robots

Will the photo of your lost loved one be replaced by a chatty robot?

1 June 2024 9:00 am

It seems entirely possible that AI simulacra could be fashioned from the digital remains we now inadvertently leave behind, says Carl Öhman

The AI future looks positively rosy

7 August 2021 9:00 am

In the future, men enjoying illicit private pleasures with their intelligent sexbots might be surprised to find that even women…

Even a robot assistant can’t help you make sense of Japan

26 June 2021 9:00 am

Understanding Japan is a life’s work

The world's first robot artist discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the perils of AI

29 May 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the world’s disappointments with the first robot artist

The robot as carer: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, reviewed

6 March 2021 9:00 am

The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…

Sinister toy story: Little Eyes, by Samanta Schweblin, reviewed

18 April 2020 9:00 am

We often hear that science fiction — or ‘speculative’ fiction, as the buffs prefer — can draw premonitory outlines of…

Could AI enslave humanity before it destroys it entirely?

26 October 2019 9:00 am

Depending on how you count, we are in the midst of the second or third AI hype-bubble since the 1960s,…

Toy boy: Machines Like Me, by Ian McEwan, reviewed

13 April 2019 9:00 am

What kind of loyalty do we owe a robot we’ve paid for — one who exhibits a convincingly human kind…

Credit: istockphoto.com

Ignore the science fiction: AI isn’t out to get us

23 February 2019 9:00 am

Every ten to 15 years there is a technology breakthrough that really changes what it means to be human. The…

Modern-day Heath Robinson and YouTube star Simone Giertz. Photo: Simone Giertz / YouTube

Meet ‘the queen of shitty robots’

23 June 2018 9:00 am

Older readers will perhaps recall the once popular Sunday evening TV programme Scrapheap Challenge, in which oily, boilersuited blokes competed…

Inhuman face: relying on robots to entertain or care for us could leave humans too vulnerable

What will it mean for mankind when robots start caring for us?

3 February 2018 9:00 am

‘I gotta be me,’ Sammy Davis Jr. croons as the android Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) steadies her horse, stands…

I, robot. You, unemployed

16 January 2016 9:00 am

One evening last autumn, four experts in the field of artificial intelligence arrived in Westminster with an urgent message for…

A gleeful vision of the future from Margaret Atwood

19 September 2015 8:00 am

What could happen in literature to a young couple — or a pair of young couples — who fall off…

After the driverless car — will airplanes be next?

Don’t buy The Glass Cage at the airport if you want a restful flight, warns Will Self

28 February 2015 9:00 am

Nicholas Carr has a bee in his bonnet, and given his susceptibilities this might well be a cybernetic insect, cunningly…

The surer we are that machines can think, the less sure we'll be about people

23 August 2014 9:00 am

Having written (for a Times diary) a few sentences about consciousness in robots, I settled back to study readers’ responses…

Michael Lewis vs Wall Street's new predators

5 April 2014 9:00 am

How the US stock market became ‘a war of robots’