Evening of Artificial Intelligence
IN MÜNCHEN steht ein Hofbräuhaus:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa!
Da läuft so manches Fäßchen aus:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa!
I FIND myself at the German Club in Westville. But our purpose is not the more traditional Munich one of beer, to the lilt of traditional lyrics.
I am in the company of the lovely Wanda Hennig, food critic and connoisseur and also a member of a select circle known as Durban's Critical Thinkers.
Topic of the evening: AI (Artificial Intelligence). This is a weighty one.
I find myself sitting beside a fellow who turns out to be the main speaker, kicking things off. Adrian Naidu has with him a 22-page illustrated dossier which tells you just about all you could wish to know about AI: its origins, its development, its replication of the human brain, the way neurons communicate with one another … etc.
It's powerful stuff. Is Adrian a professor of mathematics? A neurosurgeon perhaps? But no, he eventually tells me he's just a “practitioner” in
AI. He uses it in his work every day.
Then discussion is thrown open to the floor. Oh boy, this is quite something. Salvo after salvo from the Critical Thinkers, much of it in humorous vein, but with everyone apparently agreeing that AI is here to stay but the eventual outcome remains to be seen.
(Is this not a little concerning?) I follow the discussion with some difficulty, being unfamiliar with the concepts involved.
I decide to withhold my own observation that cellphones were better and more useful 10 years ago, before we lost control and AI took over and introduced what seems to me like gibberish. That, I sensed, would have provoked only scorn. I held my peace.
But, in context, I recall an incident a year or so ago when an AIfundi (a delightful fellow from New Zealand) was in Durban and organised for AI to write the Idler column for me. (We notified readers of this experiment). Was it a success?
Well, yes and no. It came out smooth as treacle, but something seemed to be lacking.
My colleagues unkindly said it lacked the quality of nuttiness that has been the Idler tradition of many, many years.
They said AI aims high, it doesn't seek descent into ridiculousness. But I think the swines were just trying to get at me.
Back to the German Club and the Critical Thinkers. 'Twas an entertaining and amusing evening. But somehow I still look forward to Oktoberfest and other such occasions.
Abominable Snowman
AND now a limerick explores the mystery of the Abominable Snowman.
BY Loch Ness they can toss, like confetti,
The proof that they'e snapped from the jetty. Abominable snowmen? Apparently no men
Have ever quite filmed them, as yeti.
Tailpiece
HUSBAND to wife: “Do you know Old McDonald's Farm has been taken over by Artificial Intelligence?” She: “AI?”
He: “AI”.
She: “Oh.”
Last word
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience. – Bill Watterson