“Have you ever seen Men in Black?” Mo Gawdat says, when asked to describe his former job as chief business officer of Google X

He tells @hugorifkind how a human tragedy shaped the way he sees the future – and what we need to do next

thetimes.co.uk/article/can-th…
He says he glimpsed the apocalypse in a robot arm. Or rather, in a bunch of robot arms, all being developed together. An arm farm.

For a long time they were getting nowhere...
Then, one day, an arm picked up a yellow ball and showed it proudly to the camera

“And I suddenly realised,” he says, “this is really scary"
"We had those things for weeks. And they are doing what children will take two years to do.

And then it hit me that they are children. But very, very fast children.

They get smarter so quickly! And if they’re children? And they’re observing us? I’m sorry to say, we suck”
He has a new book called Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World

Because he reckons you’re going to have to
Mo thinks we’re about to hit “the singularity”, when artificial intelligences will eclipse humans as the smartest conscious beings on the planet

We will not be able to control them and, in time, we will not even be able to understand them
One of the first myths that Mo wants to dispatch is the idea that humanity can change course. Superintelligent AI, he says, will come

There is no possibility that it will not
When he first started working with AI at Google he thought “We’re going to build amazing things that are going to change people’s lives”

But then came the arm and the ball. “It completely froze me.” He saw where this was going

“The reality is,” he says, “we’re creating God”
Scary Smart represents a cry of doomsday warning, but it is also ultimately an optimistic, wide-eyed book about salvation lying within. The terror, though, certainly comes first

Read the full interview here: thetimes.co.uk/article/can-th…

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More from @thetimes

28 Sep
★★★★★ | No Time to Die

It’s better than good. It’s magnificent. With #NoTimetoDie, Daniel Craig's Bond has finally delivered on his initial promise – a moving portrait of an antiquated hero facing his own obsolescence thetimes.co.uk/article/no-tim…
Daniel Craig’s last outing as 007 was cursed by Covid, changing directors, changing scrips, injuries — and even an Amazon takeover. How did it all still come together?

Craig, Rami Malek and producer Barbara Broccoli reveal all
thetimes.co.uk/article/why-bo…
In May 2018, Danny Boyle was announced as the man who would make Craig’s final hurrah. But in August of that year, he suddenly bowed out due to “creative differences”

What happened? Did he want to kill off Bond? Or something more?
Read 8 tweets
28 Sep
Daniel Craig acknowledged the pressures resting on the shoulders of James Bond to provide a boost to the cinema industry as he prepared to walk the red carpet for the last time as the British spy #NoTimeToDie
thetimes.co.uk/article/no-tim…
At 163 minutes, this is the longest Bond movie of them all, beating Spectre (2015), the previous record holder, by 15 minutes. #NoTimeToDie

You can find the nine others here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/no-tim…
How will this final film define Craig's tenure as Britain's most beloved spy? #NoTimeToDie

We look at the numbers behind the series.
thetimes.co.uk/article/no-tim…
Read 6 tweets
28 Sep
#WorldatFive🌏: Richard Spencer reports from al-Hawl in Syria on the thousands of families living in internment camps after being displaced by the fall of ISIS.
thetimes.co.uk/article/soon-t…
Islam Haitham was found dead in a sewage ditch.

Her face is framed by curly black hair. Her eyebrows are unkempt, but they added extra character to a look that could easily be imagined as laughing. The entrance wound in her right cheek from the shot that killed her is neat.
No one knows why she was killed, at least among the camp authorities. The 20,000 black-clad women who occupy the Iraqi and Syrian section may have an inkling. They nod knowingly when asked about Islam but scurry on and refuse to talk about it.
Read 12 tweets
28 Sep
Netflix has lifted the lid on its “big black box” of viewing data, which it normally keeps closely guarded, to reveal that Bridgerton, the racy Regency-era drama series, is its best performing TV show

Over 40% of subscribers have watched the show thetimes.co.uk/article/netfli…
Amid pressure from stars and shareholders, the streaming service is slowly becoming more transparent about what people are watching (and what they aren’t)

But which offerings are worth your time? Times critic @KevinTMaher gives you the run-down
Extraction

A vacuous action yarn in which Chris Hemsworth (Thor in the Marvel movies) plays a mercenary who deals with the death of his son by repeatedly shooting people in the face

Verdict: Don’t watch 👎
Read 13 tweets
27 Sep
#worldatfive🌍: President Biden has promised the West’s closest allies in Syria that he will not abandon them as he did Afghanistan, their leader has told The Times
thetimes.co.uk/article/biden-…
The White House sent General Frank McKenzie, head of US central command, on an unannounced visit to give a personal assurance to Mazloum Abdi, leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in eastern Syria.
The SDF is the Kurdish-dominated alliance of local militias that defeated Isis in eastern Syria with American and British support.

Abdi has forged the SDF into an effective fighting unit and established significant autonomy in eastern Syria since the defeat of Isis.
Read 8 tweets
27 Sep
Jake Gyllenhaal turned 40 over lockdown.

He talks to @thesundaytimes about what women have over men, being an uncle and, um, baked Alaska. thetimes.co.uk/article/jake-g…
The Oscar-nominated star has been having a long, hard think about his life while in lockdown.

He’s decided that, while he is “proud of my achievements, especially professionally”, he might have missed out on the more personal side of life.
“I realised how much more fun I would like to be,” Gyllenhaal says. Image
Read 8 tweets

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