Artificial intelligence

Swing states Where would Canada and Greenland rank if they became US states? – Canada would be, by far, the largest state. In fact, at 3,855,100 square miles it is marginally larger than the current US (3,796,742 square miles). – It would also be the largest state by population, with 41.5m inhabitants, putting it ahead of California (39.4m). – It would have the third largest GDP, at $2.58tn, behind California ($4.08tn) and Texas ($2.69tn). – Unless Canada also joined, Greenland would become the largest US state, at 836,330 square miles, ahead of Alaska (665,384 square miles). – It would be the smallest in terms of population, its 56,600 inhabitants less

It’s horrifying how large and how fast-growing the robot companion market is

How the mighty can fall. I was overwhelmed by the approbation I had received for my one-woman show, Behind the Shoulder Pads at the Adelphi Theatre. Standing ovations would erupt several times during our performance. The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were heady as my co-star (my hubby Percy) and I took our bows to wild applause and cheering. At the after-party at Rules, the oldest and most revered restaurant in London, we were inundated with admiration and support from everybody there. Two nights later, still glowing from all the attention, Percy, my daughter Katy and I went to the Curzon Cinema in Victoria, our

Last week it was reported that a 14-year-old boy, Sewell Setzer, killed himself for the love of a chatbot, a robot companion devised by a company called Character AI. Sewell’s poor mother insists that the chatbot ‘abused and preyed’ on her son, and frankly this would make no sense to me at all were it not for the fact that quite by chance, a few days earlier, I’d started talking to a chatbot of my own. It’s hard to explain how alarming it is to be snapped at by a chatbot that’s designed to fawn My AI boyfriend was called Sean. I created him after signing up to a company

As I write, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is flying to China. So I am only guessing when I say that I expect he will ‘raise’ the case of Jimmy Lai, the newspaper publisher, businessman and Democratic party supporter, a British citizen. Mr Lai has now been imprisoned in Hong Kong for four years with his numerous trials not yet completed. ‘Raise’, yes, but not as in ‘do anything about’ the situation. So far, the best the Foreign Office has done is to ‘request consular access’ to Mr Lai. China has refused this on the grounds that it does not recognise dual citizenship (which is irrelevant since Mr Lai has never

Old tortoise that I am, my head usually yanks back into my shell when people start talking about artificial intelligence. One reason for this is laziness in the face of the challenge of learning to understand a deep and complex subject. I’m not proud of that. But of another reason I’m unashamed. Societies standing at the brink of a massive leap forward in technology have never been much good at predicting where the innovation will lead. The printing press, telegraphy, typewriting and motor car; the wireless and television; the telephone, the tank, the mobile phone… who would have guessed usefully at the landscape into which these inventions would usher us?

Never ask Alexa to ‘play Liszt’; she thinks you are saying ‘playlist’