Information Processing

This science fiction story was written by GPT4.  Steve Hsu had always dreamed of unlocking the secrets of human intelligence. As a th...

  Fascinating director's commentary by Ridley Scott. Video cued to start at a point where Scott talks about the conceptual background fo...

I have high hopes for this new version of Dune.   Below, a re-post with two Frank Herbert interviews. Highly recommended to fans of the no...

The excerpt below is from Roger Zelazny 's Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), an experimental novel which is somewhat obscure, eve...

Some time ago I posted about The Grisly Folk by H.G. Wells, an essay on Neanderthals and their encounters with modern humans. See also The ...

Blade Runner (1982) was set in November 2019. Yes, progress has been a bit slow. Blade Runner got one thing very right -- the two mos...

Jamie Metzl joins Corey and Steve to discuss his new book, Hacking Darwin. They discuss detailed predictions for the progress in genomic t...

Steve and Corey speak with Ted Chiang about his recent story collection Exhalation and his inaugural essay for the New York Times series, O...

In this scenario Ted Chiang  forecasts that recipients of government-funded genetic enhancement will not catch up to children of elites who ...

A good long read in The New Yorker on AI, AGI, and all that. Note the article appears in the section "Dept. of Speculation" :-)...

The interviewer is Willis E. McNelly, a professor of English (specializing in science fiction). Herbert discusses artistic as well as conc...

For years, when asked what I wanted for Christmas, I've been replying: Peace On Earth, Good Will To All Men :-) No one ever seems...

I always wondered how Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became Ridley Scott's cyberpunk noir Blade Runner. Watch this docu...

The novella Gulf predates almost all of Heinlein's novels. Online version . The book  Friday  (1982) is a loose sequel. Wikipedia ...

My kids have been reading lots of books over the break, including an adventure series that involves time travel. Knowing vaguely that dad...

In October, I wrote AI, Westworld, and Electric Sheep : I'm holding off on this in favor of a big binge watch. Certain AI-related ...

Arrival is based on a short story by Ted Chiang :  Story of Your Life . Despite what some have said, the main plot idea (as I remember f...

This is in the special Sports issue -- just in time for Rio :-) We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance For many y...

This video is one of the best introductions to the coming genomic revolution that I have seen. It emphasizes breakthroughs like CRISPR t...

JAMES BARRAT My long fascination with Artificial Intelligence came to a head in 2000, when I interviewed inventor Ray Kurzweil, robotic...