finding those routes

The artificial intelligence battle is raging among search engines, but what are the consequences?

There’s currently an artificial intelligence arms race going on amongst the big tech companies. Two behemoths – Google and Microsoft, are betting big that their Bard and Bing services will revolutionise the way we navigate the net.

In 2000, Google became the world’s largest search engine. Fast forward to 2023 and the rise of ChatGPT – the revolutionary large language model (LLM) – allows for a “conversation” to find what you’re looking for.

These models are still in a test phase and it’s clear why – it’s easy to prompt them to get things wrong. These LLMs have become possible due to the advancements in computing power and no doubt they will continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

The ethical and educational concerns have been well documented. What I think is a bigger concern is the ownership and control of the data and AI models.

The parallels with George Orwell’s famous novel 1984 are striking. In the story there were just a few countries to which most of the world’s citizens belonged and it was those states that determined what constituted “acceptable speech” in order to control society.

In 2022, it was a small group of private companies in Silicon Valley and their executives, which wielded a disproportionately high level of power over prioritising the content that we see online.

In 2023, this same small group of companies and executives are handing over these powers to computer models, that by their very nature are uncontrollable.

I believe, as with any new tools, we will learn to adapt and use them in many useful ways as part of our everyday lives. However, the world’s democracies need to act fast and agree a plan to protect our national identities and diverse cultures, otherwise these important human social attributes will be lost forever in some centralised global computer model.

Cannon Workshops

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by Jon Massey

Those who don’t drive to Canary Wharf are unlikely to have made it to the glamorously named Level -3 of Canada Place’s car park. But Wharfers who have recently descended so far via the lifts to the right of Waitrose may have been surprised to find a vibrant splash of orange in the deep.

Car rental firm Sixt has joined UFO Drive in offering vehicles for hire on the estate – and it’s created a glossy, disco ball of a space, all vibrant colour and shining LEDs.

In celebration of its arrival the company offered to lend Wharf Life a car for a couple of days to demonstrate the process. So I accepted.

Stepping through the glass doors of the brand’s richly kitted out unit – complete with bright orange desks, a sliver of bustling flatscreen and smiling staff – it was easy to forget I was in a car park. Everything inside was clean, shiny and new.

Due to poor organisational skills, I’d managed to turn up a month early for my booking, but the patient staff simply made a few calls and sorted things out with minimal fuss.

I’d been expecting a lucky dip economy car – a VW Polo or similar – but was also offered an upgrade to Tesla’s long range Model Y. A chunky all-wheel drive electric, it’s capable of zipping to 60mph in less than four seconds from a standing start.

The staff took me through the rudiments of the vehicle which, after some jerky pulling away, I managed to pilot gingerly out of the car park avoiding any bumps.

My plan was simple. First, survive the journey home. Then decide on a destination out of the smoke to find some winter fresh air – nothing fancy, just a jaunt.

Both went entirely to plan. The Tesla turned out to be almost too easy to drive. Its lack of dials was a little peculiar at first, with a large touchscreen in the centre of the car

Cost: £74.66 per day (from Sixt)

Minimum hire: 3 days (from Sixt)

Range: 331 miles

0-60mph: 3.5 seconds

Top Speed: 135mph

Equipment: 15” Touchscreen

Seating: 5 Adults handling all necessary read-outs.

Bristling with cameras to aid manoeuvring and a curious video game-like graphic of the position of other motorists, cyclists, traffic lights and traffic cones, it was a vision of the self-drive future yet-to-come.

Indeed, there was a sense of the car already becoming self-aware. I felt it intervene at least once while driving on the motorway to prevent us wandering into another lane. No bad thing, perhaps, but the wheel moving independently was a little disconcerting.

I opted to travel to Warley Place Nature Reserve as a fair test of a run just beyond the M25. The Tesla – firm of ride – managed the country bumps well enough and I found myself rapidly delivered to a place less than an hour from London, but also worlds away.

Run by a voluntary, charitable trust, the reserve comprised the remains of the gardens attached to the long ruined house, the family home of Edwardian horticulturist Ellen Willmott.

It was a beautiful spot in the February sunshine, liberally coated in daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses. While not completely impossible to access via public transport, the only alternative to a car would be to catch a train to Brentwood and arrange taxis to and from its location.

The Essex Wildlife Trust proved a welcoming bunch, albeit a little over sensitive on the health and safety front. Cheery warnings were imparted as I walked through the gate about keeping to the path lest terrible peril befall the unwary.

This proved to be very much the theme of my visit as fresh terrors were regularly depicted by scary yellow signs flagging deep and dangerous water in every pond, unstable walls and the ever-present threat of CCTV surveillance.

But despite a flash of hailstones and the fearful cacophony of the warnings, I was charmed by the place. Clearly loved by its volunteer army, who keep its ramshackle beauty in good order – enough to attract a multitude of birds and other wildlife. It was the ideal antidote to the formality of the city, although a view of a distant Canary Wharf did pop up from one vantage point.

As for the car itself, it was more or less effortless to drive after getting used to its curious lack of forward crawl. Unlike standard automatics the Model Y doesn’t creep forward when the brake is released but waits

£74.66

Daily fee to rent a Tesla Model Y Long Range from Sixt based on a hire period of March 22-25. UFO Drive’s price for the same car over the same dates would be £102 per day