Meta caused a stir last week when it let slip that it intends to populate its platform with a significant number of entirely artificial users in the not too distant future. "We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do," Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta, told The Financial Times. "They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform ... that's where we see all of this going." The fact that Meta seems happy to fill its platform with AI slop and accelerate the "enshittification" of the internet as we know it is concerning. Some people then noticed that Facebook was in fact already awash with strange AI-generated individuals, most of which stopped posting a while ago.

The US is planning to create The Space Force, a new branch of the US military, by 2020, Vice President Mike Pence announced on Thursday. It would become the US military's sixth branch, following the Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps. "America will always seek peace in space, as on the Earth. But history proves that peace only comes through strength, and in the realm of outer space, the United States Space Force will be that strength in the years ahead," Pence said in an address to the Pentagon. As we continue to carry American leadership in space, so also will we carry America's commitment to freedom into this new frontier.

You know the robots have taken over when they start not just bossing you around, but being rude, too. All I had done was ask my Amazon Echo – a speaker on the kitchen worktop that connects to a supposedly intelligent'virtual assistant' called Alexa – to turn on the lights. I was greeted with: 'I hate to state the obvious, but the light is already on. I guess my job is done.' The idea is that every major appliance in the house can be connected to the internet and, in turn to your smartphone.

Allow me if you will to begin with a short piece of speculative fiction. Artificial intelligence is a dumb idea. First is the AI found in self-driving cars, Siri, and probably every VC pitch for the next few years, which could also be called "computer programs that use statistics and lots of data." This represents a marginal step forward in humans' capacity to channel our creative output through a machine that returns a somehow preferable version of it, now irrevocably owned by whoever owns the machine. We will need to regulate the fuck out of this AI, just as we have industry and consumer products, because such things kill, displace and disenfranchise people in the absence of politically determined limits on their operation.

It's a good thing to think about the technology of the future. Especially if you're politicians and the future may have a big impact. Considering how frequently we see politicians ignore future technological change, it might be encouraging that the EU Parliament is at least considering what happens when our new robot overlords enslave us. Except that the report that the EU Parliament has come out with... is ridiculous. The current insufficient legal framework on data protection and ownership is of great concern due to the (expected massive) flow of data arising from the use of robotics and AI.