Artificial intelligence
AI could make government small again
For decades, we on the liberal right have been sold the fiction that Republican lawmakers are fighting for small government.…
Can superintelligence save Trump?
Donald Trump’s greatest strength is his indefatigability. The grumblings within his administration grow louder. Inflation is stubborn, the price of…
Trump relives high school with the tech nerds
Yesterday President Trump and a gaggle of tech barons appeared before the press pack on the White House lawn, fresh…
Who’s afraid of AI?
It’s not often that we get a ringside seat to the Birth of a Narrative. Usually, those overseeing the parturition…
Can we just stop AI?
On Tuesday, a 27-year-old British researcher called Jacob Coxon walked out of Anthropic, the San Francisco lab that has made…
The Pope’s AI intervention shames our politicians
I was born into a sternly Presbyterian culture. Politically, I’m more Orange than Donald Trump’s skin tone. But today I…
Don’t let AI read philosophy for you
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) once wrote that “the man who feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out…
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’
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