Professor Candid takes us down a fiberoptic memory lane.
In Today’s episode of “Today Tomorrow Yesterday” we’re taking a look at the history of AI.
It’s a little known made-up fact but computers were actually invented hundreds of decades ago.
Early computers were made out of trees and powered by rocks.
These first computers relied a lot on human intelligence and if you want to see some great examples why not pop down to your local nerd house, or “museum” as they’re now called.
Years passed by and nothing much happened and then Alan Turing was born, with a full head of hair.
When Alan grew up he developed the Turing test, which is an amazing coincidence because Turing was also his surname. Everyone thinks that Turing was a genius, and he was, until he asked his colleague to shoot an apple off his head and he got an arrow stuck in his face.
In the 1980s computers really took off. Silicon containing rocks finally became intelligent. They started listening to Spandau Ballet and enjoyed smoking Marlboro red and sipping cheap wine served in plastic glasses.
In the 80s women were allowed to start programming as well. Here’s Margaret, she’s a divorced widow who enjoys cooking for her ex, watching rom-coms in the dark and programming sweet, sweet revenge.
And then in 1997 along came IBMs Deep Blue, a real watershed moment. It was called Deep Blue because it housed the world’s entire collection of hard-core porn and when it wasn’t curating obscenity it was beating chess addict Gary Kasparov at his own game.
And by his own game we mean chess, not masturbating.
Since then AI has improved exponentially.
When ChatGPT came along it blew everyone’s socks off. Well it did for about a day and a half until everyone realised, much to their relief, that it’s not funny and doesn’t have a truly creative bone in its silicon, fan-cooled body.
Now in the present day, charismatic Martian Elon Musk plans to make everyone unemployed by giving AI its very own legs.
Pretty soon Elon’s Optimus robots will be knocking on your door demanding to know if you’re Sarah Connor and won’t take no for an answer!
AI is now so smart that it can do pretty much everybody’s job, including the job of a GP. It can diagnose a virus just by shining a torch at the back of your throat and it’s clever enough to tell you that antibiotics won’t make a blind bit of difference to your symptoms.
AI can also write medical certificates for a mystery Monday morning illness which causes headaches and nausea and which forces the sufferer to drink lots of tea, eat bacon sandwiches and take a day off work.
Who knows what the future is going to bring, other than mass unemployment, lots of hangovers and terrifying revenge bots programmed by Margaret.
On next week’s episode of Today Tomorrow’s Yesterday we look at the role of AI in dentistry and ask; really?
