Artificial intelligence
Can superintelligent AI be regulated?
In the House of Lords on Monday there was a short discussion, prompted by a question from an ex-Labour minister,…
Is there a free-speech defense of Grok’s deepfakes?
There are scenes in blockbuster teen movies from the 1980s and 1990s that wouldn’t fly today. I think of Revenge…
The speed-camera approach to government
I was recently shown an AI analysis of long-term trends in the public’s attitude to government. The AI had been…
Grok is the Botticelli of our time
Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, stood up in the Commons on Monday and thundered against Elon Musk, saying the government…
‘I’ve been allergic to AI for a long time’: an interview with Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel has been described variously as ‘America’s leading public intellectual’, the ‘architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary ethos’ or as…
America thinks Britain is finished
‘What’s missing?’ the tech titan Peter Thiel asks me, over lunch on the hummingbird-infested patio of his house in the…
How the occult captured the modern mind
The British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, proposed a ‘law of science’ in 1968:…
The Romans would have known that AI can’t replace architects
Architects are thrilled about AI, confident that it will take us into an exciting new world at the flick of…
I’ve been enslaved by my Apple watch
Aside from streaming on an iPad, one of the few entertainments on offer when riding a stationary bike is tracking…
The AI crash is coming
Who knows what Rachel Reeves reads in bed. Perhaps she dips into her own debut book, The Women Who Made…
Bring on the robot-run railways!
I awoke on Sunday to what felt like a Brave New World moment: Radio 4’s news-reader reciting an unedited Downing…
Could you fall in love with a chatbot?
Jason, 45, has been divorced twice. He’d always struggled with relationships. In despair, he consulted ChatGPT. At first, it was…
Could Japan soon be governed by chatbots?
Tokyo Could Japan be the world’s first -algocracy – government by algorithm? The concept has been flirted with elsewhere: in…
Does AI belong on the tennis court?
The evidence was clear, the official had dropped a clanger. At 4-4 in the first set of the women’s match…
My campaign to bring back real life
A new book by an American writer, Christine Rosen, details the way in which we are losing touch with the…
Lily Parr and the creepiness of AI resurrection
I’m not sure it’s possible to make a horror movie more sinister than the chirpy four-minute film on YouTube purporting…
Controlling AI is the great challenge of our age
The genie is only half out of the bottle, says Richard Susskind, but we should be in a state of high alert – and anyone who thinks otherwise is ‘plain daft’
How I took on Microsoft’s AI – and won
‘This is an assault!’ I screamed in my study, oblivious to the fact that my husband had a guest downstairs.…
Beware this terrible new AI email feature
A friend of mine got a nasty shock last week after a Google Meet call, thanks to a new AI…
Portrait of the week: DeepSeek, Duke of Sussex’s damages and an iceberg the size of Cornwall
Home The government would invest 2.6 per cent of GDP a year to create growth, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of…
DeepSeek’s cheap information comes at a high price for the West
This week, Chinese technology has shown the West the challenge it faces – ruthless, implacable and impossible to ignore. The…
Which were the most destructive fires in history?
Swing states Where would Canada and Greenland rank if they became US states? – Canada would be, by far, the…
Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI
While we can all appreciate the benefits of AI, it is developing faster than anyone imagined, with no consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk
Am I alone in thinking?
‘Et remarquant que cette vérité, je pense, donc je suis, était si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus…
Will we ever stop predicting the end of civilisation?
Mark Cocker 24 January 2026 9:00 am
A self-destructive dynamism is at work in the West, argues the latest prophet of doom, Paul Kingsnorth, as we dethrone the old gods and install the new ones – of power, self and money