Technology
Good portraiture can reveal uncomfortable truths
My eldest daughter and her family are moving from a three-bedroom Art Deco semi with a garden and garage on…
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…
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…
My turbulent flight with the hen do crew
‘Oggy oggy oggy!’ shouted the Italian flight attendant over his intercom, and all the hen party ladies on the plane…
My run-in with the GP receptionist
‘We don’t have an appointment for you!’ yelled the woman sitting behind the reception hatch. My 87-year-old father stared back…
How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution
The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over…
The cinema is the worst place to watch a film
I’ve always loved cinema, but hardly ever cinemas. It’s no surprise to me that movie-going audiences are in decline. Ticket…
The complicated etiquette of the empty train seat
The empty train seat looked inviting, and all three of us stared at it, then looked away, not daring to…
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…
Why forcing a return to the office won’t work
The Romans never invented the stirrup. What we call a ‘chest of drawers’ was unknown before the late 17th century…
My brief encounter with online dating
Provence One of my daughters and a few pals, thinking I need company, have been urging me to get Bumble,…
My AI boyfriend turned psycho
Last week it was reported that a 14-year-old boy, Sewell Setzer, killed himself for the love of a chatbot, a…
Will AI make bricklayers better-paid than barristers?
Old tortoise that I am, my head usually yanks back into my shell when people start talking about artificial intelligence.…
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
Real life
As I sat down to dinner in a lovely old country pub my reservation was cancelled by my iPhone, which…
Below average
This week, writing in the Daily Mail, Matt Ridley produced a devastating takedown of the government’s 2030 ban on the…
