Hacker News with Generative AI: Society

An Age of Extinction Is Coming (nytimes.com)
Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete. But the age of digital revolution — the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence — threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It’s forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a “bottleneck” — a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs and peoples with extinction.
Technology, Society, Artificial Intelligence, Extinction, Cultural Change
9 points by tigerlily 2 days ago | 1 comments
Are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence? (theguardian.com)
Recent research suggests our brain power is in decline. Is offloading our cognitive work to AI driving this trend?
Artificial Intelligence, Human Intelligence, Research, Technology, Society
68 points by topaz0 5 days ago | 82 comments
An Age of Extinction Is Coming (nytimes.com)
Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete.
Technology, Society, Future, Extinction
8 points by martialg 5 days ago | 1 comments
Banned Books List 2025 (pen.org)
What books are banned in 2025? Thousands of titles have been removed from public schools across the country.
Book Censorship, Education, Literature, Society
12 points by jruohonen 7 days ago | 7 comments
The 'freaky and unpleasant' world when video games leak into the physical realm (bbc.com)
Video games are the biggest form of entertainment in the world, but sometimes they bleed into people's lives offline in surprising and disturbing ways.
Video Games, Entertainment, Technology, Society, Culture
29 points by l3x 7 days ago | 53 comments
Come with Me If You Want to Survive an Age of Extinction (nytimes.com)
Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete. But the age of digital revolution — the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence — threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It’s forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a “bottleneck” — a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs and peoples with extinction.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Culture, Extinction, Society
9 points by chucksmash 7 days ago | 2 comments
We're Raising Kids to Prefer AI over People–and No One's Noticing (substack.com)
Artificial Intelligence, Children, Society
46 points by softchaos 10 days ago | 79 comments
Make Something Heavy (workingtheorys.com)
We're creating more than ever, but it weighs nothing.
Art, Creation, Meaning, Society
4 points by theturtletalks 10 days ago | 2 comments
The Old World Is Dead (spacedino.net)
The Old World is Dead.
Culture, Philosophy, Society
20 points by kayge 11 days ago | 1 comments
The End of Children (newyorker.com)
Societies do collapse, sometimes suddenly. Nevertheless, prophets of doom might keep in mind that their darkest predictions have been, on the whole, a little premature.
Society, Predictions, Collapse
22 points by mefengl 14 days ago | 6 comments
Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future (theguardian.com)
Black Mirror is more than science fiction – its stories about modernity have become akin to science folklore, shaping our collective view of technology and the future.
Science Fiction, Television, Technology, Future, Society
176 points by magoghm 15 days ago | 174 comments
The Modern Struggle Is Fighting Weaponized Addiction (2020) (nav.al)
The modern struggle is really about individuals—disconnected from their tribe, religion and cultural networks—who are trying to stand up to all these addictions that have been weaponized: alcohol, drugs, pornography, processed foods, news media, Internet, social media and video games.
Addiction, Technology, Culture, Society
39 points by HiPHInch 18 days ago | 16 comments
China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers (msn.com)
“Let’s not blame science fiction for this,” he said. “It’s not science fiction that’s causing this kind of sociopathy.”
Science Fiction, Literature, Society
5 points by walterbell 21 days ago | 1 comments
Cashless society drives drop in children swallowing coins, researchers say (independent.co.uk)
The shift away from using coins has fuelled a drop in children needing surgery to remove objects they have swallowed or stuck up their noses, research suggests.
Health, Society, Trends, Children, Research
11 points by bookofjoe 21 days ago | 20 comments
Captured: How Silicon Valley is building a future we never chose (codastory.com)
AI’s prophets speak of the technology with religious fervor. And they expect us all to become believers.
Silicon Valley, Artificial Intelligence, Future, Society, Technology
6 points by defrost 22 days ago | 2 comments
Six unsettling thoughts Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO, has about AI (npr.org)
Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, is thinking about artificial intelligence – how it interacts with humans, and how it may reshape democracy. Or replace it.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Society, Democracy
12 points by bookofjoe 26 days ago | 1 comments
Decline of cash credited for drop in surgery for children swallowing objects (theguardian.com)
Cashless societies may be a sad fact of modern life for those with a nostalgic attachment to the pound in their pocket, but doctors have discovered one unexpected benefit of the decline of coins.
Health, Society, Finance, Children
86 points by geox 27 days ago | 61 comments
Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds (chrbutler.com)
When the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, the notion of an “everything device” was universally celebrated.
Technology, History, Society
171 points by delaugust 28 days ago | 87 comments
AI will change the world but not in the way you think (thomashunter.name)
The current generation of consumer facing AI tools, known as Large Language Models (LLMs), continue to proliferate through society, used by folks from every stage of life, from office workers to school children.
Artificial Intelligence, Society
91 points by tlhunter 31 days ago | 107 comments
The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going to Miss Almost Everything (2011) (npr.org)
The vast majority of the world's books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It's just numbers.
Culture, Media, Art, Technology, Society
10 points by bumbledraven 31 days ago | 1 comments
Music and the Decline of Civilization (renovatio.zaytuna.edu)
In almost every description of a declining civilization we find the same tropes: an excess of liberty, a confusion of social norms, and the weakening of authority that soon descends into lawlessness.
Music, Culture, Civilization, Society
21 points by walterbell 32 days ago | 39 comments
The Internet Slum: is abandoning the Internet the next big thing? (2004) (fourmilab.ch)
Is it time to start thinking about abandoning the Internet?
Internet, Technology, Society
213 points by kimi 38 days ago | 274 comments
The zeitgeist is changing. a romantic backlash to the tech era looms (theguardian.com)
Cultural upheavals can be a riddle in real time. Trends that might seem obvious in hindsight are poorly understood in the present or not fathomed at all. We live in turbulent times now, at the tail end of a pandemic that killed millions and, for a period, reordered existence as we knew it. It marked, perhaps more than any other crisis in modern times, a new era, the world of the 2010s wrenched away for good.
Culture, Society, Technology, Trends
7 points by lordleft 40 days ago | 2 comments
As AI nurses reshape hospital care, human nurses are pushing back (apnews.com)
Healthcare, Artificial Intelligence, Labor, Technology, Society
29 points by Bostonian 40 days ago | 11 comments
Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion (forethought.org)
AI that can accelerate research could drive a century of technological progress over just a few years. During such a period, new technological or political developments will raise consequential and hard-to-reverse decisions, in rapid succession. We call these developments grand challenges.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Future, Research, Society
16 points by paulpauper 41 days ago | 4 comments
Fertility on demand (worksinprogress.co)
Many women face a choice between career advancement or motherhood. But emerging fertility technologies could allow women to have it all.
Fertility, Technology, Women's Issues, Society
10 points by ortegaygasset 43 days ago | 0 comments
Ask HN: Is human technology advancing faster than human wisdom sustainable? (ycombinator.com)
I think it is easy to argue human technology has advanced far faster than human wisdom.
Technology, Society, Ethics, Artificial Intelligence
7 points by oatmeal1 43 days ago | 4 comments
Firing the refs doesn't end the game (pluralistic.net)
Firing the refs doesn't end the game: It just means there aren't any rules.
Sports, Society, Rules
7 points by hn_acker 43 days ago | 1 comments
The end of capitalism – or the end of civilisation? (theconversation.com)
Beware of hyperbolic headlines. But in this case, I’m afraid, as Ulrike Herrmann’s very readable book The End of Capitalism makes clear, the choice between capitalism and civilisation really does seem to be either/or – and the end will probably come a lot sooner that we thought.
Economics, Capitalism, Society, Politics
10 points by axiologist 44 days ago | 2 comments
Let's Talk About the American Dream (codinghorror.com)
A few months ago I wrote about what it means to stay gold — to hold on to the best parts of ourselves, our communities, and the American Dream itself. But staying gold isn’t passive. It takes work. It takes action. It takes hard conversations that ask us to confront where we’ve been, where we are, and who we want to be.
American Dream, Society, Personal Growth
34 points by _eigenfoo 51 days ago | 16 comments