rebellious

Last week, Elon Musk flew to the UK to hype up the existential risk posed by artificial intelligence. A couple of days later, he announced that his latest company, xAI, had developed a powerful AI—one with fewer guardrails than the competition.The AI model, called Grok (a name that means “to understand” in tech circles), “is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!” reads an announcement on the company’s website. “It will also answer spicy…

If you’ve watched a certain TV documentary series recently, you may have encountered the notion that belonging to royalty is a little like movie stardom – and that both are conditions you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The grandmother of all beleaguered royals-as-celebs – before Diana, Princess of Wales, before Princess Grace, before you know who off Netflix – was Elisabeth of Austria (1837-98). Fondly known as Sissi, or Sisi, she was the subject of a reverential cult of glamour in her day, and in the 1950s was played…

Most people know that Jehovah’s Witnesses are obliged to spend their free time handing out a magazine called the Watchtower, that they don’t celebrate Christmas and they believe the apocalypse to be imminent, even if the precise date of the second coming does have a tendency somewhat to slip and slide. From time to time, newspapers are also apt to remind us of the fact that even in a medical emergency, members are forbidden to accept a blood transfusion from doctors, a doctrine followed on the grounds that it is God’s…

Miriam Toews’s novels are often described as tragicomedies, populated by war survivors, and set in or around Mennonite communities where Toews, too, grew up. In works such as All My Puny Sorrows, following the relationship of two sisters, and the spectacular Women Talking, about cloistered women who gather in secret after a series of sexual assaults, Toews grapples with the humiliations of motherhood, the burdens of sisterhood, abuse, grief and suicide: a wound from her own life that she nurses throughout her work. Her…