There’s a lot of stuff going around about AI (or Super Intelligence as I prefer not to call it). There’s a lot of stuff going round that has used AI and is deceiving to say the least, if you ask me, or if you are particularly vulnerable to being taken in. The trouble is, we are all somewhat vulnerable to being deceived, as we want to believe what we see or what we read, even if it is on social media.
Many of us of a certain age have read books or seen films like 2001 A Space Oddyssey or I, Robot, and have an inkling of what artificial intelligence might get up to if left unchecked. Is it me, or has the idea that ‘if man can dream it up then it can happen,’ become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Next thing you know, we will be trying to invent the impossible Transporter. (I for one would never try it).
I have to confess, that I, being old school and not very nerdy, have stuck with Facebook, and resisted the other ‘apps’ on offer. I don’t TikTok or Snapchat, but I do WhatsApp. I suppose that I should not be amazed that my feed is full of Kittens and other fluffy animals doing cute things. After all I have posted plenty of cat pictures in my time. Do they really think that I , the owner of two real cats, cannot tell the difference between what cats can do and what cats are unlikely to do? Please! My feed is also full of adverts from companies that my husband bought something from. That’s plain spooky! I am also ‘fed’ up of it knowing that I am a certain age and have certain ailments. I don’t need reminding, thank you! The joys of technological advance are not always that joyful.
Altering images is not a new thing, though some have, in their vanity (and lack of real intelligence) taken it to extremes. People are gullible though, and take so much at face value, that it all gets out of hand and before you know a new rumour, often detrimental to someone, is doing the rounds. That’s one kind of influencing we could do without. We are already too deeply mired in ‘****’.
I am straying into politics, and that was not what I intended. Back to AI. When I was at school we were still using slide rules and log tables to begin with, calculators were around but not allowed in exams till later. If AI helps with homework then that’s okay, but what happens when it does it for you, or writes your essays? Surely that is cheating? Having spent hours in my younger years slaving over exercises and assignments, it hardly seems fair. How will we define intelligence if we never use it ourselves? I know my IQ (and I’m not meaning to boast) is above average and half the fun of a puzzle is trying to work it out yourself. Without using that intelligence or that skill, it soon goes mouldy.
I am now having visions of a WALL-E type future where we are all useless, floating about the place, not using any of our gifts and talents, just barely existing – and all under the oversight of a super-computer with super AI and a tendency to megalomania. If that ever happens, we did it to ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong, if AI can help us to diagnose disease more easily, and even great more effectively, I am all for that. Like any of these major inventions and discoveries the usefulness is seen in what use we actually put them to. The human tendency to weaponise such inventions ought to have taught us to go more carefully.
You can tell from the rambling nature of this particular offering, that I have not employed any help from AI. I have enough trouble with autocorrect on my spelling to start employing other tools that might make it look like I am saying something I don’t mean, and never thought about,
So, am I a little afraid of what uncontrolled AI might do? Yes, I am a bit. I only hope that some truly intelligent person out there, listening to their own suspicions, might recognise the potential for disaster, and do something about. Perhaps we should call the Transformers now?
Sue
October 2026
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