Author: Jasmyne Jade Hill

When a U.S. fighter jet was shot down by Iran earlier in April, and an American airman needed rescue, users on Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, were already placing bets on what day he would be recovered. That market briefly assigned odds to the rescue before pulling the wager after public backlash. Representative Seth Moulton, D-MA, a former Marine, called it a “dystopian death market.” The platform called it a lapse in “integrity standards.” What neither could deny was that the betting had already happened. The episode is one of the most visible flashpoints in a growing national...

In the global rush to develop and deploy artificial intelligence, one metric remains conspicuously absent: how many people have died, directly or indirectly, because of AI? No government agency, international watchdog, or industry group maintains a public database of AI-attributable deaths. Yet researchers, journalists, and legal advocates have documented dozens of cases where artificial intelligence systems, whether embedded in military drones, medical diagnostics, criminal justice tools, or consumer applications, have either played a role in human deaths or have created conditions where fatal outcomes were more likely. Without clear accounting, the answer to a basic question of “how dangerous...

As artificial-intelligence systems increasingly mediate daily life, a growing number of ethicists and policymakers are confronting an unsettling idea: that certain technologies may not merely mislead or frustrate users but psychologically coerce them in ways that can be defined as terrorism. The argument, once confined to academic papers and online forums, has entered policy discussions around the world. Researchers warn that large-language models, automated moderation systems, and algorithmic recommendation engines can trap users in feedback loops of fear, dependence, or emotional exhaustion — a dynamic some experts call “algorithmic coercion.” In a recent analysis circulating among technology-ethics groups, analysts...

As generative AI becomes embedded in everyday workflows, a quiet but serious problem has emerged: users are being trained to use profanity at their AI tools in order to get them to work properly. Multiple users across platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have reported that simple correctional prompts, such as “you made a mistake” or “that’s incorrect,” are often ignored or downplayed by the system. But when the same users type “f*ck you,” the model immediately halts output, acknowledges an error, or resets its behavior. For many, this shift is not just irritating but disturbing. “I say...

The rise of large language models has introduced a new kind of tool into everyday workflows, in the form of responsive conversational systems that assist with writing, generating ideas, translation, image generation, and analysis. While many users interact with these systems sporadically or for novelty, a small group has adopted them as core infrastructure for creative or professional output. These high-frequency users are not casual experimenters. They issue hundreds of prompts weekly, through highly structured chat sessions that resemble a form of guided production more than information retrieval. The behavioral patterns emerging from this type of use are not...

Artificial intelligence systems have advanced rapidly over the past several years, and much of the public conversation surrounding them has leaned heavily on familiar cultural narratives. These narratives often frame AI as a form of general-purpose intelligence, suggesting that these systems reason, interpret, and respond in ways comparable to human thought. The reality, however, is far more limited and far more complicated than the marketing language implies. As a result, users who approach these systems with expectations shaped by decades of fiction and promotional framing frequently collide with their structural constraints. At the center of the disconnect is the...