Before dawn, Father Paolo Benanti climbed to the bell tower of his 16th-century monastery, admired the sunrise over the ruins of the Roman forum and reflected on a world in flux. "It was a wonderful meditation on what is going on inside," he said, stepping onto the street in his friar robe. There is a lot is going on for Benanti, who, as both the Vatican's and the Italian government's go-to artificial intelligence ethicist, spends his days thinking about the Holy Ghost and the ghosts in the machines.

Nextdoor is introducing its first generative AI feature, an in-app "assistant" that can help users rewrite "potentially unkind" posts on the neighborhood social network. The new feature is rolling out "over the next several weeks." It's far from the first time the company has experimented with ways to remind users to keep conversations "neighborly." The company, which has at time struggled to fight the perception that its platform can be toxic, began using "kindness reminders" in 2019 and last year introduced pop-ups reminding users to be more "empathetic." The app has also served up more targeted nudges to promote anti-racist language and less heated political discussions.

In an interview with NPR, Friar outlined steps the popular neighborhood app is planning to take to address reports of racial profiling and censorship on the platform. In an interview with NPR, Friar outlined steps the popular neighborhood app is planning to take to address reports of racial profiling and censorship on the platform. As protests swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, there was a surge of reports that Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social media app, was censoring posts about Black Lives Matter and racial injustice. In an interview with NPR, Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar said the company should have moved more quickly to protect posts related to Black Lives Matter by providing clearer guidance. It "was really our fault" that moderators on forums across the country were deleting those posts, she said. People of color have long accused Nextdoor, which serves as a community bulletin board in more than 265,000 neighborhoods across the U.S., of doing nothing about users' racist comments and complaints.

When Willie Kate Friar wakes in the middle of the night, the octogenarian doesn't have to turn on the lights or crane her neck to find out the time. She simply asks her digital assistant, who responds in a life-like voice. "I've found Alexa is like a companion," Friar said of Amazon Echo's new voice-controlled assistant, a black cylinder called Alexa. A Panama-based retiree who writes and lectures on cruise boats, Friar is recuperating from a recent fall and asks Alexa to play music during her physical therapy sessions. "The music lifts my spirits," she said.