Pope Leo XIV speaks during a meeting with bishops, members of the clergy and families whose members have been victims of environmental pollution at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, in Acerra, Italy, on 23 May 2026. Pope Leo XIV speaks during a meeting with bishops, members of the clergy and families whose members have been victims of environmental pollution at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, in Acerra, Italy, on 23 May 2026. Americans echo Pope Leo's concerns about AI: 'It threatens workers, privacy and human life' Guardian readers in the US spoke of fears about unregulated AI in response to the pope's encyclical warning about the risks of the technology I n his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the "culture of power" driving the AI age. Calling for the "most rigorous" ethical constraints on AI - which he described as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today - the first US-born pope also warned of "new forms of slavery" emerging through the digital economy. Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US echoed the pope's concerns, describing AI as an "unregulated" industry increasingly being used to the "detriment of too many people", while also raising fears about surveillance, labor displacement, war and environmental harm .

More than a decade before an AI-powered chatbot could do your homework, help you make dinner or pass the bar exam, there was @Horse_ebooks. The primitive predecessor to today's chatbot renaissance began as a Twitter account in 2010, tweeting automated excerpts from ebooks that, decontextualized, took on unexpected and strangely poetic meanings. Purportedly a spambot, the account surfaced quotes from ebooks that went viral for their absurdist fragments – phrases like "Hello saxophone," "COULD THIS BE THE", and "Today we are lucky to be talking". It amassed more than 200,000 followers at its peak and now, despite being inactive for a decade, the account still holds 131,000 followers. Its most memorable quip – "everything happens so much" – still resonates today.

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Though everybody complains about Twitter, no one can deny that it has brought some amazing phrases into our lives--things we can't imagine having read in any other place, or at any other time in history. Near the top of any list of the most treasured sentence fragments posted there, the now-defunct account @Horse_ebooks would have several entries. Twitter users still recirculate strange classics like "(using fingers to indicate triangular shape) SMELL SMELL SMELL GOOD NEW NEW NEW slice drink MATCH SPARKLER (thrown in air) STARS STARS STARS." But the best-known @Horse_ebooks tweet, posted 10 years ago today, was astounding in its clarity and salience.