Everywhere I look I see AI invading. The Turing Test has long since been sent to the old folks’ home–AI can write stuff well enough to persuade you a human did it. Fool me once, fool me forever. There’s no going back. 

     I look at VentureBeat.com several times a week–it’s been around for twenty years or so covering the latest events in tech industries and there are no longer articles about chip fabs and other aspects of tech. Every single article is about AI. New AI apps are touted every day. The foundations are being ripped out of niche industries and this doesn’t make it into the TV news channels.

     But, who cares about the news? CBS News is on this first Sunday of June is devoted to nostalgia–an interview with an elderly novelist whose books were made into movies thirty and forty years ago. ABC News: THIS WEEK With George Stephanopoulos, the network’s Sunday news-panel show, with a list of charges against Trump, what a terrible mess he’s making, plus ethics violations up the wazoo. The sidebar mentions Ukraine destroying 40 warplanes on the ground at Russian military bases but that stays visible for five seconds and then we’re shown a much longer description of the availability of a new and even better Covid-19 vaccine, while the main screen continues with more revulsion about Trump. Sky News has an old black guy sitting at a table with an old white guy tsking about Israel continuing to fight instead of surrendering and allowing Hamas to slit their throats. I’m sure AI bots could disparage the Jews just as easily and persuasively.

     Anyway. AI is here to stay. Next week the Apple Developer’s Conference will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the iPhone, a landmark event in human history. Last year Apple announced that macOS Sequoia would introduce Apple AI which would have massive effects on computer usage, but the introduction has been perpetually delayed. The industry consensus is that Apple is ten years behind in the integration of AI into Siri, compared to other virtual assistants such as Alexa.

     We’re still in the early dawn of AI development. I’ve seen several articles saying AI has run its course, we’ll be forever hobbled by the inherent inadequacies of Artificial Intelligence.

     What they mean is the limitations of the transformer algorithms. I expect that some newer AI technology will be a supernova event–maybe hardware, maybe software. Who knows whether human culture will survive the blast.

     People will survive but civilization might not.