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This is the first edition of The Widening Gyre, a bi-weekly newsletter designed to help inform First Things readers about technology, notably AI, which is fast colonizing everything, our minds not the least. I've borrowed the title from WB Yeat’s apocalyptic 1919 poem, “The Second Coming," with its oft-quoted line, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer.” The imagery captures our condition but leaves open the chance that the falcon can still glide back within earshot. In this, I am more hopeful than Yeats, although I fear that techno "inevitabilism" may be more dangerous than Yeats' "rough beast" on the road "toward Bethlehem to be born."
Journalism was my trade in my formative days, and I approach the technology topic with that skeptical eye, sharpened by 30 years as writer, editor, founder, and investor.  I am also a Roman Catholic, which equips me with a certain outsider’s clarity in a place like Silicon Valley. I've published three pieces on AI with First Things, including  “The Threat of Artificial Intelligence," (2021), "The Twisted Consequences of Chatbots," (2026) and "Magnificat Humanitas, a Missed Opportunity?" (2026)

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The AI-detection company Pangram posted new research last week finding, based on a sample of more than 1 million social media posts, that “AI-generated content is a problem across all platforms.” read more at Pirate Wires

Audrey Horne is working through some AI intuitions. Her Substack is worth a read.