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Daily Mail
7 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Captives and Companions by Justin Marozzi: Everywhere had slaves - it wasn't just the West
Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi (Allen Lane £35, 560pp) They were all borne down with loads of fire-wood, and even the poor little children, worn to skeletons by fatigue and hardships, were obliged to bear their burden, while many of their inhuman masters rode on camels, whips in hand.' So wrote British naval officer Captain G. F. Lyon in 1819, a witness to the Islamic slave trade in the Sahara. Even worse, the Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt observed that 'very few female slaves who have passed their tenth year, reach Egypt or Arabia in a state of virginity'. While the West has, quite rightly, hung its head in shame over the transatlantic slave trade, open discussion about the vast Islamic trade in both African and European slaves remains rare. Justin Marozzi has set out to correct this in a new work, mixing appalling accounts of inhumanity with more heartening tales of slaves who overcame adversity. Most notable, perhaps, are the famous concubines of the glittering courts of Baghdad and Istanbul, slave-girls who became the pop stars and pin-ups of their day – though their lives remained risky. 'They could just as easily make life-changing fortunes from a bawdy joke as lose their heads from a slip of the tongue.' One such was the brilliant poet and slave, Inan, a concubine in Abbasid Baghdad, both 'flawlessly beautiful' and skilled in the 'public cut and thrust of poetic jousting, a good deal of it coarse and sexually explicit'. She specialised in mocking her numerous lovers' disappointing, ah, physiques. Much here is grim reading though. For centuries, Islamic slavers preyed brutally upon their neighbours, especially black Africans but also white Europeans. Devon and Cornwall were both subjected to repeated slave raids in the 1620s, the demand for fair-skinned slave girls being high, and in 1627 slavers raided Iceland, taking more than 400 men, women and children into captivity. Witnesses described how one woman 'unable to walk was thrown into the flames with her two-year-old baby'. And slavery is still with us today. In Mali, Marozzi meets a man called Hamey who was beaten by a mob in his native village. No one intervened, many laughed and filmed it. He had tried to resist his own hereditary slave status. Driven from the village, he and his family now live in penury in a shack on the edge of Bamako, Mali's capital. Yet he remains magnificently unbroken. 'Deep down, I'm free. Whatever my financial worries, I'm free. I'll never be a slave again.' While Hamey was enslaved by his own countrymen, most states largely enslave foreign peoples, a 'tradition' dating back a thousand years or more. King Hassan II of Morocco, who only died in 1999, owned around 80 slaves and concubines, none of the latter over 15. Today, the Walk Free human rights organisation estimates there are still some 740,000 slaves in Saudi Arabia alone. Captives And Companions is a scrupulously fair, fearless and detailed history, as well as a tacit demand for the world to finally end this horror which we like to imagine is all in the past.
Irish Times
12-07-2025
- Irish Times
Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination by Karen Hao - Precise, insightful, troubling
Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination Author : Karen Hao ISBN-13 : 978-0241678923 Publisher : Allen Lane Guideline Price : £25 Fewer than three years ago, almost nobody outside of Silicon Valley, excepting perhaps science fiction enthusiasts, was talking about artificial intelligence or throwing the snappy short form, AI, into household conversations. But then came ChatGPT, a chatbot quietly released for public online access by the San Francisco AI research company OpenAI in late November 2022. ChatGPT – GPT stands for Generative Pre-training Transformer, the underlying architecture for the chatbot – was to be made available as a 'low-key research preview' and employees took bets on how many might try it out in the coming days – maybe thousands? Possibly even tens of thousands? They figured that, like OpenAI's previous release in 2021, the visual art-generating AI called Dall-E (a play on the names of the surrealist artist Dali and the Pixar film of eponymous robot, Wall-E),it would get a swift blast of attention, then interest would wane. [ From The Terminator to Frankenstein, 12 of the best portrayals of AI from the past two centuries Opens in new window ] To prepare, OpenAI's infrastructure team decided that configuring the company servers to handle 100,000 users at once would be over-optimistically sufficient. Instead, the servers started to crash as waves of users spiked in country after country. People woke up, read about ChatGPT in their news feeds and rushed to try it out. Within just five days, ChatGPT had a million users; within two months, that number had swelled to 100 million. READ MORE No one in OpenAI 'truly fathomed the societal phase shift they were about to unleash', says Karen Hao in Empire of AI, her meticulously detailed profile of the company and its controversial leader Sam Altman . Hao, an accomplished journalist long on the AI beat, says that even now, company engineers are baffled at ChatGPT's snap ascendancy. [ OpenAI chief Sam Altman: 'This is genius-level intelligence' Opens in new window ] But why should it be so inexplicable? While Dall-E also amazed, it was fundamentally a tool for making art. Although it could construct bizarre and beautiful things (while exploiting the work of actual artists it was trained on), it wasn't chatty. ChatGPT, in thrilling contrast, hovered on the edge of embodying what people largely think a futuristic computer should be. You could converse with it, have it write an essay or code a piece of software, ask for advice, even joke with it, and it responded in an amiably conversational and, most of the time, usefully productive way. Dall-E felt like a computer programme. ChatGPT teased the possibility of the kind of sentient, thoughtful artificial intelligence that we easily recognise, given that this presentation has been honed over decades of films, TV series and science fiction novels. We've been trained to expect it – and to create it. While ChatGPT is definitely not sentient, it astonished because it seemed as if it might be, and OpenAI has continued to ramp up the expectation that an AI model might soon be, if not fully sentient, then smarter than human. No surprise, really, that Hao writes that 'ChatGPT catapulted OpenAI from a hot start-up well known within the tech industry into a household name overnight'. As big as that moment was, there's so much significant backstory for the 'hot start-up' that the tale of the game-changing release of ChatGPT doesn't materialise until a third of the way into Empire of AI. With precision and insight, Hao documents the challenges and decisions faced and resolved – or often more crucially, not resolved – in the years before ChatGPT turned OpenAI into one of the most disturbingly powerful companies in the world. Then, she takes us up to the end of 2024, as valid concerns have further ballooned over OpenAI and Altman's bossy and ruthless championing of a costly, risky, environmentally devastating and billionaire-enriching version of AI. In this convincing telling, AI is evolving into the design and control of an exclusive and dangerous club to which very few belong, but for which many, especially the world's poorest and most vulnerable, are materially exploited and economically capitalised. Hence, truly, the 'empire' of AI. OpenAI, which leads in this space, was founded in 2015 by Altman – who then ran the storied Valley start-up incubator Y Combinator – and by Elon Musk . Both (apparently) shared a deep concern that AI could prove an existential risk, but recognised it could also be a transformative, world-changing breakthrough for humanity (take your pick), and therefore should be developed cautiously and ethically within the framework of a non-profit company with a strong board. (This split between 'doomers', who see AI as an existential risk, and 'boomers', who think it so beneficial we should let development rip, still divides the AI community.) Now that the world knows Altman and Musk quite a bit better, their heart-warming regard for humanity seems improbable, and so it's turned out to be. Hao says that fissures appeared from the start between those in OpenAI prioritising safety and caution and those eager to develop and, eventually, commercialise products so powerful they perhaps heralded the pending arrival of AI that will outthink and outperform humans, called AGI or artificial general intelligence. Altman increasingly chose the 'move fast, break things' approach even as he withdrew OpenAI from outside scrutiny. Interestingly, several of OpenAI's earliest and problematical top-level hires were former employees of Stripe , the fintech firm founded by Ireland's Collison brothers. Despite having such top industry people, OpenAI 'struggled to find a coherent strategy' and 'had no idea what it was doing'. [ John Collison of Stripe: 'I am baffled by companies doing an about-face on social initiatives' Opens in new window ] What it did decide to do was to travel down a particular AI development path that emphasised scale, using breathtakingly expensive chips and computing power and requiring huge water-cooled data centres . Costs soared, and OpenAI needed to raise billions in funding, a serious problem for a non-profit since investors want a commercial return. Cue the restructuring of the company in 2019 into a bizarre, two-part vehicle with a largely meaningless 'capped profit' and a non-profit side, and the need for a CEO, a job that went to Altman and not Musk. Microsoft came on board as a major partner too; Bill Gates was wowed by OpenAI's latest AI model months before the release of ChatGPT. As dramatic as the ChatGPT launch turned out to be, Hao makes the strategic choice to open the book with a zoom-in on OpenAI's other big drama, the sudden firing in November 2023 of Altman by its tiny board of directors. The board said Altman had lied to them at times and was untrustworthy. After a number of twists and turns, Altman returned, the board departed, and OpenAI has since become increasingly defined as a profit-focused behemoth that has stumbled into numerous controversies while tirelessly pushing a version of AI development that maintains its staggeringly pricey leadership position. This, then, is Hao's framing device for looking at a company headed by an undoubtedly charismatic and gifted individual but one who has trailed controversy and whose documented non-transparency raises serious concerns. In tracing the company's early history, Hao sets out its many conflicts and problems, and Altman's willingness to drive development and growth in ways that veer far from its original ethical founding. For example, at first OpenAI adhered to a principle of using only clean data for training its models – that is, vast data sets that exclude the viler pits of internet discussion, racism, conspiracy rabbit holes, pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But as OpenAI scaled up its models, it needed ever more data, any data, and rowed back, using what noted Irish-based cognitive scientist Abeba Birhane – referenced several times in the book – has exposed as 'data swamps'. That's even before you consider AI's inaccuracies, 'hallucinations' of made-up certainty, and data privacy and protection encroachments. For a time, Hao veers away from a strict OpenAI pathway to draw on her strong past travel research and reporting to reveal how AI is built off appallingly cheap labour drawn from some of the poorest parts of the world, because AI isn't all digital wizardry. It's people being paid pennies in Kenya to identify objects in video or perform gruelling content moderation to remove CSAM. It's gigantic, water use-intensive data centres built in poorer communities despite years-long droughts, and environmentally damaging mining and construction. It's cultural loss, as data training sets valorise dominant languages and experiences. In the face of these data colonialism realities, using an AI chatbot to answer a frivolous question – requiring 10 times the computing energy and resources of an old-style search – is increasingly grotesque. Unfortunately, the book went to print before Hao could consider the groundbreaking impact of new Chinese AI DeepSeek. Its lower cost, and challenge to OpenAI and the massive scale mantra, has rocked AI, its largely Valley-based development and global politics. It would have been fascinating to get her take. But never mind. Hao knits all her threads here into a persuasive argument that AI doesn't have to be the Valley version of AI, and OpenAI's way shouldn't be the AI default, or perhaps, pursued at all. The truth is, no one understands how AI works, or why, or what it might do, especially if it does reach AGI. Humanity has major decisions to make, and Empire of AI is convincing on why we should not allow companies such as OpenAI and Microsoft, or people such as Altman or Musk, to make those decisions for us, or without us. Further reading Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L Gray and Siddarth Suri (Harper Business, 2019). What looks like technology – AI, web services – often only works due to the task-based, uncredited labour of an invisible, poorly paid, easily-exploited global 'ghost' workforce. Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race that Changed the World by Parmy Olson (Macmillan Business, 2024). A different angle on the startling debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, with the focus here on the emerging race between Microsoft and Google to capitalise on generative AI and dominate the market. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (Duckworth reissue, 2024). The hugely influential 2005 classic that predicts a coming 'singularity' when humans will be powerfully enhanced by AI. Kurzweil also published a follow-up last year, The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI.
The Herald Scotland
23-04-2025
- General
- The Herald Scotland
We cherish Scotland's right to roam but our freedom is a myth
Red Pockets: An Offering Alice Mah Allen Lane, £20 One of the most unusual and powerful books I've read in a long time. Chinese Canadian-British writer Alice Mah is Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Red Pockets – the red envelopes used in China to give money to family and clan members – describes her return to her ancestral village in South China, and the reverberations of that disturbing visit. In a soul-searching narrative that charts her escalating despair over the global climate emergency, she addresses the ways in which the world's plight is connected with unresolved issues from the past. Drawing on the cultural and economic histories of China, Canada, England and Scotland, Mah navigates her own fretful response to her family history and her fears for the future. Clear-eyed and sensitive, Red Pockets is a moving and imaginative memoir of facing up to the wrongs of the past, at the same time asking what we owe to previous generations, and to those who will inherit this planet from us. A Granite Silence (Image: free) A Granite Silence Nina Allan riverrun, £20 The murder in Aberdeen in 1934 of eight-year-old Helen Priestley horrified the nation and had a shattering impact on the over-crowded tenement community where she lived. In this closely researched account, Nina Allan creatively explores the many elements exposed by this dreadful crime. Wild Fictions Amitav Ghosh Faber & Faber, £25 In the run-up to the Iraq War, Indian-born novelist Amitav Ghosh clashed with a well-known American editor, who refused to see the USA as anything but a benign and altruistic force. In the years since he has produced a drawerful of highly-researched pieces, now brought together in this collection. Covering some of the most pressing subjects in recent decades, from 9/11, the ongoing legacy of imperialism, Hurricane Katrina, the refugee crisis and disasters such as the 2004 Indonesian tsunami - the natural and the political cannot be separated, he argues - this is an unflinching portrait of our times from a refreshingly original perspective. Room on the Sea André Aciman Faber & Faber, £12.99 Meeting while awaiting jury selection, New Yorkers Paul and Catherine covertly take stock of each other. She reading Wuthering Heights, he looking every inch the dapper Wall Street type. What starts as nothing more than a brief encounter becomes more serious, and soon a life-changing decision must be faced. André Aciman is a romantic with a melancholy soul and an eye for detail that makes his fiction read as if real. Read more Of Thorn and Briar Paul Lamb Simon & Schuster, £20 'It is during the shortening days of the autumn months, when the September mists return and the morning dew settles on the pastures once more, that the hedger begins his work.' So writes Paul Lamb, for 30 years a hedgelayer in the west country, who lives in a converted horse box. An enlightening and beautifully told monthly journal of following an ancient craft, and the benefits it brings to the countryside. Back in the Day Oliver Lovrenski Trans. Nichola Smalley Hamish Hamilton, £14.99 On publication in Norway in 2023, Oliver Lovrenski's debut novel Back in the Day swiftly became a bestseller. Norway's Trainspotting is a deep dive into the chaos, terror and black humour of teenagers locked in a cycle of deprivation. Ivor and Marco, who live in Oslo, have been on the downward slope since they were 13, when they started getting high. At 14 they were dealing drugs, and a year later began carrying knives. This bleak tale, told with brio, offers a fresh take on what it is to be young in an environment where a positive future is but a dream. Hitler and Mussolini (Image: free) The Einstein Vendetta: Hitler, Mussolini and a Murder That Haunts History Thomas Harding Michael Joseph, £22 Robert Einstein, Albert's cousin, lived with his family in a villa near Florence. One summer's day in 1944, while he was safely in hiding, a unit of soldiers arrived at the villa. When they left, 12 hours later, Robert's wife and children were dead. Their murder has never been solved, but in this scrupulously researched account, Thomas Harding takes on this notorious case, asking who ordered the killings, and why was no-one brought to account? The Eights Joanna Miller Fig Tree, £16.99 In 1920 Oxford University finally admitted female undergraduates. Joanna Miller's debut novel follows a group of young women, all living in rooms on Corridor Eight, who become close friends. From varied backgrounds - privileged, hard-up, politically engaged - all are hopeful of what lies ahead. All, too, are scarred by the recent war. With an influenza pandemic terrorising Europe, their time in Oxford promises to be eventful. Victory '45: The End of the War in Six Surrenders James Holland and Al Murray Bantam, £22 To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, James Holland and Al Murray have joined forces to illuminate how peace was finally achieved. Between May and September 1945 there were six surrenders: four in Europe, two in Japan. Describing the events leading to each, and telling the stories of the people involved, from generals and political leaders to service men and women and civilians, Victory '45 memorably brings history, and those who made it, to life.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sir Paul McCartney recalls 'madcap adventures' in new book
Sir Paul McCartney has co-authored a book about his time in Wings. The 82-year-old icon formed the rock band in 1971, after the Beatles split, and McCartney has shared his experiences in a new book called 'Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run'. The chart-topping star - who is set to release the book in November - said: "I'm so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book. "Starting from scratch after the Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better I thought, 'OK, this is really good.' We proved Wings could be a really good band. To play to huge audiences in the same way the Beatles had and have an impact in a different way. It was a huge buzz." McCartney formed Wings with his wife Linda, drummer Denny Seiwell, and guitarist Denny Laine. The group released seven studio albums - including 'Band on the Run', 'London Town' and 'Venus and Mars' - between 1971 and 1981. McCartney has co-authored the new book with historian Ted Widmer. Ted said: "Wings was about love, family, friendship and artistic growth, often in the face of tremendous adversity." The book's publisher, Penguin imprint Allen Lane, has also offered an insight into the upcoming release. Allen Lane explained: "The narrative follows the various incarnations of the band as they survive a mugging in Nigeria, appear unannounced at UK university halls, tour in a sheared-off school bus with their children, while producing some of the most indelible and acclaimed music of the decade."
The Guardian
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Madcap adventures': Paul McCartney co-authors book about his time in Wings
An account of Paul McCartney's post-Beatles career at the helm of Wings is to be published later this year. Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, by McCartney and historian Ted Widmer, will hit UK and US bookshops on 4 November. 'I'm so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book,' said McCartney. 'Starting from scratch after the Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better I thought, 'OK, this is really good.' We proved Wings could be a really good band. To play to huge audiences in the same way the Beatles had and have an impact in a different way. It was a huge buzz.' Formed in 1971, Wings released seven studio albums, a live album and a compilation album over the ensuing decade, including Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, and At the Speed of Sound. Alongside McCartney, the band's core members were his wife, Linda, and Denny Laine. 'Wings was about love, family, friendship and artistic growth, often in the face of tremendous adversity', said Widmer, who was a speechwriter in the Clinton White House. Described as an 'oral history', the book will remember Wings' songs, collaborations and performances, drawing on interviews with McCartney and others in the band's orbit. Organised around nine Wings albums, the book 'sheds new light on the immediate aftermath and seismic global impact of the Beatles' break-up', according to its publisher, Penguin imprint Allen Lane. 'The narrative follows the various incarnations of the band as they survive a mugging in Nigeria, appear unannounced at UK university halls, tour in a sheared-off school bus with their children, while producing some of the most indelible and acclaimed music of the decade,' Allen Lane added. The volume will also feature more than 100 photographs, many of which have never been seen before. The book is part of a wider re-examination of the band's catalogue, which has included the theatrical release last year of performance film One Hand Clapping and its accompanying album, 50th anniversary editions of Band on the Run (released last year) and Venus and Mars (released next month), and a forthcoming documentary about McCartney's solo and Wings-related work of the 70s by film-maker Morgan Neville.
