‘The point here is not to be anti-tech, but to rebalance a dynamic’

‘Chatbots can inflict harm. Why aren’t they held liable?’

Samuel Kimbriel at The Washington Post

Large language models are “capable of interacting with the human psyche at the most intimate level,” says Samuel Kimbriel. If a “therapist can be subject to prosecution in many states for leading a person toward suicide, might LLMs also be held responsible?” In “many of the accounts of teen suicide, what begin with seductive compliments, gradually turn into possessiveness.” Our “social capacities are among the most valuable, but also most vulnerable, features of human life. They deserve protection.”

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‘I didn’t let my kids believe in Santa. They’re glad they didn’t.’

Nicole Russell at USA Today

Kids “are prone to lean into the wonder and magic of the holidays — and this can be a really beautiful, uplifting thing for tired, cynical adults to see,” says Nicole Russell. But after “creating annual Christmas traditions wrapped around Santa Claus, most parents have to sit their kids down” and “reveal to their child that the story they’ve been telling their kid all along is a myth — or really, a lie.” This means “trust is broken, doubt seeps in.”

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‘How America and Iran can break the nuclear deadlock’

M. Javad Zarif and Amir Parsa Garmsiri at Foreign Affairs

The “external securitization of Iran has fed into a parallel dynamic at home, as the state adopted a stricter approach in dealing with domestic social challenges,” say M. Javad Zarif and Amir Parsa Garmsiri. The “result is a securitization cycle: a vicious spiral in which Iran and its adversaries feel compelled to adopt more hostile policies in response to each other’s behavior.” Breaking this “cycle will not be easy, and it will require that foreign powers respect Iran’s rights and dignity.”

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‘Catholicism is cool again’

Randy Boyagoda at The Globe and Mail

What “feels different right now, in the lead-up to Christmas, is that Catholicism, whether in high-profile politics and culture or just ordinary demographics, seems to be enjoying a certain kind of cachet,” says Randy Boyagoda. There is “something at work right now in the public life of Catholicism that’s encouraging this kind of attentiveness.” It “feels easy to be Catholic, trendy to be Catholic and subversive to be Catholic, all at once. That’s a hell of a trinity.”

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