Fast Company: “Douglas Rushkoff wants us to use AI to ask better questions”
Most conversations about AI focus on speed, scale, and answers. Douglas Rushkoff wants us to slow down—and rethink the questions themselves. In this wide-ranging Fast Company article, the renowned media theorist argues that AI shouldn’t be treated as an oracle or efficiency engine, but as a tool for expanding human imagination and agency. Used well, AI can help us surface assumptions, challenge default thinking, and imagine radical alternatives to broken systems—if we resist letting it merely automate us.
Big Think: “The boomer–doomer divide within OpenAI, explained by Karen Hao”
AI discourse, Karen Hao argues, is trapped in a false binary: “boomers” who insist AI will save us, and “doomers” who warn it will destroy us. A long-time Silicon Valley insider and the author of the New York Times bestseller Empire of AI, as well as one of TIME‘s 100 most influential people in AI, Karen shows how both narratives serve to position AI as something ordinary people can’t meaningfully influence. The truth, she says, is that each one of us has the power to chart a more hopeful course for the future of AI.
The New York Times: “A.I.’s Environmental Impact Will Threaten Its Own Supply Chain”
AI may feel like magic, but its impacts are very real, says Kate Crawford. In her New York Times opinion video, this AI scholar draws a direct line between the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure and its destructive environmental footprint—which is jeopardizing the very resources that it requires. She argues that the extractive industries that support it—from quartz mining to energy-hungry data centers—are already reshaping landscapes. Using Hurricane Helene as a case study, she reframes AI not as “cloud-based,” but as grounded in land and labor.
The New Yorker: “The End of the English Paper”
“A.I. allows any of us to feel like an expert, but it is risk, doubt, and failure that make us human,” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hua Hsu. Through far-ranging interviews with students, he explores how generative AI has quietly upended one of higher education’s most sacred rituals, forcing professors to rethink what writing assignments are really for. Rather than chasing plagiarism detectors, educators are experimenting with new forms of evaluation that prioritize thinking, synthesis, and voice—suggesting that AI may not end learning, but offer a new way forward.
The Wall Street Journal: “I Built an AI Career Coach. I’ve Never Had a Better Coach.”
What happens when career coaching becomes judgment-free—and available 24/7? Alexandra Samuel explains how she built an AI coach that helped surface patterns, anxieties, and ambitions more honestly than many human conversations allow. (Her AI coach, Viv, eventually became the co-host for her podcast, Me + Viv!) The takeaway isn’t that AI should replace mentors, but that it can lower the friction of self-reflection, creating a private space to think out loud about work, identity, and what comes next.
