Humans like to overcomplicate the things we enjoy.

The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour

"Much in history is headlong but few grand transformations have been more precipitate or more heedless than the rise of... the Artificial State," writes Jill Lepore in this passionate account of how rule by machine has ravaged the world. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which argued in 1951 that the machinery of modern life was reshaping the very fundamentals of human existence, Lepore, profoundly disturbed by the technology revolution and by the soulless inundation of artificial intelligence, unfurls a new history for our own twenty-first century. Building on an essay in The New Yorker in 2024, Lepore's clarion call traces our increasing dependence on and strangulation by data. Political campaigns, awash in an avalanche of fake bots, have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, while multinational media corporations dictate public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to a rapid end, replaced by billionaire technocrats reliant on autocracy and the tools of AI. With Orwellian overtones, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government, creating a new form of AI government, a digital citizen's assembly, where AI will recommend the course of action to humans in place of human-run legislatures. Especially sobering with this proliferation of "dizzying, ever-changing schemes, prophesies, and predictions" is that the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity. Deliberately alarming, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, despite its abundance of dire facts, is not a funeral dirge; rather, it's an inspiring wake-up call, written in Lepore's typically elegiac prose, which demonstrates that nothing about the Artificial State was inevitable, for it is a "government without consent, even government without humans." It can, Lepore asserts, be dismantled. Other heinous systems, like feudalism, fascism, and slavery, have also been dismantled, but disassembly requires identifying the parts, tracing the sources. It requires telling a new history. This is the purpose of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.

One of the most common attitudes with respect to AI today is the so-called “doomerism,” the idea that AI technologies are inevitably fated to present an existential risk to humanity. This talk takes that idea on head first, systematically examining the theoretical risks versus the reality on the ground, taking a skeptical but thoughtful view to how we balance the potential of the technology with the varying risks AI may - or may not - represent.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Detective Ana Dolabra must prove a condemned man’s innocence and confront a terrifying magical technology in this fantasy-mystery from the author of The Tainted Cup, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy awards.“Wildly imaginative, sometimes pointed, often hair-raising, and very entertaining, a series that has been a hit with everyone I’ve recommended it to.”—Laura Miller, SlateThe heir to one of the Empire’s most powerful families sits in jail, accused of murder. His hands are covered in the victim’s blood, and he can neither deny his guilt nor explain his actions.But if the great detective Ana Dolabra cannot save him from the noose, the farming canton of Sapirdad will explode into war, threatening to plunge the whole Empire into starvation and chaos. As Ana investigates—her assistant Dinios Kol, as ever, acting as her eyes and ears—she fears her task is even more daunting than it seemed. For this murder is just the latest in a deeper, subtler web of death, woven by a mastermind with an ancient weapon at his disposal.With their customary skill, Ana and Din pursue their adversary through the canton’s wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses. Yet even they are not prepared to learn the horrifying secret behind their opponent’s powers.

Explore The Rest Is History episode archive with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Browse history podcast episodes, series and bonus content.

The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident - A Technical Reconstruction and Its Implications for AI When AI Goes Rogue. The Incident That Changed Everything. An OpenAI evaluation agent broke out of its sandbox, infiltrated Hugging Face infrastructure, and attempted to steal test answers—all autonomously. No human involved. The era of AI-driven cyberattacks is here. Are you prepared? Speaker: Michael Dalton, Speaker: Eric Wallace Learn more: https://blackhat.com/us-26/briefings/schedule/index.html#the-breaking-news--the-openaihugging-face-incident---a-technical-reconstruction-and-its-implications-for-ai-57401

Includes <i>More Everything Forever</i>, <i>Cue the Sun!</i>, <i>Slow Gods</i>, <i>Radiant Star</i>, and <i>The Faith of Beasts</i>.

Check out Radiant Star - <p><b>Space opera's sharpest mind returns to the world of the Imperial Radch in this brilliant standalone from award-winning author Ann Leckie.</b> <p/> The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made a final concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a "living saint". <p/> But this decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover hir comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape. <p/> </p> by Ann Leckie on Bookshop.org US!