What can history tell us about AI?

As the AI era unfolds around us, historians reflect on lessons learned from the rollout of the internet and other technological revolutions.

In an essay posted to X on February 10, artificial intelligence entrepreneur Matt Shumer put it bluntly: “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job.”

Shumer’s words, which have racked up 86 million views to date, rattled the nerves of an already-rattled public—and fueled fear for what the future may hold as the AI revolution threatens to disrupt work and ignite or topple the economy.

According to historians, anxieties like these have surfaced during all previous technological revolutions, from the assembly line that altered manufacturing to the trains, cars, and airplanes that shortened travel times to the internet that put information at our fingertips.

One notable difference with AI is the unprecedented speed at which the technology is advancing, with newer tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 enabling users to write complex computer code, analyze data, or generate reports in a matter of seconds, or even engage in several tasks at once through a process called multi-agent teaming.

Below, two political economy historians, Louis Hyman and Angus Burgin, offer perspective on the AI-fueled shift we are experiencing and the concerns it sparks.

Hyman specializes in labor, capitalism, and the changing nature of work in the United States and has authored or edited five books on the history of American capitalism, including Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary (Viking, 2018). Burgin focuses on intellectual history and the political economy of technology in the US.

The separate conversations, combined and edited for flow and clarity, appear below:

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Art films can make you more creative

A new study offers some of the strongest evidence yet that viewing art doesn’t just move us emotionally—it changes how we think.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara found that people who viewed artistic film shorts showed measurable increases in creative thinking compared with those who watched entertaining, “non-art,” videos.

“Art confronts us with the unexpected,” says psychological researcher Madeleine Gross, who led the study with coauthor Jonathan Schooler, also in the psychological and brain sciences department.

“It pushes us beyond surface-level perception, into broader, and more abstract ways of thinking and perceiving. Those same processes appear to support creative thinking.”

In the experiment, nearly 500 participants were randomly assigned to watch either a critically acclaimed animated short film or a humorous home-video compilation—the kind of content familiar to anyone who’s scrolled through social media reels. Afterward, each participant completed two tasks designed to capture different dimensions of creative thinking.

The first was a categorization task. Here, study participants were asked to rate how well various objects fit into a given category. For example: rate how much a car belongs in the category “vehicle.” Pretty straightforward. But what about a camel? Or a foot? That’s where things get interesting. People who are more willing to accept these offbeat examples are exhibiting what researchers call “conceptual expansion”—a loosening of the boundaries between mental categories. And when those boundaries loosen, ideas cross-pollinate, and new associations form. This is, in many ways, at the heart of creative thinking.

The second task measured creative production more directly. Participants were asked to create a short story that included three given words: “stamp,” “letter,” and “send.” Some stories were uncreative and predictable: “I was writing my friend a letter, so I put a stamp on it and took it to the post office to send.” Others were more inventive, using the words metaphorically (“…her words left a stamp in my mind”) or taking the prompt in a surprising direction. Independent judges rated the stories on their originality. Once again, the group that had watched the artistic shorts came out ahead.

Perhaps the most surprising outcome was that, in general, individuals who viewed the experimental films reported that they felt worse after, compared to individuals in the control group. They rated the films lower and reported more negative emotional states. Yet they still outperformed on every measure of creativity. It seems art can produce cognitive benefits without requiring the viewer to enjoy the experience.

So what’s going on? The study points to a specific mechanism. Art appears to work its cognitive magic by triggering “state openness”—a temporary shift toward a more receptive and exploratory mindset. This shift, the researchers found, fully explained the link between watching art and broader conceptual thinking. The common intuition that art “expands your mind” may be more literal than it sounds.

The films used in the study were sourced from Short of the Week, a highly selective film curation platform, and all fell into the “experimental” genre, reflecting works that resist simple interpretation, are visually surprising or narratively ambiguous. The control videos, on the other hand, were rapid-fire compilations of humorous animal clips and other domestic bloopers. They offered immediate gratification but little to chew on intellectually.

Though the results can’t yet be generalized beyond artistic short films—the study carries important implications. This is the first experimental demonstration that passive exposure to everyday art can promote creativity. Much prior research in arts and aesthetics lack true experimental control. In the present study, participants were randomly assigned to view art or an active control, meaning they had an equal chance of seeing either. The control was a strong comparison, one that could plausibly have explained the effects of art—as a product of mere entertainment or positive mood—yet didn’t. This stands in contrast to prior work that lacks proper controls altogether, and it also tells us art is doing something more.

The findings also speak to accessibility. Much aesthetics research has focused on museum visits, which remain out of reach for many people particularly across socioeconomic lines. Film, on the other hand, is one of the most widely consumed and accessible art forms. That it, too, can promote creative benefits underscores the promise of everyday art engagement.

Perhaps most importantly, this work could have real time applications. At a time when arts funding faces persistent pressure in schools and public budgets, the study provides a controlled, preregistered and transparently reported demonstration that brief encounters with art can temporarily drive changes in cognition that favor creativity.

“When there are debates about whether arts programs deserve more funding, studies like this offer something concrete to point to,” Gross says.

“The case isn’t closed but with evidence like this, the idea that art expands the mind is starting to look less like a metaphor, and more like a measurable psychological effect.”

Source: UC Santa Barbara

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Your neighborhood may be aging you at the cellular level

Researchers have determined that neighborhood conditions may be driving aging at the cellular level.

Their study in Social Science and Medicine finds that people living in neighborhoods with fewer social and economic opportunities such as jobs and stable housing are more likely to have an abundance of CDKN2A RNA, a measure of cellular aging.

“Our health is shaped not only by individual behaviors, but also by the environments we live in,” says Mariana Rodrigues, a PhD student at New York University’s School of Global Public Health and the study’s first author.

“This study suggests that structural conditions may become biologically embedded and influence aging processes over time.”

Neighborhood factors such as green spaces, clean air, jobs, well-resourced schools, and affordable housing can influence our well-being. Studies show that people living in areas lacking these opportunities have a higher risk of chronic disease and shorter life expectancies, but less is known about the impact on health and aging at a cellular level.

As cells age, they stop dividing but remain metabolically active and secrete substances that fuel inflammation. These cellular changes are connected to frailty and aging-related diseases. Measures of cellular senescence—an indicator of biological aging—include: CDKN2A RNA abundance, which is involved in halting cell division; DNA damage response, reflecting genomic instability; and senescence-associated secretory phenotypes, which activate inflammatory pathways.

To understand the connection between neighborhood factors and cellular aging, the researchers analyzed data from 1,215 American adults in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, including blood samples measuring four molecular markers of cellular aging. They also assessed neighborhood opportunity based on a participant’s census tract using the Childhood Opportunity Index 3, which calculates 44 location-specific measures of education (e.g., test scores and graduation rates), health and environment (e.g., air and water quality, walkability, and health insurance coverage), and social and economic resources (e.g., employment, homeownership, and income).

The researchers found that people living in low-opportunity neighborhoods had significantly elevated CDKN2A RNA, even after accounting for other socioeconomic, health, and lifestyle factors. The association between neighborhood opportunity and CDKN2A expression was strongest for social and economic factors, meaning that cellular senescence may be driven by a neighborhood’s lower social and economic opportunity rather than by a lack of education, health, or environmental factors.

“Stressors related to income, jobs, and housing are not occasional, but persistent conditions that shape daily life,” says Adolfo Cuevas, associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at NYU School of Global Public Health and the study’s senior author.

“Our findings suggest that chronic stress caused by economic deprivation and limited mobility may be the primary driver of cellular aging.”

The researchers hope that future studies will hone in on community-related factors that could buffer against health risks and continue to examine how neighborhood conditions influence aging over time, which could help pinpoint critical windows of exposure.

However, they note that many environmental factors that influence health are structural—”not things we can fix as individuals, but rather, what we should be addressing as a society,” noted Rodrigues.

“Improving neighborhood conditions, particularly social and economic resources, may be important for promoting healthy aging and reducing health disparities, but if we really want to address health disparities and improve health for everyone, it’s important to consider what needs to be changed at the structural level,” says Rodrigues.

Additional study authors are from the NYU School of Global Public Health as well as the University of California, Los Angeles.

Support for this work came from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Source: New York University

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How does narcissism affect relationships?

New research challenges the popular assumption that narcissists gradually damage their relationships over time.

The study used longitudinal data to track over 5,000 couples for up to six years. Participants completed questionnaires that measured two dimensions of narcissism: narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry.

“Narcissists have two different ways to maintain their inflated positive self-perceptions,” says Gwendolyn Seidman, lead author of the study and associate professor in Michigan State University’s psychology department.

“They can puff themselves up by trying to impress others (narcissistic admiration) or they can put other people down to show they are superior to them (narcissistic rivalry).”

Published in the Journal of Personality, the study found that narcissistic rivalry traits were consistently linked to lower relationship satisfaction for both partners, but contrary to earlier research, narcissistic admiration had no meaningful effect on either partner’s satisfaction.

In addition, the study found that the rate of decline was no steeper for couples where one partner scored highly on narcissism. This suggests that long-term effects of narcissism on romantic relationships may unfold in ways that are more nuanced than previously thought.

The study also looked at couples who had been together for a year or less—and found that narcissistic traits showed no association with satisfaction at all.

“People often assume that narcissists are charming at first but gradually damage their relationships over time. Our findings suggest that the reality may be more complicated,” says Seidman.

“Perhaps there is some turning point in the relationship where things change and satisfaction nosedives or perhaps the ‘honeymoon’ phase with narcissists is longer. Another possibility is that the harm caused by narcissists doesn’t show up directly in their partners’ overall relationship satisfaction. For example, narcissists may gradually erode their partners’ self-esteem or sense of agency.”

The researchers hope that by understanding how personality traits shape relationship experiences, clinicians and other researchers can better understand why some relationships struggle and how partners influence each other’s well-being over time.

Source: Michigan State University

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New nasal flu vaccine shows promise in mice

Researchers have developed a new vaccine platform to bring about broad, protective immunity against numerous influenza virus infections that’s showing promise as an effective vaccine strategy, according to a new study.

The study in the journal ACS Nano used cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) as a vaccine platform to display various human and avian influenza hemagglutinins (HAs) in an upside-down manner on the EV surfaces.

The inverted HA tends to present the conserved HA stalk to the immune system to induce cross-protective influenza immunity while hiding the highly variable HA head to avoid strain-specific immunity.

The investigators used mice to evaluate cellular and mucosal immune responses induced by the multiple HA EV vaccines. HA is a major influenza surface glycoprotein. EVs are natural nanoparticles that facilitate cell-to-cell communications.

The researchers found that EV-based inverted HA vaccines hold great promise for developing universal influenza vaccines that target a mucosal route.

Developing innovative vaccine platforms and delivery strategies to induce protective immunity against diverse influenza virus strains in the respiratory tract is crucial for preventing influenza infection and transmission in potential epidemics and pandemics.

Mucosal vaccination effectively induces local immune responses, protecting against respiratory virus infections at the site of invasion. Although various mucosal vaccines have been studied for intranasal administration against respiratory virus infections in clinical trials, FluMist (MedImmune and AstraZeneca) remains the only FDA-approved mucosal influenza vaccine. Creating an effective mucosal vaccination strategy that elicits robust mucosal immune responses while minimizing safety concerns is still urgently needed.

“The influenza virus is smart. They have evolved to evade the immune system by hiding their critical conserved structures, rendering these elements poorly immunogenic,” says Bao-Zhong Wang, senior author of the study and a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

“These results highlight that the inverted HA is a smarter strategy for inducing protective immunity to the conserved HA stalk. Meanwhile, cell-origin EVs are a biocompatible platform for mucosal vaccine delivery. Using EVs simultaneously displaying multiple inverted HAs is a powerful approach for developing universal influenza vaccines.”

The investigators determined that immunization with the multiple HA-EV vaccine elicited cross-reactive antibodies against influenza HA stalks and viruses, robust virus-specific cellular immune responses and a balanced Th1/Th2 immune profile.

“Intranasal immunization with multiple inverted HA-EV vaccines conferred complete protection against lethal heterosubtypic challenges with H7N9 and H5N1 reassortants,” says Wandi Zhu, first author of the study and a research assistant professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Source: Georgia State University

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Listen: Could AI predict extreme weather events?

What if we could predict the world’s most dangerous weather events—not days, but weeks in advance?

Extreme events like heat waves, hurricanes, and floods cause massive loss of life and billions in damage, but they’re also some of the hardest events for traditional weather forecasting to predict.

In this episode of the Big Brains podcast, Associate Professor Pedram Hassanzadeh of the University of Chicago explains why forecasting extreme weather has long pushed science to its limits—and how a new wave of AI models could transform the field at a time when climate change is making these events more common.

By learning directly from decades of atmospheric data, these systems can generate forecasts faster, more cheaply, and in some cases more accurately than traditional models—and could one day predict freak “gray swan” weather events no one has ever seen.

Listen to the episode here:

Source: University of Chicago

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How to dye your Easter eggs naturally

Dying Easter eggs is an age-old tradition, but many Americans are looking for a more natural way to get those signature pastel colors, particularly with the US Food and Drug Administration’s recent push for fewer synthetic dyes in food.

Melissa Wright, director of Virginia Tech’s Food Producer Technical Assistance Network in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has advice on how to use ingredients you might already have in your kitchen to safely and naturally dye eggs this year.

“There are many foods that can impart color to eggshells,” Wright says.

“Yellow coloring can come from saffron, turmeric, or carrots; red or pink from beets, raspberries, or blueberries; green from spinach or matcha; and blue from purple cabbage.”

Not only can Easter egg dyes be a fun food science experiment, but they also don’t prevent you from having a tasty snack at the end of the process.

“There is nothing about dying eggs that makes them unsafe for consumption,” Wright says. “You should consider how the eggs are stored, however, to make sure they remain safe to eat. Once you have hard boiled an egg, the protective coating is removed from the shell, which leaves pores in the shell for bacteria to enter.”

Whether using dyed eggs for a hunt or a snack, it is still important to keep food safety guidelines in mind to ensure no one gets sick.

“Hard boiled eggs should be consumed within one week of preparation,” Wright says. “They should be kept under refrigeration temperatures of less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit until consumption. Any eggs, hard-boiled or raw, used for an Easter egg hunt should not be consumed if they are outside of refrigeration temperatures for more than two hours, or one hour if the outside temperature is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Wright suggests the following process for naturally dying Easter eggs:

• Prepare the coloring solutions first by adding the chosen ingredient(s) to water and boiling. More water will result in a diluted color, while less water will result in a more concentrated color.
• Remove the solids using a strainer, slotted spoon, or by filtering them out.
• Add a teaspoon of white vinegar to each color solution to help the color adhere to the shell of the eggs.
• Prepare your hard boiled eggs by covering them in a pot with cold water and bringing the whole pot to a rolling boil of at least 212 F. Remove from the heat and let the eggs cook for 15 minutes. Remove the eggs from the water and cool them quickly in an ice bath, then dry and refrigerate them until ready to decorate.
• After ensuring your eggs are dry, place them in your chosen color or color mixture. The longer the eggs are in the dye solution, the darker the color will be.

Source: Virginia Tech

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