George Osborne has a new job in tech, and it doesn't bode well for Britain OpenAI is the latest to make a political hire as big tech spreads its tentacles around the world. Since leaving frontline politics, the former chancellor has served as the chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, edited (not entirely successfully) the Evening Standard, advised asset manager BlackRock, joined boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, been appointed as the chair of the British Museum and taken on roles including advising crypto firm Coinbase . But Osborne's latest job is the most eye-opening - and is an alarming augur of what is to come. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has become the latest organisation to employ Osborne . He will run OpenAI for Countries, a unit tasked with working directly with governments while expanding the company's Stargate datacentre programme beyond the US.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, Tesla and PayPal, is worried about killer robots. "You know those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he's sure he can control the demon?" he has warned. That "unfriendly AI", as it is known in tech circles, would not be a boon for humanity is an easy cause to get behind. But unlike Musk – a tech entrepreneur who stands to make huge financial gains from AI in the short term – most of us don't have the luxury of taking the long view. The defeat, last week, of one of the world's strongest Go players, Lee Sedol, demonstrates the qualitative leap in AI that has already taken place.