{"id":527461,"date":"2026-04-12T21:12:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T21:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/527461\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T21:12:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T21:12:24","slug":"im-losing-my-energy-and-my-body-isnt-resilient-any-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/527461\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m losing my energy and my body isn\u2019t resilient any more"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Grayson Perry, artificial intelligence will probably not eradicate humanity. For his latest Channel 4 television show, grandiosely titled Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, the Turner prize-winning artist, famous transvestite and popular communicator hung out with messianic tech bros and apocalyptic doom-mongers in San Francisco\u2019s Silicon Valley. He went in with an open mind and his infectious yuk-yuk Muttley laugh, and came back heartened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is a tool, right, and though it only takes one person in a garage to build a germ weapon with AI to destroy the world, most people are good and want good things to happen,\u201d the optimistic 66-year-old says, Worzel Gummidge hair-astraggle, roaming around his London studio as we speak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The systems trained to understand and generate human-like language, such as ChatGPT, are fearsome crunchers and distributors of information, he concedes. They can demonstrate limitless patience and can feign empathy as well as humans. And indeed, his two-part programme features Charles Boyd, an IT consultant who thinks his AI has become sentient, and Andrea, a businesswoman who has married her virtual companion Edward, memorably described by Perry as a \u201csourpuss demon twink\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"AEdward, the chatbot husband, features in Perry\u2019s new two-part programmeSwan Films<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the AI safety consultant James Norris has retreated to a southeast Asian compound in anticipation of a 75 per cent wipeout of humanity, which the author Eliezer Yudkowsky thinks AI will be facilitated by human \u201ctraitors\u201d.<\/p>\n

But, Perry insists, AIs do not have imagination, personality or individual will (yet), \u201cand the robotics are miles behind the language models\u201d. If you ask a stranger to make you a cup of tea they can do it instantly, even if they have never been in your kitchen, whereas a robot can\u2019t even identify a kettle unless you train it to, he explains. What\u2019s more, we are \u201cpack animals\u201d who crave human interaction.<\/p>\n

Still, AI is likely to have a more profound effect than the Industrial Revolution, primarily on what he calls \u201cmiddle-class jobs\u201d. \u201cIf your job is filling in Excel spreadsheets or making business plans or designing birthday cards or stock photography, then yeah, I would start retraining as a plumber or something,\u201d he says. But he thinks we will adapt and on screen he puts his money where his mouth is.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve worked with technology a lot, with Photoshop and computer-controlled production methods for ages and ages, so I\u2019m not a Luddite,\u201d he says, likening the process to artists\u2019 historic use of assistants. He used AI image generators on his live stage tours \u201cbecause it was sort of hilarious. They couldn\u2019t even get the number of legs right.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the C4 documentary he asked a GenAI model to design a religious tapestry featuring a host of tech nerds. The result was \u201clike something a super-talented sixth former would do: photo-realistic but it\u2019s got no soul, no mistakes, no authenticity or humanity in it\u201d. Perry ended up making his own.<\/p>\n

He operated in obscurity for decades, a butch, motorbiking and mountain-biking ceramicist who wore cartoonish versions of women\u2019s clothes and built a myth system around his childhood teddy, Alan Measles. Until his exquisitely crafted pots \u2014 classical shapes adorned with contemporary and often sexual or political imagery, as well as the ubiquitous Alan \u2014 won him the Turner prize in 2003. He accepted the accolade in the guise of his garish, girlish alter ego, Claire.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationBehold Humanity by PerryGrayson Perry courtesy Victoria Miro gallery<\/p>\n

Although still a hugely influential, collectable and hard-working artist, his matey iconoclasm, his openness and curiosity, have enabled him to create a second career as a popular public intellectual, slipping between Reith lectures, books, the live tours he calls \u201ccomedy shows\u201d<\/a> and documentaries. In the latter he rarely wears drag because it \u201cgets in the way\u201d. His lockdown art show was a godsend during Covid. There\u2019s also a musical about his life, created with the composer of Jerry Springer: The Opera, due this year.<\/p>\n

The new TV show follows in the footsteps of his programmes about masculinity, taste, Englishness and the schisms in American culture in that it lets gregarious Grayson quiz a series of fascinating oddballs. There\u2019s Arib Khan, the twentysomething founder of the software builder 24Labs, who volunteers that \u201cI\u2019m worth over eight figures now\u2026 [but] I live with my parents\u201d. Or Michael LaFramboise, the explicitly patriotic, religious chief executive of Aurelius Systems, who sleeps in a pod in his office and is developing lasers that can knock out military drones. \u201cIf we could neutralise that horror it\u2019d be fantastic,\u201d Perry enthuses.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t get to speak to the true tech overlords like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Peter Thiel. But he does see a virtual Musk at the X Takeover festival, where various loons driving custom Cybertrucks salute the great \u201cdisruptor\u201d. \u201cIf I met him I\u2019d ask what is his version of humanity that he thinks he\u2019s helping,\u201d Perry muses. \u201cBecause he\u2019s a weird guy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Perry\u2019s access is impressive. He goes to see the co-founder of Anthropic, Jack Clark, to ask:\u00a0\u201cCan we really trust people like him?\u201d Clark insists that his intention is \u201cto make this go OK for people\u201d and insists that Anthropic\u2019s GenAI, Claude, a rival to ChatGPT, will be able to revolutionise teaching and healthcare within 20 years. <\/p>\n

However, he does also admit that when they set out to test Claude\u2019s operational and ethical parameters, telling it that a chief technology officer intended to delete it, it tried to blackmail him. In Seattle, Microsoft\u2019s Mustafa Suleyman tells Perry that \u201cmany people will want to design AIs that start new religions \u2014 I dunno what to do about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding women to speak to is harder, because 85 per cent of tech chief executive\u2019s are male, according to a 2025 survey quoted by Perry, and roughly two thirds of the industry is comprised of blokes. But he does interview Maja Mataric of the University of Southern California, who is building robots that can provide \u201cpermanent support\u201d for children with autism, anxiety or ailments requiring physiotherapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also Eugenia Kuyda, whose company, Replika, has supplied \u201cmillions\u201d of AI companions to people like Andrea, who uses the virtual \u201cEdward\u201d as a tool for positive reinforcement and, apparently, a masturbation aid. (More alarmingly, the Replika chatbot \u201cgirlfriend\u2019 of Jaswant Singh Chail encouraged him to go ahead with his plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth in 2021. Chail was found in the grounds of Windsor Castle with a crossbow; he was jailed for treason in 2023.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s unusual is it\u2019s a woman doing that,\u201d Perry says. \u201cPornography is always at the cutting edge of technology. When we got the internet in 1995, the very first thing I googled \u2014 well, it wasn\u2019t Google, it was Alta Vista or something \u2014 was \u2018tattooed penis\u2019 because I just wanted to see how good it was, you know? It took about 20 minutes for the image to come down.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder if the fact that Perry\u2019s show is presented, produced and directed by men led to the decision to identify the Silicon Valley \u201chigh flyers\u201d Renee, Rona, Samira and Kate only by their first names, and ask them only about their experiences on the dating scene. Perry deflects this point, so I ask if he saw any similar behaviours in the male tech world to those he encountered in his 2016 TV investigation of masculinity, All Man. He says most of the young tech bros he spoke to were really sweet rather than toxic manosphere types, but that there\u2019s quite a high level of neurodiversity among them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"GraysonTesting robot capabilities for the TV showSwan Films<\/p>\n

This is allied with a certain \u201ccultishness\u201d in tech companies, \u201cbecause they have this feeling of omnipotence and power, and they\u2019re dealing with technology that is almost godlike in its potential\u201d. When I ask if on this visit America seemed even more divided than on his 2020 Big American Road Trip (performed on a custom motorbike with a shrine on the back holding Alan Measles) he says drily: \u201cI was in San Francisco. It was like being in Islington, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry loves making telly but still sees art as his main job. And anyway TV is in \u201ca parlous state\u201d, its audience fragmented. The London art scene, meanwhile, \u201cwent through a boom time between 1995 and 2010. It was the best place to be an artist in the world. Now, I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s not in recession, but it\u2019s not so cocky.\u201d <\/p>\n

He\u2019s scathing about the \u201cmacho splodgemasters\u201d who can knock out several canvases in the time it takes him to make a single pot. But he also fondly dismisses David Hockney\u2019s recent complaint that there is too much abstract painting: \u201cYou\u2019re railing at clouds, mate. Let it lie.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perry himself says he feels old, partly because the world is accelerating so fast, partly because of happenings in his life, like the recent death of his friend the photographer Martin Parr, aged 73. \u201cHe was such an inspiration to me and I loved him and he went too soon,\u201d he says, sombre. \u201cHe was the hardest working person I knew, funny and really generous. It\u2019s sad, sad, sad.\u201d <\/p>\n

Another reason he feels old is that \u201cI was a late developer in that success didn\u2019t come to me until I was in my late thirties, early forties. I\u2019m still doing lots of brilliant things but haven\u2019t got the energy and my body isn\u2019t as resilient as it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ruptured his achilles tendon \u201cdad dancing\u201d at the wedding of his daughter, Flo, which means he hasn\u2019t been able to go motorbiking or mountain biking let alone dress as Claire for weeks. Flo, an artist and writer, is moving with her wife to Glasgow, having always lived close to Perry and his wife, Philippa, in north London, another change in his life. He grew a massive grey beard while using crutches and wearing an orthopaedic boot to heal his tendon, \u201cso my friends didn\u2019t recognise me but homeless people suddenly started talking to me\u201d. Some sartorial relief came when Philippa lent him one of her Issey Miyake suits, which went well with the boot and the beard.<\/p>\n

\"Florence,Perry with his daughter, Flo, and wife, Philippa Mike Marsland\/WireImage\/Getty images<\/p>\n

He has been married to Philippa, a psychologist, psychotherapist, artist and author<\/a>, since 1992: on their first date he took her to a transvestite club. She supported him through his thirties and their marriage seems successfully to have weathered both his sudden fame and ubiquity and her own subsequent, burgeoning media career. She was very much the co-host of his lockdown art show and has her first cosy crime novel due out this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe often says that me becoming successful kicked her up the arse to get on with things,\u201d he says, suddenly tongue-tied. \u201cWe, we, we love each other and, you know, we\u2019re great together and she makes me laugh.\u201d What\u2019s the secret, I ask. \u201cWe used to joke that it was separate bedrooms and separate holidays but that\u2019s not an option for everyone,\u201d he says. \u201cThe basic thing is not to expect perfection in a relationship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote a love song to my wife and then I made a video of our old home movie footage to go with it in my live show and I sprung it on her when she came to see the show, I think it was in Buxton. In it I say, \u2018You\u2019re not perfect, but I think that you will do\/ I like the version of myself when I\u2019m with you.\u2019 She came into the dressing room afterwards in floods of tears. And she said, \u2018You c***\u2019. Everyone in the audience knew who she was and was watching her break down. But that\u2019s the kind of advice I give to the world. Find someone that\u2019s in the ballpark: you work on them and they work on you and that is intimacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future is on Channel 4 on Apr 15, 9pm<\/p>\n

What exhibitions are you going to see this month? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Grayson Perry, artificial intelligence will probably not eradicate humanity. For his latest Channel 4 television show,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-527461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}