After weeks of speculation about a new and more powerful AI product in the works, OpenAI today announced its first "reasoning model." The program, known as o1, may in many respects be OpenAI's most powerful AI offering yet, with problem-solving capacities that resemble those of a human mind more than any software before. Or, at least, that's how the company is selling it. As with most OpenAI research and product announcements, o1 is, for now, somewhat of a tease. The start-up claims that the model is far better at complex tasks but released very few details about the model's training.

Artists and writers all over the world have spent the past two years engaged in an existential battle. Generative-AI programs such as ChatGPT and DALL-E are built on work stolen from humans, and machines threaten to replace the artists and writers who made the material in the first place. Their outrage is well warranted--but their arguments don't always make sense or substantively help defend humanity. Over the weekend, the legendary science-fiction writer Ted Chiang stepped into the fray, publishing an essay in The New Yorker arguing, as the headline says, that AI "isn't going to make art." Chiang writes not simply that AI's outputs can be or are frequently lacking value but that AI cannot be used to make art, really ever, leaving no room for the many different ways someone might use the technology.

With a name that sounds like something a parent would slowly mouth to their infant, NaNoWriMo is an annual "challenge" in which many thousands of seemingly well-adjusted people decide to write a novel in a month. "Do I need something special to write a novel?" the nonprofit that puts on this exquisite torture reasonably asks on its website. National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 with 21 participants, and now nearly half a million take part every November. The event is also the name of the organization that gamifies the exercise, hosting participants on its online platform. To "win" NaNoWriMo, you need to produce a minimum of 50,000 words in a month (about the length of The Great Gatsby)--or 1,667 words a day, a number, NaNoWriMo tells us, that "scientists have determined to be the perfect amount to boost your creativity."

More and more people are learning about the world through chatbots and the software's kin, whether they mean to or not. Google has rolled out generative AI to users of its search engine on at least four continents, placing AI-written responses above the usual list of links; as many as 1 billion people may encounter this feature by the end of the year. Meta's AI assistant has been integrated into Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, and is sometimes the default option when a user taps the search bar. And Apple is expected to integrate generative AI into Siri, Mail, Notes, and other apps this fall. Less than two years after ChatGPT's launch, bots are quickly becoming the default filters for the web.

On a recent Wednesday night in Los Angeles, I was ready to buy a hot dog with my face. I was at the Intuit Dome, a 2 billion entertainment complex that opened earlier this month. Soon, it will be the home of the L.A. Clippers, but I was there to watch Olivia Rodrigo, queen of teen angst, perform a sold-out show. The arena was filled with people wearing purple cowboy hats and the same silver sequin miniskirt, all of us ready to scream-sing for two hours straight. But first, we needed food.

Helen Toner remembers when every person who worked in AI safety could fit onto a school bus. Toner hadn't yet joined OpenAI's board and hadn't yet played a crucial role in the (short-lived) firing of its CEO, Sam Altman. She was working at Open Philanthropy, a nonprofit associated with the effective-altruism movement, when she first connected with the small community of intellectuals who care about AI risk. "It was, like, 50 people," she told me recently by phone. They were more of a sci-fi-adjacent subculture than a proper discipline. The deep-learning revolution was drawing new converts to the cause.

Since the start of the AI boom, the attention on this technology has focused on not just its world-changing potential, but also fears of how it could go wrong. A set of so-called AI doomers have suggested that artificial intelligence could grow powerful enough to spur nuclear war or enable large-scale cyberattacks. Even top leaders in the AI industry have said that the technology is so dangerous, it needs to be heavily regulated. A high-profile bill in California is now attempting to do that. The proposed law, Senate Bill 1047, introduced by State Senator Scott Wiener in February, hopes to stave off the worst possible effects of AI by requiring companies to take certain safety precautions.

Taylor Swift fans are not endorsing Donald Trump en masse. Kamala Harris did not give a speech at the Democratic National Convention to a sea of communists while standing in front of the hammer and sickle. Hillary Clinton was not recently seen walking around Chicago in a MAGA hat. But images of all these things exist. In recent weeks, far-right corners of social media have been clogged with such depictions, created with generative-AI tools.

For the past few nights, I've concerned myself with the private lives of autonomous vehicles. It started when I read a news story about a San Francisco apartment complex whose residents were repeatedly awoken at 4 a.m. by honking self-driving taxis. The building overlooks an open-air parking lot that Waymo recently leased to store its vehicles. In the wee hours of the morning--between ferrying home overserved bar crawlers and picking up commuters during the morning rush hour--dozens of the autonomous white sedans fill the lot, power down, and wait to be summoned. Sometimes, too many awaken at the same time and back up while trying to make their way to the exit, only to find the lanes clogged by their brethren.

Kyle Jensen, the director of Arizona State University's writing programs, is gearing up for the fall semester. The responsibility is enormous: Each year, 23,000 students take writing courses under his oversight. The teachers' work is even harder today than it was a few years ago, thanks to AI tools that can generate competent college papers in a matter of seconds. A mere week after ChatGPT appeared in November 2022, The Atlantic declared that "The College Essay Is Dead." Two school years later, Jensen is done with mourning and ready to move on.