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Love Machines by James Muldoon review – the risks and rewards of getting intimate with AI

Love Machines by James Muldoon review – the risks and rewards of getting intimate with AI

The sociology professor is suitably comfortable with AI helpers that he creates his own – it’s their inventors’ motives and unregulated environment he argues we should be concerned about If much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren’t merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead. To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than a little creepy. But Muldoon refuses to belittle those seeking intimacy in “synthetic personas”. Continue reading...

State of Statelessness review – Dalai Lama presides over intimate dramas about Tibetans’ life of exile

State of Statelessness review – Dalai Lama presides over intimate dramas about Tibetans’ life of exile

Tibetan directors, who all live outside Tibet, deliver a quartet of films that explore the pain of separation and migration The wrench of exile is the theme of this quartet of short films from Tibetan directors, who themselves all live outside Tibet. Their intimate, emotional family dramas tell stories of separation and migration. In two of them, the 90-year-old Dalai Lama smiles out from photographs on shrines, a reminder of the precariousness of Tibet’s future. As a character in one of the films puts it bluntly: will there be anything to stop China erasing Tibetan identity when its rock-star spiritual leader is no longer around? In the first film a Tibetan man lives in a kind of complicated happiness in Vietnam. He loves his wife, and they both adore their sunny-natured little daughter, but he has mournful eyes. Home is a town on the banks of the Mekong River, which has its source in Tibet. The river is a constant reminder of the region – and of Chinese might too, since Chinese hydropower dams are the cause of drought downstream in Vietnam. Continue reading...

Love Machines by James Muldoon review – the risks and rewards of getting intimate with AI

Love Machines by James Muldoon review – the risks and rewards of getting intimate with AI

The sociology professor is suitably comfortable with AI helpers that he creates his own – it’s their inventors’ motives and unregulated environment he argues we should be concerned about If much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren’t merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead. To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than a little creepy. But Muldoon refuses to belittle those seeking intimacy in “synthetic personas”. Continue reading...

State of Statelessness review – Dalai Lama presides over intimate dramas about Tibetans’ life of exile

State of Statelessness review – Dalai Lama presides over intimate dramas about Tibetans’ life of exile

Tibetan directors, who all live outside Tibet, deliver a quartet of films that explore the pain of separation and migration The wrench of exile is the theme of this quartet of short films from Tibetan directors, who themselves all live outside Tibet. Their intimate, emotional family dramas tell stories of separation and migration. In two of them, the 90-year-old Dalai Lama smiles out from photographs on shrines, a reminder of the precariousness of Tibet’s future. As a character in one of the films puts it bluntly: will there be anything to stop China erasing Tibetan identity when its rock-star spiritual leader is no longer around? In the first film a Tibetan man lives in a kind of complicated happiness in Vietnam. He loves his wife, and they both adore their sunny-natured little daughter, but he has mournful eyes. Home is a town on the banks of the Mekong River, which has its source in Tibet. The river is a constant reminder of the region – and of Chinese might too, since Chinese hydropower dams are the cause of drought downstream in Vietnam. Continue reading...

How to have a sustainable family ski holiday: take the train and head high

How to have a sustainable family ski holiday: take the train and head high

Cut out flying and you shred skiing’s carbon footprint. And opting for a high-altitude resort that needs less artificial snow makes it even greener. Les Arcs in the French Alps ticks both boxes I’ve always wanted to try skiing, but it’s not a cheap holiday and I have always had a lingering suspicion that some resorts are like Las Vegas in the mountains, with artificial snow, damaging infrastructure, annihilated vegetation and air-freighted fine dining – in short, profoundly unsustainable. However, if there’s a way to have a green family ski holiday, then sign me – and my husband, Joe, two kids and my mum – up. Here’s how to do it. Continue reading...