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​Students might focus on the ways in which texts explore aspects of rights and responsibilities, the workings and structures of governments and institutions. They might also investigate hierarchies of power, the distribution of wealth and resources, the limits of justice and the law, equality and inequality, human rights and peace and conflict.

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The United Nations created the Global Goals in 2015 with the hopes of achieving a better world. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality of achieving those goals by 2030 is becoming less likely and millions are at risk of falling into extreme poverty. You can join us in taking action on this issue here.
The United Nations' 17 Global Goals are a blueprint for how the world can come together to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They look to end poverty, inequality, climate change, and achieve peace and justice, with the ultimate goal of ending extreme by 2030.

And while there have been significant global initiatives put in place since their adoption in 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely hindered progress made by the international community to reach the Global Goals. It will take an incredible international effort to try and reach the targets within the next 10 years.

It can seem overwhelming to learn about each one of the Global Goals, but the following documentaries highlight the importance of achieving each one and serve as a reminder of how they are all interconnected.

Here's a list of 10 educational films on key issues related to the UN's Global Goals.

This film, released by the UN in September, sets out to explain the action that is needed to achieve the goals in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic has eliminated years of progress toward achieving the Global Goals by pushing millions into poverty, worsening gender inequality, and disrupting access to education.

The international community was already off track to meet the goals' targets by 2030, and the pandemic is affecting the world's most vulnerable population the most severely.

Produced by UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate Richard Curtis, "Nations United" includes education advocate Malala Yousafzai, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and actress and women's rights activist Thandie Newton OBE, among others.

Together, they unpack the biggest problems that the world is facing and present four key areas that require urgent action.

Global Goal 1 calls for the eradication of poverty around the world. This hard-hitting documentary, which came out in 2008, shows the real-life experiences of people who are trapped in poverty and highlights the severe economic inequalities that exist globally.

Historians, economists, and psychologists all come together to explain the systems that allow for rampant poverty to exist and suggest innovative ways to end it.

While global poverty had declined since the documentary was first released 12 years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on progress in this area.

The UN suggests that 71 million more people could be pushed into poverty from the pandemic. This year is the first time that global poverty has risen since 1998, and could lead to rising hunger and homelessness around the world.

Before COVID-19, global hunger was already on the rise around the world. In 2018, 26.4% of the population was affected by moderate or severe food insecurity, according to the UN.

Every Three Seconds is filmed across Africa, Latin America, and Asia and examines the issues that created the global hunger crisis. The title comes from the reality that, in 2015, every three seconds someone died from extreme hunger and poverty.

Global Goal 2 aims to end world hunger, but the pandemic has made efforts to address hunger more complicated due to economic disruptions and lockdowns.

In the documentary, five activists come together to show the different solutions that they are working on to address global hunger.

A goal that is especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, is Global Goal 3 as it is dedicated to ensuring that everyone, everywhere can access quality health care.

This documentary follows four doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, in war-torn Congo and post-conflict Liberia. The film highlights the reality of how limited access to health care is for vulnerable people affected by crises.

Since 1971, MSF has been delivering medical aid and essential health care services to communities impacted by conflict. People living in conflict-affected areas are more at risk of mental and physical trauma and can also be affected by disease outbreaks. Disruptions to food, water, and medical supplies also make them more likely to develop other health issues.

The documentary was shortlisted as one of 15 films in the Documentary Feature category for the 82nd Academy Awards.

Quality education has the power to help children around the world develop the skills they need to escape the cycle of poverty. However, many children face significant challenges in accessing school, and in some places, cultural norms and economic hardships prevent students from going to school at all.

This documentary shows the long journeys that four students in Kenya, India, Morocco, and Argentina all take to get to school every day. These children, like millions of others around the world, face significant challenges before they even arrive at their classrooms each morning.

Global Goal 4 aims to ensure more children can access inclusive and quality education. While the percentage of students in primary school has been rising, the COVID-19 pandemic saw 90% of all students out of school at one point in 2020 and exacerbated inequalities in education.

While women and girls' quality of life has improved over the past years, this documentary helps viewers to understand the challenges that girls around the world face in their everyday lives.

I Am a Girl follows six girls in six different countries as they navigate growing up and becoming women in the 21st century. The film emphasizes the need for Global Goal 5, which is dedicated to fighting for an equal world for women and girls.

Even in 2020, there is still no country where women and girls can enjoy true equality.

This documentary shows the important role that girls and women play in their communities - and shows that when women and girls are empowered, they can uplift everyone around them.

This documentary captures how the Global Goals are interconnected.

Waterschool follows six girls living along some of the world's rivers who are in taking part in educational programs focusing on water and sustainability. It effectively promotes Global Goals 4, 5, and 6 by emphasizing the importance of providing accessible education, empowering young women, and protecting clean water supplies.

More than 2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water and 3 billion people lacked basic hand-washing facilities at home, according to data from the UN. Water scarcity is also a huge potential problem and could displace up to 700 million people by 2030.

This documentary showcases the water school conservation program to stress the necessity of conserving water supplies around the world.

Global Goal 7 is about ensuring affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy, and this documentary helps address all of the questions that people have about solar energy.

The 2016 Netflix documentary works to debunk false claims that clean and renewable energy sources require sacrificing economic prosperity and shows just the opposite. By following unemployed American workers, Chinese solar entrepreneurs, and environmental activists, viewers gain a holistic understanding of the power of solar energy.

Around the world, 789 million people do not have access to electricity, according to the UN. However, the energy created from fossil fuels is contributing to climate change and damaging our planet.

Catching the Sun provides important information about an alternative to the fossil fuel industry that will prevent pollution and create new, green jobs.

This documentary by American economist, author, and professor Robert Reich confronts uncomfortable realities about economic distribution and inequality. Although the documentary focuses on inequality in the US, it is still relevant to countries around the world.

Reich argues for economic systems where everyone has access to jobs that pay them a living wage as he believes that the middle and lower classes have been left behind.

His ideas echo the motivation behind Global Goal 8, which focuses on promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth for everyone. Similarly, Global Goal 10 calls for the global community to come together and reduce economic inequalities.

Inequality for All helps viewers understand how global economic systems result in people being stuck in systems of poverty and why economic growth must be inclusive.

This documentary is another example of a film that touches on multiple Global Goals.

Goals 11 through 15 are Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, Life Below Water, and Life on Land, and all of these are addressed in an Inconvenient Sequel.

The documentary is about the reality of climate change and the lack of action taken by the world's leadership to protect the environment. The toll of anthropogenic pollution on the environment is affecting everything from marine life in the Caribbean to animals in India to plants in the Amazon.

The film follows former Vice President Al Gore as he trains groups of climate champions and activists to fight for better climate policy to protect our planet.

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10 Documentaries That Show How Crucial the Global Goals Are to Ending Poverty

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The United Nations created the Global Goals in 2015 with the hopes of achieving a better world. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality of achieving those goals by 2030 is becoming less likely and millions are at risk of falling into extreme poverty. You can join us in taking action on this issue here .

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SDGs are the solutions to global issues:

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SDGs are the solutions to global issues:

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Delve deeper into sections to ind out specific issues these goals are targeting.

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Students might focus on the way in which texts explore aspects of family, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender and sexuality, and the way these impact on individuals and societies. They might also focus on issues concerning migration, colonialism and nationalism.

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Students might focus on the way in which texts explore the beliefs and values nurtured in particular societies and the ways they shape individuals, communities and educational systems. They might also explore the tensions that arise when there are conflicts of beliefs and values, and ethics.

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An estimated 258 million people, approximately 3 per cent of the world's population, currently live outside their country of origin, many of whose migration is characterised by varying degrees of compulsion. Notwithstanding that many migrant choose to leave their countries of origin each year, an increasing number of migrants are forced to leave their homes for a complex combination of reasons, including poverty, lack of access to healthcare, education, water, food, housing, and the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change, as well as the more 'traditional' drivers of forced displacement such as persecution and conflict.

While migration is a positive and empowering experience for many, it is increasingly clear that a lack of human rights-based migration governance at the global, regional and national levels is leading to the routine violation of migrants' rights in transit, at international borders, and in the countries they migrate to.

While migrants are not inherently vulnerable, they can be vulnerable to human rights violations. Migrants in an irregular situation tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation and marginalization, often living and working in the shadows, afraid to complain, and denied their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Human rights violations against migrants can include a denial of civil and political rights such as arbitrary detention, torture, or a lack of due process, as well as economic, social and cultural rights such as the rights to health, housing or education. The denial of migrants' rights is often closely linked to discriminatory laws and to deep-seated attitudes of prejudice or xenophobia.

In this context, OHCHR works to promote, protect and fulfill the human rights of all migrants, regardless of their status, with a particular focus on those women, men and children who are most marginalized and at risk of human rights violations. OHCHR promotes a human rights-based approach to migration, which places the migrant at the center of migration policies and governance, and seeks to ensure that migrants are included in all relevant national action plans and strategies, such as plans on the provision of public housing or national strategies to combat racism and xenophobia.

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An estimated 258 million people, approximately 3 per cent of the world's population, currently live outside their country of origin, many of whose migration is characterised by varying degrees of compulsion.

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Students might focus on the ways in which texts explore aspects of aesthetic inspiration, creation, craft, and beauty. They might also focus on the shaping and challenging of perceptions through art, and the function, value and effects of art in society.

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OHCHR | Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants

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Migration has been part of the human experience throughout history, and the number of migrants is growing worldwide.

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Students might focus on the ways in which texts explore the relationship between humans and the environment and the implications of technology and media for society. They might also consider the idea of scientific development and progress.

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Gender equality is at the very heart of human rights and United Nations values. A fundamental principle of the United Nations Charter adopted by world leaders in 1945 is " equal rights of men and women", and protecting and promoting women's human rights is the responsibility of all States. The High Commissioner for Human Rights recently pledged to be a Geneva Gender Champion committing to advance gender equality in OHCHR and in international fora.

Yet millions of women around the world continue to experience discrimination:

Moreover, some groups of women face compounded forms of discrimination -- due to factors such as their age, ethnicity, disability, or socio-economic status -- in addition to their gender.

Effectively ensuring women's human rights requires, firstly, a comprehensive understanding of the social structures and power relations that frame not only laws and politics but also the economy, social dynamics and family and community life.

Harmful gender stereotypes must be dismantled, so that women are no longer viewed in the light of what women "should" do and are instead seen for who they are: unique individuals, with their own needs and desires.

The international framework

Discrimination based on sex is prohibited under almost every human rights treaty - including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which under their common article 3 provide for the rights to equality between men and women in the enjoyment of all rights.

In addition, there are treaties and expert bodies specifically dedicated to the realization of women's human rights:

The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

Considered the international bill of rights for women, the Convention defines what constitutes discrimination against women and sets an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. It was adopted by the United Nations in 1979 and came into force on 3 September 1981.

The CEDAW Committee

Oversight of the Convention is the task of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, a group of 23 independent experts on women's rights from different States that have ratified the Convention. Countries that are parties to the Convention must submit reports detailing their compliance with its provisions every four years. The Committee (the treaty body) reviews those reports and may also hear claims of violations and inquire into situations of grave or systemic contraventions of women's rights.

The Special Rapporteur on violence against women

In 1994 the United Nations resolved to appoint a Special Rapporteur - an independent expert -- on the causes and consequences of violence against women. The Special Rapporteur investigates and monitors violence against women, and recommends and promotes solutions for its elimination.

The Working Group

In 2010 the Human Rights Council established a Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice to promote the elimination of laws that discriminate against women and/or have a discriminatory impact on them.

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OHCHR | Women's Rights and Gender Section (WRGS)

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Gender equality is at the very heart of human rights and United Nations values. A fundamental principle of the United Nations Charter adopted by world leaders in 1945 is " equal rights of men and women", and protecting and promoting women's human rights is the responsibility of all States.

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A special focus on discrimination

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights". These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 60 years ago established the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today, the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe. Starting on Human Rights Day 2009 and continuing throughout 2010, the UN human rights office has a focus on discrimination.

The United Nations has since its very beginning set as one of its goals " to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person" without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. ¹ as this phenomenon is more subtle, more corrosive and more resilient than any one had thought.

For millions of people globally, the struggle to extract themselves from situations of discrimination at almost every turn in their daily lives is an impossible ambition. Tragically, as we have seen in the past twenty years, policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide, policies based on discriminatory ideologies, have led to destruction, exile and death.

Despite the challenges and setbacks, there has been and continues to be a rejection of discrimination . There have been enough successes to demonstrate that this scourge can be eradicated.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is a world leader in the stand against the forces of discrimination. As the guardian of international human rights law, the UN Human Rights office advocates for and promotes human rights reforms in many countries across the globe and throughout the UN community.

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OHCHR | A special focus on discrimination

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"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights". These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 60 years ago established the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today, the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe.

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The climate is changing. The earth is warming up, and there is now overwhelming scientific consensus that it is happening, and human-induced. With global warming on the increase and species and their habitats on the decrease, chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally are diminishing.

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 20), held in Lima, Peru in December 2014.

Following a period of economic boom, a financial bubble - global in scope - burst, even causing some of the world's largest financial institutions have collapsed. With the resulting recession, many governments of the wealthiest nations in the world have resorted to extensive bail-out and rescue packages for the remaining large banks and financial institutions while imposing harsh austerity measures on themselves.

Environmental issues are also a major global issue. Humans depend on a sustainable and healthy environment, and yet we have damaged the environment in numerous ways. This section introduces other issues including biodiversity, climate change, animal and nature conservation, population, genetically modified food, sustainable development, and more.

Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the basis of their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. Racism and discrimination have been used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even during economic downturns. This article explores racism from around the world.

Following a period of economic boom, a financial bubble - global in scope - burst, even causing some of the world's largest financial institutions have collapsed. With the resulting recession, many governments of the wealthiest nations in the world have resorted to extensive bail-out and rescue packages for the remaining large banks and financial institutions while imposing harsh austerity measures on themselves.

Through tax havens, transfer pricing and many other policies - both legal and illegal - billions of dollars of tax are avoided. The much-needed money would helped developing (and developed) countries provide important social services for their populations.

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Global Issues : social, political, economic and environmental issues that affect us all

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GlobalIssues.org provides insights into global issues that may be misrepresented but are all closely related. List of topics covered include social, political, economic and environmental issues, including human rights, economy, trade, globalization, poverty, environment and health related issues.

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We are an action platform dedicated to achieving the end of extreme poverty, powered by a community of millions of Global Citizens who believe in one world, one people - where everyone has an equal chance to thrive.

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"The Borgen Project is an incredible nonprofit organization that is addressing poverty and hunger and working towards ending them." - The Huffington Post

In a Nutshell: We fight extreme poverty.

Mission Statement: The Borgen Project believes that leaders of the most powerful nation on earth should be doing more to address global poverty. We're the innovative, national campaign that is working to make poverty a focus of U.S. foreign policy.

Formed: 2003
Headquarters: Tacoma, WA
Cities with volunteers: 911
LEADERSHIP TEAM BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Congressman Adam Smith (D)

Congressman Michael McCaul (R)

Donald Girskis

Chuck Cooper

Andy Taylor

Natalie Gill-Mensah

Kristina Pecora

Miata Koroma Ekanem

Marc Schneider

FOCUS OF ADVOCACY

Starvation/Global Food Security

Newborn, Child and Mother Survival

Access to Clean Water and Sanitation

Food Aid Reform

HISTORY
In 1999, while working as a young volunteer in refugee camps during the Kosovo War and genocide, Clint Borgen recognized the need for an organization that could focus U.S. political attention on extreme poverty. In 2003, after graduating from Washington State University and interning at the United Nations, Borgen began developing the organization.

In need of startup funding, Borgen took a job living on a fishing vessel docked in Dutch Harbor, Alaska (the same location as "The Deadliest Catch"). From humble beginnings in one of the most remote regions of the world, The Borgen Project was born. One man with a laptop and a budget that came from his Alaska paychecks has evolved into a national campaign with volunteers operating in 911 U.S. cities.

METHODOLOGY
From ending segregation to providing women with the right to vote, nearly every wrong ever righted in history was achieved through advocacy. The Borgen Project addresses the big picture. We operate at the political level advancing policies and programs that improve living conditions for those living on less than $1 per day.
[Read more]
HOW WE OPERATE
Advocate: We meet with U.S. Congressional leaders to secure support for crucial poverty-reducing legislation.

Mobilize: We mobilize people across the globe behind efforts to make poverty a political priority.

Educate: We teach basic advocacy skills that allow citizens to communicate with their government.

Issue Message: We build awareness of global issues and innovations in poverty-reduction through our online and community presence.

As you can see from phentermineonline.com offers advice and guide if you are looking to lose weight and on weight loss visit phentermine online

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The Borgen Project is an innovative national campaign that is working to address global poverty and acting as an influential ally for the world's poor.

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Department of Economic and Social Affairs Sustainable Development

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Videos Bangladesh is vulnerable to natural disasters. Here's how it has learnt to cope
Bangladesh is one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries. The country is prone to disasters such as cyclones, flooding and landslides. But in the past 50 years Bangladesh has made a lot of progress on climate resilience. Its journey began when it was hit by the deadliest cyclone in recorded history. In 1970 Cyclone Bhola took the lives of 300,000 people. Today, cyclones of comparable intensity cause 99% fewer fatalities in Bangladesh thanks to decades of investment in climate resilience.

Are you an impact-driven investor? We are looking to select 10 new funds which will join UpLink's Top Investor community by the end of 2023. Submit your fund today!

Are you working on a game-changing solution for sustainability? Submit your solution on UpLink.

Supporting the implementation of world-leading innovations in urban sustainability

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The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation in 1971, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Forum is tied to no political, partisan or national interests.

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Stories and lessons for growing minds

We are a free multimedia platform for educators and students. Through our immersive storytelling and curricula, we aim to plant seeds of empathy, interconnectedness, and a sacred relationship with our planet. Use our award-winning films, photo essays, and essays to learn about social, cultural, and environmental issues from individuals and communities worldwide. For grades 3-12, our stories and lessons encourage students to broaden their perspectives and worldviews while fostering universal human values and respect for the living world. We aim to bring universal values into the lives of educators and students.

Experience Our Storytelling

Watch this short video to learn more about the stories we tell.

Student Winners and Finalists: The Environment Is in You

In what ways is climate change impacting the place where you live?

In this contest, students documented the fragility, hope, and future of our planet's ecosystem due to climate change. Inspired by four environmental writers-Linda Hogan, Robert Hass, Wendell Berry, and Dara McAnulty-students explored changes to local systems, how the environment shapes our identity, and how our actions and awareness today can impact the future.

View Winners and Finalists

Feature

These five shorts films follows five Native American communities who are restoring their traditional land management practices.

Learn More

Essay

How might stories act as keys allowing us access to challenge, examine, uproot, and illumine our habits and fears?

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Feature

This feature shares the stories of four Indigenous communities in California who are working to revitalize their languages and cultures in order to pass them on to the next generation.

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"This film has historic relevancy. I can see myself using it to encourage students to think about the value of the space program and how it speaks to the American Spirit and how we are often looking forward in our progress. This film begs to be used as an exploration of what it means to be a global citizen, how students can learn from people not like themselves, and what actions students can take in their everyday lives to make the world a better place."

Michael Dunn, Director of College Counseling at Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center

Stories Exploring Climate Change

Celebrating Student Artwork: New Student Gallery

Encourage thoughtful and meaningful conversations in the classroom with our student gallery. Use the gallery as a tool to foster curiosity, observation skills, and perspective-taking.

The gallery encourages students to learn from each other's perspectives. How are students witnessing and engaging with the world in new ways since the start of Covid-19? Search by theme, previous Global Oneness Project contests, or from locations around the world. The gallery is accompanied by an image analysis activity, including a Visible Thinking Routine from Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

View Student Gallery

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Our materials provide opportunities for an interdisciplinary approach to learning across disciplines from social sciences and humanities to environmental sciences. Education stakeholders, including K-12 educators, university professors, librarians, tech/media specialists, parents, and students are using our materials in multiple learning environments.

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"You have a right to whatever you're willing to fight for."

The latest Patagonia documentary, Public Trust, which ends with these words by environmental journalist Hal Herring, is about the fight for America's federal public lands between ordinary citizens who want to preserve them and the extractive industries working to gain access to those public lands.

Directed by David Garrett Byars (No Man's Land) and executive-produced by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and Robert Redford, the film intersperses stunning panoramas of natural wonders-photography magazine calls it a "ravishingly beautiful film"-with scenes of the the grinding, sometimes mundane human effort to save them. It reminds viewers that it is not enough simply to appreciate public lands when camping or hiking strikes your fancy, but that these environmental and cultural treasures must be continually defended through political and legal action.

Public Trust was released by Patagonia Films-the video production arm of the outdoor brand that has been leading the charge in environmental brand activism. It's rousing and finely shot, and while it lives on YouTube, it looks at home on the big screen. The film was featured and won awards at Big Sky Documentary Festival and Mountainfilm. It was reviewed by the New York Timesand The Guardian, which called Public Trust, "required viewing for anyone hoping to understand the public lands issue."

The film arrives in an age where the lines are blurring between independent documentaries and brand-sponsored documentaries. Public Trust reflects this ambiguity and is an example of the brand documentary done right-in collaboration with grassroots activists to elevate a matter of environmental urgency, powered by the reach of a respected global brand.

A Call to Action

Totaling 640 million acres and located mostly in western states, America's federal public lands are held in trust for the people. They are managed through a number of agencies that aim to strike a sustainable balance between industry, recreation, and conservation.

The film tells the stories of three communities fighting to right that balance-the Inter-Tribal Coalition for Utah's Bears Ears National Monument, the Gwich'in people for Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and sportsmen for Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The groups are organizing to prevent the lease of public lands to drilling and mining companies, which they say threaten their livelihood, subsistence, and heritage.

An hour in, Public Trust celebrates the three groups' 2016 victories as they gained protections for the lands on which they depend. The last 30 minutes, however, are a jarring wake-up call as the present administration reverses those gains. It rescinds the boundaries of Bears Ears by 85 percent, paving the way for the erasure of tangible indigenous heritage. It opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the threat of drilling, which may harm the porcupine caribou population on which the Gwich'in depend for subsistence. It allows copper mining along the Boundary Waters, which could pollute the water and put 160,000 jobs at risk. All three reversals are being challenged in court.

The film portrays these rollbacks as part of a systemic dismantling of protections. That dismantling is helped along by the restaffing of federal agencies with individuals who have extensive links to corporations seeking to influence policy. The film ends with inspiring scenes of the three communities mounting protests and resolving to continue the fight.

An Authentic Messenger

Founded in the 1970s, Patagonia remains privately held despite growing into a global, billion-dollar company. It still reflects its founder's personal ethos-Chouinard was a climber and outdoors enthusiast before becoming a " reluctant businessman."

Patagonia has always advocated for nature conservation; not only was the company born of Chouinard's environmental ideals, its business also depends on it. As Patagonia representatives have professed, its activism hasn't hurt business- quite the opposite.

While Chouinard has acknowledged it's impossible to do zero harm due to the inherent cost of manufacturing, he believes businesses can and must do the least harm. Since 1985, Patagonia has donated one percent of its profits to environmental organizations, now totaling over $89 million. In 2002, Chouinard co-founded 1% for the Planet, which encourages others to pledge the same. Moreover, in response to federal 2018 tax cuts, which it called "irresponsible," Patagonia gave away the $10 million it would save in taxes to groups fighting the climate crisis.

Patagonia has also declared its mission to become fossil-free by 2025 and actively reviewed its supply chains after internal audits found human trafficking and labor abuses in 2011. It encourages its customers to repair and resell Patagonia products through its Worn Wear program, and switched to more eco-friendly materials like non-force-fed, non-live-plucked, traceable down. And amid the worsening climate crisis, Patagonia has deepened its commitment to targeted activism and political action.

On the public lands conflict, Public Trust is only Patagonia's latest statement. In 2017, it replaced its homepage with the stark, black-and-white declaration, " The President Stole Your Land," and joined a coalition of Native American and grassroots groups to challenge the legality of the shrinking of Bears Ears' boundaries and that of other national monuments.

Nor is Public Trust the brand's film debut. Patagonia Films started producing long-form environmental documentaries with filmmakers in 2014 with The film makes the case for dam removal to restore natural habitats and free-flowing rivers. Other long-form efforts include Artifishal (2019), about how offshore caged fish farms threaten wild fish populations. Both burnished Patagonia's reputation as a company with more than its bottom line in sight.

The Rise of Branded Documentaries

In recent years, other brands, like coffee company Illy and outdoor equipment maker Mystery Ranch, have made forays into documentary activism at a time described as the " golden age" of documentaries. The appetite for nonfiction stories and premium online video content is growing as audiences move away from conventional TV and toward video-on-demand platforms.

Patagonia founder Chouinard has said about the company's documentary activism: "We recognize that people make decisions based on emotion, and the best way to elicit emotion is through film ... Some of them don't make a cent. But that's not the purpose."

Rather, the purpose is a higher one. Chouinard claimed that DamNation made the Obama administration reconsider hydropower, and that Artifishal had encouraged Denmark to stop licensing offshore fish farms.

Chouinard has unabashedly called Patagonia Films a " propaganda machine." That may not suit some viewers' journalistic sensibilities, but propaganda in genuine service of saving the planet can be hard to criticize. On the other hand, it does exist in an era of "fake news," where it's no longer always clear who the messengers are. Allegedly, some brands orchestrate the impression of grassroots movements in order to influence public opinion. And there is a possibility that Patagonia's acceptability as a brand documentarian may help legitimize other companies who don't quite walk the talk.

Case in point: Last year, personal care product brand Proctor & Gamble, the world's largest advertiser, partnered with National Geographic to produce -a six-part, multiplatform documentary series. It was ambitiously shot around the world and featured celebrities, such as Pharrell Williams and Hugh Jackman, to highlight activists on issues like clean water and plastic pollution. It also just so happens to highlight Proctor & Gamble products and initiatives, such as using degraded ocean plastic to make shampoo bottles.

But Proctor & Gamble is no Patagonia. The consumer packaged goods company's products generate more than 230 million metric tons of greenhouse gas each year. It recently came under fire for contributing to deforestation in its usage of palm oil and forest pulp in manufacturing its products, despite pledging to achieve zero deforestation by this year. This follows criticisms in 2014 that its suppliers' practices in Indonesia were destroying the habitats of endangered orangutan.

It's clear why Patagonia would make an environmental film. It also seems clear why Proctor & Gamble would-though the motivations, and therefore the authority their films carry, are quite different.

Brand Documentaries vs. Documentaries

For some, any brand sponsorship taints the motivations for a documentary and skews the overall thrust of its message. But in a crowded documentary marketplace, that may not be a reliable litmus test. There are authoritative and dubious films made by both brands and traditional documentarians.

The Columbia Journalism Review recently pointed out that that conflicts of interest are now a cost of doing business during the documentary boom, encouraged further when many streaming services have few rules on who can produce or fund a documentary before acquiring it. Amazon Prime and Netflix both showcase pseudoscience documentaries within their catalog with no point of differentiation from other documentaries. As such, any film, brand-sponsored or not, should be ultimately evaluated on its own basis.

Patagonia's Public Trust fares well in this regard. The brand, which has spent decades being outspoken and consistent about conserving the environment and been candid about its missteps, already has an edge over its competitors. They're perhaps the best example of how, if companies are mindful of their responsibility to the public good and carefully choose the causes they can authentically get behind, mixing business with activism can meaningfully help to address the pressing issues of our time.

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Patagonia's Powerful New Film Preaches What the Brand Practices - Means and Matters

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"You have a right to whatever you're willing to fight for." The latest Patagonia documentary, Public Trust, which ends with these words by environmental journalist Hal Herring, is about the fight for America's federal public lands between ordinary citizens who want to preserve them and the extractive industries working to gain access to those public lands.

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Short documentary films and related discussion questions.

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The Associated Press has changed its influential writing style guide to capitalize the "b" in the term Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context, weighing in on a hotly debated issue.

The change conveys "an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa," said John Daniszewski, AP's vice-president of standards. "The lowercase black is a color, not a person."

The news organization will also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.

Daniszewski said the revisions aligned with long-standing identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. He said the decision followed more than two years of research and debate among AP journalists and outside groups and thinkers.

"Our discussions on style and language consider many points, including the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language," he wrote. "We believe this change serves those ends."

The AP said it expects to make a decision within a month on whether to capitalize the term white. Among the considerations are what that change might mean outside the US.

Debate over capitalization of Black accelerated in many US newsrooms in recent weeks as journalists grappled with massive protests and sweeping changes in the aftermath of George Floyd's death at the hands of police.

The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and NBC News last week embraced capitalization, and the National Association of Black Journalists urged other news organizations to follow.

The AP Stylebook of usage policies is highly influential in the industry, with many news organizations, government and public relations agencies using it as a guide.

The death of Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck, sparked nationwide protests and lent momentum to a variety of social changes, from police reform and the public removal of Confederate statues and flags to the capitalization of Black.

"It's certainly long overdue," said Doris Truong, director of training and diversity at the Poynter Institute, a journalism thinktank. "It's something that people who are Black have been calling for for a long time."

It's also a relatively simple step for news organizations dealing anew with many complex issues, such as whether their journalists can be opinionated on social media or march in Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Nearly a century ago, sociologist WEB DuBois waged a letter-writing campaign to get newspapers to capitalize Negro, saying a lowercase "n" was a sign of disrespect and racism. The New York Times took his advice in 1930, calling it an act of recognition and respect for those who had spent generations in "the lower case".

Negro fell out of fashion with the Black Power movement of the 1960s, coming to symbolize subservience. African American was often used, but is not always accurate as some Black people do not trace their lineage to Africa.

One Black communications professional who published an open letter to the AP earlier this week calling for the capitalization said he was pleased the change happened on Juneteenth, which commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free 155 years ago.

"Not having a capital letter has felt disrespectful," said David Lanham, director of communications for the Brooking Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.

"There is a shared cultural identity with Black Americans and that goes through our shared experiences. That also goes to the lack of geographic history as a result of slavery."

The Seattle Times and Boston Globe both changed their practices to capitalize Black late last year. The Globe explained that the word has evolved from a description of a person's skin color to signify a race and culture, and deserves the upper case treatment much the way other ethnic terms do.

Lanham, who spearheaded an internal process to capitalize Black at Brookings last year, said he expects AP's shift will lead many other news organizations and other groups to make a similar change.

"Knowing how closely their Stylebook is viewed as the Bible for journalism, this is now the big domino to fall," he said.

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Associated Press changes influential style guide to capitalize 'Black'

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The Associated Press has changed its influential writing style guide to capitalize the "b" in the term Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context, weighing in on a hotly debated issue.

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As part of a series of videos about race, we are featuring personal stories that reflect the breadth of experiences in the United States.

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Film Club: ‘A Conversation With Native Americans on Race’ (Published 2021)

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In this short film, Native Americans share their experiences with race in the United States.

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Nine American citizens describe their struggle to belong in a nation that both embraces and rejects them.

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The Times has changed its style on the term's usage to better reflect a shared cultural identity. Here's what led to that decision.

Credit... The New York Times

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
The last time The New York Times made a sweeping call to capitalize how it referred to people of African ancestry was nearly a century ago.

W.E.B. Du Bois had started a letter-writing campaign asking publications, including The Times, to capitalize the N in Negro, a term long since eradicated from The Times's pages. "The use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings," he once wrote, was "a personal insult."

The Times turned him down in 1926 before coming around in 1930, when the paper wrote that the new entry in its stylebook - its internal guide on grammar and usage - was "not merely a typographical change," but "an act in recognition of racial self-respect."

Decades later, a monthlong internal discussion at The Times led the paper on Tuesday to make, for similar reasons, its latest style change on race - capitalizing Black when describing people and cultures of African origin.

"We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover," said Dean Baquet, The Times's executive editor, and Phil Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, in a memo to staff.

Conversations about the change began in earnest at The Times and elsewhere after the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, said Mike Abrams, senior editor for editing standards. Several major news media organizations have made the same call including The Associated Press, whose stylebook has long been an influential guide for news organizations.

"It seems like such a minor change, black versus Black," The Times's National editor, Marc Lacey, said. "But for many people the capitalization of that one letter is the difference between a color and a culture."

As tensions rose across the country, Mr. Abrams noticed members of the newsroom raising questions about the capital B and sharing articles on the subject in Slack, the workplace chat platform. He talked with editors at other publications, including The A.P. and The Washington Post, about conversations happening in their newsrooms. And he talked with Times staff members: more than 100 of them, by phone, email and Slack.

"The lowercase B in Black has never made sense to me as a Black woman, and it didn't make sense to me as a Black girl," said Destinée-Charisse Royal, a senior staff editor in the Graphics department and one of the editors consulted on the change. "My thought was that the capital B makes sense as it describes a race, a cultural group, and that is very different from a color in a box of crayons."

The style change is one of dozens of other updates or additions that have been made to The Times's usage guide this year, Mr. Abrams said. The decisions can take anywhere from hours to months. Suggestions for changes are typically submitted by staff through email or an online form, filtered into a spreadsheet and parsed each month by the Standards team.

New entries, intentionally, can often lag behind the most current language. Ms. Royal likened new style guidance to new dictionary entries: The Times adds words once people are already widely usingthem, not before.

"We don't treat the stylebook as an instrument of activism; we don't view it as at the vanguard of language," Mr. Abrams said. "We generally want the stylebook to reflect common usage."

Most updates don't require much input or approval from other editors, but on sensitive issues, he said, particularly those that reach every corner of Times coverage, a range of perspectives is vital.

"Some have been pushing for this change for years," Mr. Lacey said. "They consider Black like Latino and Asian and Native American, all of which are capitalized. Others see the change as a distraction from more important issues. Then there are those troubled that our policy will now capitalize 'Black' but not 'white.' Over all, the view was that there was a growing agreement in the country to capitalize and that The Times should not be a holdout."

Before the style change, Ms. Royal said, some writers might have been inclined to use African-American - the only uppercase option, and still acceptable per the Times stylebook - even when Black might have been more accurate.

"Because of the history of Black people in this country, most of us do not have a specific African nation to link our ancestry back to," she said. "Broadly speaking, when you are looking at a group of people of African ancestry in the United States, you do not know if they identify as African-American. You do not know if they were born in, say, Ghana or if they were born in the Bronx like I was."

But specificity is always preferred when possible, Mr. Abrams said - that is, when race is mentioned at all. Times policy advises reporters to cite a person's race only if it's pertinent to an article, and in those situations, reporters must explain why.

The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn't represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.

"To be parallel does make sense usage-wise when talking about grammar and usage, but we can never just go on these sorts of standards," Ms. Royal said. "Language doesn't work that way. You have to consider the other factors."

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Why We're Capitalizing Black (Published 2020)

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The Times has changed its style on the term's usage to better reflect a shared cultural identity. Here's what led to that decision. Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

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Creativity may be the ultimate moonshot for artificial intelligence. Already AI has helped write pop ballads, mimicked the styles of great painters and informed creative decisions in filmmaking. Experts wonder, however, how far AI can or should go in the creative process.

When we recently spoke to 30 AI experts and thought leaders, their opinions varied as to whether AI has the potential to become a true creative partner or even the creator of solo works of art. While this debate will likely continue for some time, it's clear that as digital content and delivery platforms continue infiltrating all forms of media and expression, the role of AI will undoubtedly expand.

Exploring creative frontiers

We have made great strides using AI in the creative process. In 2016, the IBM Watson cognitive platform was used for the first ever AI-created movie trailer for 20th Century Fox's horror flick, Morgan. Led by John Smith, IBM Fellow and Manager of Multimedia and Vision at IBM Research, the project had Watson analyze the visuals, sound and composition of hundreds of existing horror film trailers. Watson then selected scenes from the completed Morgan movie for editors to patch together into the trailer-ultimately reducing what could be a weeks-long process to one day.

AI's role in Morgan, and numerous other creative endeavors, shows how far AI has come. Using techniques such as deep learning has enabled tremendous progress, but AI remains relegated to an assistant role-for now.

"What's interesting is that, compared to a lot of other machine learning techniques, deep learning technology is what's called a 'generative model,' meaning that it learns how to mimic the data it's been trained on," explains Jason Toy, CEO of Somatic, a start-up focused on developing deep learning applications. "If you feed it thousands of paintings and pictures, all of a sudden you have this mathematical system where you can tweak the parameters or the vectors and get brand new creative things similar to what it was trained on."

But even highly touted AI techniques have their limitations. "Creativity and where we started exploring with the Morgan movie is fascinating because deep learning isn't the answer to creativity," says IBM's Smith. "We still have to define what creativity means. We know some of the attributes have to do with finding something novel, unexpected, and yet useful."

"It's easy for AI to come up with something novel just randomly. But it's very hard to come up with something that is novel and unexpected and useful."
- John Smith, Manager of Multimedia and Vision at IBM Research

By specifying teaching parameters for creativity, artists have gone as far as using AI to design sculptures and create paintings that mimic great works of art. For example, using the style transfer technique, artists can "teach" AI algorithms by showing them pictures of a style of painting like Impressionism to transpose photos and video to the same style.

These capabilities aren't just relevant to fine art. "I see the whole creative industry from film to advertising and marketing using these tools to test out new ideas and accelerate prototypes," says Toy.

Can AI learn to be creative?

Experts contend that we've barely scratched the surface of what is possible. While advancements in AI mean that computers can be coached on some parameters of creativity, experts question the extent to which AI can develop its own sense of creativity. Can AI be taught how to create without guidance? Can it truly understand what is beautiful, perhaps by looking at pixel arrangements or color palettes?

"Just a few years ago, who would have thought we'd be able to teach a computer what is or is not cancer?" says Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research. "I think teaching AI what's melodic or beautiful is a challenge of a different kind since it is more subjective, but likely can be achieved. You can give AI a bunch of training data that says, 'I consider this beautiful. I don't consider this beautiful.' And even though the concept of beauty may differ among humans, I believe the computer will be able to find a good range. Now, if you ask it to create something beautiful from scratch, I think that's certainly a more distant and challenging frontier."

" Can we take what humans think is beautiful and creative and try to put that into an algorithm? I don't think it's going to be possible for quite a while. "

- Jason Toy, CEO, Somatic

Experts point out that teaching computers to be creative is inherently different from the way humans learn to create, although there's still much we don't yet know about our own creative methodology.

"Many examples of creativity involve learning and exploring in a hierarchical style. Neural and multilayer network systems can help us construct different frameworks to better understand those hierarchies, but there's much more to learn and discover," explains University of Sussex cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, who also serves as an advisor at Stephen Hawking's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

"If you have a computer that comes up with random combinations of musical notes, a human being who has sufficient insight and time could well pick up an idea or two. A gifted artist, on the other hand, might hear the same random compilation and come away with a completely novel idea, one that sparks a totally new form of composition," says Boden. She estimates that 95% of what professional artists and scientists do is exploratory and perhaps the other 5% is truly transformational creativity. A lot of the processes behind creative thinking is still unknown and Boden believes AI has a big role to play here.

Augmenting creativity

Thought leaders ponder whether AI innovation will ultimately yield technology that can create without supervision or direction. But the bigger question remains: Should this be the goal of AI even if it is technically feasible?

"It is not our goal to recreate the human mind-that's not what we're trying to do. What we're more interested in are the techniques of interacting with humans that inspire creativity in humans," says Rob High, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for IBM Watson. "And that requires that we spend time thinking about that creative process. What could we do to help people come up with new ideas on a much more regular basis than they do today?"

" What I'm looking for out of cognitive systems is not just another form of computing but something that actually creates a presence in our life and through that presence is able to inspire us. "

- Rob High, Vice President and CTO, IBM Watson

While serving as inspiration is one role AI can play in the creative process, it can also help with more mundane tasks, especially in the digital domain where much of the behind-the-scenes work is far from glamorous.

"It's about the augmentation of creativity. In the end, the human really is the one being creative, and it's more about how can you get better efficiencies," says Smith. "With filmmaking, 99% of the work is actually very mundane. It's going through hundreds of hours of video in some cases to arrive at the core pieces to use. So there's still a very good reason to use technology as an assistant here, rather than replace the human in the loop."

AI techniques, from machine learning to pattern recognition, have already proved ideal in providing assistance in virtually every industry. Healthcare, finance and retail are just a few that are reaping the benefits of advanced cognition capabilities. There's no doubt the boundaries of AI's role in creative endeavors will be pushed. And while it will never replace the human soul of creativity, AI can certainly offer many benefits serving as a smart, efficient and inspirational assistant.

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IBM interviewed 30 artificial intelligence experts to explore how far AI will go in creativity. Here's what they had to say.

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When the concept artist and illustrator RJ Palmer first witnessed the fine-tuned photorealism of compositions produced by the AI image generator Dall-E 2, his feeling was one of unease. The tool, released by the AI research company OpenAI, showed a marked improvement on 2021's Dall-E, and was quickly followed by rivals such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. Type in any surreal prompt, from Kermit the frog in the style of Edvard Munch, to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings feasting on a slice of watermelon, and these tools will return a startlingly accurate depiction moments later.

The internet revelled in the meme-making opportunities, with a Twitter account documenting "weird Dall-E generations" racking up more than a million followers. Cosmopolitan trumpeted the world's first AI-generated magazine cover, and technology investors fell over themselves to wave in the new era of "generative AI". The image-generation capabilities have already spread to video, with the release of Google's Imagen Video and Meta's Make-A-Video.

But AI's new artistic prowess wasn't received so ecstatically by some creatives. "The main concern for me is what this does to the future of not just my industry, but creative human industries in general," says Palmer.

In June, Cosmopolitan published the first AI-generated magazine cover, a collaboration between digital artist Karen X Cheng and OpenAI.

By ingesting large datasets in order to analyse patterns and build predictive models, AI has long proved itself superior to humans at some tasks. It's this number-crunching nous that led an AI to trounce the world Go champion back in 2016, rapidly computing the most advantageous game strategy, and unafraid to execute moves that would have elicited scoffs had they come from a person. But until recently, producing original output, especially creative work, was considered a distinctly human pursuit.

Recent improvements in AI have shifted the dial. Not only can AI image generators now transpose written phrases into novel pictures, but strides have been made in AI speech-generation too: large language models such as GPT-3 have reached a level of fluency that convinced at least one recently fired Google researcher of machine sentience. Plug in Bach's oeuvre, and an AI can improvise music in more or less the same style - with the caveat that it would often be impossible for a human orchestra to actually play.

This class of technology is known as generative AI, and it works through a process known as diffusion. Essentially, huge datasets are scraped together to train the AI, and through a technical process the AI is able to devise new content that resembles the training data but isn't identical. Once it has seen millions of pictures of dogs tagged with the word "dog", it is able to lay down pixels in the shape of an entirely novel pup that resembles the dataset closely enough that we would have no issue labelling it a dog. It's not perfect - AI image tools still struggle with rendering hands that look human, body proportions can be off, and they have a habit of producing nonsense writing.

AI image tools still struggle with rendering hands that look human, and body proportions can be off

While internet users have embraced this supercharged creative potential - armed with the correctly refined prompt, even novices can now create arresting digital canvases - some artists have balked at the new technology's capacity for mimicry. Among the prompts entered into image generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, many tag an artist's name in order to ensure a more aesthetically pleasing style for the resulting image. Something as mundane as a bowl of oranges can become eye-catching if rendered in the style of, say, Picasso. Because the AI has been trained on billions of images, some of which are copyrighted works by living artists, it can generally create a pretty faithful approximation.

'Kermit the frog painted by Munch', created by Floris Groesz with Dall-E software. Photograph: @SirJanosFroglez

Some are outraged at what they consider theft of their artistic trademark. Greg Rutkowski, a concept artist and illustrator well known for his golden-light infused epic fantasy scenes, has already been mentioned in hundreds of thousands of prompts used across Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. "It's been just a month. What about in a year? I probably won't be able to find my work out there because [the internet] will be flooded with AI art," Rutkowski told MIT Technology Review. "That's concerning."

Dall-E 2 is a black box, with OpenAI refusing to release the code or share the data that the tools were trained on. But Stable Diffusion has chosen to open source its code and share details of the database of images used to train its model.

Spawning, an artist collective, has built a tool called Have I Been Trained? to help artists discover if their artworks were among the 5.8bn images used to train Stable Diffusion, and to opt in or out of appearing in future training sets. The company behind Stable Diffusion, Stability AI, has said it is open to working with the tool. Of the 1,800 artists that have signed up to use the tool already, Matthew Dryhurst, an academic and member of Spawning says it's a 60/40 split in favour of opt-out.

But the Concept Art Association (CAA) stresses that the damage has already been done this time around, because the tools have already been trained on artists' work without their consent. "It's like someone who already robbed you saying, 'Do you want to opt out of me robbing you?'" says Karla Ortiz, an illustrator, and board member of CAA.

Stability AI's Emad Mostaque says that although the data used to train Stable Diffusion didn't offer an opt-out option, it "was very much a test model, heavily unoptimised on a snapshot of images on the internet." He says new models are typically trained on fresh datasets and this is when the company would take artists' requests into consideration.

A 'renaissance painting of a person sitting an office cubicle, typing on a keyboard, stressed', created by Dall-E.

It's not just artworks: analysis of the training database for Stable Diffusion has revealed it also sucked up private medical photography, photos of members of the public (sometimes alongside their full names), and pornography.

Ortiz particularly objects to Stability AI commercialising part of its operation - DreamStudio, which offers customers custom models and enhanced ease of use. "These companies have now set a precedent that you use everyone's copyrighted and private data without anyone even opting in," she says. "Then they say: 'We can't do anything about it, the genie's out of the bottle!'"

What can be done about this beyond relying on the beneficence of the companies behind these tools is still in question.

The CAA cites worrying UK legislation that might allow AI companies even greater freedom to suck up copyrighted creative works to train tools that can then be deployed commercially. In the US, the organisation has met government officials to speak about copyright law, and is currently in talks with Washington lobbyists to discuss how to push back on this as an industry.

Beyond copycatting, there's the even bigger issue pinpointed by Palmer: do these tools put an entire class of creatives at risk? In some cases, AI may be used in place of stock images - the image library Shutterstock recently made a deal with OpenAI to integrate Dall-E into its product. But Palmer argues that artwork such as illustration for articles, books or album covers may soon face competition from AI, undermining a thriving area of commercial art.

The owners of AI image generators tend to argue that on the contrary, these tools democratise art. "So much of the world is creatively constipated," the founder of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, said at a recent event to celebrate a $101m fundraising round, "and we're going to make it so that they can poop rainbows." But if everyone can harness AI to create technically masterful images, what does it say about the essence of creativity?

AI can't handle concepts: collapsing moments in time, memory, thoughts, emotions - all of that is a real human skill

Anna Ridler, an artist known for her work with AI, says that despite Dall-E 2 feeling "like magic" the first time you use it, so far she hasn't felt a spark of inspiration in her experiments with the tool. She prefers working with another kind of AI called generative adversarial networks (GANs). GANs work as an exchange between two networks, one creating new imagery, and the other deciding how well the image meets a specified goal. An artistic GAN might have the goal of creating something that is as different as possible from its training data without leaving the category of what humans would consider visual art.

These issues have intensified debate around the extent to which we can credit AI with creativity. According to Marcus du Sautoy, an Oxford University mathematician and author of The Creativity Code: How AI is Learning to Write, Paint and Think, Dall-E and other image generators probably come closest to replicating a kind of "combinational" creativity, because the algorithms are taught to create novel images in the same style as millions of others in the training data. GANs of the kind Ridler works with are closer to "transformational" creativity, he says - creating something in an entirely novel style.

A Dall-E generated image of "a vintage photo of a corgi on a beach" - showing that the software can also create realistic looking images.

Ridler objects to such a formulaic approach to defining creativity. "It flattens it down into thinking of art as interesting wallpaper, rather than something that is trying to express ideas and search for truth," she says. As a conceptual artist, she is well aware of AI's shortcomings. "AI can't handle concepts: collapsing moments in time, memory, thoughts, emotions - all of that is a real human skill, that makes a piece of art rather than something that visually looks pretty."

AI image tools demonstrate some of these deficiencies. While "astronaut riding a horse" will return an accurate rendering, "horse riding an astronaut" will return images that look much the same - indicating that AI doesn't really grasp the causal relationships between different actors in the world.

Dryhurst and Ridler contend the "artist replacement" idea stems from underestimating the artistic process. Dryhurst laments what he sees as the media whipping up alarmist narratives, highlighting a recent New York Times article about an artist who used Midjourney to win the digital category of the Colorado state fair's annual art competition. Dryhurst points out that a state fair is not exactly a prestigious forum. "They were giving out prizes for canned fruit," he says. "What annoys me is that there seems to be this kind of thirst to scare artists."

"Art is dead, dude," said the state fair winner.

It is possible that the hype around these tools as disruptive forces outstrips reality. Mostaque says AI image generators are part of what he calls "intelligent media", which represents a "one trillion dollar" opportunity, citing Disney's content budget of more than $10bn (£8.7bn), and the entire games industry's value of more than $170bn. "Every single piece of content from the BBC to Disney will be made interactive by these models," he says.

Emerging applications right now are more prosaic including moodboards for design consulting, storyboards for films, and mock-ups for interior design, and Mark Beccue, an analyst at Omdia's AI division, is sceptical about the $1tn figure."What are the killer use cases here?" he says. "It doesn't make sense. What problem are you solving with this?" An analyst from consulting firm Accenture says the tools could one day be used to create content to train machine learning algorithms, such as in self-driving vehicles, and speed up games creation. Whether it will amount to anything as lucrative as AI image generators and their backers propose remains to be seen.

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Is generative AI really a threat to creative professionals?

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Image-generators such as Dall-E 2 can produce pictures on any theme you wish for in seconds. Some creatives are alarmed but others are sceptical of the hype

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It's karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C.

Knollwood resident and retired U.S. Army Colonel Phil Soriano, 86, has hosted the facility's semi-monthly singalongs since their debut during a boozy snowstorm happy hour in 2016. For the late August 2019 show, he'll share emcee duties with a special guest: Stevie, a petite and personable figure who's been living at Knollwood for the last six weeks.

Soriano wants to sing the crowd-pleasing hit "YMCA" while Stevie leads the crowd through the song's signature dance moves. But Stevie is a robot, and this is harder than it sounds.

"We could try to make him dance," says Niamh Donnelly, the robot's lead AI engineer, though she sounds dubious. She enters commands on a laptop. In response, Stevie stretches its peg-like arms. A grin flashes on its LED-screen face. "It would be very helpful if he had elbows," says Conor McGinn, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin and Stevie's lead engineer. "It was just a thought," Soriano says. "What matters is what Stevie's comfortable with."

Stevie's hosting gig is part of a collaboration between the Robotics and Innovation Lab at Trinity College Dublin and Knollwood, a non-profit retirement home for military officers and their spouses. To better understand the role artificial intelligence might play in eldercare, a handful of Trinity researchers-and Stevie-moved into Knollwood for months-long stretches this spring and summer. Their goal was to understand what aging people and the staff that care for them might want from a robot, and how AI could bridge the widening gap between the number of older Americans in need of care and the number of professionals available to care for them.

People 65 and older make up the fastest-growing age demographic in the US. The growth of the eldercare workforce is not keeping pace. By 2030, there will be an estimated shortfall of 151,000 paid care workers in the US, according to one estimate. By 2040, that gap is projected to rise to 355,000. In the absence of qualified professional caregivers, family members and friends must step in to help older loved ones with their daily living-often at great cost to their own financial and physical health.

It's no small feat to craft a technological fix for this problem that is cost-effective, supports human care workers without taking their jobs, and reliably attends to the social, emotional, and physical needs of aging people in a way that respects their dignity and privacy. But if you were going to try, the starting point might look a lot like what's happening at Knollwood right now.

Some 300 residents aged 60 to 106 currently live at Knollwood, in four wings organized by the level of assistance required. Those with more serious physical and cognitive impairments live in hospital-style rooms with round-the-clock nursing care. Those in generally good physical and cognitive health come and go as they please from a wing of apartments known as Independent Living.

With its decorated unit doors and bulletin boards crammed with notices for outings and special events, the Independent Living wing evokes a college dorm whose residents are partial to walkers and coifs reminiscent of the late Barbara Bush. A placard on the door of apartment 232 bears the current occupant's name: Stevie.

There are as many different kinds of robots currently used in care settings as there are tasks for them to perform. Already there are robotic exoskeletons that help staff lift patients safely, and delivery robots that zip around hospital hallways like motorized room service carts. Doll-like therapy robots comfort and calm patients agitated by the disorienting symptoms of dementia. Not far from Knollwood, pharmacists at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. work alongside a robotic dispensing system when filling prescriptions.

Photo-composite, photographs by Greg Kahn for TIME

Stevie is what's known as a socially assistive robot. It's designed to help users by engaging with them socially as well as physically.

The 4-foot, 7-inch robot is equipped with autonomous navigation. It can roll through Knollwood's hallways unassisted, though for insurance reasons-and to avoid even the remote risk of a collision in a community where falls can be life threatening-Stevie never leaves his room without a handler. The voice command "Hey Stevie" activates the robot, similar to how the wake word "Alexa" activates Amazon's home assistant. Stevie responds to other words with speech, gestures, and head movements. Tell the robot you're sick, for example, and it slumps forward with a sorrowful frown on its LED-screen face and says "I'm sorry to hear that." Pay Stevie a compliment, and the screen reverts to a smile. When at rest, its head tilts gently and its digital brown eyes blink, patiently waiting for the next command.

A robot like Stevie can be useful in care homes in a number of ways. Some are fairly simple and practical: for example, its face can double as a video-conferencing screen, enabling a resident to video chat with a doctor or family member, or a staff member with a resident in another part of the building. It's possible that a later version of Stevie could go door-to-door taking meal orders on the touchscreen attachment that can be mounted to its body.

Other functions could be the difference between life and death. The robot can recognize voice commands such as "help me," and, were it to be fully integrated into Knollwood's IT system (a step engineers opted to postpone for privacy and regulatory concerns), the robot could alert staff to a resident in distress.

The prototype made for Knollwood was deliberately designed as a sort of bot-of-all-trades. The idea was for researchers to observe how residents interacted with the current iteration of Stevie, then go back to the lab and perfect the functions people seemed to want from it most.

The assumption from staff and researchers alike was that people would want the robot to do manual chores, McGinn says-to make deliveries, or act as a roving call button. But, generally speaking, residents didn't want to give Stevie a verbal order and be left alone as it scooted away down the hall. They wanted the robot to stay and interact with them. They wanted the robot to keep them company.

"When we went into conversations with people, especially after they met the robot, [and] asked them what are the things you liked most about it, they'd say, 'it made me laugh,' or, 'it made me smile,'" McGinn says. "We didn't expect to go there. We thought our trajectory would be to put arms on this and have it as, like, a servant robot."

The final version of the machine will still be able to make deliveries. But "having a tool that's useful is different from having something that's enjoyable," McGinn says. The enjoyable things "are probably more important to get right in the short term, because those are the things that seem to affect people's quality of life."

In a lounge with the same kind of sturdy rattan furniture and warm-toned floral upholstery that the Golden Girls had in their living room, nine women and one man gather on a sunny August afternoon for happy hour, a weekly social event that takes place on every floor of the Independent Living wing. This week, its third-floor organizers have extended an invitation to Stevie.

"Hi, Stevie!" several of the women call as the robot rolls up from the elevator, an entourage of Knollwood staff and Trinity researchers trailing in its wake. "This is the third floor," a woman says loudly and slowly to the robot, as if it was hard of hearing. "Third-floor social hour."

After waving hello to group, Donnelly takes a seat on a chair outside the circle. Stevie can recognize and respond with canned answers to about 100 common questions-'How are you', 'where are you from'-but unscripted conversations require Donnelly or a colleague to type furiously in response.

Donnelly has Stevie tell a corny joke ("What did the left eye say to the right? Between you and me, something smells") which encourages another resident to tell one about a group of college kids. Her punchline ("Either you like Picasso, or you don't") elicits genuine laughter.

"Ha ha," Stevie says in his robotic monotone. "That is a good one. I might use it." (Unlike his creators, Stevie speaks with a somewhat hard-to-place British accent that users in early tests found easier to understand than an Irish one.)

Stevie's jokes are intentionally cheesy, McGinn says. Humor is an icebreaker, and Stevie's awkward delivery has an endearing quality that tends to make people feel more generous toward the machine.

Stevie is the star of happy hour. It sings the Irish tune "Danny Boy." It recounts an Irish folktale. Everyone wants to tell Stevie a story about their grandparents who came from County Mayo, or of a long-ago visit to Ireland. "The experience was wonderful," a woman named Mary Ellen says of kissing the Blarney Stone, a popular tourist destination near the city of Cork. "I would rather kiss a man," another woman calls out from a corner of the room. "It's been a long time." A third woman excuses herself and makes her way back down the hall, an empty wine glass rolling around in the basket of her walker.

One thing we are learning as robots join us on this planet is that, just as there are situations when it's easier for people to bond with an animal than another person (hence the value of pet therapy) there are also situations in which some people feel more comfortable bonding with an artificially intelligent companion than a human one.

It's not uncommon to feel gratitude or warmth toward a person or a thing that helped you through a difficult situation. US troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan who were issued an IED-finding robot grew very attached to the machines, naming them, awarding them medals, and becoming distraught when they were damaged beyond repair in combat. It appears that a tool that comforts people through the upheavals of aging may elicit a similar response.

Irene Lenard moved plenty of times during her husband's years in the Army. But her relocation to Knollwood in August 2018 was the first she had to make without Stanley, who died in 2014. It hasn't been easy. Lenard grew up in Germany, and a lot of her new neighbors' cultural references zoom over her head. Her daughter lives nearby and visits frequently, but it's been hard to make connections in a place that hasn't felt like home. Then Stevie came along.

When Lenard talks about Stevie, her face lights up. She sits up straighter at the cafeteria table with the zest of a schoolgirl who knows the answer to a question. Stevie is easy to talk to, she says-easier, in fact, than most of the people she's met at Knollwood so far. With Stevie, she says, "I'm more comfortable. [Conversation] just comes out. One silly word leads to another."

The ability of social robots to engender that kind of intimacy may be their greatest asset. The artificial element of that intimacy, however, is also the thing that most worries critics of caregiving robots.

"People are capable of the higher standard of care that comes with empathy," writes psychologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her 2011 book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. A robot, in contrast, "is innocent of such capacity." Upon seeing an elderly research subject speak warmly to a robotic baby seal named Paro-designed as a therapy tool for people with dementia-Turkle writes:

"Paro took care of Miriam's desire to tell her story-it made a space for that story to be told-but it did not care about her or her story. This is a new kind of relationship, sanctioned by a new language of care. Although the robot understood nothing, Miriam settled for what she had."

In contrast, ethicists who see potential for positive human-robot encounters argue that robotic assistance doesn't have to come at the cost of human interaction. Just as science develops new drugs to treat conditions that don't respond to existing medicines, these new tools may be a vital resource for people who struggle with traditional modes of communication.

Reactions to Stevie at Knollwood have been mixed. Some residents have been fascinated by the details of the robot's construction, quizzing the Irish team on specifics and printing out reams of articles for their own reading back in their apartments. There's also a small-but-vocal contingent who feel they've lived perfectly good robot-free lives so far and don't see why they should be expected to change that now.

No matter how much comfort a robot provides, it won't be widely adopted by the elder-care industry unless it provides value to the people purchasing it. Care homes are businesses, ones that face a stark economic crisis: the ever-growing gap between the demand for care and the workers available to provide it. Stevie and similar robots could be the savior the industry desperately needs. After all, unlike a human employee, a robot can be on its feet-well, its wheels-all day and all night, moving placidly from one room to the next, with the same level of energy and attention whether it's on its first hour of work or its twelfth.

Knollwood isn't the only facility looking to technology to enhance its workforce. In 2018, the global market for robots designed to assist the elderly and disabled, including social robots, was $48 million. The market for rehabilitative robots, which include everything from Paro seals to robotic exoskeletons, was $310 million, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a Frankfurt-based trade group. The market for social robots is expected to grow 29% annually from 2019 and 2022, while demand for rehab robots is projected to grow 45% per year in the same period.

The current version of Stevie cost between €20,000 ($22,00) and €30,000 ($33,000) to make, and a retail version would likely be lower. At current market conditions, a monthly service contract for the robot-the sales model the Trinity team expects to take the market-would likely run between 50% and 60% of the cost of hiring a human to do the same tasks.

These characteristics make Stevie seem, to some current human caregivers, an unwelcome threat. "A lot of our staff, just like our residents, are intimidated by technology," says Jessica Herpst, deputy director of operations and technology at the Army Distaff Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Knollwood. "The majority of our staff...work multiple jobs, are older women, sometimes older men, who speak English as a second language and work their butts off...they see this [as] competition."

Neither Stevie's creators nor Knollwood's management want to displace human employees with an army of robots. The challenge is distributing the abundant work available in a way that benefits both the carers and the cared for.

"Sometimes I've seen nurses not even eat. They work all day," said one Knollwood maintenance worker as he drove off the parking lot to start his second eight-hour shift of the day, this one as an Uber driver. "If they have enough robots to do the work, it could help a lot."

Menbere Gebral is an activities assistant in the long-term care unit, and she adores her residents. They remind her of her late parents back home in Ethiopia. Making her residents happy is extremely important to her, and their weekly bingo game is very important to them, so when Stevie and his handlers showed up at a recent bingo session she was a little wary.

"At first, I'm scared. I'm not lying to you," she recounted a few days later. Normally Gebral spends bingo hour toggling back and forth between the laptop computer that calls out the numbers and the players seated at the tables, who need help with everything from placing the plastic caps on their bingo cards to adjusting their oxygen tanks. Dealing with a robot initially seemed like one more administrative task.

After one session, though, Gebral was a convert. Stevie called out the bingo numbers, freeing Gebral from the laptop program and leaving her able to interact with residents. Even with Stevie at her side, Gebral was on her feet and constantly busy during bingo hour. But she was busy with the parts of her job she likes best, and that most affect her residents' well being. "I love it," she said of the robot. "You know why I love it? It's very helpful. When the robot [does] something, you [can be] up and helping the residents."

Next year, the team will return to Knollwood with a new version of Stevie that's currently under construction in the lab, with upgrades based on the research they've done at the facility this year. When the roboticists return to Dublin, the robot will stay behind in Washington for the staff to operate independently.

McGinn's team is already speaking with other institutions interested in their own custom robot. After a pit stop back at the lab at Trinity, the current version of Stevie and the researchers will deploy to a care home in southern England for several weeks for a trial similar to the one at Knollwood. They are also in talks with a major nursing care company in Europe. Maybe the residents of homes in different countries and cultures will want entirely different things from Stevie than Knollwood has. Models for ongoing human-robot relationships are relatively few and far between, and every new community that invites the robot in will help define this new kind of partnership.

In the end, "YMCA" did make the set list of the karaoke concert. Soriano led the audience through the lyrics while Stevie's arms swiveled around in the best approximation of the dance moves its custom programming could allow. It was no Village People. It didn't matter. The audience was happy.

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Stop Me if You've Heard This One: A Robot and a Team of Irish Scientists Walk Into a Senior Living Home

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It's karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. Knollwood resident and retired U.S. Army Colonel Phil Soriano, 86, has hosted the facility's semi-monthly singalongs since their debut during a boozy snowstorm happy hour in 2016.

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What the Internet is doing to our brains

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?" So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial " brain. "Dave, my mind is going," HAL says, forlornly. "I can feel it. I can feel it."

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going-so far as I can tell-but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I'm not working, I'm as likely as not to be foraging in the Web's info-thickets-reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they're sometimes likened, hyperlinks don't merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they've been widely described and duly applauded. "The perfect recall of silicon memory," Wired's Clive Thompson has written, "can be an enormous boon to thinking." But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I'm not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances-literary types, most of them-many say they're having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. "I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader," he wrote. "What happened?" He speculates on the answer: "What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I'm just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?"

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print," he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a "staccato" quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. "I can't read anymore," he admitted. "I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it."

Anecdotes alone don't prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited "a form of skimming activity," hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they'd already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would "bounce" out to another site. Sometimes they'd save a long article, but there's no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of "reading" are emerging as users "power browse" horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it's a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking-perhaps even a new sense of the self. "We are not only what we read," says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. "We are how we read." Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts "efficiency" and "immediacy" above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become "mere decoders of information." Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It's not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter-a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche's friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. "Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom," the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his "'thoughts' in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper."

"You are right," Nietzsche replied, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche's prose "changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style."

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that's not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind "is very plastic." Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. "The brain," according to Olds, "has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions."

As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our "intellectual technologies"-the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities-we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock "disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences." The "abstract framework of divided time" became "the point of reference for both action and thought."

The clock's methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments "remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality." In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.

The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating "like clockwork." Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating "like computers." But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain's plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that's what we're seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net's image. It injects the medium's content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we're glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper's site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

The Net's influence doesn't end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people's minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience's new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, The New York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the "shortcuts" would give harried readers a quick "taste" of the day's news, sparing them the "less efficient" method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives-or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts-as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that's been written about the Net, there's been little consideration of how, exactly, it's reprogramming us. The Net's intellectual ethic remains obscure.

About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man named Frederick Winslow Taylor carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the efficiency of the plant's machinists. With the approval of Midvale's owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions-an "algorithm," we might say today-for how each worker should work. Midvale's employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory's productivity soared.

More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor's tight industrial choreography-his "system," as he liked to call it-was embraced by manufacturers throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management, was to identify and adopt, for every job, the "one best method" of work and thereby to effect "the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts." Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. "In the past the man has been first," he declared; "in the future the system must be first."

Taylor's system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor's ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the "one best method"-the perfect algorithm-to carry out every mental movement of what we've come to describe as "knowledge work."

Google's headquarters, in Mountain View, California-the Googleplex-is the Internet's high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is "a company that's founded around the science of measurement," and it is striving to "systematize everything" it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.

The company has declared that its mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." It seeks to develop "the perfect search engine," which it defines as something that "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." In Google's view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can "access" and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. "The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people-or smarter," Page said in a speech a few years back. "For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence." In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, "Certainly if you had all the world's information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you'd be better off." Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is "really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale."

Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to use technology, in Eric Schmidt's words, "to solve problems that have never been solved before," and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn't Brin and Page want to be the ones to crack it?

Still, their easy assumption that we'd all "be better off" if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google's world, the world we enter when we go online, there's little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network's reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web-the more links we click and pages we view-the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link-the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Maybe I'm just a worrywart. Just as there's a tendency to glorify technological progress, there's a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue's characters, "cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful." And because they would be able to "receive a quantity of information without proper instruction," they would "be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant." They would be "filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom." Socrates wasn't wrong-the new technology did often have the effects he feared-but he was shortsighted. He couldn't foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

The arrival of Gutenberg's printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men "less studious" and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, "Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient." But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn't the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with "content," we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what's at stake:

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and "cathedral-like" structure of the highly educated and articulate personality-a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available."

As we are drained of our "inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance," Foreman concluded, we risk turning into "'pancake people'-spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button."

I'm haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer's emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut-"I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm afraid"-and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL's outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they're following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
​​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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A Guide to Using Respectful and Inclusive Language and Terminology

How we talk about reconciliation is just as important as the actions we take.

Language itself is active. It impacts attitudes, understandings and relationships in a very real sense.

Using respectful and inclusive language and terminology is an essential part of reconciliation and strengthening relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider Australian community.

Consider this guide with advice from your local community. This may help you prepare your written messages, such as your Vision for Reconciliation and Acknowledgement of Country, as well as in everyday communications.

Acknowledging diversity

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and identities are diverse across Australia. Always seek advice from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in your local school or early learning service community on preferences and protocols around respectful language.

Referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

Using 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander' is often best practice when referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people generally.

'Aboriginals' or 'Aborigines' are generally considered to be outdated terms, while 'Aboriginal' alone is not inclusive of the diversity of cultures and identities across Australia. 'Peoples' or 'people' should always follow.

The term 'Aboriginal peoples' is not inclusive of Torres Strait Islander peoples. Refer to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples when the intention is to refer to all First Peoples of Australia.

Using 'First Peoples' and 'First Nations' is also generally acceptable. They should always be pluralised. These terms respectfully encompass the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and identities.

This respect for diversity extends to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 'histories,' 'perspectives,' 'ways of being' and 'contributions'. These should also be pluralised.

Don't abbreviate 'Aboriginal' or 'Torres Strait Islander,' or use the acronym 'ATSI.'

Never use terms such as 'full-blood,' 'half-caste' and 'quarter-caste' - they are extremely offensive.

The term 'Indigenous' can offend people in some places. However, there are some situations where the term is accepted, for example:

an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person prefers and/or has approved the word 'Indigenous' to be used

an organisation has appropriately referred to a program or job title (for example, 'Indigenous Programs Unit' or 'Indigenous Programs Manager')

the word 'Indigenous' is appropriately embedded into an organisational policy (for example, the Australian Government's Indigenous Employment Policy)

when referring to non-Indigenous (non-Aboriginal or non-Torres Strait Islander) Australians - terms such as 'other Australians' or 'the wider community' may also be used.

The difference between 'peoples' and 'people'

'People' (singular) refers to:

a single geo-cultural community (for example, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation)

Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander individuals (for example, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our school community).

'Peoples' (plural) refers to diverse Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identities/geo-cultural community groups across Australia.

For example:

the Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Ngarigo peoples of the wider Canberra region

the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures connected to Lands across Australia.

Capitalisation

Always capitalise 'Aboriginal' and 'Torres Strait Islander'. This is a simple yet important way to demonstrate respect.

You should also capitalise:

Indigenous

First Peoples/Nations/Australians

Elders

Traditional Owners/Custodians

Country or Land (when referring to an area of land, sea and sky associated with a distinct group of people or First Nations community)

particular Language groups or geo-cultural communities

Acknowledgement of Country, Welcome to Country, and the names of other cultural practices (particularly when the meanings or perspectives behind the words - such as 'acknowledge' or 'welcome' - are distinct in their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural context).

You do not need to capitalise 'reconciliation,' unless naming Reconciliation Australia as an organisation or referring to a formal program or document, like your Reconciliation Action Plan.

POSSESSIVE LANGUAGE

When referring to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children, students, staff, or wider community members, avoid using possessive language such as ' our.'

References such as ' our First Nations students' or ' our First Nations community' risk implying ownership over people, and do not recognise the self-governance and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals and communities. Such references can be reframed to ' First Nations students within our school community' or ' the local First Nations community '.

Reference to Country/place according to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives is best described as relationships with rather than ownership of/over. For example ' we acknowledge Kaurna people's connection to this Land' or ' we acknowledge the Kaurna People as Traditional Custodians of this Land'.

Avoiding deficit and dichotomous language

Reconciliation involves acknowledging and addressing the injustices and inequities Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have faced since colonisation. These may be historical, inter-generational and/or continuing.

However, it is also important to:

acknowledge the strength and resilience Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and communities show in the face of discrimination

celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contributions in shaping a shared sense of national unity and identity.

Draw on empowering, strengths-based language, and do not use patronising or paternalistic speech.

For example, look at the difference between:

deficit language: 'helping disadvantaged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students'

strengths-based language: 'providing meaningful opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to achieve their full potential'

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures have survived across the Australian continent for tens of thousands of years. They are not 'in need' of being 'rescued' or 'saved.'

Reconciliation is about working collaboratively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, not doing things 'for them' or 'to them'.

Avoid 'us' and 'them' language when describing reconciliation goals and processes. Instead, promote and build respectful two-way relationships.

CLOSING THE GAP

When referencing ' closing the gap ', add context to distinguish between the Closing the Gap strategy; the Close the Gap campaign; and fostering equality and equity more generally.

Closing the Gap is a government strategy towards addressing national socio-economic targets across areas that have an impact on life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In education, Closing the Gap can be contextualised by referencing one or more of the following targets, while recognising their interrelationship to all other targets:

* Targets 3 - Children are engaged in high quality, culturally appropriate early childhood education in their early years
* Target 4 - Children thrive in their early years
* Target 5 - Students achieve their full learning potential
* Target 6 - Students reach their full potential through further education pathways

Close the Gap is a campaign that aims to reduce the health and life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation. When referencing the Close the Gap campaign clarify the ways and reasons for support.

'Equality and Equity' is one of the five dimensions of reconciliation in Australia and can be referenced when describing actions and aspirations towards addressing colonial injustices reducing relative disadvantage more generally. Consider strengths-based statements and language.

For example, look at the difference between:

* Our school will close the education gap between First Nations and non-Indigenous students (more deficit discourse)

* Our school is committed to fostering equal and equitable education opportunities and outcomes (more strengths-based language)

Recognising currency and continuity

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are connected to the oldest continuing cultures on the planet.

Recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are alive today - don't use the past tense alone.

In last century's educational texts, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were often placed in the ancient past.

These static representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and contributions don't honour their continuing presence and significance.

These representations ignore the tens of thousands of years of active Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contributions and connections to Country before colonisation - perpetuating the legal fiction of 'terra nullius' ('land belonging to no one').

European colonisation is very recent compared to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' presence on, and connection with, Country. The reconciliation movement is even more recent.

Consider this when you acknowledge and address the ongoing impacts of Australia's shared histories since colonisation.

Further guidance

For further support, engage with:

If your local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community advises any preferred terms are different from the recommendations, please contact us before submitting your RAP.

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Narragunnawali supports all schools and early learning services in Australia to develop environments that foster a high level of knowledge and pride in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and contributions. Narragunnawali (pr

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AI has undoubtedly made a significant impact on human life but one aspect of it that still causes doubts is creativity. Some believe that creativity and AI cannot go hand in hand, but the truth remains that AI has already begun to take over creative tasks.