The Book Club gives their verdict on Larry Niven's Ringworld It was quite an experience, moving from the technicolour magical realism of Michel Nieva's wild dystopia, Dengue Boy, to Larry Niven's slice of classic science fiction, Ringworld, first published in 1970 and very much redolent of the sci-fi writing of that era. I was a teenager when I last read Ringworld, and a hugely uncritical sort of teenager at that, so I was keen to return to a novel I remembered fondly and see how it stood up to the test of time – and my somewhat more critical eye. The first thing to say is that many of the things I loved about Ringworld were very much still there. This is, for me, a novel that inspires awe – with the vastness of its imagination, the size of its megastructures, the distance it travels in space. I was reminded of that awe early on, when our protagonist Louis Wu (more on him later) recalls standing at the edge of Mount Lookitthat on a distant planet.

But rather than nudging out the need for humans, the artificial intelligence might stand to enhance the creative process. Or so the experts say. The implication of AI on design is a major theme of the 21st century, with experts from many fields discussing the AI's entanglements with fashion, design, media, art and beyond. Entrepreneur Camilla Olson was in town to promote her fashion-tech software solution Savitude, which uses AI to recommend clothing based on a shopper's shape and proportions. Before Savitude, Olson founded two predictive modelling companies and designed an eponymous fashion label, both of which informed her insights into solving fashion's fit issues.

On Oct. 11, in Washington, Future Tense will host a free screening of WarGames, followed by a discussion with Open Technology Institute director Kevin Bankston and sci-fi author Malka Older. This year, John Badham's WarGames--one of the movies most beloved by hackers, techies, and tech policy wonks (like me!)--celebrates its 35th anniversary. Though it may look a little kitschy now, it was notable for several firsts: It was the first popular film depiction of the now well-known hacker archetype. It raised the specter of an artificial intelligence starting World War III a year before James Cameron's The Terminator did, and it introduced America to a young Matthew Broderick. WarGames is the alternately lighthearted and deadly serious tale of a wargaming A.I. at U.S. missile command that almost sparks a nuclear war after being broken into by a troublesome but well-intentioned teenage hacker.

In recent weeks, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has said artificial intelligence (AI) is riskier than North Korea and he has called on the United Nations to ban autonomous weapons before they turn into killer robots. Musk has also reportedly called for AI regulation, saying AI is a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization" and he said Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's rosier spin proves "his understanding of the subject is limited." It is a decidedly grim view of a technology infiltrating the marketing industry via channels like customer service, search and data analysis. So how worried are marketers exactly? For her part, Jenna Niven, creative director at ad agency R/GA, noted AI has been around for a long time and is already integrated into processes we use every day, like Gmail sorting spam or Netflix recommending content, but only now are we starting to see AI in the forefront of user experiences like Alexa and self-driving cars, which means it is assuming a more obvious role in our lives.