Reading the age of artificial intelligence
What is actually happening, and what it means for the people who will live with it.
Interviews with the people who have had to sign something. Series that take one domain at a time. A weekly reading of the week. And two standing instruments — because the argument is more useful when somebody is willing to put a number on it.
Not yet published
Eight programmes are commissioned and none of them is out yet. What follows is what we are making, so you can decide now whether it is worth your Sunday morning.
Hear when the first pieces land →What we make
Each of these runs on its own schedule and can be followed on its own. Pick one and you get its full run.
Series
Watched. Each takes a subject and stays with it.
The Future of AI
ForthcomingA monthly conversation across two generations, taking one domain at a time and giving the optimistic case the same scrutiny as the risk.
MonthlyKellan Galzahr & Karim GalzahrThe Interviews
ForthcomingOne guest, an hour or more, and the questions a published position does not have to answer.
MonthlyKarim Galzahr & Sven JungmannThe Week in AI
ForthcomingEach week Karim Galzahr and Sven Jungmann work through what has actually happened in AI, and what follows from it.
WeeklyKarim Galzahr & Sven JungmannWill AI replace your ___
ForthcomingWe take one profession per episode, establish what the work consists of, and ask what would have to be true for the whole of it to be automated.
MonthlyKarim Galzahr, Moss Trestman & Sven JungmannIs AI Conscious?
ForthcomingFour episodes on machine consciousness — what the question is asking, what would count as evidence, and what follows morally and practically while the answer is still open.
In productionKarim Galzahr, Moss Trestman & Sven Jungmann
Written & measured
Read on a Sunday, and consulted when the argument needs a number.
The Signal
ForthcomingA weekly reading of what actually changed in AI, and what it changes for anyone who has to act on it.
Weekly, SundayKarim Galzahr, Kellan Galzahr & Sven JungmannThe AGI Clock
ForthcomingOne dial read across a whole day — midnight is the singularity, morning holds what has already happened, evening holds what has not — and the hands move only on a published event, with the reasoning attached.
Moves on eventsKarim Galzahr, Moss Trestman & Sven JungmannThe AI Readiness Index
ForthcomingA second instrument, still in draft — a sector-by-sector reading of how prepared institutions are for systems already installed inside them.
In developmentKarim Galzahr, Moss Trestman & Sven Jungmann
By subject
All subjects →The programmes cut one way; these cut across them. Once there is work here, a subject will gather everything we have made on it, whichever programme it came from.
- Scientific researchWhat machines change about how discoveries are made.
- Military & defenceAutonomy, targeting, deterrence, and the pace of decision.
- Policing & justicePrediction, evidence, and the discretion of the state.
- HealthcareDiagnosis, triage, and where clinical judgement still sits.
- Governance & policyHow institutions decide, and how quickly they can.
- Work & labourWhich tasks move, which jobs hold, and on what evidence.
- EducationWhat is worth learning when the tools can do the exercise.
- Consciousness & mindWhat the question means, and what would count as an answer.
- Safety & riskFailure modes, verification, and the cost of being wrong.
- EconomicsCapital, productivity, and who captures the gains.
The Signal
One considered email, every Sunday.
Eight to ten things that changed in the week, each with a sentence on why it matters, and a closing paragraph on the pattern they trace together. About twelve hundred words. Written by one of us in rotation.
Subscribe before the first issue →Three vantage points, and a fourth
An investor
Karim Galzahr
Brings a polymath's range across fields, and the investor's question: what would have to be true for this to matter?
An entrepreneur
Sven Jungmann
Deploys artificial intelligence in real-world settings, and asks of every claim whether it survives contact with users, workflows, and consequences.
A young person
Kellan Galzahr
Will spend a working life inside whatever this becomes, and asks the question the other lenses can afford to defer: what is it like to inherit it?
A scientist
Moss Trestman
A research chemist working on AI for science — attentive to method, to evidence, and to what the data will and will not bear.