In the seven febrile years since, less so. And the third was his insistence that in important ways, artificial intelligence posed a more imminent threat to the survival of our species than, say, climate crisis or pandemics or nuclear war.Īt the time, that idea seemed to me inflected with too many outlandish tropes from science fiction. The second was that the germophobic Bostrom was the first interviewee I’d met who insisted on fist bumps rather than handshakes (the shape of things to come). The first was that when I arrived a bed was being delivered to the institute, cementing the belief that anxiety about impending catastrophe was, these days, a 24/7 kind of occupation. If I think about that encounter, I remember three things. Bostrom’s institute, which sought to weigh the apocalyptic potential of various humanity-threatening forces, had just been given a £1m grant by Elon Musk. The book outlined the existential risk to democracy and humanity implied by advances in machine learning. It's a worrying sign to some, not just because the Chinese economy is one of the biggest risks for the global outlook, but it continues a trend of decoupling from the West.Back in 2016, a month before the EU referendum, I went along to the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford to interview its director, the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom, who had just written a book called Superintelligence. Not China's though, with President Xi Jinping choosing to sit this one out. German industrial production figures are due today, with the euro bloc's giant threatening to slip back into recession.įederal Reserve officials will be speaking en masse at a fintech conference hosted by the Philly Fed, before they soon enter the blackout period on public comments heading toward their own policy meeting.Īnd let us not forget the G-20 meetings kicking off in India that will offer more chances to read the economic tea leaves. Traders have preferred to trust the data over protestations from ECB officials that the tightening cycle may not be over ahead of next week's policy meeting. It's staying close to Wednesday's three-month top to the euro as well. The dollar continues to overpower all its rivals, popping to a new 10-month peak versus the yen, despite Japanese finance ministry warnings. Steadfast efforts by China's central bank to prop up a drooping yuan by setting stronger-than-consensus official midpoints haven't prevented the currency from hovering on the weaker side of the closely watched 7.3 per dollar line. Investors weren't in the mood for any glass-half-full interpretations of Chinese trade data either, which were dreary but not as dire as economists had predicted. Markets in China and Australia took another steep step down.
data is showing a flare-up in inflationary pressures, just as markets had become comfortable with the idea of a Goldilocks scenario replete with soft landings and less hot labour markets.Įven ultra-resilient Japanese stocks seem to have finally succumbed, with the Nikkei threatening to snap an eight-day winning streak. The dominating theme in global financial markets is once again central bank policy, and equity investors in particular are worried. A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Kevin Buckland
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