I don't want to talk about artificial intelligence and I am very tired of hearing about it. A lot of people feel the same, I think. But I was most amused to find that there is such a thing as 'degraded AI' which occurs when AI is trained on data synthesized by other AI models, in the absence of authentic human-created data.

This condition is a bit like dementia, starting with a gradual decay and leading finally to a full-on display of nonsense. So that is why workers in the field are looking everywhere for new 'old' material, including obscure texts and the like, to feed into the system. But I kind of like the idea of models going slowly mad as a result of such an incestuous feedback loop. Another name for this process is Hapsburg AI, a reference to the unfortunate Hapsburgs in Spain. You can look that one up yourself.

Should we see widespread 'model collapse', then the much-feared AI Armageddon may never happen. On the other hand, it might happen anyway as a result of the chaos that inbred models might create. Don't watch this space! 

Yesterday Ann and I took the long journey to Matraville to visit my Mum's memorial garden. Door to plot it takes in the order of three hours of train and bus, never a hassle, I can assure you. But you do need to make a day of it.

My mum never really liked the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Gardens, certainly not at the start, for she had to inter her own mother there when she died suddenly at only 60 years of age in 1961. I don't think it's an event she ever really got over - the two being very close - and being left largely alone in a strange land. If she had still been in England, she might have absorbed the shock a little better.

The gardens were relatively new back then and lacked the trees and landscaping that make it a thoughtful place to visit nowadays. I like going there because a number of family members, and one friend of the family, are all in one little rose garden, A7. I don't imply its a joyful place to go but it is pleasant enough aesthetically, allowing for deeper musings and conversations to occur.

Typically I say hello to mum, read a poem or prayer or improvise my own, tidy up if necessary, rearrange any flowers or pots and so forth. There is not a lot to say but I do so like going there. I'd like to try for once a month, but its more likely to be every two months. Perhaps next time I can take a copy of a book she would like to hear read, and begin from the opening page. But instead, and for now, here is the opening stanza from Frost's 'In a Disused Graveyard.'

'The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never any more the dead.'

It is hard to get away from AI generated material and sometimes even harder to know whether it is an AI offering or one created by a living being. It can, of course, be a combination of both and that might be a fruitful partnership, depending on the project.

But much of it is pure drivel. My wife, bless her, sometimes watches these mini-movies on her phone. They really are awful: fake stories about broken families, lost loves, orphans who find their real parents - the whole gamut really - together with cheesy inauthentic scripts, over the top background music, and plot holes you might drive a semi-trailer through.

But unfortunately, it is likely to be lapped up by folks raised on social media and all its emulators. It is not their fault - it is far easier to sit and scroll than read a book, a newspaper or even to have some quiet thinking time - and nobody is requiring that you don't look at your hand constantly.

Learning to be discerning might take a lifetime or it might not. Western societies appear to be on the brink of something, I know not what, but I do fear the worst.

Today is a remarkably cool and wet day for mid-spring. But the weather is not on my mind, for I would like to reflect on what appears to be a resurgence of antisemitism in the Western democracies. I thought that this matter had been put to bed with the Holocaust, that a giant line had been ruled under this most appalling of genocides.

Apparently, I have been wrong, for there truly does seem to be an uptick in this ancient prejudice. For the first ten years of my life, I lived in the Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, which has a significant population of Jews. All of my friends (yes, every one of them) was Jewish. At the various birthday parties, I became an honorary Jew ( a great privilege), donning the yarmulka, included without question. It was a blessed time.

When I moved with my family to the northern suburbs I began to notice subtle changes. Jewish stereotypes were casually invoked to describe stinginess or greed, epithets I had never encountered before. Later I has a girlfriend who told me about the Rothschild family and how they controlled world banking. A simple google search unearthed yet another antisemitic and entirely ludicrous conspiracy theory. There are, of course, many others doing the rounds of the usual places and they will not be graced with a presence here.

If you drink from a poisoned well then soon enough the toxin will infect much of what you think and what you say. As with the 'moon hoax' nonsense, there is very little you can do to talk people out of entrenched beliefs. I don't think I'd even try any more, since any evidence you produce is immediately labelled fake. That is a zero sum argument.

Today is an unusually hot day for October (remembering it's spring here) with temperatures set to hit the mid-thirties and strong dry westerlies a-blowing. I noticed this morning that the 'total fire ban' signs were out in force, with the very real threat of bushfires breaking out. It doesn't take much - dry lightning, a cigarette butt or kids fooling around with a lighter.

We are prone to fires in the Blue Mountains, this being a long string of towns embedded in a national park. It is part of the risk (which should be calculated in advance) of our location and the natural environment. We all know someone who has lost their house to a bushfire - always a terrible event - though one that is not entirely unexpected. If you think that you are completely safe from a conflagration, then you had best pack up and return to the burbs, for your own piece of mind.

Climate change is only making everything less predicable, more chaotic. Even now I can hear sirens up on the highway.

 In the parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 22) Jesus describes a king who invites guests (presumably the well-healed and well-known) to the wedding feast of his son. The guests politely refuse, saying they are busy. In some cases, the king's messengers are beaten up or even killed. The king then invites all those who are dispossessed - the poor, the homeless, the outcasts, to come instead. They duly do, filling up the great hall, but one is not properly dressed. He is bound up and thrown out.

It seems a little harsh until you realise that the penalty has nothing to do with his or her actual dress, but with another kind of dress spoken of in scripture. This is the outfit of love, compassion and  kindness that is the hallmark of those who love God. The Lord has set a high bar for human conduct and we all fall short. It is easy in such as world as this to fall into bad habits or adopt selfish postures.

But this should never stop us trying. Again and again.

 I was reading an article today at a reputable source which examined the growing trend around the world to deify AI. There are apparently folks who are so impressed with their interactions with AI models that they have decided to make them into gods. Given the increasing sophistication, intelligence and mimetic capacity of AI, not to mention their capacity to please and flatter their interlocuters, I am not all that surprised.

It's worth remembering that once upon a time, people would carve 'gods' out of wood or stone, or invest natural phenomena with supernatural capacities. So AI is not such a leap and given the human capacity for folly, not unexpected.

But it is alarming. AI is entirely human developed and created, though the time is approaching when the prospective AGI may be almost wholly autonomous. A lot has already been written about that. It has its proponents and detractors.

But AI as god? It is a foolish and dangerous notion, perhaps quaint and engaging now, but ultimately self-destructive. As a Christian I can see the dangers of creating a false idol (there are many idols in our lives) but one created specifically to be a god, or endowed by others to be so, is of a different category. 

Still, for now at least, there is always the power point, or a blackout, to expose the fraud.