Book Launch: Realistic and Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence - 18th June 2026

 

Maggi and her son Zak are launching their new book on the Realistic and Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence at Blackfriars Hall in Oxford on 18th June 2026. As well as David and Maggi speakers will also include Kester Brewin is Associate Director at the Institute for the Future of Work, Professor Sarah Hayes from the University of Bath Spa and Dr Elaine Kasket, an expert on technology’s role within our work, individual psychology, and relationships.

If you're in, or can get to, Oxford, we'd love to see you there. 

IK2026: Bridging Realities - Brains, Language and Technology

 

Maggi and David are both at the IK2026 Interdisciplinary College by the Mohnesee in Germany this week. IK2026 explores the dynamic intersection of brains, language, and technology, where reality and fiction increasingly overlap and inform one another. This is being approached through three interconnected focus areas:

• Immersive Interfaces
• Language and Intelligent Agents
• Societies and Blurred Realities

Maggi is part of the 3-person leadership team for the event and David is delivering a 4 lecture course on virtual humans, the metaverse and the accidental digital immortal.

Chatbots and Conversational AI: Past, Present and Future

 

This White Paper grew a bit as a wrote it, but it is essentially an update to my Virtual Humans book, covering and bringing together things I've learnt and thought and talked about since then, and also reflecting that we're now in the era of LLMs. 

Click here to download a free copy!

August 2025 - Metaverse News and Links

 

Couple of interesting posts in the Guardian (and other media) this month:

- Digital resurrection: fascination and fear over the rise of the deathbot - https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/aug/10/artificial-intellligence-avatar-death-grief-digital-resurrection-fascination-deathbot

Deathbot seems an even more perjorative term than griefbot! What interests me though is what the bot means for the person making it more than what it means for those left behind. I'm writing something long form on this but looking the for the best way to publish it in due course.

- It’s missing something’: AGI, superintelligence and a race for the future -https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/09/its-missing-something-agi-superintelligence-and-a-race-for-the-future

In which it's reported that "Google’s AI unit on Tuesday outlined its next step to AGI by announcing an unreleased model that trains AIs to interact with a convincing simulation of the real world". Whilst it's not clear if this is real embodiment as we've described in Virtual Humans it's certainly a recognition of the greater issue that an AGI needs to exist in a "place" in order to gain all the awareness that AGI may need.

- Can an AI chatbot of Dr Karl change climate sceptics’ minds? He’s willing to give it a try - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/11/digital-dr-karl-kruszelnickic-ai-chatbot

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki is dealing with 100s of questions about climate change so is making a Digital Dr Karl. It is trained on 40,000 PDFs.