N° 77 • SEPTEMBER 2026

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EDITORIAL

RISE OF THE MACHINES

IN HIS EDITORIAL IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE PRESS ASSOCIATION’S BULLETIN, BRAD COLES DRAWS ATTENTION TO THE EVER-GROWING THREAT POSED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

He reveals that a recent analysis by the renowned Australian player, writer and bridge bibliophile Tim Bourke has uncovered a list of more than 100 bridge books that are suspected of being written by AI.

He points out that the proliferation of these fake books is a serious threat to the game. It is detrimental to writers and teachers, whose genuine work will get lost in the flood, as well as beginners who abandon bridge after reading books that make the game seem incomprehensible.

METR (Model Evaluation and Threat Research), an independent organisation based in Berkeley, California, evaluates AI models’ capabilities to carry out long-horizon, agentic tasks that some researchers argue could pose catastrophic risks to society. It recently pronounced:

by Mark Horton

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“The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every seven months for the last six years.”

Brad points out that at that rate, the systems we regard as extraordinary today may soon look primitive in the same way that an early mobile phone or iPod does now. 

Anyone who is a fan of the Terminator movie franchise will be aware of the role played by Cyberdyne Systems, which is responsible for the creation of Skynet. The movies explain how humanity’s downfall originates from its own attempts at technological advancement.

In January of this year, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, wrote, “If the exponential continues … it cannot possibly be more than a few years before AI is better than humans at essentially everything.”

Clearly he is not a bridge player!

Cover photo “Courtesy of the Polish Bridge Union, Marek Jarkulisz.”

Number 77 – Monthly – September 2026 – Director of publication Matthieu Jacquier – Publisher Éditions de Presse Spécialisée Le Bridgeur – 33 avenue Emile Zola, 92100 Boulogne Billancourt  – France – Executive Director Karine Meyer-Naudan – Editorial Committee Michel Bessis – Muriel Clément – Philippe Cronier – Mark Horton – Vincent Labbé – Karine Meyer-Naudan – Assistant Editor-in Chief Vincent Labbé – Editorial Secretary Muriel Clément – Adverts Bridgerama+ Muriel Clément 01 42 96 25 50  – Subscriptions 01 42 96 25 50 – Art Director Isabelle Le Squer-Fontaine/Maya –
mayatom@me.com – Translation Monika Kummel – Legal Deposit septemver 2026, N°7.680 – Joint Committee – 1118 K 85690 – ISSN 0184-8127.

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