Natural Solutions

When it comes to existential threats to humanity, as we all know, a moderate and sensible approach is generally to be advised. The pragmatic and down-to-earth British managerial class is notable for its moderation in combating climate change, an existential threat to humanity; and for its sensibility in poking Russia and China with sharp sticks so as to precipitate a world war, also an existential threat to humanity. On the matter of artificial intelligence, which poses so existential a threat to humanity that the Chancellor wants to turn it into yet another world-beating British business, the position is inevitably more nuanced: given the undoubted gravity and complexity of the problem, ministers have naturally chosen to frame it in terms of immediate divergence from the ghastly Euro-wogs. The Strasbrussels bureaucrats have adopted the ludicrously inflexible approach of regulating ad hoc, and are considering a law whose application would depend on, of all things, context - and, what with the innate depravity of the foreign hordes, probably real-world context at that. By contrast, His Majesty's Government wishes to stay as nimble as any government possibly could stay whose collective natural intelligence can barely operate one of those Babbage computating contraptions without risking a haemorrhage.