
The prime minister and the AI that solved the climate crisis
Audio Long Reads, from the New StatesmanShow Notes
After the extreme heat of summer 2024, which saw children stretchered out of their exams, Britain’s prime minister calls a press conference in Westminster Hall. He has one eye on life after office (skiing in Aspen, a big gig in Silicon Valley), but before he leaves, he wants to unveil something truly ground-breaking: a large language model that has been trained by the best minds to solve the climate crisis.
In this satirical work of speculative fiction, the New Statesman’s business editor Will Dunn explores the government’s love affair with Big Tech, fast-forwarding to the dying days of a Conservative government. Climate protestors have been cleared from the roads - but the tarmac is melting and people want answers. Could an advanced AI called Tom provide the prime minister’s moonshot moment?
Written and read by Will Dunn. You can read the text version at newstatesman.com
If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy Edward Docx reading Boris Johnson: the death of a clown.
Download the New Statesman app: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/new-statesman-magazine/id610498525 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.progressivemediagroup.newstatesman&hl=en_GB&gl=US
Subscribe to the New Statesman from £1 per week: https://newstatesman.com/podcastoffer
Sign up to our weekly Saturday Read email https://saturdayread.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman
How did one detective take on an international network of romance fraudsters?
They no longer have a stranglehold on Oxbridge and would lose tax breaks under Labour. So what is elite education really selling?
On 2 November 2023, Rishi Sunak closed his global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park by interviewing the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk. The mood was deferential (the PM towards the tech billionaire). Was Sunak eyeing up a post-politics job in San Francisco, some wondered, or calculating that Musk’s Twitter might be an effective campaigning tool come 2024?
What might be the long term impact of the Israel-Hamas war on global alliances? In this week’s audio long read, the New Statesman’s contributing writer John Gray reflects on three weeks of bloodshed, beginning with the massacres of 7 October, and their wider consequences. An escalating conflict will empower Iran and Russia, he writes, as well as strengthen swing states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The United States might abandon Ukraine, or dilute its commitment to defending Taiwan from China. And with a presidential election on the horizon, does the White House have the stamina for a protracted foreign war?
In May this year, an American woman sought the help of a chatbot on an eating disorders website. The bot, named Tessa and running on an evolving, generative AI, advised her to start counting calories. Perhaps she should get some calipers, it suggested, to measure her body fat. When it emerged that Tessa had given similarly dangerous advice to others, the bot was taken down.