AI
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…
Cringe benefits
The tagline of This is Dating, a new podcast from across the pond, is ‘Come for the cringe, stay for…
The AI future is rosy
In the future, men enjoying illicit private pleasures with their intelligent sexbots might be surprised to find that even women…
Ai-Da Vinci
Stuart Jeffries discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the world’s disappointments with the first robot artist
Bright and beautiful
Edward St Aubyn’s ‘Patrick Melrose’ novels were loosely autobiographical renderings of the author’s harrowing, rarefied, drug-sozzled existence. Despite their subject…
A robot with feelings
The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…
The terrifying development of AI warfare
The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in France contains some of the earliest known Palaeolithic cave paintings, including those of lions, bears, and…
Concrete poetry
Since technology is developing at such light-speed pace, why does it feel so strangely slow? There is a sense that…
Car-boot sale of the unconscious
In 1772 the 15-year-old Mozart wrote a one-act opera set, like The Magic Flute, in a dream world. Il sogno…
How far should we go?
Modern advances in communication technology, computer power and medical science can sometimes be so startling as to seem almost like…
TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing – and goofiest – digital platform, but should we fear it?
In November last year, an internet video made by a 17-year-old American went viral. The video was less than a…
Ancient and modern: Antigone and algorithms
Hardly a day goes by without someone making excitable predictions about human progress and how, thanks to AI, we are…
Flop of the year? Royal Court’s Instructions for Correct Assembly reviewed
‘Hunt the Flop’, the Royal Court’s bizarre quest for dud plays, has found a candidate for this year’s overall prize.…
The artist who creates digital life forms that bite & self-harm. Sam Leith meets him (and them)
Digital art is a crowded field. It’s also now older than I am. Yet despite a 50-year courtship, art galleries…
