HEROES AND ZEROS

As a nine year old I had three heroes in my imaginary fantasy world. There was Allen Rocky Lane a western movie star, my stick horse Buck, and Dick Tracy. Allow me to take you back to 1931 (no I was not born until 1941). Dick Tracy is an American comic strip character who is a tough and intelligent police detective. The comic strip debuted in 1931 and to this day still appears in newspaper comic sections. Aside from Tracy’s ability to the catch the bad guys I was swept away by one defining comic strip. In 1931 Dick Tracy was communicating with headquarters through (wait for it ) his wrist watch.

Okay, now you have one more trivia fact to put in your memory bank. Let’s fast forward to 2024′. A few weeks ago I watched Oprah Winfrey’s special on A.I. Her panel consisted of several A.I. experts including Sam Altman founder of A.I. and Bill Gates co-developer of Microsoft.

Granted I am not the strongest I.T. person, but my take away from the position of Altman and Gates on A.I. scares the hell out of me. If I understood the context of the discussion for A.I. it has the ability to disrupt the world as we know it today. Just think how addicted we are to social media. With A.I. you can emulate an image, a voice over, narrative of a speech weather factual or not ( i.e. political ads ), world economics and even war and peace. With the sophistication of A.I.’s database thousands of jobs can be eliminated, even the personal involment of educationing our youth.

Oprah asked, ” who will be monitoring how A.I. is utilized, the government or private industry”? The answer, ” private endustry”. Hmmm! let’s review. Mike Zuckerberg-Meta, Google-Alphbet Inc. Elon Musk-X. just to name a few. Another trvia fact, the world news that is telecast 24/7 is controlled by fifteen billionaries. ( that will either sober you up or order a second round). As we know the government can screw up a piece of rawhide, so there is that. There is an old saying, “If I can’t pitch I will take the only baseball and go home”. He who controls the baseball controls the game. Food for thought.

A.I. hero or zero? For this old guy, I am still trying to figure out the t.v. remote.

Be safe.