Human Intelligence® News Update (3/17)

Mar 17, 2026

Human Creativity

Intrepid writer Lincoln Michel gets a lot of flak - par for the course when you pull no punches in your prose. This essay, in its simple declaration, is no exception: The best way to become a writer is simple. Read a few good books. And then practice. For recent generations raised on visual media rather than written words yet who, nonetheless, aspire to be “persons of letters,” bona fide reading (voraciously, btw) is foreign and anachronistic and … unnecessary. Wrong, says Michel, because interiority and perspective are the soul of a story. Read » [12 min]

Selling more than 170,000 copies worldwide, Solvej Balle’s inscrutably titled “On the Calculation of Volume” is a 7-part novel telling the story of an antiquarian bookseller who is endlessly reliving the same day: November 18^th. This wonderfully written expose offer rare insight into the reclusive Danish author who percolated for 30 years on the book’s premise: the loneliness and possibility of our everlasting present and the texture of everyday life. Read » [11 min]

Indian educator Rouble Nagi was awarded the $1M GEMS Education 2026 Global Teacher Prize for transforming abandoned city walls into large-scale, interactive murals that teach literacy, numeracy, hygiene, and environmental awareness. In addition to her focus of making learning accessible to marginalized communities, Nagi is an internationally recognized visual artist who’s been exhibited in more than 200 shows worldwide. Learn more » [4 min]

What if the real problem with doomscrolling isn’t the content, it’s the worldview baked into the habit? Doc Adam, philosopher and essayist, makes a compelling case that our compulsion to track, map, and contextualize everything is the logical endpoint of a current culture programmed to “get the picture right,” as if the world will stand still long enough for us to do so. His remedy is “orthopraxy” - knowledge that can only be earned from genuine presence and showing up for things that can push back. Read » [20 min]

“It’s rude. It’s an imposition. It’s gross.” That’s Cory Doctorow’s rebuttal to people who have embraced the trend of pasting an unverified blob of chatbot-produced transcript into a dialogue or (worse) asking a GPT to generate “commentary” on a conversation. Doing so doesn’t showcase your knowledge on the topic, Doctorow argues. It reveals you didn’t take the time to understand and participate using your own mind and experience. Read the screed » [4 min]

Thirteen prominent U.S. book publishers have initiated a major infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Anna’s Archive, accusing the repository of operating one of the world’s largest piracy platforms. The complaint points to its 140 million texts, amassed without proper authorization, as well as its advertising to LLM and AI system developers and data brokers high-speed access to its extensive collection. Learn more » [3 min]

In early March, journalist and Platformer founder Casey Newton discovered the AI writing assistant had turned him into an editor, without permission or compensation. So he tested the feature, called Expert Review, using a piece of his own journalism to see which “leading professionals” Grammarly would offer up to edit it (ever heard of John Carreyrou?). You surely know where this is going, but it’s a fun read to get there. (Grammarly has since shut the feature down.) Read » [12 min]

Patrick Galey has a thesis: GenAI will damage your mental and physical health, even if you never use it - the same way Covid was bad for you even if you never got sick. In this unfiltered, pull-no-punches piece (he starts of by claiming that every single GenAI developer is a creep), the British journalist lays out how GenAI will disrupt your financial plans, make work harder to accomplish, and make your life profoundly more annoying to navigate. He’s got the receipts. Read » [20 min]

According to multiple information security experts, AI isn’t dangerous to the economy because it’s autonomous. It’s dangerous because of the growing gap between LLM complexity and human comprehension, resulting in an increasing inability to apply guardrails. The solution, they say, isn’t better algorithms. It’s a kill switch with multiple people who know where it is and how to use it when an AI agent goes sideways. Learn more » [7 min]

The Golden State is spending millions of dollars on chatbot platforms to help its 1.8 million community college students easily and efficiently navigate the maze of admissions, financial aid, campus services, and “delicate topics.” Which would be great if they worked, but alas, they don’t. At least not consistently or particularly accurately. As a result, students are ditching them for the old (and free) standbys of social media and Google. Read » [10 min]

Imagine losing your job to the mere possibility of AI. It’s a distressing thought exercise serving both as the title of this The Atlantic editorial as well as the reality it unpacks: that “AI washing” is absolutely happening. Businessman Andrew Yang referred to this reality as “the f*ckening” in a recent speech, which was underscored one day later by Block’s layoff of nearly half its workforce due to AI. But we all know Block isn’t singular in fulfilling this sh*tty prophesy. Read » [8 min]

A Raleigh, North Carolina lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice is out of a job for admittedly filing “incorrect citations to case law” gleaned from using an AI chatbot to create his legal brief. The day after Rudy Renfer was excused, U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle did the obligatory tisk-tisking in an internal memo, admonishing his staff to be more mindful when using LLMs to ~~help~~ do their jobs. Learn more » [2 min]

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