There’s been a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) over the last few months, much of it falling into two categories: Terminator based apocalypse (du-du dum da dum) or the end of pop music as we know it (Da da da-dum, daa daa daa dum de dum). — The accidental creation of AI overlords is, to be fair, a fairly sizable issue and is probably something we should sit down and have a good think about. The pop music side of things has been less well investigated though.

Confusing entertainment with reality creates a soap opera — It’s a conspiracy, growls a voice from one of the internet’s murkier corners, rambling like a tipsy uncle slumped on a chair who shouldn’t have had that third port after lunch. He’s forgotten the sad truth that his alcohol tolerance evaporated as the evening drew in on his glory days. Still he talks. Look at this, look at this, he says, brandishing a forty year old horror book that predicted that a virus would strike at some point in the near future and it would come from a lab just outside the city where in reality it looks like Covid-19 first emerged. It’s…

Trying to separate the myth and the reality of crypto — There’s a lot of froth and bubble about cryptocurrencies at the moment. Can an asset really have a value if it isn’t backed by anything other people’s perceptions of value? How do you get around the accusation that it simply a way for criminals to launder money? Isn’t it environmental vandalism? Aren’t we just witnessing the inflation of another investment bubble that is bound to pop and devastate consumer confidence just as the world is struggling to recover from the devastating economic impact of Covid-19?

Data’s great in the right places — Data’s having its moment. There are articles about it everywhere. It’s revolutionising the insurance industry, bringing joy and pain in equal measure to the banking sector, helping people develop and deliver more effective medicines more quickly, and its helping our fridges talk to our kettles to make sure that they are both feeling really positive about themselves.