Human Intelligence® News Update (3/24)

Mar 24, 2026

Human Creativity

Human Intelligence® sat down with Emily Harris, an award-winning national, and international investigative journalist for NPR and co-founder of both Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud and community journalism outlet Uplift Local. Emily discusses the common threads that run through seemingly disparate people and communities, the shift from oral and written traditions to visual and AI-driven “learning,” the commoditization of the news, and IP protection challenges. Watch or listen » [36 min]

The Emerald Isle has launched the world’s first system to financially support artists in their work. Called Basic Income for the Arts (BIA), the project’s goal is to retain talent in the arts and culture sector by paying eligible artists €325 ($376) per week for three consecutive years. Approximately 2,000 artists will be selected after applications open in May. In 2029, BIA will continue the program with a new set of selected artists. Learn more » [2 min]

Eight years after serving an 11.5-year prison sentence, Kerwin Pittman decided to pay forward his personal transformation by buying North Carolina’s former Wayne County Correctional Center and remaking it into a housing and job training facility for formerly incarcerated people. Called the Recidivism Reduction Campus, it’s “a blueprint for transformation [and] about showing that when we invest in people, real change happens.” Read » [5 min]

In this age of “all men suck” memes, Drunk Wisconsin (yes) has penned a satirical-meets-serious piece we think is worthy of your time. Less a blog than a contemplation, Drunk uses a literary device called anaphora, beginning each paragraph with the same provocative sentence – Men only want one thing and it’s disgusting – followed by a tapestry of male desires that weave larping and whimsy with true meditative reflection. It’s one more example of the awesomely cool ideas the human mind can conjure. Read » [3 min]

Cloudflare, the service that internet publishers pay to block unauthorized crawlers, just launched its own crawler that, according to Thomas Baekdal, founder of media trade journal Baekdal Media, “does exactly what we are paying them not to do!!!” Called Browser Rendering, Cloudflare’s feature release doc claims it respects robots.txt and AI Crawl Control by default. But upon testing … well, you can guess what happened. Read » [3 min]

“We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly,” said Michael Asia, a Kenyan data labeler who was part of the human labor behind AI sex bots, splitting time between annotating uncensored violent and/or pornographic content and sexting with lonely people. He’s now secretary general of Kenya’s Data Labelers Association, which is fighting for better pay, mental health services, and benefits for the often-destitute ghost workforce that powers the runaway valuations of Meta, OpenAI, and other AI giants. Learn more » [13 min]

Coming off the coattails of the above “Hidden Labor” story, it seems that Meta’s privacy-by-design AI Glasses allegedly were used to record everything its wearers do - from living rooms to naked bodies and intimate moments - and transmit those raw, uncensored feeds to subcontractors in Kenya (data labelers, anyone?) for frame-by-frame annotation. No disclosure. No permission. So far, seven lawsuits have been filed, all of which you can download and read here. [choose your own adventure]

AI doom-forecasting is a common theme across the education sector and for good reason. In this fifth installment of “AI Killed My Job,” journalist Brian Merchant of Blood in the Machine widens the aperture to include “education-adjacent” instructors - private tutors, adjunct lecturers, librarians, HR employees, essay graders, edtech workers, and more - who’ve had their jobs transformed by AI. (Spoiler alert: it’s demoralizing and alarming, so you might want to have your beverage of choice at the ready.) Read » [50 min]

The multi-month study evaluated real-world capabilities and limitations of media integrity and authentication (MIA) methods such as cryptographically secured provenance, watermarking, and fingerprinting to gauge how helpful - or not - they are at verifying the source and history of digital content. One of its central findings: no single technology is sufficient on its own. (Note: MIA techniques are driven by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, a standards body dedicated to scaling these capabilities and which Human Intelligence® is a contributing member.) Read the blog and the Q&A » [7 & 8 mins]

Perplexity is launching Personal Computer (waitlisted), software that turns your M4 Mac mini into an 24/7 personal assistant with always-on access to everything: Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Salesforce, all local files and apps, all Perplexity sessions, and surely lots more. According to CEO Aravind Srinivas, “A traditional operating system takes instructions; an AI operating system takes objectives.” (Please hold for swelling theme music.) The company promises Personal Computer works in a secure environment with clear safeguards, including a kill switch. That’s a relief. I guess. Learn more » [3 min]

In yet another “Hey college kids, you’re f*cked” report, ServiceNow CEO says that AI agents could easily send college grad unemployment above 30%, since many entry-level jobs will soon and increasingly be done by them. From Block’s recent layoffs (half its workforce) to Atlassian’s 10% workforce slash, young people need to seriously reevaluate their future plans and, in many cases, pivot to what AI can’t do, e.g., jobs and careers that rely on terrestrial skill and human interaction. Read » [2 min]

British Judge Agnello KC tossed out witness testimony after discovering the man, Laimonas Jakštys (also the co-claimant), was receiving coaching by one of his lawyers through a pair of smart glasses. Did Jakštys take any responsibility? Of course not. After trying the same ploy again on Day 2 of the trial, he blamed the snafu on ChatGPT, which he said was helping him with English translations. Bummer for him that he’s highly proficient in the language. Read » [5 min]

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