Non-fictionHow then do we approach a circumstance in which it is possible to consciously curate those memories and sense impressions, such that they become mere features of our ‘profile’? Or one where third parties, having gleaned enough data to know us better than we know ourselves, can supply those memories and impressions for us?

Non-fictionThe history of computer science is bound up with the game of chess, whose innate complexity and clearly defined rules make it the ideal proving ground for artificial intelligence. And yet the game not only survived the defeat of Garry Kasparov in 1997 by IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue, but also seemed to flourish in its wake. According to International Chess Federation figures, more people are playing the game than ever before, and not merely over the internet. Now, as a new generation of AIs aces the Turing test – according to which a machine may be deemed intelligent if the human interacting with it can’t tell if it is a machine or not – it might be worth taking a closer look at chess as a social and creative phenomenon that speaks to the limits of ‘smart’ machines.

Essay‘IT IS EASIER to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.’ So wrote the critical theorist Fredric Jameson in New Left Review in 2003, attributing the sentiment to an unnamed ‘someone’ whom posterity,...

EssayIN THE SOUL of Man under Socialism (1891), Oscar Wilde wrote, ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always...