Taylor Lorenz knows how to make people mad on the internet. Lately, she’s been doing it by taking on the AI doomers, whom she regards as a quasi-religious movement with an extraordinary talent for accumulating money and power. Damir is delighted to find an ally against the apocalypse crowd.

But soon enough the conversation ricochets unpredictably. Shadi wonders whether AI might actually be conscious — or even capable of suffering, which sends Taylor worrying that Shadi’s one step away from joining an AI cult. Taylor, though no fan of Elon, defends X, which in turn send Shadi spinning.

From AI agents that manage your inbox, to the future of journalism and creative work, moral panics and women falling in love with chatbots, this one’s got it all.

Required Reading:

* Taylor Lorenz’s newsletter, User Mag (Substack).

* The AGI Chronicles, by Kevin Roose (Book website).

* “AI nonprofit will spend $10 million on journalism,” by Max Tani (Semafor).

* Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, by Bridget Todd and Michael Amato (Simon & Schuster).

* Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation (Penguin Random House).

* “The Bad Science Behind Jonathan Haidt’s Call to Regulate Social Media,” by Aaron Brown (Reason).

* Candice Odgers’s critical review of The Anxious Generation (Nature).

* Alice Marwick and colleagues’ 2024 report, Child Online Safety Legislation: A Primer (CITAP).