Point of Order: Weren’t we supposed to be better off?

It should send a shiver down an already-cold spine, when the regular media starts running an article headed “The path to cheap power will be very expensive”.

So warm up your neurones with the latest from Reuters, which explains why current net zero strategies are failing – on their own terms.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 11/9/24

Church leaders want to protect the Treaty “covenant” – but the PM would breach coalition covenant if he took their advice

The Waitangi Tribunal, more than 400 church leaders who signed a letter to all members of Parliament (above) and the many other critics of a proposed bill which none of them has seen have suffered a setback. Cabinet has agreed to the next steps for the Treaty Principles Bill.

Jon Miltimore: Why We Shouldn't Fear AI Destroying Hundreds of Millions of Jobs

Workers, entrepreneurs, and companies should explore ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into their workflows and businesses—and give the job displacement fears a rest.

I recently saw a quote on Facebook attributed to Sigmund Freud that I was going to share on social media.

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful,” the quote read.

Matthew Birchall: New Zealand's AI future

It is brave to invite an historian to speak at a conference about the future. As the Scottish historian Tom Devine once quipped, the future was not his time period.

So it was with some trepidation that I addressed a full house at Wellington’s new Tākina conference centre last week for the policy forum Diplosphere’s conference on AI.

Point of Order: The good thing about artificial intelligence is what it might do for human intelligence

As the man who seized Boris’s crown, Britain’s PM Rishi Sunak has his work cut out.

But his latest brainwave – making the UK a global centre for regulation of the new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) – is unlikely to help.

While recent times suggest that more detailed prescription is not the way to fruitful innovation, the confidence of politicians, bureaucrats and general experts has not diminished.

Oliver Hartwich: The most exciting breakthrough of 2022

As the year comes to a close, it is natural to reflect on both the good and the bad of the past twelve months.

This year has been tough, with wars, inflation, and the fallout from the pandemic.

But I do not want to dwell on the negatives. Instead, I want to focus on the one thing that truly stood out to me this year: the incredible advances in artificial intelligence (AI).

Matt Ridley: AI in the UK - Ready, willing and able?

As a member of the House of Lords select committee on artificial intelligence, whose report is released today, I was struck by two things during the course of our inquiry: how well placed Britain could be to take advantage of the new technologies that go under the name of AI, should we choose to play our cards right; and how pervasive and invisible this technology will prove to be.

The first point was driven home during an evidence session with a more than usually brilliant German professor, Wolfgang Wahlster, chief executive of the German Research Centre for AI. He said: “We have a very special approach that is based on Germany’s industrial strengths . . . This is quite different from the US approach, which is based more on internet services. We are more in the physical domain; you know that Germany is well known for its engineering and manufacturing.” He added: “Historically, the UK was the leading country in Europe in AI. It started in Edinburgh.”

Matt Ridley: Artificial intelligence will be a symbiosis, not a replacement

In the early 1960s, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there was a disagreement about what computers would achieve. One faction, led by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, championed “artificial intelligence”, believing that computers would gradually replace human beings. The other, led by Norbert Wiener and JCR Licklider, the man who oversaw the creation of the internet’s precursor, championed “human-computer symbiosis”, believing that computers would augment human beings.

“Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in co-operative interaction between men and electronic computers,” wrote Licklider in a crucial essay published in 1960. “It will involve very close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the partnership.” In his arresting analogy, computers would be to us as fig wasps are to fig trees: symbiotic partners.