Par Avion : Al Is Nigh – Not!

If there is a brave new world of artificial intelligence lurking on the margins of the cybersphere then I’m the coward hiding out in an analogue attic.

It’s not as if I’m a complete Luddite and digital denier, I’ve been working on a computer for the past 30 years and can’t live without a Wi-Fi connection or an iPhone hotspot as I move between my iMac and Macbook Pro. I love the international connectivity when I travel, although these days anything international is entirely restricted to my photographic memories, the locations of movies I’m catching up with and a satellite link.

I couldn’t live without Wikipedia or Google but I definitely can get by without Facebook although the reverse is obviously not the case given that it seems to know so much about me despite my presence being restricted to a picture of a deck chair. I get a constant stream of pathetic requests from Mr. Z. asking for further details about my birthplace and which educational institutions I may be an alumnus of. But he knows enough to send me an album of pictorial mementoes every year, which he has scraped from friends’ feeds – spooky! And like everyone else I am speculatively linked to a veritable forest of other people via the Facebook family tree where, while there may be no shared DNA, the reach of the social genealogy is positively scary.

So, Facebook’s intrusive presence and Google’s intuitive search engine are in fact arguments against my scepticism of AI in general, these behemoths are right across their algorithms and know how to mine the deepest data seams which result in those annoying ads popping up seemingly randomly but in fact as a result of previous searches and oogie boogie mind reading.

But it’s this sort of stuff that reassures me as to the uncertain future of AI. As it says on the box, ‘artificial intelligence’ and it is just that. Any device with actual intelligence wouldn’t keep sending me advertisements for a Ford Ranger taillight lens after I had bought the only taillight lens I’d ever needed for my ute. Likewise a shoe stretcher, how many shoe stretchers can a non-cobbler need? I imagine if I were to search for my own coffin my beneficiaries would continue to get coffin offers in perpetuity.

I was behind a woman at the supermarket checkout the other day who was having a brief contretemps with her iPhone payment software. She was becoming increasingly frustrated with Siri’s inability to complete a transaction, so she starts demanding loudly ‘Siri pay bill’ and Siri make a PAYMENT!’ Finally she gave up and tapped her card as I do, so much easier than contorting one’s wrist so that an Apple watch can be scanned or shout at your digital assistant in public. And while I don’t believe that 5G phones towers caused the COVID pandemic, I do suspect that Siri*, Alexa, Google’s digital assistant and things called Robin and Cortana do eavesdrop when you’re talking about your next holiday destination or which pasta dish you’re thinking of for dinner. It can’t be a coincidence that within minutes you’re getting ads for Santorini or Tagliatelle.

But it’s the more mundane machinations of what has been described as a ‘discrete deterministic mechanical device’ that blindly follows its instructions that convince me that AI and computer hardware have a way to go before they replace squishy little neurons and synapses. Try calling your local telco and get any sense out of that loop of tape that tries to anticipate what you may be calling about, that endlessly patient robotic voice just never really gets it and obviously the last thing any telco wants to do is actually answer a phone call which results in a total cranial detonation in my case.

And what about those web forms which refuse to accept phone numbers with spaces or dates expressed in any way other than the one they have been coded to acknowledge? I don’t know how many hours I’ve wasted trying to submit forms that deny my address or the date or my gender and almost anything else a five year-old would be able to comprehend.

But there are websites and tech entities that do understand how to make selling their product simple enough for anyone with two fingers and keyboard to get checkout satisfaction in an instant. Hello Amazon! I can download a 600-page novel to my Kindle anywhere in the world in about ten seconds with a single click. Also the streaming services like Netflix and Stan who know exactly what I am watching on any device and can resume the stream from anywhere anytime and then recommend similar programs that I may like based on what I have just watched.

The man-made mock mind has some catching up to do and it will be a while before it overtakes the genuine article – I think! * Siri was named after one of the inventor’s co-workers in Norway and means ‘beautiful woman who leads you to victory’ in Norwegian