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As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

I wrote my first science book when I was 5. I decided the world needed to know about horses and that, as I had once seen a horse in real life, I was uniquely qualified to write about them.

Your book is about why AI is making the world weirder. What do you mean?

AIs sometimes do things that reveal how very different they are from human-level intelligences, like when they delete a list of numbers instead of sorting it because their job was technically to eliminate sorting errors. Or when they mistake a photo of a house for a photo of a giraffe. Because a lot of science fiction AIs are humanlike, we tend to forget that what we have today is a lot simpler. It doesn鈥檛 have the understanding that we have, so it鈥檒l do weird things.

You are known for giving AIs unusual things to learn about, with amusing results. Can you give us an example?

One of my favourite experiments is to have AIs try to imitate recipes. They鈥檒l get the overall title-ingredients-directions format correct, but they tend to lose track of what the ingredients are, or they鈥檒l ask for things like chopped flour and peeled rosemary and shredded bourbon. It becomes pretty clear that they don鈥檛 understand that the recipe refers to things that you do to real ingredients.

鈥淲hen AIs try to imitate recipes, they will ask for things like chopped flour and peeled rosemary鈥�

Has your field of study changed in the time you have been working in it?

One of the tricky things about writing a book on the state of today鈥檚 AI is how quickly things are changing. When I started writing the book in 2017, state-of-the-art algorithms could barely generate complete sentences. Now, they鈥檙e generating readable articles, even if the articles don鈥檛 make much sense. I had to stick to what鈥檚 been true about AI for a long time.

What achievement are you most proud of?

I鈥檓 always proud when people read my work and say they鈥檙e no longer afraid of an AI takeover. I鈥檓 also tickled when people say they laughed so hard they made people stare.

What scientific development do you hope to see in your lifetime?

I鈥檓 really looking forward to the first major film to use AI-generated imagery. AIs tend to generate pictures that have lushly realistic textures but completely weird geometry, so you鈥檒l get melting clocks with multiple hands and illegible writing, or cars with lots of mismatched wheels. As AI tools get more powerful and easier to use, I鈥檓 excited to see what artists will do with them.

Do you have an unexpected hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it?

I play the Irish flute, and it was interesting to look at some of the Irish tunes generated with AI. Some are weird but others could have been written by humans. Yet nobody plays the AI music, and I think that鈥檚 because the point is the history of the tunes and their social context. It鈥檚 a glimpse of the role AI-generated music will have in the future. It might be useful for background music, but it won鈥檛 replace the music we listen to.

You say AIs tend to spot a lot of giraffes in pictures. What鈥檚 that about?

People take way more pictures of giraffes than they do of boring rocks or bushes. As a result, AIs seem to have learned that giraffes are everywhere. If they鈥檙e not sure what鈥檚 in a picture 鈥� and they do get confused a lot 鈥� they鈥檒l often guess 鈥済iraffe鈥�.

What鈥檚 the best thing you鈥檝e read or seen in the past 12 months?

I really enjoyed Exhalation, Ted Chiang鈥檚 latest collection of science fiction stories. There鈥檚 a story in there, 鈥淭he Lifecycle of Software Objects鈥�, that explores the moral dilemmas around creating 鈥� and therefore being responsible for 鈥� sentient AI.

How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?

I don鈥檛 have many build-it-from-sticks-and-stones kinds of skills. But at least people will always need music and stories.

OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds鈥�

Someone once trained a neural net to place bets on horse races. Its winning strategy? To place zero bets.