I sometimes make use of AI chatbots to amuse myself creating nonsense content such as sonnets on ridiculous themes or essays about absurd topics. And to be honest, they are not half bad at it, given they take less than a second to create what I asked for. Chatbots can only get better and better as programmers develop the software. They may, in fact become almost indistinguishable in terms of output from their human masters

AI is one of those divisive topics that has fanatical proponents in one corner, and naysayers in the other. The latter invariably trot out dystopian futures in which AI seizes control of the planet or decides to wipe out the human race. I suppose that both of those scenarios are within the realm of science-faction, as it were.

Silicon Valley tends towards the opposite with some genuinely Panglossian advocates of open-slather, let her rip positions. One such fellow, a billionaire who shall remain nameless, said in a recent paper ('The Techno-Optimist Manifesto', no less),

"We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom...we are not victims, we are conquerors."    

If this sounds a little familiar in tone, then it is. During and after WW1, a group who became known as Futurists advocated pretty much the same thing, faster cars, airplanes, technology, industry, youthfulness and so forth as a way forward for society. Futurists would be uber-excited about AI if they were around today. For them it was foot flat to the floor and hang the consequences.

I shouldn't need to point out to the writer of the above manifesto that the 'split atom', eros or otherwise, has lead to a point of human extinction unknown in the past and very real in the present. I suppose that billionaire's might be able to build extravagant bomb shelters to ride out the romance of radioactivity, or maybe not.

I do know that we are living in an age of extraordinary hubris, almost unrestrained by any sanction. And that makes it a very dangerous time indeed.