No boss will pay for a clumsy human to do a job if AI can do it better
POLITICIANS, boffins and business leaders met up this week to discuss the global threat posed by artificial intelligence.
And so far as I can tell, they decided all will be well if the new technology is fitted with an “off” switch.
I think that’d work. It certainly does with my vacuum cleaner.
Until recently I’d never been all that worried about AI, because even though scientists have been talking about it for decades, we haven’t even got to a point where a robot can make a cup of tea or fetch my slippers.
A couple of years back Honda said it was getting somewhere and presented a robot it called ASIMO. Hmmm.
The Terminator it was not. Mainly because it couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs without falling over.
So there we are. If, one day, Skynet does become self-aware and Arnold Schwarzenegger pulls up outside your house on an enormous motorcycle, just go upstairs. That’d stump him.
Apparently though, it’s not killer robots roaming the streets on Harley-Davidsons that we should be worried about.
It’s the less exciting stuff that should be keeping us awake. Voter fraud. Fake videos on social media. That sort of thing.
Only last week, I saw an AI-generated clip of Greta Thunberg on social media, saying that armies should only use vegan hand grenades.
And as that’s the sort of twaddle she normally says, I was completely fooled. So that’s a worry.
And there’s more. According to Elon Musk, there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when no one need work because a machine will be able to do your job better.
He may have a point. It might not be able to fetch your slippers yet, but already it can fly a fighter plane and build a car and do complex medical surgeries.
It’s even pretty good at writing newspaper columns.
In the future, then, we can be sure it’ll be able to get into a driverless car and paint the ceiling of its local chapel more beautifully than Michelangelo did.
That means, of course, we will all be free to spend our days in the park, playing with our children and travelling on pilotless planes to exotic beaches for 20-year holidays.
Lovely. But who’s paying? Elon says you can work if you want to, but what boss will be paying for a clumsy human when a robot can do the work to a higher standard without ever needing a holiday, or even a toilet break.
The fact is, then, that if machines are doing all the jobs, there will be no economy.
You won’t be able to buy anything because you won’t be earning anything.
And there’s no point going to the government for help because that won’t have any money either. Because machines don’t pay taxes.
They just spend all day making stuff. That no one can afford to buy.
This means we will need a whole new economy. A whole new system where there’s no such thing as money.
And that is the biggest worry of them all because no one has a clue what that might be.
THIS may seem odd from a country that gave the world the Tour de France, but the French are about to ban bicycles from city centre pedestrian zones.
They say — and British cyclists would do well to pay attention to this — that it’s fine to ride your bicycle in the countryside but it’s not a “suitable” mode of transport in a city. Hear hear.
Oh Joe please go
WITH the fentanyl drug crisis turning many American cities into zombie-filled wastelands, Joe Biden was woken from his afternoon nap, given a mug of cocoa and asked by his nurse to sign an Executive Order that would clamp down on the dealers.
And now, the American law enforcement agencies have announced that the Mr Big is a chap called Matthew Grimm, from Chipping Sodbury, in Gloucestershire.
It’s alleged that Mr Grimm, who’s a keen cyclist, must stand trial in the US, where investigators say he’s been selling bath salts.
All of which makes me wonder – what exactly did Mr Biden sign?
And is it maybe time he stepped down and let someone more awake run things from now on.
A TOWN in Australia has decided to tackle the problem of homeless people sleeping on the streets by erecting loudspeakers and constantly playing an annoying children’s song called Hot Potato, by The Wiggles.
I’m sure it’s very successful, but I wonder. It’s not like the vagrants think: “Oh no, I hate this music so I shall go home and get into bed.”
They’re homeless and if you drive them away, they’ll just be homeless somewhere else.
Plus, if I lived in the town, I think I’d rather have homeless people sleeping by my front gate than be bombarded all night long by a form of musical torture.
David, please can’t you just tell us about the animals?
LIKE most people, I’ve been glued to the third series of Planet Earth. But unlike most people, I hate it.
Oh the photography is brilliant. Spellbinding even. But the words are driving me insane.
There used to be a time when Sir Attenborough would tell us all about the animal he’d found.
Where it lived. How it mated. How it built a house. How it caught food. It was fascinating.
But now all we ever get is: “Here’s a see-through fish with an orange stomach, and it’s future is threatened by climate change.”
And then it’s: “Here’s something with pointy teeth and soon it will be wiped out by global warming.”
We know already. So please, in future, tell us about the animals, not the bloody weather.
THERE’S now talk in Labourite circles that if Sir Starmer comes to power, meat will be given a prominent health warning. Like you see on cigarette packs.
You’ll be told it causes cancer, diabetes, heart problems, gout, kidney stones and global warming.
And doubtless there will be graphic photos of a butcher’s diseased colon to hammer the point home.
I wonder though – if it really is true that we should eat seeds and weeds, how come, after 300,000 years of eating animals, the human race is still here?
Been a bit, er, nice
EARLIER in the week, we were warned by every stern-faced global warming enthusiast that an enormous storm was on its way and that everything in southern England would be destroyed.
People were told to go home and make their peace with God. Schools were closed.
Train services were suspended. And guess what?
Apart from the Channel Islands, where it got a bit breezy, the storm never arrived.
They told us there was a threat to life but, from where I was sitting, there wasn’t even a threat to my barnet. There was more weather in my fridge freezer.
This is not the first time we’ve had a panicky warning from the Met Office that Armageddon is on its way. Followed by a long spell of nothing.
It’s easy to see why. The Government needs to convince us that the massive cost of net zero is worthwhile.
So they have to keep telling us that the weather is getting more extreme.
As a result, we can expect a lot more “storms” in the coming weeks.
Or as we used to say, “entirely normal autumnal weather patterns”.