The AI reality check

What technology is actually doing to us

Author

Perspective Media
September 14, 2025

THIS WEEK’S DEEP DIVE
AI makes you stupid
BY SUSIE ALEGRE

Barrister Susie Alegre argues that our reliance on AI is literally rewiring our brains for the worse, just as GPS dependency has already shrunk our spatial memory. Drawing on MIT research showing how ChatGPT users lose neural connectivity and can't even remember what they've written, she warns that we're trading cognitive ability for convenience – but offers hope in an unexpected form of resistance.

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Research shows that habitual reliance on GPS leads to a progressive decline in users’ spatial memory

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Apocalypse, how?

Journalist and author Mic Wright argues that our obsession with apocalyptic AI scenarios – from killer robots to artificial general intelligence – reveals a peculiar human conceit. While tech barons fantasise about dramatic extinction events and nuclear strikes against rogue AI, he suggests we're ignoring the slow-motion disasters already unfolding around us, from climate change to inequality.

www.perspectivemedia.com/apocalypse-how

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Prosaic problems of providing water, food and shelter are far less interesting to tech barons

Even AI porn needs consent

Academic Kate Devlin explores the disturbing rise of AI-generated pornography, from deepfakes using celebrities' faces to customized explicit content created from text prompts. While acknowledging that censorship often fails, she examines why non-consensual AI porn represents a particularly harmful convergence of technology and exploitation – and why the solution lies in understanding consent rather than in banning either AI or pornography.

www.perspectivemedia.com/even-ai-porn-needs-consent

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Censorship is often doomed to failure, driving behaviour underground and making it harder to debate

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