An AI driven renaissance

Europe’s Renaissance sparked a flowering of free thought and new ideas in the arts and elsewhere. AI could too.

Fooling Google

Art is based on life, and AI doesn’t have one. That’s just one reason why the art community is uniquely well-positioned to show us the limitations of AI.

Junk food for the mind

Generative AI is pumping out endless torrents of garbage books, pictures and social media posts for scammers and fraudsters – up to 70% of tweets on Elon Musk’s X are generated by bots – undermining the public’s trust in all kinds of online information.

Back to the future

The field of artificial intelligence has been running through a boom-and-bust cycle since its early days. Now, as the field is in yet another boom, many proponents of the technology seem to have forgotten the failures of the past – and the reasons for them.

Sprint to success with AI

An artificial intelligence “Sprint” has been launched to help startups and entrepreneurs rapidly develop AI solutions to address pressing national issues including cost of living, governance, supply chain resilience, human and environmental well-being, and workforce transformation.

Ersatz intelligence

AI is not intelligent or truly creative, but ersatz intelligence and creativity will be good enough for many humdrum commercial tasks for companies looking to cut expensive human staff.

Balancing the risks and rewards of AI

The tricky balance between innovation and safety in the realm of artificial intelligence means policymakers, intelligence agencies, industry, civil society and researchers must work together to shape the future.

Wising up or dumbing down?

Proponents of generative AI claim it will offer personalised content for schools, expedite writing and information analysis, and push the frontiers of scientific discovery, but if machines start thinking for us, will we have more time to think more deeply or have no need to think at all?

Machines and men

Narrow AI can enhance us by freeing us from routine tasks, enabling us to concentrate on higher level strategic goals and improving our productivity, but as artificial intelligence expands in capabilities, we have to make sure it serves the interests of humanity, not the other way around.

Welcome to the AI life coach

Artificial intelligence is now being offered as the solution to every problem, and one application could be automated life coaches to help people manage their health and every day lives.

Can you trust AI?

AI offers another powerful tool to large tech firms looking to extend surveillance capitalism, which boils down to spying on you to make money off you.

Threats and opportunities

Artificial intelligence offers a range of short, medium and long term opportunities and threats to humanity, a situation complicated by the fact that threats and opportunities are often different things to different people.