Technology
The anxiety-inducing world of wellness tech
I first came across the Zoe programme when a bright yellow package arrived on my parents’ doorstep last year. My…
My night with the paedo hunters
It’s a Wednesday evening, and I’m getting psyched up to go catch a paedophile with the boys. Playlist on, rocking…
Why are Chinese students giving up on architecture?
I recently convened an urban studies summer school in a top university in Shanghai and asked the assembled class of…
Nothing beats a 1980s brick phone
In the late 1980s, a story entered advertising folklore. A group from an ad agency had boarded an evening train…
Keir Starmer’s parenting lessons
Before he became Prime Minister, Keir Starmer admitted he was concerned about what life in Downing Street might be like…
Portrait of the week: IT meltdown, riots in Leeds and the wrong kind of pandemic
Home Britain enjoyed its share of the worldwide failure of 8.5 million computers reliant on Microsoft, through a faulty update…
‘Nationalise Google!’: the techno-optimists hoping to save the world
Future House is a weird private members’ club. There’s a mattress on the floor for napping, a bathtub designed to…
An AI visionary looks forward to the best of all possible worlds
Technology unquestionably improves lives, says Ray Kurzwei, and soon we’ll be living to 150. As for 3D-printed guns invisible to scanners – there’ll be a solution to those too
AI is both liberating and enslaving us
It is becoming more than a useful tool, fears Neil Lawrence. As it takes over most of our work, we grow less and less efficient at doing what remains
What will we do when all our jobs are done for us?
The philosopher Nick Bostrom speculates imaginatively about the travails of extreme leisure, but we don’t get any guru-like nuggets
How I incurred the wrath of my iPhone
As I sat down to dinner in a lovely old country pub my reservation was cancelled by my iPhone, which…
Light bulb moment: the flaw in the petrol car ban
This week, writing in the Daily Mail, Matt Ridley produced a devastating takedown of the government’s 2030 ban on the…
Should we fear AI? James W. Phillips and Eliezer Yudkowsky in conversation
James W. Phillips and Eliezer Yudkowsky on the threat from AI
Is the glucose monitoring craze really so healthy?
The curious obsession with glucose monitoring gadgets
I know how AI will bring us down
On the smooth marble concourse by the exit doors at Heathrow Airport I met my first cleaning robot. It was…
How to fake it till you make it
Not to sound too much like Kamala Harris during one of her peregrinations on the nature of time, but the…
I dropped a morphine capsule in my Moscow Mule
A dear friend came to stay for two nights. Could I be persuaded, wondered he and Catriona, on the first…
Is Russell Brand really so dangerous?
Once the dust has settled over the government’s mini-Budget, another big political battle looms: the Online Safety Bill. This is…
China vs the US: who will win the chip war?
Semiconductors are the latest battleground for China and the US
The China threat our politicians don’t seem to have noticed
The threat our politicians don’t seem to have noticed
Nick Bostrom: How can we be certain a machine isn’t conscious?
Philosopher Nick Bostrom on the AI threat
Why sat navs are a conversation killer
When my daughters learned to drive, I suggested they take their tests in automatics as driving manual cars would soon…
The villains of Silicon Valley
David Honigmann 20 May 2023 9:00 am
Malcolm Harris is unsparing in his attack on Palo Alto’s tech giants past and present, including Leland Stanford, Herbert Hoover, William Shockley and Peter Thiel