RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
AI and socialism
Software engineer SCOTT ALSWORTH explains to his mother
INNOVATION/REVOLUTION? 28/09/1971. Salvador Allende, together with his government during the act of nationalisation of copper.
[Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional - Chile/CC]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
“I NEED to ask you, what actually is AI?”
That’s how my mother began our last long-distance WhatsApp call. And really, it’s not a stupid question. I mean, I don’t have an answer. Not a good one. And I’m not altogether convinced anyone else does either. I don’t know.
Maybe that ought to give us some pause for thought. Maybe Sir Keir Starmer can tell us? After all, he’s just pledged our money — £14 billion of it — to an AI Opportunities Action Plan. Mind you, if he’s asked during Prime Minister’s Question Time, I can well imagine some glib reply like “machine learning” or that old chestnut, “simulated human intelligence.”
To which, we might respond, is my spellchecker learning? Are images generated online with Midjourney, simulating the wonders of our cognitive capacity when they mistake hands for feet?
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