Artificial intelligence is threatening our freedom. But what can we do about it?

"The big difference," says Stephen Schwarzman, the impossibly rich boss of the private equity group Blackstone (personally worth an estimated $13bn), "is speed." He's talking about industrial revolutions, the latest of which is widely held to be driven by the ever-growing capability and decision-making power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Unlike the social transformations wrought by steam, or steel, or the internal combustion engine, he says, we only have a single blink-and-you've-missed-it opportunity to direct AI for good. By contrast "it took a long time to have an industrial revolution in the 19th century." He is speaking on the day it is announced that he has donated £150m to Oxford University...