UAlbany Journalism Professor Thomas Palmer, the Picture Prosecutor, exposes photographic deception occurring through intersemiotic contextual misrepresentation.
BEGINNING AND END: I was the lead front page designer of our @timesunion coverage of the 2001 U.S. military campaign. 20 years later, I struggled emotionally to design our front page which chronicles this humiliating end — a blight in U.S. history. @CaseySeiler#Afghanistan
I spent today teaching an AI workshop for the communications team of Hapag-Lloyd, the global shipping company. We worked on better prompting — the art of communicating with bots. But the deeper conversation was about what humans bring that no robot can replicate: empathy, authenticity, and the irreplaceable advantage of having been there.
Then I came home and read a New York Times piece about Tilly Norwood — billed as the world's first AI-created actress — interviewed by a seasoned celebrity journalist who has shared cigarettes with Gwyneth Paltrow and walked Hampstead Heath with Tom Hiddleston.
The reporter held her own. But at the end, she wrote something that stopped me:
"It was the people I've interviewed whom I was thinking about during my time with Tilly. The people who said wild things, who laughed inappropriately, who dodged my questions, who charmed me, who burst into tears, who dragged my name through the mud later. As I made my way through this story, I longed for each of them."
From shipping logistics to Hollywood — the question is the same: What do we actually lose when we remove the human from the room?
Turns out, everything that makes it worth remembering.
https://t.co/t9F0C0Li07
Enjoying my day at DPG Media in Amsterdam, conducting AI and mobile storytelling workshops for the teams in that group. Workshop topics: Artificial Intelligence in 5 Acts; Two Revolutions in the Newsroom-Mobile Storytelling & Artificial Intelligence. Engaged, enthusiastic audience.
I'm sitting in Amsterdam, putting the final touches on my new book about AI and humanity, when I see that the Pope just published his landmark encyclical on AI. The Pope calls it Magnifica Humanitas — Magnificent Humanity. I call it the Scent of the Human. Different words. Identical conviction. The machine is magnificent. But you are the muse. Here's what that means for every leader navigating the AI age right now. In my blog: https://t.co/LDlq2tsY4k
Today, Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas — a 42,000-word encyclical on AI and humanity.
TechCrunch says it's really about inequality and power. Big Tech. Regulation. The arms race.
I read it differently.
The Pope and I agree on something more fundamental: the machine is magnificent. But the human is the muse.
Creativity. Empathy. The Blue Note. The scent of the human that no algorithm can synthesize. That's what this document defends — and it's exactly what I've been writing about in my new book, The Virtuoso Machine (Forbes, 2027). Read my take — and tell me: do you see the encyclical as a regulatory manifesto, or a defense of human creativity?
👉 https://t.co/LDlq2tsY4k
Graduation season always makes me reflective. But this year, watching my grandson Frank walk across that stage, I wasn't thinking about the past — I was thinking about 2040.
By then, every graduate in that auditorium will have spent their entire lives alongside an AI Bestie. Not as a tool. As a companion.
In my new blog post, I explore what that means for human creativity, the art of the "Blue Note," and why a senior Wall Street executive is now hiring fewer STEM graduates and more humanists — because the market is already grading on soul.
These ideas are at the heart of my forthcoming book, The Virtuoso Machine (Forbes Books, 2027) — but today, they live in a blog post.
The machine brings the archive. You bring the surprise. Read "The Bestie Essay" and tell me: are we teaching the next generation the most important skill of all — the Veto Power?
✍️ This essay draws from my forthcoming book, The Virtuoso Machine, to be published by Forbes Books in 2027. Read my blog post here: https://t.co/S9nzD3ANGu
🔗 [link] #AI #Journalism #HumanCreativity #TheVirtuosoMachine
There is a bigger, smarter and more robust AI Super Crane coming to us according to a new McKinsey Report which confirms it: 2026 is the year quantum computing stops being a laboratory promise and becomes a strategic management question.The super crane is arriving. More than ever AI still needs you in the conductor's chair.
In my new weekend blog post: https://t.co/HUj0kyLVaE
McKinsey's new quantum computing report stopped me cold. It confirms what few of us have fully absorbed yet: quantum computing and AI are already merging — deliberately, strategically, right now. So if today's AI checks each door one by one until it finds the open one — quantum computing checks all 10 doors at the same time.
The super crane is arriving. It still needs you in the conductor's chair.
In my new weekend blog post: https://t.co/HUj0kyLVaE
After consulting with media companies nearly every week, I've noticed a pattern in how they adopt AI — it's a four-phase journey:
🔵 Phase 1: Curiosity Without Protocol — staff experiment solo, leadership barely notices
🟡 Phase 2: Strategic Awareness — "we should do something about AI" energy
🟠 Phase 3: Full Integration — AI embedded across every department, with real guardrails
🟢 Phase 4: AI as Competitive Differentiator — proprietary tools, AI-native storytelling, true innovation
Here's the irony: when I ask a media CEO which phase their company is in, the answer is almost always one or two phases ahead of reality.
Self-awareness is Phase 0
Getting ready for my Artificial Intelligence workshop with the team of Tagesspiegel in Berlin. Emphasis on the Scent of the Human at the controls of AI---and prompt engineering.
Working on the manuscript of my new book, The Virtuoso Machine: Finding the Scent of the Human at the Controls of AI (Forbes Books).
A couple of lines for your weekend meditation 👇
"While the industry obsesses over AI's monopoly on facts and data, we are overlooking our most powerful leverage: our monopoly on the senses and the soul. In a world of digital perfection, the 'scent of the human'—the messy, intuitive, and soulful essence of our species—is our only irreplaceable asset."
"AI is a crane for heavy lifting and a library of the world's echoes. But without you, the output is odorless—a sterile calculation. To 'scent' a prompt is to inject your unique human DNA into the machine, ensuring the result isn't just 'content,' but a signature work."
#TheVirtuosoMachine #AIandHumanity #FutureOfCreativity
This Sunday morning I do one more review of the manuscript for my new book, The Virtuoso Machine: Finding the Scent of the Human at the Controls of Ai, to be published by Forbes Books. Here are two takeaways from the book’s mantra: AI is always in tune. The Virtuoso knows when to play flat.
The Crane is what AI does magnificently — lifting the crushing weight of data, research, and repetitive process so that you do not have to. The Muse is what lives in your gut and your history and your particular way of seeing the world….Never ask the machine to do the dreaming for you. (Illustration by https://t.co/BmxKDAw4zN)
When you are writing a book, there are creative, inspired days bunched up like radishes. Well, I happen to be going through such a cycle. I wake up at 5 each morning and must write more of my new book, tentatively titled The Virtuoso Machine: Finding the Scent of the Human at the Controls of AI. It is my love letter to creativity in the AI age. After a 55+ year career surrounded by the most creative souls, I put human creativity in the altar in my book. Here is a sentence from today’s writing: The machine can play every note ever written. Only the human can still play the one that hasn’t been played before.
New board game called PROPAGANDA! Learn how to control the narrative and dominate the world with lobbyists and power broker movesNew board game called PROPAGANDA! Learn how to control the narrative and dominate the world with lobbyists and power broker movesNew board game called PROPAGANDA! Learn how to control the narrative and dominate the world with lobbyists and power broker moves!
From the Newsroom to the Moon: A History of Prompting. We’ve been prompted all our lives!
Learn to go from the vague to the specific for your prompting, in my blog today. We call it "Prompt Engineering" like it’s a new science, but we’ve been prompting since the dawn of time. From Mrs. Earle’s classroom rules to Reagan’s demand at the Berlin Wall—and even that failed trip to the grocery store for your mother—humans have always struggled to turn intent into action. In my latest blog post, I explore why the AI "text box" might actually be the clearest mirror we’ve ever had for our own communication. It’s time to bridge the context gap.
https://t.co/yQ5ZBZzkAJ
🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable
We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening, the fraud must be stopped.