The balance of power between humans and machines
Robert Skidelsky dismisses the possibility of our annihilation by a superintelligent computer system, since ‘science tells us that we cannot create such a being’. But does it?
Circular arguments
Aristotle had long proved that the Earth was spherical, and even the illiterate masses of early medieval Europe were aware of the fact, says James Hannam
Why Anaximander deserves to be called ‘the first scientist’
A mere fragment survives of the Greek philosopher’s work, but other sources attest to his bold ideas about the universe, human evolution and the weather
Slavoj Zizek: the philosopher who annoys all the right people
Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian graphomaniac who infuriates some of the world’s most annoying people, and might for this reason…
The best and coolest decade: nostalgia for the 1990s
The long 1990s began with the Pixies album Surfer Rosa in 1989 and ended with the invasion of Iraq in…
The AI future looks positively rosy
In the future, men enjoying illicit private pleasures with their intelligent sexbots might be surprised to find that even women…
Four German-speaking philosophers in search of a theme
How do you write a group biography of people who never actually formed a group? Such is the challenge Wolfram…
Who will take on the behemoths of Big Tech?
With Britain having gone through its third general election in four years, the halcyon days of Cleggmania in the 2010…
Could AI enslave humanity before it destroys it entirely?
Depending on how you count, we are in the midst of the second or third AI hype-bubble since the 1960s,…
The bias against digital music is more emotional than scientific
It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…
A computer will never write the Brandenburg Concertos
What is creativity? Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician and Oxford professor for the public understanding of science, offers this pert…
Catchwords for today — what’s in, what’s out
The mid-term elections in the US, when Democrats took over Congress, were hailed as a victory for ‘progressives’, while David…
In the garden of good and evil: the power of the poppy
America has for years been struggling with a shortage of the drugs it uses to execute people, yet it was…
High culture or state-of-the-art murder simulators?: Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt reviewed
For the past few decades, admirers of video-games have every couple of years mounted a new attempt to persuade the…
David Sedaris, the current king of humorists, is often not funny at all
Since the 17th century, a ‘humourist’ has been a witty person, and especially someone skilled in literary comedy. In 1871,…
The young Descartes: I fought, therefore I thought
Descartes is most generally known these days for being the guy who was sure he existed because he was thinking.…
Wonder is all around
Different people find different things impressive. Some claim, for instance, to experience a sense of wonder at the fact of…
Princess Uppity
Princess Margaret was everywhere on the bohemian scene of the 1960s and 1970s. She hung out with all the famous…
Life gets faster — as the Earth slows down
Modern life is too fast. Everyone is always in a hurry; people skim-read and don’t take the time to eat…
When Britannia ruled the digital waves
Everyone, we hear these days, must learn to code. Being able to program computers is the only way to be…
Matt Ridley manages to Pangloss over the nastier aspects of evolution
Before I read this book, I wasn’t aware that I was a creationist. But Matt Ridley tells me I am,…
Is truth really beauty after all?
Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…
Carl Jung meets David Icke (and writes a book of bonkers business-speak)
What do you get if you cross renegade psychoanalyst Carl Jung with lizard-men conspiracist David Icke? It is a question…
