Roasting can be really brutal, but at least if we inflict it on ourselves, we can get ahead of the joke A friend recently shared a comment someone had made about her online. Sophie was a middle-aged, never-was influencer, in this stranger’s estimation, who exploited her children and alienated everyone she met. As I debated whether “liking” the post would read as support or broad agreement, I noticed a strange watermark. The vicious words had been generated not by a bitter stranger, but an AI roast app. My demented friend had asked for this. Who would volunteer to be insulted? A wave of apps such as Roastai.app, Roastedby.ai, Roastik.com and er, Monica.im suggest the answer is loads of us. Every day, people upload selfies to the Reddit page r/RoastMe, begging to be taken down a peg or two hundred. “You look like a series of circles stacked on top of one another,” the users exult. “Why does your forehead start at the back of your head?” There is a cruel craft to it. One sedentary rapper recently got called “The Notorious BMI”, while someone else, who I don’t even think had strabismus, was accused of having “mortgage eyes – one fixed, one variable.” Continue reading...

Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book Throughout history many traditions have believed that some fatal flaw in human nature tempts us to pursue powers we don’t know how to handle. The Greek myth of Phaethon told of a boy who discovers that he is the son of Helios, the sun god. Wishing to prove his divine origin, Phaethon demands the privilege of driving the chariot of the sun. Helios warns Phaethon that no human can control the celestial horses that pull the solar chariot. But Phaethon insists, until the sun god relents. After rising proudly in the sky, Phaethon indeed loses control of the chariot. The sun veers off course, scorching all vegetation, killing numerous beings and threatening to burn the Earth itself. Zeus intervenes and strikes Phaethon with a thunderbolt. The conceited human drops from the sky like a falling star, himself on fire. The gods reassert control of the sky and save the world. Two thousand years later, when the Industrial Revolution was making its first steps and machines began replacing humans in numerous tasks, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published a similar cautionary tale titled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Goethe’s poem (later popularised as a Walt Disney animation starring Mickey Mouse) tells of an old sorcerer who leaves a young apprentice in charge of his workshop and gives him some chores to tend to while he is gone, such as fetching water from the river. The apprentice decides to make things easier for himself and, using one of the sorcerer’s spells, enchants a broom to fetch the water for him. But the apprentice doesn’t know how to stop the broom, which relentlessly fetches more and more water, threatening to flood the workshop. In panic, the apprentice cuts the enchanted broom in two with an axe, only to see each half become another broom. Now two enchanted brooms are inundating the workshop with water. When the old sorcerer returns, the apprentice pleads for help: “The spirits that I summoned, I now cannot rid myself of again.” The sorcerer immediately breaks the spell and stops the flood. The lesson to the apprentice – and to humanity – is clear: never summon powers you cannot control. Continue reading...

Robert Skidelsky is concerned about the surveillance potential or AI, while Brian Reffin Smith is worried about its capacity to hijack culture, and Michael Heaton warns that it relieves us of the need to think In his interesting opinion article (Robots sacked, screenings shut down: a new movement of luddites is rising up against AI, 27 July), Ed Newton-Rex misses one of the most serious concerns about artificial intelligence: its surveillance potential. Governments have always spied on their subjects/citizens: technology multiplies their powers of spying. In his novel 1984, George Orwell had the authorities install a two-way telescreen system in every party member’s home, and in all workplaces and public spaces. This allowed Big Brother to monitor individuals’ actions and conversations, while he himself remained invisible. Continue reading...

The future is here, whether some like it or not, and artificial intelligence is already impacting the film industry. But just how far can, and should, it go? Last year, Rachel Antell, an archival producer for documentary films, started noticing AI-generated images mixed in with authentic photos. There are always holes or limitations in an archive; in one case, film-makers got around a shortage of images for a barely photographed 19th-century woman by using AI to generate what looked like old photos. Which brought up the question: should they? And if they did, what sort of transparency is required? The capability and availability of generative AI – the type that can produce text, images and video – have changed so rapidly, and the conversations around it have been so fraught, that film-makers’ ability to use it far outpaces any consensus on how. “We realized it was kind of the wild west, and film-makers without any mal-intent were getting themselves into situations where they could be misleading to an audience,” said Antell. “And we thought, what’s needed here is some real guidance.” Continue reading...