Getting an F in AI

And other pleasantries

Photo by Jakub Pabis on Unsplash

I once heard an older gentleman on the radio talking about how there was no good music to listen to anymore. He had a vast collection of old records with a heavy emphasis on Gene Autry, and he said, in his thick southern accent, You go up and down the dial on the radio, ain’t nothing to listen to. All the stations play the same thing, and ain’t none of it any good. He said he let people in his house sometimes to listen to his records, but it really ticked him off when they talked. He said, If they talk, I just lift the needle off the record and I say, when you all are done TALKING , we’ll listen to some MUSIC!

The guy was really crabby, vitriolic, even. I thought, if I were standing there talking to him, I’d be scared of him. And then I thought, wait a minute, in some respects, he sounds like ME. Only what I go on and on about is computer technology, which I know very, very little about. It is not an exaggeration to say that I am afraid of computers and all the things they are capable of. Especially AI. I’m really, really afraid of AI. So the other day, I decided to try to take a step in the direction open mindedness and willingness, and I went over to the public library where two (2!) librarians were offering a class on AI: what is it, where did it come from, where is it going. I regret to inform you that from the first sentence that came from one of the librarian’s mouths I was lost. (Hint: I wasn’t quite sure I knew what “bot” meant, not completely. )But I was determined to stay. I figured I might not understand everything, but surely I would get something out of having taken this class. I got something out of it, all right, but what I got was not what I expected.