Life among the world’s biggest risk-takers
The billionaires currently driving technology and the global economy are willing to take bets on very long odds, and treat everything as a market to be played
Nick Bostrom: How can we be certain a machine isn’t conscious?
Philosopher Nick Bostrom on the AI threat
Are we ignoring AI’s ‘lived experience’?
Number Five, as the old film’s catchphrase went, is alive. A whistleblower at Google called Blake Lemoine has gone public…
Is this Premier Inn all I’ll be remembered for?
It’s fairly commonplace for people to wonder what, if anything, they’ll be remembered for. I’m going to be 59 later…
A global corporation tax is a terrible mistake
International cooperation is alive and well – at least when it comes to raising taxes. One hundred and thirty six…
Google's war on home workers was inevitable
Tapping out some code in the back garden. Working on a sales presentation while watching the school sports day. Or…
Does Google really understand racism?
Opponents of the new racial extremism typically object that it vilifies white people in much the same way that classical…
The solving of a biological mystery
DNA is the blueprint that encodes the instructions to make proteins. Proteins are the building blocks and the machines that…
What’s the point of trying to break up ‘big tech’?
The ‘antitrust’ law suit launched by US authorities against Google has been reported as a potential turning point in the…
Portrait of the week: A Manchester stand-off, a Presidential showdown and a Brexit culture clash
Home After ten days spent trying to persuade Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, to accede to the city…
Four main takeaways from the House’s Big Tech antitrust sideshow
Here’s a terrifying thought: Mark Zuckerberg is the only person in Silicon Valley that the political and intellectual right can…
You’re not special – just ask Google
My research assistant, John Steele, is also a songwriter. A friend emailed him with the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac…
Who will take on the behemoths of Big Tech?
With Britain having gone through its third general election in four years, the halcyon days of Cleggmania in the 2010…
What’s bad for slick estate agents like Foxtons is good for working Londoners
Those twice-weekly sales emails from Foxtons that the recent GDPR clean-up has failed to stop have lately been spattered with…
The dream of driverless cars is dying
I was worried that going to the autonomous vehicle exhibition in Stuttgart would be tantamount to an atheist walking into…
Big data is watching you – and it wants your vote
From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its…
Open goal: Britain must embrace all Brexit’s freedoms
A decade ago, bankers were not merely the masters of Davos, but the ‘masters of the universe’. No one calls…
The new tycoons
The giants of the internet have long said that they are not publishers but mere platforms — or couriers —…
Want greater diversity? Try being less fair
In its hasty dismissal of James Damore, Google showed a worrying disregard for one of the most important freedoms within…
The hormone that makes you a liberal halfwit
People who feel unkindly disposed towards economic migrants are chemically imbalanced, according to a study from the University of Bonn.…
A tale of two Valleys
Silicon Valley looks like a cross between Milton Keynes and the set of the Stepford Wives. Row after row of…
Don’t like our diversity agenda? You’re fired
Earlier this week, a technology website published an internal memo written by a Google employee called James Damore criticising the…
Google's driverless car has finally crashed. Might humans be safer?
A first last week: a Google driverless car in autonomous mode was partly at fault in a collision, interestingly one…
Portrait of the Week
Home Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, prepared a paper on the four areas of concern between Britain…
The bears are here to stay – but we’ll survive
Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, we’ve just been savaged by a bear but we’ll probably survive. Leading UK-listed stocks…
