1. OpenAI says the brand-new GPT-5.1 is ‘warmer’ and has more ‘personality’ options
OpenAI’s incremental GPT-5.1 upgrade refines the flagship model into two variants—Instant and Thinking—fine-tuned to deliver either warmer, more empathetic responses or sharper, more persistent reasoning, while a new palette of eight tone presets invites users to co-author the affective dimension of their AI interlocutor.
“With more than 800 million people using ChatGPT, we’re well past the point of one-size-fits-all,” writes OpenAI’s Fidji Simo, highlighting a new era of user-shaped AI identity. (theverge.com)
2. Human-AI Co-Embodied Intelligence for Scientific Experimentation and Manufacturing
This pioneering arXiv preprint introduces “co-embodied intelligence,” a mixed-reality paradigm weaving wearable sensing, real-time agentic reasoning, and human dexterity into a unified loop. In demonstrations inside a cleanroom for flexible electronics, the APEX system observes, guides, and corrects novice researchers through complex multi-step fabrication protocols—extending AI agency out of the cloud and into the glove. (arxiv.org)
3. For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist—something no machine does
Philosopher Alva Noë argues that AI’s seductive veneer of “agency” rests on a reductive framing of human cognition as mere rule-following. Turing’s famed “Imitation Game” is revealed not as proof of machine thought but as a sleight-of-hand that swaps the messy embodied contest of human games for keyboard-bound text experiments—clearing the path for the myth of machine minds. (aeon.co)
4. How algorithms are transforming artistic creativity
Aeon’s multimedia essay traces the silent hand of computation through every stage of creative practice—from smart-phone photography’s auto-optimizations to AI’s role as the “extended mind” of critics and audiences. It calls for “algorithmic literacy,” urging artists and thinkers to decode the hidden grammars that now shape our aesthetic judgments and to reclaim agency in a co-creative dance with our own creations. (aeon.co)
5. Snapshots of Home. A photo essay
Andrew Taylor’s intimate photo essay weaves personal vignettes—from Texas school buses to California beach fronts—into a meditation on “home” as a constellation of people, places, and moments. Each frame becomes a prompt for memory, evoking how photography anchors our sense of self and place in an age of relentless change.
“I look back on old photos of myself and can vividly remember my thoughts, emotions, and the world around me,” Taylor reflects. (medium.com)