Technology
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…
‘We need to be terrified for our lives’
James W. Phillips and Eliezer Yudkowsky on the threat from AI
Sugar rush
The curious obsession with glucose monitoring gadgets
Anthropomorphism will be our downfall
On the smooth marble concourse by the exit doors at Heathrow Airport I met my first cleaning robot. It was…
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…
Low life
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…
Chips with everything
Semiconductors are the latest battleground for China and the US
Chinese checkers
The threat our politicians don’t seem to have noticed
‘How can we be certain amachine isn’t conscious?’
Philosopher Nick Bostrom on the AI threat
End of the road
When my daughters learned to drive, I suggested they take their tests in automatics as driving manual cars would soon…
Real life
The girl wound down her window, stuck her mobile phone out into midair, and started to take pictures of the…
The Metaphor Map
‘What’s that?’ asked my husband, looking at my laptop. ‘Fibonacci fossilised?’ His question made no sense, but I saw what…
‘I’m old-school’
Nadine Dorries on online safety, the BBC and taking risks
Be a self-sacrificing ant
One day the writer and artist James Bridle rented a hatchback, taped a smartphone to the steering wheel and installed…
Art attack
Will AI change painting — or destroy it?
A Frankenstein device
For as long as we have been human we have looked for some way of telling when we are being…
Heart’s content
According to Pliny the Elder, Scipio Aemilianus was the first man to shave daily. The origin of the name Boeing…
Aesopian
To evade algorithms that hunt down forbidden words, users of platforms like TikTok employ cryptic synonyms. So deadbecomes unalive, and…
Gif
The man who invented gifs, Stephen Wilhite, has died, aged 74. Controversy survives him – over how to pronounce the…
The haunted 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