https://www.scmp.com/rss/500328/feed Mike Hodgkinson is a freelance writer and editor based on the west coast of the US. Since his first assignment at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989, he has covered technology, culture, sports and more for newspapers and magazines including The Independent, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, The Guardian and The Times of London. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com The tech story of the century so far has been the mainstream arrival of generative artificial intelligence, which drives the uncanny capabilities of systems such as ChatGPT, and is fast being absorbed into our everyday lives. Whether to mimic human creativity, double as empathetic counsellor or eliminate clerical drudgery, generative AI has delivered an unprecedented surge in excitement for its potential benefits. Of equal concern are possible negatives: catastrophic job losses, widespread... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3230746/quantum-computing-could-give-ai-rocket-fuel-it-needs-become-transformative-its-not-there-yet?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3230746/quantum-computing-could-give-ai-rocket-fuel-it-needs-become-transformative-its-not-there-yet?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 11 Aug 2023 23:45:14 +0000 For the first time in human history, we can give machines a simple written or spoken prompt and they will produce original creative artefacts – poetry, prose, illustration, music – with infinite variation. With disarming ease, we can hitch our imagination to computers, and they can do all the heavy lifting to turn ideas into art. This machined artistry is essentially mindless – a dizzying feat of predictive, data-driven misdirection, a kind of hallucination – but the trickery works, and it is... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3200976/ai-rewriting-rules-creativity-what-does-mean-human-imagination?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3200976/ai-rewriting-rules-creativity-what-does-mean-human-imagination?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Nov 2022 11:15:08 +0000 Mike Hodgkinson Mike Hodgkinson For much of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted our physical reality, equally dangerous patho­gens surged unchecked through our digital mediascapes. The technologies that promised to bring the world together have ruptured, exposing an unstable, corruptible core where conspiracy and prejudice thrive. It is a far cry from the enlightened digital utopia the internet was thought to be capable of facilitating early on. Instead, the inverse situation seems far more prevalent. So in 2021, as we... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3118630/how-world-caught-media-visionary-marshall?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3118630/how-world-caught-media-visionary-marshall?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:15:06 +0000 The campus of Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), in the United States, could double for a spectacular fortress, lifted from the pages of a medieval European romance, extruding squarely from Portland’s bucolic Marquam Hill – “pill hill” in the local argot – over­looking the Willamette River valley towards a horizon buckled by the snow-capped monolith of Mount Hood, around which more local legends abound. But it is the idea of a therapeutic Camelot that makes OHSU a fitting site for what... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3100024/what-crispr-gene-editing-technology-carries-much?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3100024/what-crispr-gene-editing-technology-carries-much?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Sep 2020 11:15:05 +0000 A dish called three-storey building I was born in August 1952, in San Francisco. I grew up in Berkeley. My father was from Tahiti. He was Chinese and he came to the United States to go to the University of California, Berkeley. He came from a very large family, from around Guangdong. Like a lot of families, all the celebrations were food-centric, and in Tahiti a lot of it was about fishing. My mom grew up in California. Her parents were immigrants, German and Danish. So we’re quite a melting... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3018156/monique-siu-chinese-american-chef-who-put?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3018156/monique-siu-chinese-american-chef-who-put?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 11 Jul 2019 14:00:11 +0000 Portland, in the American state of Oregon, tethers its identity to arts and crafts in the same way that Los Angeles claims movies and San Francisco commandeers high technology. The artisanal mindset embedded deep in the West Coast city’s grain is the natural by-product of a dramatic urban landscape defined by wood and stone; a skyline of Douglas fir trees and snow-capped mountains represents an open invitation to connect with the natural elements and make something by hand. For more than a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3014166/why-portland-oregon-handicrafts-what-los-angeles?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3014166/why-portland-oregon-handicrafts-what-los-angeles?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 13 Jun 2019 16:00:17 +0000 On any given evening, the city of Portland, in Oregon, flashes its credentials as the North American capital of bar-room table tennis. In watering holes such as Pips & Bounce, The Nest Lounge and Sellwood Public House, a largely millen­nial crowd revisits the pastime they all enjoyed as children, this time with dispos­able income and artisanal beverages. In the Pacific northwest, where it rains a lot and the local beer wins prizes, table tennis has an evolutionary advantage in the natural... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3012297/ping-pong-diplomacy-game-and-players-changed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3012297/ping-pong-diplomacy-game-and-players-changed?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 30 May 2019 14:00:15 +0000 The curious case of The Slants is no ordinary underdog tale of Asian-American identity politics, infinitely nuanced trademark law, heated constitutional wrangling and defiantly catchy rock music. It’s far more complex than that. At first glance, the basic elements of a story that grew exponentially, from a legal formality into an incendiary debate at the Supreme Court of the United States, appear simple enough. Beneath the surface, however, is a rabbit hole of densely interwoven cultural issues... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3002529/slants-asian-american-band-who-took-fight-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3002529/slants-asian-american-band-who-took-fight-their?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Mar 2019 21:00:07 +0000