In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! Thanks to those who sent in their questions for AI expert Ronee Hulk, whose book was reviewed here in yesterday’s edition.

It’s not too late to send yours: just hit reply to this email (or, indeed, any Early Line) and your email will come straight to your inbox.

The issues around artificial intelligence have drawn strong responses from some readers: two got in touch to express their strong dislike of the entire subject area, saying they didn’t want to be caught up in what they think is “hype”.

As you might have guessed, I don’t think it’s only hype: the evidence is that AI is here to stay, and will soon shape the world in which we will have to live. Today, I highlight two viral essays which will help you understand the debate about where it’s all going.

And yes, I’ll continue do my level best to avoid the hype.

Best, NM

📣 Scotland’s top law officer has denied being “corrupt” or handing First Minister John Swinney a political advantage by briefing him on the criminal case against Nicola Sturgeon's estranged husband, and says she will not resign.

Dorothy Bain, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, is head of Scotland’s prosecution service as well as being a member of the Scottish Government.

She was summoned to face questions from MSPs in the Scottish Parliament last night following the revelation she had written to the First Minister last month with details of the charge against Peter Murrell.

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said she was supposed to be politically neutral, but “any remnants of that neutrality are in ruins”. Bain insisted her January 19 email to Swinney was standard practice. (Daily Record) (Mail) (BBC)

📣 Tech firms have been given 48 hours to remove obscene deepfakes and “revenge” images from their platforms - or risk being blocked and heavily fined in the UK.

“The burden of tackling abuse must no longer fall on victims,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer writes in the Guardian. “It must fall on perpetrators and on the companies that enable harm.” (Guardian)

📣 The US is ready to strike Iran, but President Donald Trump has yet to make a decision to do so: not since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has the region seen such a concentration of US airpower. (WSJ)

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📣 The Guardian offers its view on Scotland’s homelessness crisis: perhaps, it says, we should take a leaf from Vienna’s book: it used public housing – “built at scale and sustained over decades” – to shape the housing market rather than serve only as a safety net. (Guardian)

📣 What’s driving Scotland’s “silver vote” - vital in the Holyrood elections? The NHS, housing, rising living costs and immigration are among the top concerns of older voters. (STV)

📣 The “uppies” and the “downies” do battle today in Jedburgh in the “hand ba” game that’s been played there since 1704. Windows on the town’s High Street are being boarded up in preparation. (BBC)

📣 The Gorton and Denton by-election takes place a week today, and will be the UK's first crucial vote of the year. In the constituency, there are clues to suggest the electorate is fragmenting. (Sky News)

📣 Donald Trump has warned Keir Starmer is making “big mistake” with the Chagos Islands deal, sparking fresh speculation that Starmer may be forced to U-turn on the deal. (Independent)

📣 The death toll in Gaza was far higher than first thought, according to new analysis published in The Lancet: it says more than 75,000 were killed in the first 16 months of conflict, 25,000 more than thought at the time. (Guardian)

⚽️ Scottish Cup-holders Aberdeen beat Motherwell 2-0 in a tumultuous tie at Pittodrie in which three players - two from Motherwell, one for Aberdeen - were handed red cards. Both the visitors’ reds looked very harsh. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Martin O’Neill celebrates a remarkable 1,000 games as a manager tonight, as his Celtic side takes on Stuttgart. (Mail)

🥌 Team GB's Winter Olympics curling medal hopes are still alive in both the men’s and women’s events, after a day of drama in Cortina. (BBC)

⚽️ Are Arsenal bottling their title chances? They let lowly Wolves come back from two goals down to earn a draw - and lose the chance to extend their lead over Manchester City. (Guardian)

🗣️ A friend sent me a link last week, appended with the question: “Have you seen this? Do you think it’s true?” The link was to an essay by a guy named Matt Shumer titled "Something Big Is Happening." It was in the process of going wildly viral across the internet, and it was easy to see why.

It’s an easily digestible summary of where one author thinks artificial intelligence is taking us. It shares some characteristics with the book we delved more deeply into yesterday: Ronee Hulk’s Dear Future: You Can Keep the Change: it paints a scary picture of the speed of progress of AI development, makes some dramatic predictions about where it’s all going, and offers some suggestions as to how to ride the wave.

Shumer’s essay gained attention, I suspect, for its opening premise, likening this moment in AI development to those carefree weeks before Covid arrived in early 2020.

“The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips,” he writes.

“Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. Your office closed, your kids came home, and life rearranged itself into something you wouldn't have believed if you'd described it to yourself a month earlier.

“I think we're in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid,” he concludes.

Got your attention, right?

In the Guardian, Dan Milmo and Aisha Down have written a relatively cool analysis of the essay’s main points. They point out Shumer’s track record of over-hyping AI technology. They question how many of the massive bets being made on AI will pay off.

(They don’t add, but I will, that AI’s first world-upending act may not be automating millions of white-collar jobs, but provoking the stock market crash that wipes some of those jobs out).

Everyone is still searching for signs. In that Guardian analysis, Greg Thwaites - an associate professor at the University of Nottingham - says evidence of a tangible AI jobs impact on large western economies is “quite ambiguous so far”.

He adds: “The idea that there are going to be bands of unemployed lawyers and accountants roaming around London within a few years seems like a stretch to me.”

Other viral essays are doing the rounds. Amy Tam is an investor at Bloomberg, deciding which very early-stage tech companies to back. She’s written The Cost of Staying, which, in just the last 48 hours or so, has been read more than 20 million times. It talks about how technologists should plan their next move amid the AI tumult.

“A year ago, you could sit in a comfortable seat and deliberate,” she writes. “The cost of waiting was low because the divergence was slow. That’s no longer true. The tools are compounding.

“The difference between someone who moved six months ago and someone still weighing their options is already compounding.”

Get going, then.

The direct relevance of this essay to all of us, not working in Silicon Valley, might be quite limited. But, just as when investing it’s sometimes helpful to understand where investment professionals are stashing their private cash, it can be interesting to see how IT professionals are planning their careers.

And what the essay describes is an industry going through change that might be - in the abstract - quite familiar to, say, people working in the media industry: an old world, with its old ways of working, clearly on its way out, and a new world that’s hazy, speculative, but probably forms the outline of a future.

As that outline takes shape, we should probably all be paying attention, and attempting to relate it to - and figure out its impact on - our own lives, policies and businesses. Just in case it really is “something big”.

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