In connection with our symposium, “The Forever War and The First Amendment,” the Knight Institute and Harper’s Magazine co-commissioned this essay by the writer Hari Kunzru about art created in the quarter century since 9/11. It appears in the October 2026 issue.
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We articulate a vision of artificial intelligence (AI) as normal technology . To view AI as normal is not to understate its impact—even transformative, general-purpose technologies such as electricity and the internet are “normal” in our conception. But it is in contrast to both utopian and dystopian visions of the…
On March 31, Twitter open-sourced its recommendation algorithm. It turns out to be a standard engagement prediction algorithm of the kind most major platforms use; I explained how these algorithms work in a recent essay . The source code release makes for an interesting case study of social media transparency. Let’s…
What made TikTok such a success? A commonly given reason is that the app’s advanced AI is really good at figuring out what you want to watch. Many people say TikTok knows them better than they know themselves. Some users think of the algorithm as a divine force that guides them.