Recursive Words

Where does the time go? Where did the week go? Somehow it’s already Thursday morning – or rather, it will be when I get up in a few hours time – after I go to bed.

Oh – while I think of it – for those that didn’t realise, yesterday’s post – “1973” – was co-authored by artificial intelligence. Only one person seemed to realise. I wondered how many of you would. I don’t know about you – and perhaps I’m more attuned to it than most because I work with it day-in, day-out – but there’s a certain “smell” to AI generated content.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s brilliant, and getting better all the time – but there’s something missing from anything created by artificial intelligence – and it’s hard to put your finger on what it is.

While it’s easy to say “it will never be the same as the real disjoined ramblings of us humans”, I would perhaps remind everybody that Garry Kasparov once told anybody that would listen that machines would never beat the top humans at chess. He was very quickly proved wrong.

There’s an allegory for it – the artist and the toolmaker. Given enough time, the toolmaker will always defeat the artist. The big difference this time is the toolmaker has made a toolmaker tool, and it’s better at making tools and toolmakers than the toolmaker themselves – and every time it tries again, it gets better at it.

At some point soon you won’t be able to tell that AI wrote a news story, or a magazine article, or a blog post. Perhaps it’s a blessing – if we start to reject the masses of unverifiable interactions and content flooding the world, we’ll end up returning to face-to-face interaction, and appreciate each other’s company far more than we have in some time.

The internet made the world small. Artificial intelligence and algorithmic timelines have filled that world with halls of mirrors.

Anyway.

1am is racing towards me with wild abandon – waving it’s arms enthusiastically – as if it hasn’t seen me since at least two nights ago.

Tick tock, tick tock.

It really was my birthday yesterday, in case you’re starting to doubt everything. After work we all put our last clean clothes on and headed to the pub for a meal. Somehow we lucked into our youngest charge (now six weeks old) not screaming the place down – she slept throughout much of the evening.

Seeing as it was my birthday, I talked everybody into getting pitchers of cocktails. I couldn’t tell you what they were – there was a pink one, and a purple one. They both tasted like vodka and fruit squash. After drinking at least a pint of one of them, I had no headache this morning – which I thought rather miraculous.

For my birthday, my other half bought me a subscription for the teatime bookshop – an internet store that sends a book and tea every month – only I got the upgraded version that swaps the tea for wine. You can also pick a genre – she chose non-fiction for me. I might change it to fiction – we’ll see. I wonder if they do banned or notorious books as an option?

I never did finish reading Fifty Shades of Grey. I made it as far as the first sex scenes, and thought “is this it?”.

I really should go to bed. It’s getting properly late, and I have work in the morning. Oh. I also got a Toblerone chocolate bar. A huge one. I might have a couple of triangles before bed.