Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Jane Goodall and the chimp wars
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/10/2025
» Jane Goodall died last week, still on the road at the age of 91 and still advocating for biodiversity in general and the welfare of chimpanzees in particular. She was a hero to me and millions of others for her courage, her wisdom and her compassion. She was also one of the greatest self-taught scientists in history.
Here's a taste of things to come in the US
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/10/2025
» 'Predictions are hard, especially about the future' (Danish proverb), but still we make them, especially when we care about the future. Here are some about the future of the United States in the next three and a bit years, expressed as probabilities, although you should not trust the numbers.
So what exactly is Macron's strategy, then?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/06/2024
» Even before the final results were in from all of the 27 European Union countries that voted in the EU elections last weekend, President Emmanuel Macron had called national elections in France for the end of this month. What does he know that other European leaders don't?
ICJ's efforts to build rule of law must continue
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/01/2024
» Israel's defence minister, Yoav Gallant, dismissed the ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip with the words "Hague Schmague". US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was equally dismissive, saying that the case brought before the ICJ by South Africa was "meritless".
Have we passed the point of no return with AI?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/06/2023
» 'Sometimes I think it's as if aliens have landed and people haven't realised because they speak very good English," said Geoffrey Hinton, the 'godfather of AI' (Artificial Intelligence), who resigned from Google and now fears his godchildren will become "things more intelligent than us, taking control".
Israel pogroms reflect nation's shift to right
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/03/2023
» The dictionary definition of "pogrom" is "an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." So, there is something deeply strange about hearing pogrom used in Hebrew to describe what some Jewish people are doing to Arabs in 21st-century Israel.
COP26: Mixed bag of hope, despair
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/11/2021
» It's not too early to assess the success or failure of COP26, the climate summit that began in Glasgow on Oct 31. The first week, while the heads of state are there, is when all the big promises are announced; the second week is devoted to haggling over the details of the deals. So we already know that it hasn't been an absolute failure.
Sept 11 didn't change the world forever
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/09/2021
» 'Changed the world forever' is the most hackneyed phrase in journalism, and if you can get through this week (the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks) without hearing it half a dozen times you'll be very lucky.
Are we ready for the first real automatons?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/01/2021
» They were planning to put on a play written by an artificial intelligence programme in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic, this month, to mark the invention of robots (or at least the idea of robots) in the same city exactly one hundred years ago. The coronavirus pandemic got in the way of that, and it will now only be available free online late next month. Kind of symbolic, really: the future is quite different than what they expected.
China, climate and the blame game
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/09/2020
» China took a major stride forward on climate on Tuesday. President Xi Jinping, addressing the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, for the first time committed China to a hard target for future greenhouse gas emissions.