My views on sinister AI, clever AI and a problem for witches on broomsticks – Peter Rhodes
When we hear of schools allowing pupils to self-identify as wolves, cats and whatever, we tend to assume there was a time, not so long ago, when common sense reigned and the authorities gave short shrift to bizarre requests. Think again.
A reader sends me a 40-year-old copy of Private Eye which reported that in March 1984 councillors in Exeter upheld a petition from a woman who claimed that if two houses were built next to hers they would interfere with her flight path to Dartmoor. “I ask for the utmost consideration,” she said, “because I am a member of a minority group.” A witch, to be precise.
I love the vision, unveiled by the Government this week, of an obesity-free world. After a series of injections, the lard will tumble from our buttocks and we will emerge, snake-hipped and bright-eyed, to fulfil our destiny in a dynamic workforce, ready to increase our nation's prosperity and win the war for growth. I can almost picture an Attlee-era poster showing the heroic, slim, worker clambering like a butterfly from the bloated chrysalis of obesity. And all thanks to the NHS.
But this is real life, not dreamland. And while the health service should do everything possible to keep the population healthy, it should not assume that every obese citizen wants to join in. Millions of couch potatoes have settled into a lardy lifestyle of binge-eating and daytime telly and have no great wish to swap it for alarm clocks, muesli and working nine to five. They know the long-term risks but love the short-term gratification. I wonder how many patients, when offered the NHS's 36-week course of weight-loss injections, will decline with a cheery: “Me? I'm just big-boned.”
Scientists have used AI (Artificial Intelligence) to recreate with uncanny precision the voices of long-dead crewmen in Endurance. a splendid new documentary on Shackleton's 1915 expedition to the Antarctic. Police this week warned that fake text appeals for money, often from children to their parents, are being superseded by phone messages using perfect, AI-created copies of the caller's voice. So there you have it. The blessings and curses of AI in a single week.
