Boldly going where hundreds have gone before: Brave New Planet podcast reviewed

Since technology is developing at such light-speed pace, why does it feel so strangely slow? There is a sense that driverless cars, green energy and of course certain vaccines are, for all their breakneck pace, still taking for ever to arrive. Watching the future emerge is like watching slow-motion footage of a high-speed train. We know it’s going quickly — but can we not just fast-forward?

Perhaps it’s merely our heightened expectations, our diminished boredom thresholds. Some of our most distinguished thinkers and entrepreneurs have warned that an all-powerful artificial intelligence, badly calibrated, might represent the greatest threat to the long-term survival of humanity. That they’ve been warning this for ten years makes no difference to the actual threat, but it does increase the likelihood of some attention-deficient, dopamine-chasing idiot — me, for instance — turning round and snapping: ‘Listen, Elon, you’ve been saying this for ever. Show me the paperclips or shut it.’

Coming round the corner this month and making vague, spooky gestures about the future is Brave New Planet, which explores not just the problems that technology will create, but also how we might use technology to solve those problems.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard it all before. We learn that deepfakes — ostensibly real videos that are in fact synthesised from pre-existing footage — are primarily used for revenge pornography, political sabotage and recasting long-dead actors in desiccated film franchises. These were supposed to be a major threat to the US election — I wonder if we’ll hear as much about their destructive power during the Biden presidency. The episode on climate change was appalling, in the way that everything you learn about climate change is appalling. It’s a problem with no quick fixes.

The episode on ‘killer robots’ was dominated by official-sounding military types, who talk admiringly about the efficiency of their futuristic weapons.