Humanity 1, AI 0

I read in today's FT - with a measure of disquiet, I have to say - about the Prime Minister's stated aim '...to make Britain "the best state partner" for artificial intelligence companies in the world...'. Firstly, I'm not even sure I can see exactly how we can make that work, given that all the major players in the game have pretty-much limitlessly deep pockets from which to draw in development: something that currently the UK just doesn't have. Secondly, his USP of the UK's "values of democracy, open commerce and the rule of law" really won't cut it with the current batch of technoligarchs and their venture capitalist buddies-in-arms, who are now moving into the disturbingly uncharted waters of complete, global, financial anarchy: they just don't give a shit for law and order or democracy, and as for open commerce, they would rather that all anti-trust laws and corporate taxation were expunged from the world economy once and for all. So where do the 'decent Brits' come into this equation? We're outside of the EU bloc and we have a domestic economy that has been trashed by the very free-market forces that have been trumpeted for the last fifty years by libertarians and shyster 'businessmen' and their political enablers.

Anyhow, over a bowl of chips [french fries, chunky cut] and a couple of beers in the Bull in Biwmaris this lunchtime, I decided I would task ChatGPT when we got home, with a seemingly simple task. I first asked the chatbot if it was aware of my blog. It took a matter of seconds to scrape my million-word-plus output and to formulate a pretty decent synopsis of my online output. So far, so good, thought I; so I then asked it to write me 250 words on the Trump/Greenland issue in my style. About a minute later, it indeed came back with 250 words on said topic. Now, I'm no Proust, Hemingway or Shakespeare, but I like to think I can string a decent sentence together; but the output ChatGPT produced was *execrable* and about as much like my stuff as Vogon poetry is to Keats [if you don't get the reference, you are obviously too young: Google Douglas Adams, and maybe Keats as well, while you're at it], and just about as readable. I would have been embarrassed to submit its output as my own when I was fifteen, let alone at seventy. Not only was it poorly written, but there was no hint of irony - which you might have guessed by now I thrive on - or sarcasm; let alone any profanity in it. Just not moi, don'tcha bleedin' know. I include ChatGPT's effort at the bottom in italics.

Whilst reflecting on all of the above, I was idly mooching around YouTube and came across two of my favourite guitarists, Matteo Mancuso and Joscho Stephan, playing "Django's Tiger" with Stephan's eponymous trio. Stunning and joyful in equal measure, the piece left me grinning from ear to ear from the first note to the incredible unison coda: when AI can do something this well, I might just pay it a little more attention than at present. It's usefulness to date seems logically to lie in very vertical applications where the parameters and data-sets are highly constrained, such as in medical scan analysis, where significant progress has been made in recent years. However, the need for a human to cast an eye and their experience over the output of such systems is still paramount. Anyone who believes that humanity can be taken entirely out of the loop is a fucking idiot. This last sentence would not have been generated by Chat GPT, had I given it the task of writing 250 words on AI itself, QED. Cogito ergo sum, and just to prove it, I've written this post back to front, last paragraph first, first paragraph second and the second paragraph last. Suffice it to say I won't be using ChatGPT or any other AI to 'generate' anything meaningful in my lifetime, even if I do make it to my centennial...

ChatGPT: [From the perch of the hill, the world can feel distant, yet the absurdities of human ambition often rise above the fog. The summer of 2019 brought us one such peculiarity: the notion of a global superpower attempting to purchase an island. But not just any island—Greenland, the vast, icy expanse perched on the edge of the Arctic, home to glaciers, musk oxen, and a smattering of hardy souls.

When news broke that Donald Trump, then President of the United States, floated the idea of buying Greenland, reactions ranged from incredulity to outright laughter. Denmark, the island’s custodian, was understandably bemused. Greenland itself, with its rich Inuit culture and proud autonomy, issued a polite but firm refusal.

To the casual observer, the proposition seemed to belong more to a 19th-century empire builder than a 21st-century leader. Yet, beneath the bluster lay a kernel of pragmatism. Greenland, with its vast reserves of untapped natural resources and growing strategic importance as Arctic ice melts, represents a geopolitical prize. But can such a place, teeming with life and history, ever truly be commodified?

From this hill, watching the seasons change, it’s easy to marvel at the folly of seeing land only for its value in minerals and military bases. There’s something deeply human—and deeply flawed—in that. Greenland, like Wales, is more than a map's surface; it’s a story, an identity, a home. Perhaps that’s what the view from here reveals most clearly.] Give me a fucking break. Really?