Human Intelligence® News Update July 14, 2026

Jul 14, 2026

Human Creativity

This summer, the Human Intelligence Institute was able to co-host a special showing of the new documentary “Ghost in the Machine.” Audience engagement was extraordinary, and our panel discussion was insightful. Here’s a link to the opening music video, along with a powerful summary of the aftermath, along with closing remarks from Human Intelligence’s Ned Hayes. READ MORE » [2 min]

At this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Director and LAIKA President and CEO Travis Knight spoke about his upcoming film, Wildwood. Created by combining traditional stop-motion techniques with practical and digital effects, Knight emphasizes the film was created without generative AI. “It feels like you’re seeing the hands of the artists at work,” Knight told the audience, “Which I think is more special now than it’s ever been.” READ MORE » [4 min]

Speaking and Storytelling Coach Jay Acunzo shares, “The best response to AI slop, infinite advice, and online noise,” and it’s Robin Williams’s (as Dr. Sean Maguire) speech about the difference between access to information and being alive. “AI has read the internet. It can't read the room. It hasn't lived a life.” But more than that, AI hasn’t lived your life. READ HIS EXPLANATION » [7 min]

Early this summer Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed Colorado Senate Bill 133 into law. By signing the bill, Polis has enabled Colorado Artist Companies, also known as A Corps, “a new kind of limited liability company built specifically for artists and creative work” — everything from the expected (songs and novels) to the unexpected (game design and clothing restoration). Kickstarter Co-Founder Yancey Strickler came up with the idea for A Corps. A Corps need not be located in Colorado to register there. Other U.S. states are working on similar bills. READ AN ANNOTATED VERSION OF THE BILL » [8 min]

Author and Journalist Vauhini Vara asks, “Is the em dash still a worthy punctuation mark, or has chatbot output devalued it?” Though it is widely accepted as one of the telltale signs of AI-generated prose — likely the result of large language models having been trained on the work of human writers, many of whom use it to great effect —Vara fiercely defends the symbol. READ HER ODE TO THE — » [6 min]

We get it. It’s hard. We communicate using language, and until very recently language was only used by other humans. But now that machines can “communicate” with us, how do we talk about them? University of Washington Professor of Linguistics Emily M. Bender and IT-University of Copenhagen, Denmark Assistant Professor Nanna Inie use a three-step process: Noticing anthropomorphizing word choices; Make alternative phrases your norm. For example, substitute “image labeling” for “image recognition,” and “automatic transcription” for “speech recognition.” PICK UP SOME TIPS HERE » [6 min]

Addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference earlier this month, New York Times Publisher and Chairperson A.G. Sulzberger urged news organizations to collaborate and fight AI companies’ “brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale.” His four thoughts — Stand up for your rights; Deal carefully; Push your legislators; and Join together — are a starting point, he says, for “News organizations to stand up as the reliable alternative to this mess.” READ OR WATCH HIS ADDRESS » [21 / 37 min]

In Science Fiction Author, Activist, and Journalist Cory Doctorow’s most recent book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, he reports how we found ourselves cast as “reverse centaurs” — people forced to use technology to work at an inhuman pace — and how we’ll get back to a world where the tech works for us. ”AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society,” Doctorow says in this interview with Ars Technica, “We will be excavating it for a generation or more.” READ HIS INTERVIEW WITH ARS TECHNICA » [19 m]

Anthropic, the U.S. AI company whose large language models (named Claude) were built by scraping original content from the internet, has accused Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company, of … you’re going to love this … theft. Anthropic accuses Alibaba of launching a distillation attack in an effort to use Claude output to train its own offering. READ MORE » [2 min]

The Economist has tracked how AI is transforming five professional activities: book publishing, filing of civil lawsuits, academic paper circulation, iOs app publishing, and music streaming. Their finding: “From literature to law to music, AI has lowered the skills and effort required for some work. That, in turn, might lower the value of all content.” That doesn’t seem great. CHECK OUT THEIR STUDY » [2 min]

This work has been certified as genuine human work. Check the certificate here.