In the Fifties, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published perhaps the most optimistic vision ever of history as an exact science. In his Foundation series (recently adapted for television), he imagined a distant future in which a cadre of …
I’m in love with my AI girlfriend
Grand announcements in the world of AI are not rare; in fact, they are almost as frequent as new Tory Prime Ministers. Nonetheless, last week’s launch of OpenAI’s latest glittering iteration of its GPT series, GPT4o — the “o” is …
John Betjeman had the last laugh
“Any fool can make money these days”, says Colonel Cargill in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, “and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money.” “T. S. Eliot”, ex-P.F.C. …
Iran is about to double down
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. Ebrahim Raisi’s presidential career represented the worst of the Islamic Republic. As Tehran’s deputy prosecutor less than a decade after the revolution, he was a member of the so-called “death commission” …
Iran is about to double down
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. Ebrahim Raisi’s presidential career represented the worst of the Islamic Republic. As Tehran’s deputy prosecutor less than a decade after the revolution, he was a member of the so-called “death commission” …
Why we still believe in gold
Gold, which John Maynard Keynes called the “barbarous relic”, has become so eagerly sought that even Costco has got in on the business. Perhaps this newfound fascination shouldn’t surprise us. For those looking to build nest-eggs, gold is easier to …
Why China is winning the weapons race
In 1949, Chinese-born scientist Qian Xuesen (1911-2009) drew a diagram on a blackboard at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that would change the course of military history. It showed the path of a projectile rising elliptically up into the …
Europe’s fate rests on Georgia
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the foreign policy of Georgia’s ruling party has been nothing short of schizophrenic. For years, Georgian Dream has been flirting with both the European Union and paradoxically with Moscow, Georgia’s age-old enemy which invaded the …
Will humans survive the rise of the machines?
If the American futurist R. Buckminster Fuller was right, as he always was, then the boundaries of human knowledge are forever expanding. In 1982, Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”, which showed that up until the year 1900, human knowledge …
The world belongs to late bloomers
Lots of people don’t believe in second acts, second lives, mid-life resurrections. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in The Last Tycoon, published in 1941: “There are no second acts in American lives.” But his absolutism was being embarrassed at …
Inside the Orbán insurgency
Will Viktor Orbán really march to Brussels and, as he claims, “occupy” the heart of the European Union? The EU’s enfant terrible has clashed with the bloc for years, but he is no Nigel Farage. He doesn’t want to abandon …
Britain’s forgotten Battle of the Beaches
The headlines were gratifyingly sensational: “Beach Terror”; “Battle of the Beaches”; “Charge of the Mods at Margate”. It was the Whitsun weekend, May 1964, and the national press was thrilled to discover the existence of hitherto unknown tribes of youth, …
Biden won’t win his war with China
When Donald Trump introduced a series of tariffs on Chinese goods, just over five years ago, Joe Biden was among his fiercest critics. Trump, he said, was “crushing” American farmers, workers and consumers by sparking an “irresponsible trade war”, and …
Sex education is TMI
“In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites”, said Freud — a sentiment that came to mind as I watched reactions to the government’s announcement about sex education on Wednesday. …
How Hamas became radical chic
Any thinking Jew today hears the alarm resounding like a shofar blast in days of old, announcing rising floodwaters or marauding Cossacks. Confronted with a worldwide, increasingly violent explosion of antisemitism, the mind turns to dark mysteries. Why have radical …