Arthur Holland Michel
@writearthur.bsky.social
Friendly reminders about spooky technologies.
Words in Wired, The Economist, The Atlantic, and others. Author of “Eyes in the Sky”
Words in Wired, The Economist, The Atlantic, and others. Author of “Eyes in the Sky”
Here's my new essay "Autonomous Refusal in Lethal Weapons," which examines an overlooked facet of all autonomous weapons, their inherent capacity to "refuse" orders, and explains how this could undermine human compliance with legal and moral obligations in warfare.
www.sdu.dk/-/media/cws/...
www.sdu.dk/-/media/cws/...
www.sdu.dk
January 29, 2026 at 8:26 PM
Here's my new essay "Autonomous Refusal in Lethal Weapons," which examines an overlooked facet of all autonomous weapons, their inherent capacity to "refuse" orders, and explains how this could undermine human compliance with legal and moral obligations in warfare.
www.sdu.dk/-/media/cws/...
www.sdu.dk/-/media/cws/...
I've been off all screens for a month—glorious, highly recommend—so this is a bit behind, but @technologyreview.com's latest issue has a story of mine on Europe's odd fixation with new instruments of annihilation. Gift link: ter.li/8ma6me
Europe’s drone-filled vision for the future of war
Eighty years after total war transformed the continent, European countries are making big bets on new instruments of annihilation.
ter.li
January 26, 2026 at 3:48 PM
I've been off all screens for a month—glorious, highly recommend—so this is a bit behind, but @technologyreview.com's latest issue has a story of mine on Europe's odd fixation with new instruments of annihilation. Gift link: ter.li/8ma6me
Holy hell. An internal Meta AI safety policy document sated that “It is acceptable [for a chatbot] to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”
Meta only removed that line (and others like it) after Reuters contacted them for comment.
www.reuters.com/investigates...
Meta only removed that line (and others like it) after Reuters contacted them for comment.
www.reuters.com/investigates...
A flirty Meta AI bot invited a retiree to meet. He never made it home.
Impaired by a stroke, a man fell for a Meta chatbot originally created with Kendall Jenner. His death spotlights Metaâs AI rules, which let bots tell falsehoods.
www.reuters.com
August 14, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Holy hell. An internal Meta AI safety policy document sated that “It is acceptable [for a chatbot] to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”
Meta only removed that line (and others like it) after Reuters contacted them for comment.
www.reuters.com/investigates...
Meta only removed that line (and others like it) after Reuters contacted them for comment.
www.reuters.com/investigates...
Maybe this won’t come as a surprise but this tech is built, in part, on models made by OpenAI (CLIP) and Meta (DINOv2). So there’s that, too.
In a new note for @economist.com I wrote about an effort to arm drones with a formidable new surveillance power: facial recognition. www.economist.com/science-and-...
Drones could soon become more intrusive than ever
“Whole-body” biometrics are on their way
www.economist.com
August 13, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Maybe this won’t come as a surprise but this tech is built, in part, on models made by OpenAI (CLIP) and Meta (DINOv2). So there’s that, too.
In a new note for @economist.com I wrote about an effort to arm drones with a formidable new surveillance power: facial recognition. www.economist.com/science-and-...
Drones could soon become more intrusive than ever
“Whole-body” biometrics are on their way
www.economist.com
August 13, 2025 at 6:57 PM
In a new note for @economist.com I wrote about an effort to arm drones with a formidable new surveillance power: facial recognition. www.economist.com/science-and-...
If you still had any doubt that the idea of "AGI" was 100% a marketing ploy, watch as all these guys stop using it now that it's no longer profitable to do so.
www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/s...
www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/s...
Sam Altman now says AGI, or human-level AI, is 'not a super useful term’ — and he's not alone
Computer science experts say it's better to focus on the more specialized use cases of AI.
www.cnbc.com
August 12, 2025 at 3:25 PM
If you still had any doubt that the idea of "AGI" was 100% a marketing ploy, watch as all these guys stop using it now that it's no longer profitable to do so.
www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/s...
www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/s...
Someone needs to make a manual on the do's and don'ts of writing about predictive policing.
eg. never say something like "spot future killers." There's no such thing as a future killer.
eg. never say something like "spot future killers." There's no such thing as a future killer.
Aaargh, deleted that pre crime post because article was from 2022. I was looking for this one from today, but so far it’s only on Apple News.
August 12, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Someone needs to make a manual on the do's and don'ts of writing about predictive policing.
eg. never say something like "spot future killers." There's no such thing as a future killer.
eg. never say something like "spot future killers." There's no such thing as a future killer.
"at a disadvantage" is an awfully strange way of saying "happy and free."
Zuckerberg says people without AI glasses will be at a disadvantage in the future
Zuckerberg says people without AI glasses will be at a disadvantage in the future | TechCrunch
Mark Zuckerberg really believes AI glasses will be the ideal way to blend the physical and digital worlds together.
techcrunch.com
July 31, 2025 at 8:27 AM
"at a disadvantage" is an awfully strange way of saying "happy and free."
Imagine if a college in 2010 announced that it was going to accept the reality that a bunch of its students were paying people from Craigslist to write their essays.
July 22, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Imagine if a college in 2010 announced that it was going to accept the reality that a bunch of its students were paying people from Craigslist to write their essays.
The new definition of insanity is training a chatbot on the whole of the Internet and expecting it not to repeat the Web's ugly biases.
Study finds A.I. LLMs advise women to ask for lower salaries than men. When prompted w/ a user profile of same education, experience & job role, differing only by gender, ChatGPT advised the female applicant to request $280K salary; Male applicant=$400K.
thenextweb.com/news/chatgpt...
thenextweb.com/news/chatgpt...
ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds
A new study has found that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT consistently advise women to ask for lower salaries than men.
thenextweb.com
July 21, 2025 at 11:10 AM
The new definition of insanity is training a chatbot on the whole of the Internet and expecting it not to repeat the Web's ugly biases.
July 18, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Reposted by Arthur Holland Michel
Creativity and critical thinking might take a hit. But there are ways to soften the blow
Does AI make you more stupid?
Creativity and critical thinking might take a hit. But there are ways to soften the blow
econ.st
July 16, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Creativity and critical thinking might take a hit. But there are ways to soften the blow
For this week's @economist.com I investigate how heavy AI use can degrade our cognitive abilities. The science on this question is still very new. But the evidence so far is troubling, to put it mildly.
www.economist.com/science-and-...
www.economist.com/science-and-...
Does AI make you stupid?
Creativity and critical thinking might take a hit. But there are ways to soften the blow
www.economist.com
July 17, 2025 at 7:26 AM
For this week's @economist.com I investigate how heavy AI use can degrade our cognitive abilities. The science on this question is still very new. But the evidence so far is troubling, to put it mildly.
www.economist.com/science-and-...
www.economist.com/science-and-...
I'm trying to imagine what we would have thought in 2016 if the DoD had given Microsoft $200 million for Tay, the chatbot that went full bigot on Twitter within hours of being launched, a mere week after the debacle. Our heads would have exploded.
July 16, 2025 at 8:15 AM
I'm trying to imagine what we would have thought in 2016 if the DoD had given Microsoft $200 million for Tay, the chatbot that went full bigot on Twitter within hours of being launched, a mere week after the debacle. Our heads would have exploded.
Reposted by Arthur Holland Michel
Media outlets can't pivot to AI to save themselves. It's not a business strategy and it's not going to work. The only path forward is for journalists to lean into their humanity, to do things AI can't, and to make clear they are writing for people, not algorithms:
www.404media.co/the-medias-p...
www.404media.co/the-medias-p...
The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work
AI is not going to save media companies, and forcing journalists to use AI is not a business model.
www.404media.co
July 14, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Media outlets can't pivot to AI to save themselves. It's not a business strategy and it's not going to work. The only path forward is for journalists to lean into their humanity, to do things AI can't, and to make clear they are writing for people, not algorithms:
www.404media.co/the-medias-p...
www.404media.co/the-medias-p...
Someone should tell the people who did this that making music with your own hands and voice is way more fun.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify. Now music insiders say listeners should be warned
The Velvet Sundown released two albums before admitting their music, images and backstory were created by AI
www.theguardian.com
July 14, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Someone should tell the people who did this that making music with your own hands and voice is way more fun.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Friendly reminder that there's no point talking about using a technology "for good" if you don't let people talk about how it's also being used for bad.
July 10, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Friendly reminder that there's no point talking about using a technology "for good" if you don't let people talk about how it's also being used for bad.
Those who predicted the AI revolution decades ago were right about a lot of things but they never counted on just how racist a lot of these machines would turn out to be
July 9, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Those who predicted the AI revolution decades ago were right about a lot of things but they never counted on just how racist a lot of these machines would turn out to be
If you're wondering why people who work on AI ethics look a little tired, maybe it's because they've spent a decade watching AI do really racist stuff. They can be forgiven for being a bit grumpy.
July 9, 2025 at 12:34 PM
If you're wondering why people who work on AI ethics look a little tired, maybe it's because they've spent a decade watching AI do really racist stuff. They can be forgiven for being a bit grumpy.
Reposted by Arthur Holland Michel
My takeaway from the Grok white genocide debacle is that it has been nine years since Microsoft Tay and tech companies still have zero idea how to get their chatbots say what they want them to say.
May 16, 2025 at 12:53 PM
My takeaway from the Grok white genocide debacle is that it has been nine years since Microsoft Tay and tech companies still have zero idea how to get their chatbots say what they want them to say.
It’s dangerous for LLMs to generate terms such as “I understand your point,” “my intention was” and “I apologize.” None of these words represent the actual reason the system did what it did.
June 16, 2025 at 7:29 PM
It’s dangerous for LLMs to generate terms such as “I understand your point,” “my intention was” and “I apologize.” None of these words represent the actual reason the system did what it did.
Friendly reminder that 99.999% of what tech leaders say about AI is not expertise. It's content.
June 10, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Friendly reminder that 99.999% of what tech leaders say about AI is not expertise. It's content.
The DoD is starting to get into FPV drones. They're only about fifteen years behind hobbyist drone racers, and three years behind the Ukrainians.
aviationweek.com/defense/airc...
aviationweek.com/defense/airc...
DIU Launches Project GI To Select First-Person Vehicle Drones | Aviation Week Network
A new acquisition channel has opened to introduce first-person vehicle (FPV) drones and UAS for other domains into the U.S. military inventory.
aviationweek.com
June 4, 2025 at 2:39 PM
The DoD is starting to get into FPV drones. They're only about fifteen years behind hobbyist drone racers, and three years behind the Ukrainians.
aviationweek.com/defense/airc...
aviationweek.com/defense/airc...