Magic and AI are mixing to create tricks you won't believe

Arthur C Clarke famously wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic – but magician Tom Webb (also known as Tom London) sees it the other way around. “What people don’t realise is any sufficiently deceptive magic is indistinguishable from technology,” he says. “So with a little bit of magic, you can make people believe that technology is better than it really is.”

Webb, 26, puts technology at the centre of his stage shows. In one of his tricks, he asks an Amazon Echo to guess which playing card a volunteer has picked; another takes the classic “three-card Monte” – a sleight-of-hand trick in which three cards appear to switch places – and performs it using drones. “People aren’t thinking, ‘How did he put it up his sleeve?’” he says. “They’re thinking, ‘How the hell did that drone switch cards without fingers?’”