A few months back I wrote a Spectator piece about a phenomenal new'neural network' – a subspecies of artificial intelligence – which promises to revolutionise art and how humans interact with art. The network is called Dall-e 2, and it remains a remarkable chunk of not-quite-sentient tech. However, such is the astonishing, accelerating speed of development in AI, Dall-e 2 has already been overtaken. Just last week a British company called Stability AI launched an artificial intelligence model which has been richly fed, like a lean greyhound given fillet steak, on several billion images, equipping it to make brand new images when prompted by a linguistic message. It is called Stable Diffusion and it is revolutionary in multiple ways, perhaps the most important being this: unlike other models, the'owners' are letting anyone use Stable Diffusion from the get-go (with intrinsic restrictions on sexual or prejudicial imagery and so on).

Equipment at the Custom Group in Woburn, Mass., includes automated robotic cutting tools. Equipment at the Custom Group in Woburn, Mass., includes automated robotic cutting tools. But critics say maybe it should have been named the Tax Cut and Robots Act. That's because it doesn't create new tax incentives that specifically encourage companies to hire workers and create jobs, some employers and economists say. But it does expand incentives for companies to buy robots and machines that replace workers. Republicans say that lowering taxes will boost the economy and spur job creation.