In his interesting opinion article (Robots sacked, screenings shut down: a new movement of luddites is rising up against AI, 27 July), Ed Newton-Rex misses one of the most serious concerns about artificial intelligence: its surveillance potential. Governments have always spied on their subjects/citizens: technology multiplies their powers of spying. In his novel 1984, George Orwell had the authorities install a two-way telescreen system in every party member's home, and in all workplaces and public spaces. This allowed Big Brother to monitor individuals' actions and conversations, while he himself remained invisible. Today's digital control systems operating through electronic tracking devices and voice and facial recognition systems are simply Big Brother's control devices brought up to date.

Like runaway climate change, the rapid development of self-learning artificial intelligence is an unprecedented existential threat to humanity, where past experience will be no guide to our future prospects (AI will end the west's weak productivity and low growth. But who exactly will benefit?, 7 April). This is especially true when AI links to either super- or quantum-computing power. Complex systems like these give rise to emergent properties, and circumstances where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Previously "dumb" neural networks like ChatGPT, by drawing on large language models, have already led to increasingly sophisticated and adaptable generative AI.

Artists, illustrators and photographers have often led the way in embracing new technology. The concerns that creators such as Harry Woodgate have about AI programs ('It's the opposite of art': why illustrators are furious about AI, 23 January) that "rely entirely on the pirated intellectual property of countless working artists, photographers, illustrators and other rights holders" must be heeded. The UK's £116bn cultural and creative industries have an opportunity to be world leaders in developing and sustaining talent in emerging technologies, but the government must ensure that artists' rights are protected.

Your report (Scientists try to teach robot to laugh at the right time, 15 September) reminded me of Sir Alan Ayckbourn's 1998 play Comic Potential. Except that in the play, the robot did not need to be taught to laugh. Set in the not too distant future, Comic Potential foresees TV soaps acted by AI robots. As the play opens, just such a TV programme – a hospital soap – is in progress. But in the studio where it is being recorded, the robots are malfunctioning and the action spirals into chaos. The human overseer, desperately trying to restore order, is startled (as were we) to hear one of the AI nurses break into a fit of the giggles, because the action has become so very funny.