It’s all smiles for the French spy and ‘Thomas’ but for the nobles it’s no laughing matter

On Monday PastMaster walks in the footsteps of 80s TV show Quantum Leap, sending Ryan back in time to inhabit a stranger’s body.

But where and when will he wake up? Who is he? And what the heck is his mission?

His cavalier attitude means he treats the whole thing as a dream that he can ‘wake up from’ whenever he likes. But will his tomfoolery go down like box office smash or a sack of wet dirt?

Episode drops on Monday 4th July.

Tongue waggling and devil horns: Ryan introduces Medieval England to Kiss

AI in the news

Big AI: energy intensive

The relentless race for processing power behind AI is driving a data centre boom, the FT says. But critics question the value against the environmental impact.

This natty little report gives a visual sense of the scale of these computing behemoths. Corridors of computers running Nvidia’s chips consume more than 10 times as much power as normal web servers and the latest processors give off so much heat that air conditioning isn’t sufficient to cool them down.

The age of net zero targets and four degree temperature warnings is also the age of the AI boom. It’s quite a dilemma. How can our leaders look after the environment without getting left behind in the technology arms race?

Superintelligence poses ‘novel’ safety concerns

Zuckerberg: part man, part machine

After a deranged folly with VR headsets and the ‘Metaverse’ Mark Zuckerberg seems now to have firmly refocused his efforts on AI.

Investing bazillions of dollars in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg has promised we are not far away from creating ‘superintelligence’. But it comes with a warning that it may bring ‘novel’ safety concerns.

Regardless of what superintelligence is - which Zuckerberg leaves conveniently vague - it’s a bit concerning when that man who has played a leading part in social media’s rise says he’s a bit worried about what AI might unleash. Especially when he’s ploughing cash into it like there’s no tomorrow.

Is this the end, my friend?

Killer bots: cool but dangerous

This is definitely at the extreme end of the AI-good-or-bad scale, but this update would have us believe AI will wipe out humans in a couple of years.

The boffin says that AI will soon equate to a country of geniuses and that there will be no time to react to catastrophic attack on humankind.

But as one wag in the comments sums it up, this is hard to believe when my computer still isn’t aware of my printer.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Tan and the PastMaster crew.

PS if you’ve got any suggestions for what you’d like to see the PastMaster team try next, get in touch:

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