As befits a writer whose breakout work, Sapiens, was a history of the entire human race, Yuval Noah Harari is a master of the sententious generalisation. "Human life," he writes here, "is a balancing act between endeavouring to improve ourselves and accepting who we were." Elsewhere, one might be surprised to read: "The ancient Romans had a clear understanding of what democracy means." No doubt the Romans would have been happy to hear that they would, 2,000 years in the future, be given a gold star for their comprehension of eternally stable political concepts by Yuval Noah Harari. In his 2018 book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari wrote: "Liberals don't understand how history deviated from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality. Disorientation causes them to think in apocalyptic terms."

When I started writing about science decades ago, artificial intelligence seemed ascendant. IEEE Spectrum, the technology magazine for which I worked, produced a special issue on how AI would transform the world. I edited an article in which computer scientist Frederick Hayes-Roth predicted that AI would soon replace experts in law, medicine, finance and other professions. But that year, 1984, ushered in an AI winter, in which innovation stalled and funding dried up. By 1998, problems like non-recurrent engineering had begun to be recognized: "Algorithms that can perform a specialized task, like playing chess, cannot be easily adapted for other purposes."

Cities generate lots of data. The exact amount depends on the size of the city and its sophistication and ambitions, but it's certainly more than mere humans can absorb and use. The Smart Cities movement, which looks for ways to find data-driven technological solutions to everyday urban challenges, is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to deliver "services" to its residents--everything from locating gunshots and finding tumors to dispatching work crews to pick up trash. New York is one of about 90 cities worldwide that uses a system called ShotSpotter, which uses a network of microphones to instantly recognize and locate gunshots. In Moscow, all chest X-rays taken in hospitals are run through an AI system to recognize and diagnose tumors.

A few weeks ago, for the first time ever, a computer beat the world champion of Go, one of the most complex games known to man. This was another watershed moment in the progress of artificial intelligence. To give you an idea how complex Go is, there are 2.082 10 170 possible board configurations. That is 2 with 170 zeroes after it. Chances are your brain cannot even conceive of a number that large (but a computer can). Or to give you an idea of how big of a number that is, there are only 10 80 atoms in the universe -- that is, one followed by 80 zeroes. The reason this is such a big deal is that Go is so complicated that in order to beat a top human player, a machine would have to learn how to think creatively, improvising and adapting to the situation at hand without being able to calculate every possible outcome; i.e., there has to be some serious artificial intelligence going on -- like real, creative intelligence.

A few weeks ago, for the first time ever, a computer beat the world champion of Go, one of the most complex games known to man. This was another watershed moment in the progress of artificial intelligence. To give you an idea how complex Go is, there are 2.082 10 170 possible board configurations. That is 2 with 170 zeroes after it. Chances are your brain cannot even conceive of a number that large (but a computer can). Or to give you an idea of how big of a number that is, there are only 10 80 atoms in the universe -- that is, one followed by 79 zeroes.

Here's a quick one for review in case you guys weren't aware of the many brilliant options the market has provided to help your clients sell stuff. This depressing message comes to us via a PR agency that obviously can't tell the difference between "advertising" and "ad tech" but works with clients offering a "sharing economy" solution to those companies' most pressing needs. Here's the pitch in full except for the "do you want to schedule an interview?" Take Uber and Airbnb for example, which own no cars or real estate. The shared economy is growing.