It’s a grey November day; rain gently pocks the surface of the tidal pools. There is not much to see in this East Sussex nature reserve – a few gulls, a little grebe, a solitary wader on the shore – but already my breathing has slowed to the rhythm of the water lapping the shingle, my shoulders have dropped and I feel imbued with a sense of calm.
In your brain, neurons are arranged in networks big and small. With every action, with every thought, the networks change: neurons are included or excluded, and the connections between them strengthen or fade.
I still love software as much today as I did when Paul Allen and I started Microsoft. But—even though it has improved a lot in the decades since then—in many ways, software is still pretty dumb.
A few years ago, advertisements for a software service named Monday.com seemed to be suddenly everywhere online. This ubiquity didn’t come cheap. An S.E.C. filing revealed that the product’s developers had spent close to a hundred and thirty million dollars on advertising in 2020 alone, which amounted to roughly eighty per cent of the company’s annual revenue.
I do not think human beings are the last stage in the evolutionary process. Whatever comes next will be neither simply organic nor simply machinic but will be the result of the increasingly symbiotic relationship between human beings and technology.
Today, as we navigate the transformative waves of AI, we find ourselves on the cusp of a new era marked by similar uncertainties. However, this time the driving force isn’t merely economics — it’s the relentless march of technology, particularly the rise and evolution of AI.
SIX OR SEVEN years ago, I realized I should learn about artificial intelligence. I’m a journalist, but in my spare time I’d been writing a speculative novel set in a world ruled by a corporate, AI-run government. The problem was, I didn’t really understand what a system like that would look like.
Visiting a small beautiful village feels like stepping back in time, from the unique architecture to the stunning surrounding scenery. But it’s hard to feel transported when you’re surrounded by throngs of tourists also in search of small-town charm.
Known as the murder capital of the world at the start of the 90s, by the late 2000’s Medellín, Colombia, had undergone a revival. As violence ebbed, it welcomed new investment and visitors from abroad. Backpackers roaming the streets became a common sight.
The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of the Los Angeles Times, and they would be passed from one reader to the next.
WHEN A MOVIE becomes a mass culture phenomenon, like Barbie, any negative criticism of it runs the risk of coming off hysterical. Any meanness toward it becomes the mirror version of the reactions of fans who see the movie in the theater again and again, who cry during certain scenes each time, and who tell the world about it on social media with a great sense of pride and purpose, or even with a certain amount of shock about its power over them.
In 1775, a Swiss watchmaker named Pierre Jaquet-Droz visited King Louis VI and Queen Marie Antoinette, in Versailles, to show off his latest creation: a “living doll” called the Musician. She was dressed in a stiff rococo ball gown and seated at an organ...
IT’S BEEN HAILED as a cultural phenomenon and at the moment, it’s all anyone can talk about. It’s ChatGPT, the language model created by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial-intelligence company. We touched on the subject briefly before, but will take a more in-depth look today at the fastest-growing internet service ever (it reached 100 million users in January, just two months after its launch at the end of November 2022).
If you suspect that 21st-century technology has broken your brain, it will be reassuring to know that attention spans have never been what they used to be. Even the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger was worried about new technologies degrading his ability to focus. Sometime during the 1st century CE, he complained that ‘The multitude of books is a distraction’. This concern reappeared again and again over the next millennia. By the 12th century, the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi saw himself living in a new age of distraction thanks to the technology of print: ‘The reason people today read sloppily is that there are a great many printed texts.’ And in 14th-century Italy, the scholar and poet Petrarch made even stronger claims about the effects of accumulating books ....
As another year comes to and end, I find myself reflecting on the inspiration gathered in 2018. It has been a year where visuals have mattered as much as words. Most of all, I have been inspired by hearing people’s stories, especially through podcasts.
