AI-detection tools are getting better. Basically every recent, high-profile accusation of someone passing off AI-generated writing as their own has started in the same way: with a tool called Pangram. In March, when a horror novel from a major publishing house was pulled just days before its scheduled U.S. release date, it was in part because Pangram, an AI-detection program, had identified the text as AI-generated. Other people have fed text into Pangram to suggest that chatbots have been used to write articles in major newspapers including, multiple short stories awarded a prestigious literary prize, and most recently, significant chunks of Pope Leo XIV's encyclical warning about the dangers of AI. The tool is also used by universities to vet student work and scientific associations to scan research papers.

AI is causing a crisis of agency. Back in the web-traffic-obsessed days of 2018, at a time of dawning awareness of how easily audiences online could be manipulated and spoofed by bots, the writer Max Read argued that the internet had crossed a threshold known as "the Inversion." Not only had bots proliferated across the internet; they had come to constitute it. In outnumbering humans, bots were also loosening everyone's grasp on the very reality of online experience. "What's gone from the internet, after all, isn't'truth,' but trust: the sense that the people and things we encounter are what they represent themselves to be," Read wrote.

Look closely and you'll see that every part of the text is not quite right. A few weeks ago, where I live in Johannesburg, a man ran a stop sign and crashed into my Subaru. At the scene he was frantic, unable to gather his thoughts. Half an hour later, I received a lengthy, perfectly grammatical text from him elegantly explaining how he perceived the crash had happened. For a repair quote, I wrote to a mechanic I know, a man who used to text me in curt phrases riddled with shorthand.

They can be high-tech, but crucially, are "screen-free." Bondu is a stuffed dinosaur that speaks 27 languages. It--or, more precisely, the AI chatbot embedded inside it--can also play games, help with homework, and patiently answer a child's questions, even the really inane ones. Its "bedtime mode" includes breathing exercises and stories. Bondu, which costs $300 and comes in four colors, is marketed as a playmate, a confidant, a teacher, a quasi-caregiver.

What counts as an acceptable use of AI has never been fuzzier. Steven Rosenbaum has decided that the real villain behind the bogus quotes in his book is a chatbot. Earlier this week, reported that, Rosenbaum's much-discussed book about how AI shapes reality, contains more than half a dozen fake or misattributed quotes . Rosenbaum pinned some of them on his use of AI. He claimed responsibility for the errors and said he was investigating what went wrong.

There's Never Been a Better Time to Study Computer Science Even as AI progresses, coders aren't doomed. It's a weird time to be studying computer science. Recent grads have a higher unemployment rate than those in just about every other major--yes, even philosophy. The internet is littered with rants from newly minted programmers who can't find work. On one such YouTube video, the top comment reads: "Your first mistake is not being born earlier."

Toward the beginning of the 2002 film, a domineering lawyer (played by James Spader) barges into the office of his assistant (Maggie Gyllenhaal) with evidence of a work infraction: a memo she has written that has "three typing errors." "Do you know what this makes me look like to the people who receive these letters?" Setting aside that his screed turns out to be foreplay, Spader's character was channeling a widespread cultural revulsion: Typos were the ultimate shorthand for careless work. A spelling mistake was proof that the writer hadn't bothered putting much effort into a piece of correspondence, that their instructions or advice shouldn't be taken seriously--and perhaps that the recipient shouldn't invest time in reading their note at all. More than two decades later, as AI-generated writing has flooded workplaces, social media, and dating apps, old hallmarks of sloppiness--typos chief among them--are getting a new gloss. Some job applicants are intentionally adding typos to their cover letters to prove that they, and not an AI program, wrote them.

Is there any way of fighting back? Anthony "Bingy" Arillotta waited years to become a made man in the Genovese crime family, and when at last the call came in August 2003, he followed directions to the letter. According to sworn testimony, Arillotta was summoned to a steak house in the Bronx, where he was made to hand over his cellphone, beeper, and jewelry before being driven to an apartment building. When he got there, he was taken to a small bathroom and strip-searched for electronic devices. For his big meeting with the boss, he was given a bathrobe to wear. Until recently, only spies and criminals had to worry this obsessively about their private statements being picked up by electronic equipment.

Once-speculative concerns about the technology have now become pressing matters. AI has ascended to the role of main character. When Donald Trump traveled to Beijing for an historic summit last week, AI was one of the central topics of his discussions with Xi Jinping. As the two nations remain locked in a technological arms race, the president brought along some of the United States' most powerful AI executives, including Elon Musk and Nvidia's Jensen Huang. A continent away, the European Union has been unsuccessfully petitioning Anthropic to grant access to its advanced cybersecurity model, Mythos. Back in the United States, millions of students and teachers are dealing with the fallout of a devastating ransomware attack on the software platform Canvas--a hack that was likely aided by AI tools.

My Son's Math Homework Is Essentially Just Pokémon Education games are taking over American classrooms. One afternoon earlier this year, my 11-year-old son was sitting at his laptop and working quietly on his math homework. At least, that's what he was supposed to be doing. When I glanced at his screen, equations were nowhere to be seen. He was controlling a monster in the midst of battle, casting magic spells to outduel an opposing player.