Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is right up there with the MidEast, Ukraine, Democracy, Inflation and Kim Kardashian among the memes that we see in our news feeds today.
*On Wall Street, AI hopes drove a big boost in the stock market. People are going to lose jobs and machines are going to take over and we can rake in some bucks: Hurray!
*For my brother, it’s a quick “Belated Birthday Card source” [Hell with Hallmark]
*For headline writers, AI fever has been a chance to get clicks, hits and page views based on FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
*For an older writer, [me] AI nudges one forward, raining down ideas when his own synapses are flagging.*&%!
I spent over 40 years in the computer trade ‘press’ – as the Web took over it was called ‘media’. I wrote was about what was inside these boxes. The Definition of computer is 1-input, 2-processing, 3-output – all of which is enabled by 4-memory.
The last 5 years before I retired I had the Big Data beat.
That was the Big Thing before Generative AI. Quickly forgotten! But relevant to
the challenges AI actually faces today.
I am not a programmer. I interviewed programmers. Hundreds of them. I also worked in newsrooms with as many as 40 engineers on hand. Working besides them – I was supposed to be ‘the word engineer’ – was a joy.
By chance, at Digital Design, early in my career, I worked with editors focused on electronic imaging and neural processing. These were sees of what we have today. I covered companies such as Hecht-Nielson, SAIC, TRW.
*&%! For some reason, AI understands my turns of phrase better than most people I am selling too. [Maybe I’ve been in the Belly of the Machine too long.] Hey Bard, if someone says their "synapses are flagging" - what does that mean?
The phrase "my synapses are flagging" is a creative way of saying someone is mentally fatigued. Synapses are the junctions between nerve cells in the brain where information is transmitted. It's not literally true that synapses get tired, but this expression uses scientific language to describe a familiar feeling.
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