I Am Imagining That One Can Pronounce "A.I." As "Aye"
What's going on here? Hmmmmm well, probably an insidious and sinister encroachment upon human society and civilisation, by the untrammelled forces of Artificial Intelligence, usually abbreviated to "A.I."
No, we are not talking about the Spielberg film, but that does allow me to add in a picture of same as click-bait. Art!
No, you see an ex-colleague, Gary, was lamenting on Facebook about the unregulated adoption of AI and how it had the potential to render 95% of all workers unemployed. He cited the example of Ocado and their 'Hive' warehouse at Erith in London. Well, they lose 5,000 brownie points for allowing a nickname like that to promulgate. Art!
The statistics are revealing - 2,000 of those robots above work for 20 hours a day and pick 2,000,000 food items; whereas puny humans could only achieve 400,000. The chilling words "powered by an algorithm" turn up in descriptions of how the robots function and are organised. This reflects on the vulnerability of a tranche of low-skilled occupations that are highly vulnerable to being made redundant by a software algorithm, a set of microchips, some wheels and a multi-jointed arm. Art!
It's not that obvious from the first shot, but the food items are stored in boxes on the floor, and the robots use the grid of rails to get to the right box and remove the correct number of items.
Robotic manufacturing systems have been in use for decades; take a look at car manufacturers to see how thoroughly integrated these technologies are, and then look at a British Leyland production line in 1972. Art!
Covid brought the concept of a cashless society one step closer to fruition; when Your Humble Scribe left Sainsbo's they were trialling a store in London that only accepted cashless payment via phone apps, and this is the wave of the future. Fittingly, because he wrote the short story that "A.I." is based upon, sci-fi author Brian Aldiss in one story mentioned the health benefits of a cashless society, where 'Filthy lucre', as cash money was nicknamed, was extinct. Indeed, the last time Conrad used cash was a couple of weeks ago at the market stall in Lesser Sodom. Art!
Whilst on the subject of sci-fi authors, Conrad remembers the outline of the above, where one of the main characters takes refuge aboard an asteroid engineered to be habitable. One portion is screened off from all outside access, and there is speculation as to what's on the other side; human beings? Hideous cyborg freaks? Aliens?
Philip Kendred Dick
You know who'd get a kick out of all this? The chap above. His worry about the robots taking over, as he put it, was not that some enormous robotic monster would go rampaging down Main Street. Instead, when you came to brown a breakfast bagel in the morning, the toaster would inform you "Okay. This is how it's going to be from now on." So we're looking at a sly death by a few million cuts, none of them distinguishable alone yet devastating en masse. It's interesting to speculate what 2033 will look like as compared to today.
The really worrying thing will be if a bunch of researchers decide to use AI to design a better AI, and that AI - without being told to do so - decides to create an even better AI, which in turn -
And at that point the only thing that can save Hom. Sap. is Grey Goo.
Of course, I could be overthinking this ...
O Delicious Schadenfreude!
Hmmmm Conrad caught the 84 into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell this morning, and it was obvious that a few previous buses hadn't turned up as there were rugby teams getting on at most stops. In fact, by the time we got to here - Art!
- abutting the Central Parc tram stop, the bus was 1) Rammed and 2) Fifteen minutes late.
So, the driver simply drove past the rest of the bus stops on the way into Manchester, completely ignoring the waiting passengers. He drove past one stop with a couple of angrily gesticulating lads, who then saw the bus stuck temporarily in traffic and sprinted down to the next stop. Nice try, lads, as the driver drove right past that stop, too.
Conrad got into the office with 15 minutes to spare, so he thoroughly approved. Tee hee!
You Don't See One Of These Every Day
One of the reasons I got in with 15 minutes to spare and not 5 is because I got off at the first stop on Oldham Street, rather than riding the bus all the way to Piccadilly Gardens, as it has to wait at two separate sets of traffic lights, and then you have to fight your way off in the debussing scrum.
Thus I hied me hence down Thomas Street, which is pedestrianised for part of it's length, and spotted this. Art!
 |
| Ignore the thumb! Ignore the thumb! |
Conrad's not sure what you do with recovered cooking oil. Can you filter and strain it and re-use it? Refine it and fuel trucks with it? Use it as a base for cosmetics? Enquiring minds want to know.
"The Sea Of Sand"
Things are winding down to a dramatic conclusion, if you can mix metaphors like that.
The Sahariana mounting the
flamethrower and a black tank were locked together, burning furiously. The Sahariana had been partly shattered, the
black tank split open and roasted by and flames. Fragments of glass, metal and wood lay on the
desert sands. No tracks from survivors
led away from either vehicle.
Dominione
clenched his fists alternately and muttered curses about Torrevechio’s end in
an undertone, spitting onto the desert sands.
‘Not
another one of us dead!’ said Sarah, the shock and horror in her tone manifest
without any need for translation.
Tenente Dominione turned in his seat to look at her with a wondering
expression.
‘Human
feeling for human loss, Tenente,’ commented the Doctor, an undertone of iron in
his voice.
Dominione
brought the Sahariana to a halt, reaching for a pair of Austrian binoculars
under his seat. He focussed carefully,
seeing a black tank racing back across the desert, way to the south of Mersah
Martuba, returning to the dig at Makin Al-Jinni.
‘This
is strange, Dottore. Another of the
monster’s vehicle’s is heading east.
They must be trying to get back home.’
That
left the second vehicle unaccounted for.
All five in the Sahariana realised that much.
Attrition at work.
Finally -
It would be BOOJUM! without tweaking the tail of the Gremlin In The Kremlin, would it? He's probably sulking on his gold toilet at how everybody laughed at his faintly pathetic Victory Parade, all the more as there were no Victories to go Parading about.
Here's a few financial figures to finagle with.
South Canadian Universities And Their Funds
Harvard University: $50 billion
Yale University: $41 billion
Stanford University: $36 billion
Princeton University: $35 billion
Total Ruffian budget for Higher Education: $8 billion
That is, it was $8 billion before the economy started to collapse; by now who knows how low it's fallen, because it will have been cut back to allow more defence and security spending. No wonder the educated and skilled Ruffians departed over a year ago.
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