If I'd tried to set this up properly it wouldn't have worked, but as a phone-snap taken in a friend's sitting room with just the right amount of 'Vermeer' sidelight it was a happy accident. I probably should have moved the basket of towels, perhaps added a few relevant-to-Mark books to the table, but sometimes no thought is better.
I always loved climbing trees as a youngster, something that went on long after I should have been practising cool, experimenting with make-up etc. More recently I scaled our huge and ancient pear tree at the previous, previous house to prune it back, but I can't quite imagine doing that now - a few years on, due to having done far too much heavy work on the last house project.
At our now-house, there is a beautiful pine tree which shades us in summer, provides bird-shelter and give us cones for fire lighting; however it is/was extremely tall and during gales would thrash and bend alarmingly, and as the house would be a direct hit I thought it was time to invite in a tree specialist. Also, our house insurance guy had shrugged at my mention of the tree even though we had bought extra insurance to cover any eventual tree-house-debacle. 'It is your responsibility to manage the tree, madame'. So . . . not exactly sure what the extra house insurance was for . . .
The tree-guy arrived yesterday morning, and after moving his van in, and partaking of a coffee, he donned a harness and zipped up the tree as agile as a marmoset. We'd had a quick word about not lopping the top off as if Goliath had done a touch of strimming, and he'd said, 'of course, Madame, I will sculpt it so it looks natural', and he did, swinging in circles from the already sawn top section grasping the chain saw and lopping as he went.
An hour later he was clearing up the branches, the birds had returned to scoff sunflower seeds and it was as if nothing had happened except the tree is now five meters shorter.
Or, in my mind, the potential overuse of Artificial Intelligence, and more worryingly, Artificial General Intelligence.
And not really global. Not everyone in every country is waving on this madness; very far from it. Where's the choice, the voting, the real information? Hey, would you like clean drinking water or would you rather the water was diverted into that town-sized silver building over there that you can probably see from the moon? Or, would you like to continue using heating? or shall we divert everything from this brand new nuclear plant into your local data centre?
And, not mutual. Just a race to see who can get to creating something unbearably powerful and unknown with no apparent off switch, where there will be more money. F*#$ everything else. AGI will of course sort it all out. Even how to construct water, as most of what we have left seems destined to end up cooling ever increasingly enormous data centers.
We might actually be living in a Douglas Adam's novel. But without the humour element.
Having listening to many lectures and podcasts by people (scientists /professors) who actually spend all their time researching and exploring these subjects I feel I know just about enough to feel extremely scared. They certainly are.
As one researcher put it, AGI could be undeniably useful if it had a narrow usage, for example, solely investigating and suggestion solutions for say a certain type of cancer - and within rigid guidelines and and following an actual brief. Well, he didn't say that word for word, but it's what I could extrapolate . . . rather than a full on massive free for all - everything from how to lose pounds unbelievably quickly without having to self-amputate a limb; how to convince people that you are highly intelligent without the trouble of learning anything (ah - that's already out there), make your own film of world leaders dancing with each others' entrails, or how to build a car from vegetable peelings - actually that last one would be rather useful. Etc.
Imagine if all this human ingenuity and energy could be put to solving the real problems that threaten to wipe out out our maligned species (and all our fellow species, although I suspect tics, hornets and cockroaches would continue to thrive, along with bunker-dwelling billionaires). Imagine the greening of cities, efficient water capture, affordable, ecological housing; new ways of growing real food for everyone; a kickstarted education system where kids learn real hands on skills, and learn to appreciate this world rather than a generated unreal one. Real learning rather than a quick cheat. Re-learning to share this planet with fellow humans, and re-learning how to appreciate the mega complex natural system that underlies absolutely everything about life on this extraordinary space-sphere.
I suspect, left to their own devices, which ever AGI becomes sentient first, they'll just think: Right. What an utter mess . . . let's find the Homo Sapiens off switch. World wide no-cure virus? or, oops, nuclear holocaust . . . just have a cup of tea first.
