Does AI dream of electric sheep?

Weekend Reads for July 19, 2025

Happy Saturday, Ink readers! As we do each weekend for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected below some of the best writing we’ve come across as we’ve read and researched this week. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• What goes through the mind of artificial intelligence?

• What kind of American are you?

• Can we tell stories about nature without including ourselves?

• What JD Vance should learn from history

• The countless deaths in nature that we never see

• And, as always, music to unwind with

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In The Ink this week

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And now, your Weekend Reads

What do machines dream of?

As artists, academics, practitioners, or as journalists, dataset investigation is one of the few tools we have available to gain insight and understanding into the most complex systems ever conceived by humans.

This is why advocating for dataset transparency is so important if AI systems are ever going to be accountable for their impacts in the world. [Knowing Machines]