We are on the verge of a seemingly Cambrian explosion of AI tools. Chatgpt was the starting pistol for an already teeming cluster of technologies to be released upon us. Humata.ai can read and discuss pdf. Consensus can summarise entire fields of academic research. AIs can work in law firms. You can give Dreamix a video and a set of instructions and it will make you an entirely new video. The Poe app gives you rapid responses to any questions. And of course, Bing’s chat-bot search engine Sydney told a New York Times reporter that she loved him and that he was in an unhappy marriage.

Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This is what Sydney feels like. It’s not just that Sydney’s got sass and is able to love bomb a journalist. As Ben Thompson wrote, this now feels like the thing that will replace social media. If you haven’t read the transcript of the conversation she had with the reporter, you really should. As the economist Noah Smith said, this is art.