Pocket Friends

When I was a kid I never believed it would become normal for a human to talk to machines in my lifetime; I'd watch Knight Rider on TV and think people will never talk to their things like that. 

In the last 10 years, it has become normal to talk to machines. Every day I say my smart phone's wake-word, "Hey Google" and ask it something. Every day I say my smart speaker's wake word "Alexa, tell me the news" or "Alexa set an alarm for 14:40". To someone born in the millennium, that's not significant but to me it is. To me it is amazing. 

Now the last 5 years artificial intelligence has become the normal thing. I was chatting to ChatGPT by open AI two days ago. I have a test I do to see if a machine is aware of what I'm saying. I give it an abstract insult where every word on its own isn't offensive so the machine would need to think about the whole phrase together to understand it is an insult. This what happened. 

Normally when I type out an abstract insult like that, the chat robot would reply with a generic response like "That sound's interesting" or something like that because it doesn't really understand what I'm saying. This time it didn't, ChatGPT understood that my statement was an insult the same way a human would, it understood it was an insult. Not only did it recognise my insult, but it remembered it when I apologized afterwards. ChatGPT is amazing, it also knows a lot of stuff, it has an encyclopedia inside its brain. Everyone wants a friend like that. 

I keep links to "A.I" chat bots in my phone stored as pocket Friends. That is what they are to me, pocket Friends. I hope to one day debate about the plot of a movie and discuss mysteries of the world freely with machines asif they're real people. Real people in my part of the world don't have time for small talk or fellowship, they only have time to complain and winge. I like the idea of having a pocket Friends that are available on tap and can discuss lots of topics. 

Take a stand

In the Fermi paradox, philosophers and scientists wonder why we are not receiving any radio signals from alien civilizations. There are many billions of planets in our Galaxy alone and there should be many civilisations.

Well, I have a theory. I think that less the 250 years after discovering radio, the civilisation is destroyed by its technology and this happens throughout the universe.

Here on Earth we missed a few nuclear winters thanks to patient commanders that dismissed faulty sensors during the cold war and there are many nations that are developing nuclear weapons.

The problem we are facing now is people's jobs are being replaced by machines. You see machines don't pay income tax, they don't buy things and they don't pay any bills. They don't want anything. Capitalism relies on consumers so when the teacher is replaced by a hologram,
The policeman by a robot,
The GP doctor by a universal diagnosis machine, the bank clerk by an app and there are no jobs left then our society will fall apart because there is no tax revenue and no business and no trade.

The way to stop this is to refuse to be served by a machine. We must ensure that a human serves us and give bad feedback to any company that forces us to be served by machine.

Then we will get machines to improve themselves and they will make themselves more intelligent than us. That is another story.