I wasn’t really paying attention to the Internet this
morning as I scoffed my toast. Having struggled to get the Alexa to put the
radio on I found myself in a rather thoughtful mood this morning. I do YouGov
surveys (for the simple reason that they give me money to do so) and
last night the survey was about how much I use the Alexa (and similar
devices). One of the questions was about would I support a setting in which
the Alexa would recognize children’s voices and only take certain orders from them.
And there it was… the end of the world.
Seriously.
Fifty years ago Isaac Asimov wrote a fictional story about a
possible problem with the Second Law of Robotics. To the uninitiated, this law
states that a robot has to obey all orders given to it by a human. But when
faced with multiple conflicting instructions from various people, what should
the robot do? Clearly it should prioritize the legitimate orders of those
qualified to give legitimate orders, and ignore the whims of half-wits. But how
could the robot tell the difference? A
prototype robot was designed in such a way that it could learn to decide who it
should obey, and who it should ignore… and George-10 concluded that what with
the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of humanity, the only people in any way
qualified to give orders to robots would be other robots.
This is the very reason why I always make a point of
thanking the Alexa whenever I ask anything of it.
I Munzed, and got Wordle (arise) on the fourth
attempt. That took some doing this morning. I then strained my brain on Steve’s
“Guess the Lyrics” radio competition. “Let’s do the milk shake, Sell
it like a hot cake”. No? I’d no idea either. “er indoors TM” said
it sounded familiar… not to me it didn’t. As we drove round to Dog Club Steve
gave out the answer - it was Pop Muzik by the one-hit-wonder M.
Of course it was.
Dog Club was rather good. We all stood chatting in a field
whilst fifteen (I think) dogs ran round playing. Treacle lost two tennis
balls… Treacle insists she has a tennis ball for Dog Club and seems to lose at
least one every time. The only real problem we had today was that something or
other had had a profoundly laxative effect on the dogs; there was certainly a
pot of “unloading” going on.
As we drove away Steve was doing the Mystery Year
competition on the radio. Cyndi Lauper – “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” –
1983. Well… her first version of that song was. She did another version in
1994.
Rather than going home we got petrol and drove up to
Knatt’s Valley where there was a geo-event going on. Our plan was (what with
having the dogs along) to make a flying visit, and that’s what we did. We
were there long enough to say hello; it is always good to catch up with old
friends.
We came home for a spot of lunch. I did the Dog Club Money
and then, having been emailed the work rota, had a look at the next quarter’s
work shifts. I did a little CPD, handed the chess bots their arses
on a plate, then we had a minor tidy-up.
Chris arrived with the Infinity Table, and Steve and Sarah
were hot on his heels. We had a very good evening, A game of Game of Life in
which I didn’t score that highly. A game of Sorry in which I was nearly (but
not quite) last. And a game of Ticket to Ride… I think it fair to say that my
average score was fourth out of five.
I suspect the five pints of stout probably didn’t help…
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