Human Intelligence® News Update June 16, 2026

Jun 16, 2026

Human Creativity

David Hockney - painter, photographer, stage designer, and digital and graphic artist - passed away this week. Widely considered one of the most influential British artists of our time, his work spanned more than 7 decades, and has been featured near-continuously in exhibitions since the mid 1960s. An outspoken critic of censorship in art, Hockney regularly depicted gay men in his work well before it was broadly accepted. A retrospective of Hockney’s work is currently featured at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. » READ HIS NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY and CRITIC HOLLAND COTTER’S RETROSPECTIVE [12 min / 4 min]

Griff Larson, the musician who goes by the name honesty, admits he will likely spend the rest of his life wrestling with the ethics of the use of genAI to create works of art. He understands the question of whether to use it is deeply personal. But he’s here to remind us that, “Whatever you get externally from your art should be looked at as the icing on top. The process is the cake.” » READ HIS ESSAY [10 min]

Father, novelist, and owner of Nooks Gallery & Book Shop, Shawn Smucker has written a poem that really needs no introduction. Powerful, evocative, and pointed. » JUST READ THIS BEAUTIFUL THING [2 min]

Andy Hunter founded Bookshop.org in the months before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and was prepared for the moment independent bookstores were threatened by lockdown. By sharing profits among bookstores and affiliates promoting book sales, Hunter estimates “about 400 bookstores credit us for their survival during the pandemic.” When the 2023 slowdown forced them to revamp the business, Hunter, who also co-created Electric Literature and Literary Hub, realized, “If we really want to make a big difference and grow from here, we’ve got to learn to compete.” » WATCH THE FORBES INTERVIEW [40 min]

Amnesty International has entered the chat, and they are not here to play. The organization’s May 28 brief concludes that genAI’s reliance on “a mass invasion of privacy” is in direct conflict with international law. Because of this - compounded by the environmental effects on historically marginalized communities - Amnesty calls for companies to “immediately cease the practice of unlawful non-consensual web scraping of personal data for AI training purposes,” and for a ban of AI systems built using such practices. » READ MORE [4 min]

Asterisk Magazine Editor-in-Chief Clara Collier interviewed METR Researcher Ajeya Cotra and Journalist Timothy B. Lee, in which they volley arguments in response to the question, “How long until AI doesn’t need humans?” The resulting conversation is in equal measure fascinating and terrifying. » READ THE INTERVIEW [20 min]

Scientist Adrian de Wynter implores other scientists to stop projecting human traits onto AI when studying it. In his paper, titled If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II, de Wynter creates a neural network within a 1999 real-time strategy game, concluding, “A lot of things you interpret have to do with the SYSTEM, not with the LLM itself.” In other words, if ChatGPT tells you it is anxious, empathetic, moral, or self-aware you might believe it; but if you observe the results of the same computation filtered through a bunch of videogame goats, you are less likely to recognize such traits. » READ HIS SUMMARY OF THE STUDY AS WELL AS A SUMMARY OF THE STUDY DE WYNTER THINKS IS BETTER THAN HIS OWN [15 min / 2 min]

AI Architect and Security Researcher Disesdi Shoshana Cox reviews and interprets Anthropic’s security white paper, Zero Trust for AI Agents, which concludes that we should (checks notes) not trust AI agents. “In other news,” she writes, “My lab has experimentally determined that water is wet.” Cox reminds us it can be no other way: Backdoor data poisoning, the constantly-changing AI landscape, and agents’ dependence on autonomy to be useful guarantee AI agents are, by nature, untrustworthy. » READ HER POST [7 min]

When HR professionals turned to AI to help manage the hiring process, applicants did what you’d expect them to do: use AI to build their résumés, write their cover letters, take their engineering tests, and even coach them through live interviews. Atlantic Staff Writer and Author Annie Lowrey examines the current state of an AI-driven job market to reveal the best approach for job hunters. Her conclusion: “Nobody I spoke with was certain.” » READ MORE [5 min]

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