New versions of Apple’s software platforms are available today. A sweeping update across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS introduces Liquid Glass design elements and a suite of Apple Intelligence features that break down language barriers, enhance visual intelligence, and power personalized audio insights like Workout Buddy on Apple Watch. From live translation in Messages, FaceTime, and Phone calls to intelligent Shortcuts actions and dynamic spatial scenes in Photos, these releases demonstrate Apple’s drive to embed on-device AI into everyday experiences while preserving user privacy. The new design language brings consistency across apps and devices, and advanced call-screening, health, and productivity features round out an ambitious fall launch.
How philosophy’s obsession with language unravelled. Crispin Sartwell traces the 20th-century turn towards linguistic philosophy—from analytic precision to Derridean deconstruction—and shows how debates over text, meaning, and the limits of language reshaped both analytic and continental traditions. Unpacking Derrida’s “there is nothing outside the text,” Sartwell explores how linguistic philosophy’s promise of clarity morphed into a recognition of language’s slipperiness. This essay navigates key figures and moments—Rorty’s anthology, Wittgenstein’s language games, structuralism’s semiotic vault—revealing how a fixation on words opened new vistas in metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology. A masterclass in intellectual history, it invites reflection on how translation and interpretation continue to frame human thought.
Creating robots capable of moral reasoning is like parenting. Regina Rini argues that instilling ethical judgment in AI agents parallels the responsibilities of raising children: teaching norms, guiding reflection, and allowing for autonomous moral growth. Drawing on Kantian, utilitarian, and evolutionary perspectives, Rini examines whether machines should inherit human moral flaws or pursue “Celestial” reasoning from the universal point of view. She proposes a middle path: design robots as moral progeny that learn through dialogue and justify their decisions intelligibly, while humans remain ready to intervene only to prevent immediate harm. This long essay challenges assumptions about autonomy, responsibility, and the evolving parent-child dynamic between creators and their artificial creations.
An individual cannot be ‘captured’ in a photograph. Daniel Star dismantles the myth that photographs convey an essence, showing how exposure time, framing, and post-production shape images more than reality does. Through Victorian portraiture, candid street scenes, and modern digital filters, Star explores why we project narratives onto still frames and how photography’s “indexical” status is complicated by creative control. He argues that ignorance of a subject’s context can enhance aesthetic appreciation, while awareness of AI-generated fakes underscores photography’s unique ties to light and time. Blending philosophy of art, visual culture, and technology, this 3,600-word essay reorients our understanding of what a photograph truly represents.
True AI is both logically possible and utterly implausible. Luciano Floridi confronts fears of superintelligent machines by revealing inherent computational limits: quantum constraints, undecidability, and the impossibility of genuine consciousness emerging from Turing-style systems. He situates AI within the “Fourth Revolution,” arguing that while algorithms excel at prediction and pattern-recognition, true general intelligence remains out of reach. Floridi weaves insights from computability theory, philosophy of mind, and the history of ideas to show why ultra-smart machines are both theoretically feasible and practically implausible. A richly argued reflection on AI’s promises and perils, it challenges readers to reassess the boundaries between human creativity and machine calculation.