Articles By This Author

What does “slow down” even mean? (and Elon Musk’s big idea)

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Keeping up is exhausting. The constant flow of WTF stories out of the global AI technopolitical ecosystem has rendered both the commentators and the curious (including this writer) a little punch-drunk.

Bernie Sanders and AI – serious or cynical?

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I have always sort of liked Bernie Sanders, even though my politics and his rarely align. I liked the way he attracted support from both the left and the right wing, particularly during his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020. I liked his dishevelled look, his growly New York accent, his gruff attitude, and the fact that he could hew to an unpopular political position and hold fast, no matter what the political cost. He seemed to be a politician from another time, a 1960s firebrand, now greying, but still bursting with fervour.

Five days in July – the bizarre paradox of an obedient AI

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By now most people have seen the media reports of an unauthorised hack by a swarm of OpenAI-created AI agents into an external site called Hugging Face. The details of how this hack happened are technical and gnarly and multilayered (the tech post-mortems started coming out last week).

A cancer breakthrough and the second coming of mRNA

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There can be few technologies in modern history that have travelled so quickly from scientific triumph to political tribalism as mRNA.

Monty Python and the great energy marketplace

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If we ignore fossil fuels (and we really shouldn’t – they are still the dominant energy source and will be for some time) and try to cut through the extraordinary amount of energy-tech hype spewed out by various true believers, it is easy for confusion to reign. Solar will save us! Biowaste! Power plants in space! Sodium-ion batteries! Wind, waves, geothermal, hydropower, fusion, natural gas! Drill, baby, drill!

The great AI data centre allergy of 2026

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Last week a popular local radio station was looking around for someone who might defend the proposed construction and operation of an AI data centre in the city in which I live (as a counterpoint to previous guests who were apparently vocal data-centre resisters).

This column was written by AI… wait, no, it wasn’t, was it?

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I have been writing professionally for 15 years, starting with a novel in 2011. AI-assisted writing only arrived somewhere around 2023, but it took off in 2025 as the LLMs got pretty good at it. I was not interested in using it; I have been writing (and enjoying the process) without AI for so long that I have no desire to hand off what is an energising and creative activity. It is rarely drudgery and I never suffer from writer’s block.

Living for all eternity – the tech barons and their obsession with longevity science

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I remember a film from decades ago, when I was young enough to have had few worries about ageing. It was called Zardoz, and it starred Sean Connery. The plot swirled around a glass-domed city in some future world, peopled by those wealthy enough to have purchased eternal youth and health.

AI – The Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming!

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Even people with only a light interest (or even disinterest) in AI know that there is a leaderboard. Sometimes OpenAI is on top. Then Anthropic releases a new model and they grab the lead. Somewhere behind them SpaceXAI and Meta and Google, all huffing and puffing to stay in the race.

Why does everyone hate billionaires?

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It’s easy to hate billionaires. Although “hate” may be a bit strong, let’s rather say that most people are less than well disposed towards them. The narrative goes like this – to accumulate that much money is a mark of greed, or moral turpitude, or worse. It seems to violate some unwritten law of civil society. And there are indeed a great many odious representatives of the mega-rich class, and many who became billionaires by accident – they inherited it.