1. OpenAI says the brand-new GPT-5.1 is ‘warmer’ and has more ‘personality’ options
OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 launch introduces two variants—Instant for speed and warmth, Thinking for depth and persistence—alongside eight new conversational presets, signalling a deliberate move to humanize AI voices and reshape our expectations of dialogue with machines.
“Queries will, in most cases, be auto-matched to the models that may best be able to answer them, making each conversation feel more attuned to our needs.” (theverge.com)
2. Holes in the web: Huge swathes of human knowledge are missing from the internet. By definition, generative AI is shockingly ignorant too
Cornell researcher Deepak Varuvel Dennison maps the digital blind spots of GenAI, showing how Western-centric, text-heavy datasets marginalize entire oral traditions and ‘low-resource’ languages, thereby embedding colonial epistemologies into the next wave of intelligent systems.
“Generative AI risks contributing to the erasure of systems of understanding that have evolved over centuries, disconnecting future generations from vast bodies of insights and wisdom that were never encoded yet remain essential to human ways of knowing.” (aeon.co)
3. Hail the maintainers: Capitalism excels at innovation but is failing at maintenance, and for most lives it is maintenance that matters more
Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel dismantle the innovation fetish, tracing its rise from Cold War economics to Silicon Valley hype, and pivot attention to the under-acknowledged labor of repair, upkeep, and infrastructure that sustains our technological world.
“The most remarkable tales of cunning, effort, and care that people direct toward technologies exist far beyond the same old anecdotes about invention and innovation.” (aeon.co)
4. How Apple’s Human Interface Team Quietly Shapes the World
Ray’s essay unveils Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines as a form of global design governance—mandating gestures, layouts, and aesthetic rules that ripple through apps, operating systems, and even rival platforms—ultimately orchestrating how billions experience digital life.
“Apple is also a design governance company. They don’t just sell iPhones. They sell the rules for how all apps, across all platforms, should feel.” (medium.com)
5. Photography in the Age of AI (2025): Lessons From 25 Weeks of Experimentation
Mitchel Lensink’s rigorous Closer project—feeding one human photograph into an AI description engine and then back into image generation each week—lays bare AI’s twin gifts and limits: its uncanny accuracy in description versus its sterile, ‘too perfect’ visuals that lack the grit and context of lived experience.
“AI can replace transactional photography… but it struggles with the layer of context—of being there—that carries the weight of presence, imperfection, and story.” (mitchellens.ink)