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Computing and artificial intelligence

Essays and videos exploring physics, evolution, cosmology and other frontiers in science

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People relaxing in a lush garden with inflatable flamingos and laptops by a pool.

essayProgress and modernity

Authenticate thyself

Data has created a new and paradoxical social order: the promise of emancipation is made possible by classifying everything

Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy

Abstract digital art with geometric shapes in various colours, forming the shape of a person’s head and shoulders, featuring black glasses in the centre.

essayEthics

The incompleteness of ethics

Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right will always be our burden

Elad Uzan

A man in a blue shirt playing a saxophone against a dark background.

essayConsciousness and altered states

Kind of confusing

Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural?

Tim Bayne

A satirical painting of a giant man being fed with spoons by tiny attendants.

essayInformation and communication

Methodical banality

Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty

Hannah Katznelson

A dark building at night, the black building structure contrasting with a deep blue night sky, with many vertical rectangular windows, three windows are brightly lit.

essayPhilosophy of science

More-than-human science

When AI takes over the practice of science we will likely find the results strange and incomprehensible. Should we worry?

Brandon Boesch

Abstract digital art with glowing spirals and spheres on a dark background.

videoComputing and artificial intelligence

A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away

9 minutes

Illustration of hands typing on a keyboard with handwritten notes and a man in a sequence of frames.

essayComputing and artificial intelligence

Chatbots of the dead

We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again?

Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story

Abstract digital art of geometric patterns made with spheres, creating a sense of depth on a black background.

videoComputing and artificial intelligence

Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators

8 minutes

Hand-drawn diagram titled “Free-Form Discrete H’Texts” showing a map with two-way links and a flowchart with one-way links.

essayFuture of technology

A linkless internet

In creating anonymous summaries, AI flattens out all the fascinating architecture of thought that makes the internet hum

Collin Jennings

Photo of shattered glass with multiple cracks against a black background.

essayPhilosophy of mind

Rage against the machine

For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does

Alva Noë

A DNA double helix with overlapping images: lined pages, the printed pages of an old book, and a painted portrait of a woman that is the Mona Lisa, all on a black background.

videoComputing and artificial intelligence

The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?

12 minutes

Close-up of a person’s hand using a smartphone in a dimly lit room with blurred lights in the background. The phone screen shows the text ‘How can I help you today?’ and a text input field.

essayComputing and artificial intelligence

Mere imitation

Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI?

Deepak P

A team of surgeons in blue scrubs and surgical caps operate under bright surgical lights in an operating theatre. Medical instruments and equipment are arranged on tables around them, while one team member adjusts another’s mask. Shelves in the background hold medical supplies.

essayMedicine

Last hours of an organ donor

In the liminal time when the brain is dead but organs are kept alive, there is an urgent tenderness to medical care

Ronald W Dworkin

Rainy forest road with yellow railings on either side and autumn trees with colourful leaves lining the road. Wet reflective surface and slight haze from the rain.

essayNeuroscience

How to make a map of smell

We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is too complex and personal? Strangely, no

Jason Castro

Four blue, irregularly shaped objects with black squiggly lines attached, displayed in a sequence against grey and white backgrounds.

videoPhysics

Is it possible to design a shape to roll along any fixed path?

4 minutes

A busy public library reading room with people using desktop computers at wooden tables, surrounded by bookshelves and lit by large windows and chandeliers.

essayHistory of technology

Indexing the information age

Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable

Monica Westin

A tree with exposed roots growing from an eroded cliffside, with dense foliage in the background.

essayComputing and artificial intelligence

Frontier AI ethics

Generative agents will change our society in weird, wonderful and worrying ways. Can philosophy help us get a grip on them?

Seth Lazar

Close-up of an orange Mercedes car with the focus on the front tyre, which is inscribed with ‘In Crypto We Trust’

essayEconomics

The cruelty of crypto

Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and loads risk onto the poor

Rachel O’Dwyer

Stephen Fry stands at a podium, wearing a checkered blazer, pink shirt, and ‘Choose Love’ badge, speaking with an expressive gesture.

videoMeaning and the good life

Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave’s letter on the threat of computed creativity

5 minutes

Abstract night scene with vibrant colours; glowing trees line the horizon under a dark sky with a bright, distorted moon.

videoFilm and visual culture

An augmented-reality filter reveals the hidden movements all around us

7 minutes

Aerial view of a river winding through a lush green valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains with a few red marked spots.

videoComputing and artificial intelligence

A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’

9 minutes

A 3D model of a room in progress, with a floating person, computer setup, scattered items, bed, pictures on the wall, and a plant by the window.

videoComputing and artificial intelligence

Struggling to learn how to do a backflip, Nikita takes on an unusual training regimen

12 minutes

Hand holding a paintbrush colouring a vintage map of England with various regions in different colours.

videoMathematics

How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever

9 minutes

videoTechnology and the self

Why we should worry less about ‘sentient’ AIs and more about what we’re teaching them

16 minutes