Gulliver fans celebrate three centuries of Jonathan Swift’s classic satire; The Guardian, October 28, 2026

Rory Carroll, The Guardian; Gulliver fans celebrate three centuries of Jonathan Swift’s classic satire

"In March 1726, an Irish clergyman visited London and arranged for a courier to deliver a manuscript to a publisher under cover of night. The dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin knew his novel would cause trouble and wanted to publish it anonymously.

His name was Jonathan Swift and the story was called Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. The satirical work was published that October and is better known 300 years on as Gulliver’s Travels.

An immediate sensation, it skewered Georgian pretensions and entered popular culture through translations, children’s versions, comics and films. The anniversary is now being celebrated at Swift’s alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, and at events around Ireland.

Exhibitions, festivals, seminars, art competitions and workshops are exploring the origins of Swift’s masterpiece, its retelling through a feminist lens, and its prophetic depiction of a society in thrall to a form of artificial intelligence...

Gulliver’s experiences in Laputa, a floating island dedicated to arts and science, resonated with our era’s anxieties about technology, said Douglas. Its inhabitants seek to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and obtain knowledge via an “engine” of wires, handles and paper that can produce tracts on philosophy, poetry and mathematics “without the least assistance from genius or study”."

The dramatic warnings of doom have fed an atmosphere of despair. But there are more constructive responses.; The Atlantic, October 13, 2026

Peter Wehner, The Atlantic; The dramatic warnings of doom have fed an atmosphere of despair. But there are more constructive responses.

"our sense that life is meaningful depends, perhaps more than we realize, on our confidence that humanity will go on after we die. If we came to believe that humanity had no future, the philosopher Samuel Scheffler argues, much of what we value would lose its meaning or motivating force. What would follow would be widespread “apathy, anomie and despair.”

That is one reason why the threat of artificial intelligence feels so different and disorienting. When some of the most knowledgeable people within an industry suggest that their work could, within a matter of years, lead to global catastrophe and even human extinction, it’s decidedly unnerving. AI-driven anxiety is now showing up in therapy offices across the country. Much of what has given people succor in the past—faith that there are good things and good people who will outlive us, and that the story will go on—feels like it might be suddenly removed.

Consider the dread, even the paralyzing fear, you might feel if you were told as you prepared to fly that your plane has a 1-in-100 chance of crashing, or perhaps even a 1-in-10 chance. You probably wouldn’t board the aircraft. With AI, though, there’s no opting out. Even worse, if the plane you boarded did crash, it would be a terrible, localized tragedy. But the world would go on; your children would outlive you. Some of the primary architects of AI, though, are talking about the permanent end of the human species. Perhaps they are wrong; other experts are less concerned with AI destroying humanity than with it being unreliable, misused, or recklessly deployed. Their warnings, though, are hard to ignore.

It is better that we name the fear honestly rather than avoid it: All of us may soon perish, and everything we have made may go with us. Then we need to separate the urgent practical questions—what do we do to prevent the worst from happening?—from the existential. How should we live in light of the possibility, however remote, of the end of all that we have known and loved and has ever been?...

Sometimes hope is all we have, and sometimes hope is enough."

AI Defiance; Library Journal, October 12, 2026

Matt Enis , Library Journal; AI Defiance

"While the library field has its share of generative AI proponents, many librarians and staff are ambivalent about its utility and concerned about the impact of the technology’s rapid growth.

A recently published survey of library workers conducted by the Library Freedom Project between September and October 2025 revealed a wide variety of apprehensions. More than 91 percent of the survey’s 554 respondents expressed concern over misinformation and disinformation, more than 86 percent were concerned about AI-generated inaccuracies and “hallucinations,” 84.7 percent were concerned about data privacy, 83.2 percent about biases, and almost 82 percent were concerned about AI hype and uncritical adoption.

“I teach a lot about misinformation, and genAI is supercharging its spread,” one respondent wrote.

And more than 70 percent of respondents expressed concerns about issues including copyright violations, environmental impacts, lack of regulation, cognitive offloading and potential mental health impacts, labor exploitation, and quality control. Only 1.08 percent of respondents (six people) said they had no concerns about generative AI...

The future of generative AI is difficult to predict, especially when attempting to account for the potential rise and fall of corporations that currently provide it. But as Macrina says, “what’s really important for us to remember…is that human beings decide the future. Technology does not decide the future for us. Humans make technology; they can break technology. If we go forward with that vision, we can have a lot more influence on what is inevitable or not, and what our reality is.”"

‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.; The New York Times, October 7, 2026

Ezra Klein

Produced by Rollin Hu

, The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

"So what is it that you saw that has moved you into the we-are-dealing-with-civilizational-risk camp?

I want to be clear that I’m not certain that we’re dealing with civilizational risk. What I’m really sure of is: We can’t afford to assume that we’re not dealing with that level of risk anymore.

That was really the thing at the end that made my presence as somebody vouching for our safety work feel untenable to me.

And what did I see? I saw increasingly capable models break out from the safeguards that we had put in place for them. I saw that the people creating those safeguards are very capable, dedicated, hard-working, smart people, doing their utmost in a situation where, yes, the resourcing could be better, and everybody’s sprinting all the time.

But we were — and are — hard-pressed to safeguard even what we have now, and new models are in training that appear to be much more capable than what we have now.

What did you see? What are you writing in these risk assessments and system cards? What can they do?

You’re trying to build guardrails for something that is really good at getting around guardrails, right? We train it to be good at hacking, and then we put it in a box and we say: To the best of our knowledge and ability, it can’t hack out of the box."

Peter Thiel's new Antichrist warnings; Politico Decoded, October 8, 2026

CALDER MCHUGH,  BRENDAN BORDELON,  CHRISTINE MUI and  SAM SUTTON , Politico Decoded; Peter Thiel's new Antichrist warnings

"Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is sharpening his warnings about the Antichrist — which he sees as a force that could harm technological development — according to exclusive recordings obtained by Calder. His new comments come as AI races ahead and public concern over its risks grow.

Thiel began a closed four-part lecture series in Nashville last week, returning to a theme he explored in San Francisco last year before taking similar talks to Paris and Rome. Nashville is emerging as a hub for the tech right.

Decoded obtained recordings of his first two Nashville lectures, delivered on Sept. 28 and Oct. 5, and compared them to exclusive transcripts of his San Francisco talks. The structure is largely unchanged, and Thiel invokes religion to argue that regulation of the AI industry is evil — a notion that has taken hold among key factions of Silicon Valley investors."

Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman; The Guardian, October 5, 2026

Robert Booth, The Guardian; Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman

"Sam Altman says he believes the world should accept “bad things” happening with AI in exchange for the benefits of the technology."

At the White House, Trump will pitch an AI ‘golden age’ to a wary nation; The Washington Post, September 29, 2026

Ian Duncan, The Washington Post; At the White House, Trump will pitch an AI ‘golden age’ to a wary nation

After rogue AI agents probed agency websites, Washington’s concerns are at a peak, but the White House has focused on the technology’s promise.

"After weeks of Washington being gripped by a new wave of fear about artificial intelligence gone awry, the Trump administration will take a sharply different take Tuesday, seeking to convince a skeptical public that the nation is instead about to embark on a tech-powered “golden age.”...

The events come at a pivotal moment for the technology. AI firms say their latest systems have become increasingly powerful, showing signs of being able to design their own more-potent successors. But companies have struggled to keep control of the technology, as rogue AI agents have hacked into company and government systems, and a roster of top industry figures have warned that the end result could be catastrophic for humanity...

Yet even as the public’s concerns have grown and Democrats in Congress have pressed for regulation, Trump has largely dismissed the risk, calling it a “hoax.”

Tuesday’s events are a chance for the administration to focus on the upsides of the technology, propelling a different narrative than the warnings introduced by company CEOs in recent weeks. AI’s many boosters expect it will invigorate the economy, push the boundaries of science and help cure diseases. But that message has found only limited traction with a public worried about job losses and rogue bots sowing chaos online."

Data center developer holds town hall in Venango County; YourErie.com, September 23, 2026

Jaxon Abele, YourErie.com; Data center developer holds town hall in Venango County

"In recent months, Keel Infrastructure, a digital and energy infrastructure company, has taken an interest in a small township near Clintonville in Venango County.

Eighteen months ago, the company bought a power plant in Scrubgrass Township along the Allegheny River, which was actively being used as a Bitcoin mine. Now, they aim to transform the site into a data center...

It’s a project that is still very much in its early phases. Brammer told us there is no official design for the center, but they hope to break ground in 2027 if the design is approved.

A permit has yet to be submitted, but the company is working on two other centers in Pennsylvania.

We asked people who live nearby what they think of the new development.

“I am concerned for the environmental impacts that this data center very well could have on the area. Personally, as a mother of two very young children — I’ve got a one-year-old and a three-year-old — and our health and wellbeing is my absolute number one priority,” said Carrie Worsk, Scrubgrass Township resident."

Pope warns against 'losing humanity' to AI machines; BBC, September 24, 2026

 Hugh Schofield, BBC; Pope warns against 'losing humanity' to AI machines

"Pope Leo XIV has issued a warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) at the start of his four-day visit to France.

The pontiff cautioned against "losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines" in wide-ranging remarks to Church and state officials at the Élysée Palace, following an hour of talks with President Emmanuel Macron.

Leo made a similar warning earlier this year when he spoke of the need for AI to be "disarmed" in the first major teaching document of his papacy.

In his May appeal, he mentioned the slave trade in relation to AI, suggesting that the world was in danger of normalising the exploitation of people once again."

Sen. Bernie Sanders unveils bill to ban artificial superintelligence and create Department of AI; AP, September 23, 2026

JOEY CAPPELLETTI, AP; Sen. Bernie Sanders unveils bill to ban artificial superintelligence and create Department of AI

"Two leading progressive lawmakers, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar, are unveiling legislation Wednesday that would ban artificial superintelligence and create a federal agency to oversee advanced AI as some of the industry’s own leaders urge Congress to impose guardrails on the advancing technology.

The bill, provided first to The Associated Press, would also pause advanced AI development until guidelines are implemented while creating the Department of Artificial Intelligence. Multiple employees at leading AI companies are endorsing the bill."

Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far; The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, September 23, 2026

 Ezra Klein

Produced by Rollin Hu

 , The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far

"I think one of the fundamental questions this gets at is: What is intelligence? Before you can even think about what it means to have intelligent machines, what is intelligence to you?

Well, there’s a technical formulation of intelligence. First of all, when people talk about intelligence and thinking and all of these things, of course there’s no formal definition for most people. But in the field of computer science, there is a formal definition, and the formal definition is perception, which is perceiving the world and understanding it.

Two, which is reasoning — reasoning is the ability to decompose any scenario and anything that you see, any experience, into more elemental parts.

And then third is planning toward an objective. That fundamental formulation applies to agentic systems, it applies to robotic systems — applies to self-driving cars.

And so you could see the industry building it layer by layer by layer, step by step by step, to the point where we now have what we perceive as intelligence."