When I was a mere slip of a lad, growing up in the semi-suburban Home Counties of North London, I knew what a cow looked like but rarely got close enough to one to smell it’s breath. That was until I went away to school in East Anglia, where a number of my mates were farmers’ sons and I spent many happy days, mucking out, driving tractors and helping to deliver calves. It must have been about 1968 that I first heard the term “AI”. I’ve no idea how long it had been around for, but I think the process of Artificial Insemination was a relatively new concept for fertilising cows. Of course since then it’s become a common practise for humans as well as our bovine herds. I believe it’s quite a common practice for lesbian couples amongst others, although I have somewhat limited first hand experience of that.
There is, however, a totally new interpretation of AI; Artificial Intelligence. These innocent sounding words have much more sinister implications than just a bit of tampering with nature. In between listening to “experts” pontificating on the dangers of Covid and how we will probably have to live with it for the rest of our lives, (what, like flu?) I have also been intrigued by other “experts” warning how we have been so brilliant at inventing robots with brains that they might actually become cleverer than us and…….
It’s the stuff of Hollywood science fiction. The good guys dressed in white help us to do wonderful things, then somehow one goes bad and we have regiments of bad guys in black taking over the world. The trouble is, it seems it’s no longer fiction. The boffins are becoming seriously worried that the artificial brains they are building might prove to be far too clever for us and in an Animal Farm like takeover they will become the masters and we the slaves; that’s if we’re lucky/unlucky enough to be allowed to live. How ironic it would be, if after all this breast-beating and history incinerating over slavery, we end up as slaves ourselves. I take some comfort in the knowledge that unless workable cryogenics arrive somewhat earlier than predicted, I won’t have to worry about it too much, but I do fear for my children.
Purely by chance, as I write this, I have the headphones on listening to the fantastic Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the angelic voice of Scandinavian singing sensation Sissel. (More precisely she’s Norwegian, but I liked the alliteration!). She is performing that beautiful salutation to the Almighty, “How Great Thou Art”. The Saviour of which they sing might well be needed rather sooner than he’d planned on. Although come to think of it, if he/she/it/they really is omnipotent then they would have anticipated all this anyway. I think I’m in danger of disappearing up my own backside here. (Avoiding the coffee grains hopefully!)
Harking back to those halcyon days of my youth, the revered establishments of learning almost universally put the ‘place’ before University; i.e. you went to Cambridge University, or Oxford or Durham or London or, heaven forbid, Nottingham University. However, there’s always been that occasional intellectual snobbishness that inverts the appellation; The University of Cambridge. It was quite effective when used occasionally to emphasise that this is truly a stalwart of academe, a noble institution where the elite gathered to further the cause of mankind. It’s a shame, but now it seems to have become the norm for every two bit former polytechnic to be “The University of….”.
How long I wonder before the Dons are all robots with heads the size of giant pumpkins?
ADayInTheStrifeOf 