Thoughts on AI

 Here's my issue with AI. 

We developed the internet, which was fine, but we expected too much of it. We thought it would expand our consciousness - and turn us into better versions of ourselves. But it didn't; it just let us look further into our hearts. Look at what's on display now, the angry, bitter, venal behaviour that floods social media. The internet wasn't a gateway; it was a mirror. It's showing us, US. And we're not great. 

But that would have been fine - if we'd learned. It doesn't particularly seem to me that we have.

And now - there's AI. We took all of that machine learning and let computers loose, with the expectation that they'd create something wonderful - or that they'd replace mundane employment, freeing human beings to enjoy lives of unfulfilled promise.

Except that's not happening either. We gave AI everything we know, and expected it to be able to replace us, but it's just another version of us. Instead of a person idly scrolling on the internet, flicking through Instagram, wasting their life with something petty. AI gives us a program, idly reforming images (based on inputs we've given it), flicking through those images as they endlessly morph and grow into further iterations of minor inputs we've supplied. AI isn't going anywhere new, it's going to places w'eve told it to go. It's the logical progression to the internet as a mirror. That internet mirror showed us all the dark places, the faults and the foibles of our existence. Then, AI turned around and started to just pinball around through the fractal chaos of all that information, defining and redefining the strange neural journeys our minds can take. But we know the steps on those journeys; they're nothing new.

Instead of AI, we need a way to expand ourselves, not have a program crawl through the myriad pathways of the houses our minds already reside in. We need to escape the paradigm completely. AI represents something that's still inside us. It will reproduce and grow but can never escape that boundary. 

The next step for us is to identify what's on the other side of that boundary.

The tyranny of expectation...

 ..Is hanging over my head again. I need to find a way to escape its clutches: to wriggle free of the idea that other people's happiness depends solely on my actions.

I'm always like this, on the eve of a concerted period of activity from the band. Really, I ought to have learned my lesson, by now - but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. Perhaps realisation is the first step towards altering one's behaviour? Le'ts hope so.

It's been a particularly trying few days, if I'm honest. A few days that I would really rather forget. I've walked off a lot of frustration, and confusion. The one thing that could save me, is a bicycle. But the weather has been (typically, for February) absolutely appalling. I'm hoping that will change, tomorrow. 

Blast from the past

 Every time I listen to The Flys, I'm in awe of exactly how perfect they were: a seamless mix of new-wave optimism and power-pop dynamics. Hooks and melodies for days. 

This is the opening track from their (totally forgotten) second album "Own". But, it's a Peel Session version, which I'm pretty sure has never been released. It's very odd - there has been an otherwise comprehensive 2CD Anthology, collecting everything they ever did, yet the radio sessions remain missing. Normally these are the first port of call, when a label goes looking for extra material. I live in hope that one day, absolutely everything can finally be released. Until then - just play this nice and loud, cheers.