Segregation Tomorrow

Transport for London has confirmed that work will shortly begin on segregated "cycle superhighways" in Central London, due for completion in 2016, augmenting the fragmented blotches of blue paint that currently claim to do the job on some of the capital's roads. There will be an East-West route from Tower Hill to Acton, and a North-South route from King's Cross to Elephant & Castle, the two interconnecting at the north end of Blackfriars Bridge. No doubt the new MP for Uxbridge will be the first to try them out, probably on the longer Acton to Tower Hill route, which will allow for a photo opportunity at Parliament Square followed by lunch in The City. We can only hope the name "Boris lanes" does not catch on.

Coincidentally, the free marketeers at the IEA have issued a proposal to convert various urban rail lines into busways, i.e. dedicated, single-lane roads for high-capacity buses. Leaving aside their ideological antipathy to railways as natural monopolies that the state cannot avoid managing, their case is perfectly rational viewed in terms of minimising cost and maximising carrying capacity, but it will disappear without much trace. The same cost-benefit rationale would indicate that segregated cycle lanes are the worst possible use of a scarce resource, but the odds are that the current plans will lead to more routes in future. So why is it that the political establishment in London is (broadly) keen on cycleways but not on busways?

Carrying capacity (the number of passengers who can pass a specific point in a given period) is essentially a factor of the speed and size of vehicles. Generally speaking, the faster a mode of transport, the lower the capacity because of increased stopping distances (the stopping distance increases by the square of the increase in speed). You can potentially offset this reduction if you increase vehicle size, subject to aerodynamic drag. It is difficult to do this for trains due to the constraints of existing infrastructure (low bridges and limits on platform extension in urban areas), so high-speed railways inevitably end up being premium services enjoyed by the few. Conversely, the high capacity of the Tube is largely down to the relatively slow speeds dictated by short runs between stations and Victorian engineering.

Buses are potentially higher capacity than trains because of better braking (rubber on tarmac is superior to steel on steel) and upper decks (assuming you avoid low bridges and trees). The problem is that they are in competition for road space with cars and lorries, though this is elsewhere an advantage in that they can flexibly serve low-use routes - e.g. minibuses in rural areas. Railways have the advantage of dedicated corridors in urban areas by which they can carry relatively large numbers quickly into and out of city centres. Without this, nobody would ever build a railway (of course, without railways, you can't easily build large cities). Aeroplanes are far cheaper over longer distances (you don't have to build sky), but their capacity is constrained by speed, distance from urban centres and limited runways, as well as externalities such as noise and air pollution.

A dedicated busway makes sense in terms of capacity, but it is also attractive (to a certain mindset) because it creates two classes of road: mass transit for the majority in parallel with mixed-use roads for a minority who can afford tolls (e.g. the congestion charge). As with most libertarian fantasies, this boils down to segregation. The problem with converting existing railways to busways is that the tracks used by commuter trains are also often used in part by inter-city trains. Where routes aren't mixed use, they've usually been incorporated into light-rail systems already (e.g. the Overground in London). Where busways have been implemented, they are usually new-builds in expanding cities where land values are relatively cheap (e.g. South America).

Arguably, a better approach for London would be to convert existing roads to dedicated busways (the logical extension of bus-lanes), but that would be inconvenient for car and van-drivers, which is why the IEA doesn't argue for it. This reluctance to offend drivers is matched by the popularity of trains with the middle-classes, which together limits the potential for the re-purposing of either roads or railways. This in turn explains why schemes that carve out road capacity for cycling can only succeed where they clearly benefit the influential upper middle classes, which is why a cycleway between The City and Acton (crossing Hyde Park and skirting Notting Hill) is being referred to admiringly by both the cycle lobby and the Evening Standard as "Crossrail for bikes". The shorter North-South route will cement the gentrification of Elephant & Castle.

Cycleways are low capacity. High-capacity platoon cycling, i.e. where everybody chugs along in a group at a common speed, was the norm before mass car-ownership but is now a distant memory, even in China. In an environment with vehicles travelling at different speeds, the fastest effectively dictates the carrying capacity because of the natural desire to maintain safe distances (the proposed TfL routes are two-way, i.e. you have to avoid on-coming traffic). Once you get racing bikes, mountain bikes and fixed-gear bikes on the roads - the result of wealth plus concerns over fitness and the environment - you reduce carrying capacity due to competition. This is not just testosterone, but the result of the plurality of bike capabilities, personal objectives (working up a sweat versus transport) and attitudes towards risk (exemplified in jumping lights, which will still be a problem with segregated routes that intersect with roads and pedestrian crossings).

Because of modern cycling manners, the per capita capacity demanded by cyclists will always be in excess of other modes of transport. This is a triumph of the individual over the collective, and thus an inefficient use of road space and transport spending. Cycling has become popular with politicians not just because it is seen an environmentally-friendly, with the added cultural bonus of an image that mixes the common touch, the fashionable and the slightly lairy, but because it is emblematic of constant striving and individual achievement. Like marathon running, it is an exemplary neoliberal mode of transport - i.e. elitist and antisocial (this is sidestepped by cyclists who habitually cast themselves as victims). Whereas segregation once meant denying access to others, now it means opting out. Arguably, it has done ever since the 1960s.

Cycle superhighways are part of the emerging urban transport environment in which segregation between different modes in city centres is not just a practical necessity but a means of status identification - i.e. a privilege. The further expansion of the segregated cycle network in London will depend on the reduction of existing road traffic, which may be achieved through a combination of autonomous vehicles (Uber increasingly looks like a stepping-stone) and more expensive tolls. Once, the chief difference between urban and suburban transport was underground. In the future, it will be overground. The city gates of old will be reintroduced, just further out.

Looking on the Bright Side

My last post on Arsenal, in early December, suggested that we were likely to improve significantly over the coming months as the squad settled down and injuries abated. This didn't require a crystal ball. A bumpy start to the season was always likely, given the after-effects of the World Cup and the time required to integrate new first-choice players - a process made more difficult by the international breaks in October and November as well as the many injuries. It is no coincidence that this improvement has happened after the Champions League and Euro qualifiers went into hibernation, and may also owe something to our early exit from the League Cup. The team looks to be benefiting from more time on the training ground, with reports of Alexis Sanchez's appetite for work being emblematic of more than just the Chilean's personality.

Though we've had to accommodate new absences since the start of December (Wilshere, Arteta and Debuchy), they've been in areas where we have been able to backfill competently, while the returns (Giroud, Ozil and Walcott) have significantly improved our attacking options. The progress of Hector Bellerin has vindicated Arsene Wenger's decision to let Carl Jenkinson go on loan, while the recall of Francis Coquelin has shown that a loan spell isn't a one-way ticket, a point worth remembering in respect of Joel Campbell as well as the Gooner full-back (on the other hand, Lukas Podolski already feels a distant memory, despite his popularity among the fans). The young Catalan has quickly become a fan favourite, though this, like the improvement in Monreal's reputation, owes much to a more solid midfield providing cover and freeing up the full-backs to attack.

As shown against Man City and Villa, the side now has a balance that allows it to sit back more and safely cede possession. This is being hailed as "flexibility" by the pundits, the "plan B" having apparently gone out of fashion, though we shouldn't forget that Wenger has been routinely criticised for being inflexible in the past. The solidity of the midfield owes much to Cazorla's workrate in a central role, effectively dividing the job previously done by Arteta between himself and Ramsey. With Coquelin happy to sit deep, Arsenal look less likely to be caught by balls behind the full-backs. This suggests that Sanchez will come back into the side at the expense of either Ozil or Walcott, rather than revert the midfield from a threesome to a pair. Add in Oxlade-Chamberlain and you've got four quality players to perm for two positions. Giroud and Wellbeck (plus the eager Chuba Akpom) offers rotation up front. Altogether we're looking healthy at the sharp end, which explains the Campbell and Podolski loans and the sale of Benik Afobe.

Rosicky, Wilshere and Flamini provide alternatives for the central midfield three (with Arteta to come), and we now appear to have (touch wood) enough cover at the back with the addition of Gabriel. Though the simultaneous loss of Mertesacker and Koscielny remains a risk, we're no longer skating on such thin ice, not least because Monreal (and briefly Debuchy) have shown that gaps can be plugged. Calum Chambers, who has looked a bit of a square peg at times, is likely to benefit more from time on the training pitch now than from games. Though not a straight positional swap, Krystian Bielik looks like he may be the long-term replacement for Abou Diaby in the squad, though preferably on the pitch rather than the treatment table (you have to suspect the Frenchman's Arsenal career may end in the summer when his contract is up).

The one blemish over the last 8 weeks was the defeat at Southampton (the point away at Anfield was tolerable in the circumstances), which owed a lot to Szczesny's poor decision-making. The promotion of David Ospina appears to have had a calming effect on the defence, while prompting a bizarrely orgasmic chant from the crowd (which is already getting a bit wearing). The media focus on the crafty fag in the shower (which sounds idiotic on so many levels) is perhaps Wenger's way of making a deliberate point about the Pole's immaturity. Ospina's four straight clean-sheets ought to be even more salutary (Szczesny conceded in each of his last 7 games before being dropped). Wenger's willingness to put the Pole's nose out of joint is also a clear message to the rest of the squad that no one can coast. The undemonstrative Colombian, as much as the hyperactive Chilean, may be indicative of the new Arsenal.

There will no doubt be further cock-ups, but over the course of the next 18 weeks you'd expect our overall performance to be closer to the last 8 weeks than the preceding 16 weeks from August through November. The draw of Monaco in the Champions League gives us our best chance to progress beyond the last 16 since 2010, while progress in the FA Cup against Middlesborough looks achievable. I doubt both Chelsea and Man City will implode, and the gap of 11 points looks too much to make up over 15 games, so third is still a reasonable target, probably around 76 points. Manure have gathered points without playing well, but I can't see them playing worse, so it will be tight at the end. Neither Southampton nor Spurs look like they've got the legs to finish in the top four.

Overall, we're starting to see the promise visible last season bear fruit, while the squad reinforcements have provided greater flexibility and depth. We probably still need another couple of players next summer, bearing in mind that Mertesacker doesn't look like the sort of defender capable of continuing into his mid-30s at the top level (he'll be 31 in September), and I suspect that one or both of Arteta and Flamini are likely to be released within the next 18 months. Now that the money tap has been de-iced, buying proven quality looks well within budget. Expect rumours about Mats Hummels and Lars Bender to start circulating once the transfer window closes.

We may not win anything this season, and may finish with fewer league points than last - which could lead to more anti-Wenger ranting over the summer - however I think we're heading in the right direction and should be capable of mounting a serious title challenge before the manager's current contract expires. On the other hand, and indulging my inner optimist, this could be the season when we finally overcome the memory of Paris 2006. A final in Berlin against Bayern Munich would be fun, particularly if Ozil can spare us the need for penalties.

Game Theory

It is received wisdom that a punitive attitude towards German debt at the end of WW1 hamstrung the German economy, as JM Keynes foretold in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, thereby producing the hyperinflation of the early 1920s, and that the 1953 write-off of German debt after WW2 led to the economic miracle, or Wirtschaftswunder. Surely these facts should encourage the Germans to write-off Greece's debt now, given that it is widely regarded as unpayable and the country has achieved a primary surplus and is thus unlikely to need further bailouts?

This is naive. The French did not insist on punitive reparations under the Treaty of Versailles because they were too stupid to understand Keynes's warning. They wanted compensation for the damage done to them (the war was fought on French and Belgian territory while Germany was largely unscathed), hence their occupation of the Ruhr and Saarland as well as the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, but they also needed to satisfy popular demands for emblematic revenge. The problem was that Germany was unable to offer enough to satisfy this demand, ironically because its limited colonial expansion before 1914 did not leave it with sufficient bargaining chips in the way of marginal assets. Cameroon and Togo were not much of a prize for France.

In contrast, the 1953 London Agreement balanced the write-off of German debt against the need to shore up the Federal Republic as the frontline in the Cold War following the end of the Marshall Plan. It is worth noting that Germany formally joined NATO in 1955, an event promptly followed by the creation of the Warsaw Pact. In other words, Germany was able to offer a significant quid pro quo, both in terms of its contribution to NATO and its willingness to act as a shop-window for Western capitalism and liberal democracy. With this in mind, we should think about the current negotiations between Greece and Germany in terms of political power rather than the intricacies of debt rescheduling. It is also worth noting that Greece's main negotiator, the economist and now Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, is an expert in game theory.

We should also avoid the caricature of innate Greek corruption (the real tax-dodgers are not marching on the streets of Athens, they are shopping in London), but likewise we should ignore the caricature of a German obsession with sound money (the recent British Museum exhibition on Germany was typical in this regard, with the profusion of coinage under the Holy Roman Empire leading inexorably to the Euro). Germany is no different to any other country in its willingness to damage its own economy for political reasons, from printing banknotes during WW1 to fund its military expenditure (in preference to foreign loans), which started the process of devaluation that would lead to hyperinflation, to converting Ostmarks to Deutschmarks at parity in 1990 for wages and prices, which decimated the less competitive industry of East Germany. Political economy trumps macroeconomics.

According to Daniel Davies, Greek debt is "part of the means by which control is exercised over the Greek budget by the Eurosystem ... [A]lthough Germany got massive debt relief in the twentieth century, it got it in the context of an equally massive national admission that the entire political system was rotten and needed to be totally restructured with foreign help". The Troika has always been concerned primarily with reform rather than repayment, so it may be persuaded to trade one for the other. The restructuring of Greece is less about Jean-Claude Juncker clamping down on corporate tax avoidance and more about "de-oligarchising" the economy, a task beyond the compromised parties of the centre. In other words, replacing a backward form of capital with a more progressive form, in keeping with the rest of the EU (a similar process is at work in Ukraine, where oligarchism is even more entrenched).

The Eurozone crisis has often been characterised in terms of North versus South or core versus periphery, with membership of these blocs varying as individual economies fluctuate (something that causes much angst in France). This binary paradigm has been a feature of European politics since the Treaty of Paris in 1951, and is most familiar to the UK in terms of "in/out" and the concept of a "two-speed" Europe. Amidst this familiar scene, some observers think they can spot the recrudescence of an older geopolitical pattern, namely a German fear of encirclement by hostile powers. According to Hans Kundnani, "Germany now fears the emergence of a coalition of weak economies rather than strong armies".

I doubt it. Germany weakened its own economy when it absorbed the DDR in 1990, and it was the driving force behind the expansion of the periphery in Eastern Europe thereafter. Despite the retrospective claims of "cheating" by Greece and others, Germany has never put its foot down to limit either EU expansion or Eurozone membership (though it has been cautious on NATO expansion). Though it is understandably wary of advertising the fact, many in Germany's political establishment feel they have a soft-power mission to promote bourgeois sobriety across the continent. Far from fearing encirclement by a hostile or importunate "periphery", they wish to hug the rest of Europe more closely to Germania's ample bosom.

Syriza is already being cast in the role of a stalking horse for those governments, such as France and Italy, that are privately sceptical about further austerity. The recent EC initiative on infrastructure investment and the ECB decision on QE indicate that establishment support for reflation is about to break cover. In the worst case scenario, Greece could be isolated and a Grexit accommodated by the ECB, but the political impact on the EU of a failure to cut a deal might well be profound, starting with the Spanish elections in December. All the signs suggest the establishment knows that austerity has passed its sell-by-date (the lesson of Osborne's disguised U-turn has been noted), even if it has enabled pro-capital "reforms" such as privatisation and welfare cuts. An easing-up is now widely expected (and priced in) and it would be politically convenient for all parties to cast this as the product of hard but fair negotiations, with Germany in particular receiving praise for compromising in the interests of solidarity.

Syriza's coalition with the Independent Greeks (ANEL) ensures there is a clear mandate for rejecting austerity domestically, so the EU cannot question Tsipras's democratic legitimacy. Assuming the rescheduling of debt, the EU will want Syriza to enact structural reforms as the quid pro quo. Some of these will be no contest (e.g. rooting our corruption, getting serious about tax etc). Others will be more problematic for Syriza (privatisation, labour market deregulation etc). One chip that Tsipras can use to offset some of these demands will be the replacement of ANEL, once the deal is done, by To Potami or even the rump PASOK. The substitute would not only be a "moderating influence" in public discourse, but would effectively act as the EU Commission's watchdog within the Greek government.

ANEL is being characterised as "a far-right nationalist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, hard-core Christian orthodox party". In fact, they are part of the European Conservative and Reformist bloc in the EU Parliament and thus aligned with our very own Tories. Most of the members are Eurosceptic refugees from Nea Demokratia, so the nearest ideological equivalent over here would be UKIP and the bigoted fringe of the Conservative Party. Despite the antisemitic rants by the party leader, Panos Kammenos, this is not the "far-right" - that's Golden Dawn - any more than Syriza's electoral base is "radical left" (most are ex-PASOK voters).

Tsipras's decision to give ANEL the defence ministry is also significant. Kammenos had wanted the shipping ministry, by all accounts, which would have reinforced the oligarchs and called into question the government's commitment to rooting our corruption (of the "wrong" sort). Given the hand he has to play, I think Tsipras's decision to enter coalition with ANEL is probably the optimal move. By the same token, any friendly gestures towards China or Russia should be seen less as residual "leftism" or historic Balkan sympathy and more as the creation of further bargaining chips. China isn't going to underwrite a new Drachma and Russian oligarchs aren't going to swap Mayfair for Kolonaki.

Considering that Greece has various debt repayments scheduled for the end of February, and given the apparent appetite for a deal by key Eurozone players, it is likely that negotiations will proceed fairly quickly. If the pincer-like advance of Podemos in Spain and the Front National in France is to be halted and reversed, the EU establishment needs to deliver a new economic programme that can be credibly cast as pro-growth with top-notes of "hope" and "dignity". A deal can be done, and one that will be genuinely progressive for Greece, hence the focus on building up bargaining chips now. For Germany, the outcome will mix compromise (which will boost bourgeois self-esteem) with structural reform (which will boost German soft-power). Bild will bleat, but Mutti will have strengthened the apron-strings.

The Rise of the Machines

A dog can be thought of as a biological robot - an artificial product of human design. We haven't built it out of inanimate matter, but we have selectively bred its forbears for certain characteristics. The idea that this might eventually lead to humanity being supplanted by another species is limited to satire, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, or to the anthropomorphism of our evolutionary nearest and dearest, such as Planet of the Apes. In contrast, we never cease to worry about megalomaniacal computers and murderous robots knocking us off our perch, despite the negligible progress in artificial intelligence (AI). Edge.org is the latest to tackle the issue, rounding up "experts" (some are just journos and boosters) to answer the question: "What do you think about machines that think?" Despite the wincingly cute formulation, this is a fascinating subject, precisely because it combines science (how), philosophy (why) and politics (who).

Though not one of the Edge contributors, movie heart-throb Stephen Hawking is the latest big name to warn that the technological singularity, when computers become self-aware and start to design faster and smarter versions of themselves, is approaching: "The risk is that computers develop intelligence and take over. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded". In suggesting that once machines reach a certain level of intelligence they will push us aside, Hawking is yoking intelligence to autonomy. The singularity is a modern concern, but its form and assumptions originate in the traditional fear that once the lower orders acquire knowledge they will become unruly (or, to put it another way, that class-consciousness will lead to revolution). After a week in which the Davos set eulogised King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as a moderniser and reformer, the political dimension of the singularity is worth dwelling on.

The singularity: opinion is divided

Those who forecast the rise of the machines can be divided into optimists and pessimists. The optimists look forward to the singularity, assuming that our AI overlords will be benign and that the consequences in terms of technological progress will usher in an earthly paradise. This is obviously a religious impulse: "the rapture of the nerds". Jaron Lanier described it as "a certain kind of superstitious idea about divinity, that there's this entity that will run the world, that maybe you can pray to, maybe you can influence, but it runs the world, and you should be in terrified awe of it". That "terrified awe" hints at the origin of this style of thinking in the Enlightenment notion of "the sublime": a secular reverence for nature and the vertiginous wonders of the universe that lives on in the rhapsodies of Brian Cox.

The pessimists don't just fear the singularity, and a future somewhere between Terminator and The Matrix, they also worry about the course of human development leading up to it, which they usually describe in declinst terms - "the Internet is making us stupid" being a current example. This is a variation on the theme of decadence, the belief that we are doomed by our self-indulgence and lack of moral fibre. Traditionally, "we" is not mankind as a whole, but the better sort - hence the focus on literacy, cognitive skills and other class identifiers, all set within a first world paradigm. Before it becomes a totalitarian dystopia, Skynet is a slave revolt. One emotional reaction to this decadent fear is the search for authenticity and "the joy of using your hands", but artisan craft-brewers are less like Cincinnatus and his plough and more like Marie Antoinette milking cows - another kind of decadence. The information overload trope is a variant on this theme of creeping incapacity - there was probably someone in Ur of Sumer complaining about the information overload of urbanisation and how we had lost our ability to concentrate since leaving the fields behind.

Both clever and funny

The singularity presumes that a computer is capable of imagination: envisaging another computer that is superior to itself. This is not the same as being original or creative, which Alan Turing simplified to whether a machine could "take us by surprise" (Amazon's warped logic has often surprised me), all of which can be programmed and simulated. Rather it presumes a capability for purposeful thought on subjects for which there is no prior data. Imagination is a characteristic of consciousness, the self-aware mind. The "strong AI" premise holds that consciousness is computational and emergent, so a machine can become self-aware (the singularity) assuming progressively more powerful technology.

In contrast, the essentialist premise is that the intelligence referred to by the phrase "artificial intelligence" is by definition a human attribute, so an intelligent machine is no more credible that Brian in Family Guy. Both humans and dogs are sentient and conscious, but we do not mistake canine intelligence for human intelligence - they are categorically different - and we therefore have no reason to believe that "machine intelligence" could ever develop the consciousness of organic intelligence, let alone the attributes of human intelligence such as sapience or self-reflection. While the human mind can imagine mental abilities that don't exist, such as telekinesis or the Vulcan mind meld, we have no grounds to believe that machine consciousness could do likewise.

It is worth remembering that the purpose of the Turing Test is not to show that a computer can think like a human, but to broaden the definition of "thinking" by showing that a machine could imitate the appearance of human thought ("the imitation game"). By this method, Turing sidesteps the essentialist challenge and avoids the need to answer such questions as could a computer be a philosopher? But if we restrict the meaning of AI to "machine intelligence", we prompt the question: how would this differ categorically from human intelligence? One obvious answer is that it would be incapable of autonomy, which puts the kybosh on the singularity.

In cinema, there is a fascination with "artificial emotion", i.e. the ability of a machine to simulate empathy through mimicry, such as in Her or Ex Machina. This is a recurrent artistic motif, from Pygmalion via Metropolis to Blade Runner, but it is enjoying a vogue because we extrapolate the rapid advance from Tamagochi to Siri and wonder what's round the next corner. Politically, this is a case of lowering the bar. It doesn't show that androids can be self-aware and autonomous, but that humans can be brought down to "their" level. This reflects current anxieties about downward social mobility, and overlays the traditional belief that the lower orders are emotionally incontinent. The logical extrapolation of Siri is not C-3PO but Howard's disembodied mother in The Big Bang Theory.

Outside of science fiction, robots do not understand sarcasm, let alone irony. To be fair, this goes over the heads of many humans too. The point is not that sarcasm is a more complex form of intelligence, but that it is an example of ambiguity. Though this quality does not necessarily rule out a computational base - consider the ambiguity inherent in quantum computing - it suggests that simulated ambiguity may be a long way off, not least because we don't fully understand how or why it works in humans. One thing we do know is that a lot of ambiguity is social. The significant point here is not the technical challenge for robotics, but the variety of human intelligence and its interdependence. To put it metaphorically, no two humans are running the same program, and if we equate the mind with an operating system, no two humans are fully compatible. Despite this, human intelligence tends to atrophy in isolation, suggesting that it requires social stimuli.

Fear and loathing

The fear of machines is not just a fear of the lower orders, but a fear of the absence of God as a social capstone. The traditional hierarchy saw man below God but above the animals, with the conclusion that man himself was naturally sub-divided into what Edmund Burke called "a chain of subordination", with WASPs above the lessers breeds and monarchs above the multitude. Darwin's theory of evolution replaced this settled order with a linear progression, suggesting that man himself could progress further. That "blasphemy" has since been transferred to machines, both the reality of WMD ("the destroyer of worlds") and the potential of AI. The fear that they could prove malign is a reflection of our own human failings and thus a reformulation of the concept of original sin: we are bound to bugger things up somehow or other.

A weaker form of this is the fear of being superseded and made redundant. As George Dyson puts it, in typically decadent fashion, "What if the cost of machines that think is people who don’t?". The danger is not that HAL9000 might decide to kill us, but that it might decide we are irrelevant to its purpose and thus ignore us altogether (Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are thus overridden by "whatever"), denying us the benefit of its intelligence either by quitting Earth or devoting itself to hedonism (i.e. sitting there apparently doing nothing, as it can simulate pleasure internally). Of course, this returns us to the problem of explaining how a machine might develop a purpose that had not (and perhaps could not) be imagined by a human mind.

A modern (and distinctively neoliberal) twist on the fear-of-machines trope is the idea that "we" are in competition with them, a conflict that conveniently elides the role of capital. Some, such as tech-booster David Kelly, are prepared to concede the contest now: "This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots". What this ignores is who is doing the paying, and it achieves this misdirection by investing technology with a personality and thus a mind of its own (Kelly is the author of What Technology Wants, which rather begs the question).

One of Steve Jobs's more famous quotes is: "it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them". What is less well known is the next sentence: "That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things". While most people wheel the quote out in support of not relying on focus groups, or following your dream, the real message is that the rewards go to those who imagine (and fulfill) new needs. This is not a statement that praises human imagination in general (after all, the focus groups were found wanting), but one that praises the vision of a handsomely-rewarded elite. AI can already do a good job of analysing customer preferences, because that is technically quite easy, but it cannot imagine hitherto unmet desires.

The social relations of automation

Karl Marx is often accused of simple technological determinism ("The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist") but as his work on alienation shows, he also recognised that the social relations of capital and labour influenced technological design - i.e. automation was pursued in a manner that disadvantaged labour to capital's profit.  The foundation of the industrial revolution was not steam power but the specialisation by function and production lines of early manufactories. The weaving-frames that the Luddites smashed were as likely to be human-powered as steam-powered. Their chief objection was not that the new frames made workers redundant, but that they lessened the need for skill and thus lowered wages. The substitution of male artisans was by unskilled youth and women, not by autonomous machines.

The factory system was hated because it reduced the autonomy that the worker enjoyed under the older putting-out system. The factory itself was a machine for regulating labour. What powered machines enabled was the scaling up of the organisation of the factory system. Most modern robots do not look like androids, because we organised industry as early as the 18th century to decompose production and thereby "dehumanise" workers. The unit of production was simplified with the intention of minimising the bargaining power of labour, but a byproduct of this was the easier automation of those units of production. However, this meant that machines were cognitively simple, because they inherited the deskilled organisation of industry (Guild Socialism can be read as a humanist reimagining of industry that sought to reintegrate the unity of the worker, which lives on today in the nostalgia of Steampunk).

The assumption is that the "second machine age" will now automate higher-level cognitive tasks in much the same way, and this is plausible when you consider that the jobs already disrupted by software are those that were organised to be highly procedural, with minimal autonomy and little scope for error (or sabotage) by humans. But this implies that automation will continue to be pretty dumb. If we don't value intelligence in humans, why would we build it into computers? It should come as no surprise that the cultural response to automation in whitecollar jobs has been an increase in "performative humanity", i.e. emphasising skills and behaviours that are distinct from machine intelligence (the anti-Turing test, if you will). Examples include the valorisation of emotional intelligence and the vogue for mindfulness, which fetishise social skills and the human brain respectively.

Rights for all

The role of machines as a metaphor for our Promethean hubris means that ethical discussions about AI usually ignore the limitations of technology, assuming instead an equivalence between the biological and the mechanical or even indulging in the metaphysical cop-out of "panpsychism". Our speculation about the rights of self-aware AIs is less about forward-planning and more about contemporary anxieties. The idea of universal human rights is a recent one. For most of history, we have believed that there is as great a gap between the elite and the mass as between the mass and the beasts of the field. Like the philosophy of the Greens, which imagines a world saved from humanity (i.e. "them"), the rapture of the nerds assumes that a worthy elite will survive the transition to live as demigods. The unstated anxiety is that this may turn out to be the owners of intellectual property rights, not software programmers.

The core argument as to why an animal such as a dog should have rights is based on consciousness: because an animal can feel pain, it should not be subject to cruelty. Assuming the "strong AI" premise, before we develop a machine equivalent to an average human intelligence, we must logically create a machine equivalent to a human with low intelligence. This machine would be deserving of rights equivalent to a human by virtue of its ability to feel mental pain. Therefore we would have to grant human-equivalent rights to machines that were, in the language of an earlier age, morons. Given that we struggle in practice to extend full human rights to many humans, I suspect the more likely outcome would be cognitive dissonance, accepting that consciousness is computational but denying the machines rights. In effect, creating a new helot class.

You can see this expectation in the tendency of researchers to stereotype robots as slaves and drudges, building prototypes that serve drinks or fold towels. In parallel we see the development of the servile ego, exemplified in the artificial emotions of Siri and its ilk. The promise of robotics, from automated factories to driverless cars and household droids, is the simultaneous disappearance of the manual working class and the reappearance of the servant class, but without the human interest of Downton Abbey. In the case of the (usually female) sex-bot, a lack of intelligence is a feature, to the point where autonomous behaviour is presented as a bug: "female robots rarely stick to their programs, leading to chaos and destruction". The promise of AI is the disappearance of the clerical classes and the perennially frustrating "human factor" in bureaucracy.

The stars my destination

I don't worry about Skynet. Contrary to the creation myth of the singularity, I think artificial intelligence will remain bounded by human intelligence. It may simulate human personality, and even the artefacts of personality such as works of art, and it may be capable of feats of analysis beyond human comprehension, but it will not achieve consciousness and therefore autonomy. The more realistic danger is not the rise of the machines but technology-augmented humans. Despite the failure of Google Glass (at least in its current form), it is pretty clear that the drive to "improve humanity" is not going to let up, and equally clear that the full benefits will only accrue to a privileged elite, and I don't just mean Tony Stark.

And if this new order is threatened from below, then the elite has its traditional plan B: become an emigré. According to Hawking: "We face a number of threats to our survival ... We need to expand our horizons beyond planet Earth if we are to have a long-term future . . . spreading out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race. Establishing self-sustaining colonies will take time and effort, but it will become easier as our technology improves". You can safely bet that World Economic Forum will be an early-adopter of the off-world opportunities, bidding a fond farewall to Davos as it cruises above the common herd in the Starship King Abdullah.

Tits Out for the Lads

The reaction to the retirement of The Sun's Page 3 has been notable for the complete absence of wank. By which I mean, no one has mentioned the role of masturbation. Some commentators have suggested that soft-porn in a daily newspaper lost its value once the Internet opened the firehose of hardcore, but this misses the point that online porn elbowed out top-shelf mags, not tabloid newspapers. Nobody bought The Sun instead of Men Only. Some men did buy the paper to provide material they could both safely leave around the workplace and tuck under an arm as they wandered off to a toilet stall for a mid-morning hand shandy (it was less obvious than unhooking the Pirelli calendar). Presumably their needs will now be catered for by The Daily Star.

I'm not suggesting that the disappearance of Page 3 is due solely to a decline in workplace wanking, but it is worth noting the impact of two developments. Joan Smith amusingly suggested a positive role for the Internet: "What made the difference was the internet, which allowed a new generation of women to articulate their opposition to Page 3 and support each other in the face of a backlash". In fact, the key technological change was not the Web or Twitter, but the appearance after 2010 of cheap smartphones supporting video streaming. The key social change has not been the rise of third or fourth-wave feminism but tighter workplace monitoring, with some employers now docking pay or requiring formal requests for loo-breaks. In such a closely inspected environment, the five knuckle shuffle either becomes an unaffordable luxury or necessitates the "quick hit" of a two minute video.

Rupert Murdoch's decision is widely seen as epochal, but I was pleased to see that the paper had not lost its sense of proportion when it said that "Page 3 of The Sun is where it’s always been, between pages 2 and 4", suggesting they might have momentarily considered retiring it, like a football club ostentatiously reserving the squad number of a celebrated player. One thing that Murdoch and his critics had in common was the claim that Page 3 was "old-fashioned", but this is as redundant as saying that Eastenders and Coronation Street are old-fashioned. The question is, what sort of old-fashioned? Rent-a-rant defenders have tried to put it in the tradition of British bawdy, but a better clue was provided by one critic, Stella Creasy, saying "we didn’t need boobs with our breakfast tables", as if most people still got a paper delivered and had time to read it over their boiled egg and soldiers before setting off for work. Surely they have convenience stores and coffee shops in Walthamstow? And do they really still say "boobs"?

While many have associated Page 3 with Benny Hill, a man who literally ran away from adult women, a more troubling spectre has been Jimmy Savile, with many pointing out that The Sun only stopped using 16-year old models in 2003 and was happy once upon a time to dress them in school uniforms. Famously, the paper ran a countdown in advance of Sam Fox's 16th birthday, having featured her previously but without exposed nipples. Paul Gadd (aka Gary Glitter) is currently appearing at Southwark Crown Court (and on a double page spread of The Sun, no doubt). But I think it is wrong to imagine, as Joan Smith does, that "The sexual revolution made Page 3 possible", not least because it was more Health & Efficiency than Forum. This was a cultural artefact of the 70s and 80s, rather than the 60s, and one that looked quaint by the 90s with the arrival of "lads' mags" and their recuperation of Robin Askwith and all his works. Page 3 was of its time, and therefore inescapably Thatcherite, and you wouldn't explain her away as an opportunistic byproduct of second-wave feminism.

Another critique of Page 3's failing powers centres on the increasing use of candid shots of nude or partially-clothed slebs across the media. Some of these will be as staged as the traditional model photos while others are on the border of an invasion of privacy. In contrast, Page 3 was highly formulaic, from its fetishistic staging to the language and tone of the caption. In other words, it was looking increasingly tired up against MailOnline's human zoo, the 'sidebar of shame', which appears to have cornered the mass-market in both self-righteous prurience and borderline lewd since the demise of The News of the World. One common assumption is that MailOnline appeals mainly to women, just like the print version, hence the obsession with physical imperfection and diets, however it appears to do equally well among men, and quite possibly the same "lads" who used to buy Loaded in the 90s and are now fascinated by Kim Kardashian's arse.

Why did Page 3 last for 44 years? It wasn't Murdoch's stubbornness in the face of feminists, nor his commitment to free speech (announcing its demise in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings has predictably stimulated the usual suspects into concerns over self-censorship). I think the clue is that it has almost covered the entire working life of the core Thatcher generation. Someone born in the mid-50s would have been a teenager when Page 3 appeared, and will now be approaching retirement. Up to the 70s, women tended to vote more for the Conservatives than Labour. The Thatcher breakthrough owed much to the initial maintenance of that advantage augmented by a swing to the right by male voters. From the 80s onwards, women have shifted left, coincident with their growing presence in the labour market. Though there is much talk at election time of targeting women, in reality it is male voters who have been more likely to "swing", particularly those in their 20s and 30s. Blair's embrace of "Cool Britannia" was a psephological calculation, not just starfucking.

I think the chief reason that Page 3 has been retired is that the target demographic has been dispersed due to economic and social change. The primary sector and manufacturing continue to decline. Transport and warehouse workers have ended up on short-term contracts or been obliged to become self-employed, so downtime means you're not earning. Workers generally are up against the clock. Offices have become increasingly sensitive to overt sexism as women have advanced, so not only are the topless calendars disappearing, so too are magazines as both sexes (and particularly the young) retreat to the Internet on phones and tablets. The Sun even appears to have gone out of fashion as a token of laddishness and ironic class contempt on City trading floors, where a ruffled copy open at page 3 (seriously "manhandled") was a way of marking territory in open-plan offices. In London, it is now unusual to see a paper being read on the Tube other than the free Evening Standard.

Page 3 was a serious work of ideology, and specifically performative gender, not just in its portrayal of women as fluffy-headed, antiseptic pleasure bots, but in its implicit portrayal of the working class male as more-cock-than-brain yet as sexually sophisticated as a sausage roll. We should celebrate its demise as the last weak fart of Thatcher's mouldering corpse, but we should also recognise that it represents a kind of proletarian defeat.