The Rise of AI – A Cautionary Halloween Tale

According to the hype doing the rounds at the moment, we’re all about to be replaced by Robots and/or Artificial Intelligence.
Alexa, Cortana, Siri, we already have computers that are talking to us.
Incidentally, all of these devices seem to have female voices, even the gender-neutrally named Google Assistant.
Deb reckons that this is because everyone understands that, when it comes down to it, women know best.
Whilst I wouldn’t presume to question this assertion, I must confess to being somewhat unconvinced as to the inevitability that AI is about to take over the world.
For a start, there are those automated checkouts that have been in supermarkets for several years now.
Not only are they all rather temperamental, they all have their own individual quirks.
Then there are the Sat-Navs they’re incorporating into cars. What with one thing and another I seem to be spending an increasing amount of my life arguing with other programmers’ bugs…

Some Sat-Navs are about as useful as an automated checkout for guiding you to your destination.
The one built into Deb’s car, for example, has the approximate IQ of a pebble.
She has lost count of the number of times she has been cruising along Marlborough Street whilst the Sat-Nav is convinced she is skimming across Willen Lake.
She is rapidly coming to the conclusion that she should just buy a mobile phone holder and use Google Maps. The GPS on her phone is more reliable than the car’s Sat-Nav. By more reliable, she means that at least the phone is not going to get lost pulling off the driveway.
On the plus side, a rubbish Sat-Nav is at least consistent. What happens when your car is inhabited by something that is, apparently at least, rather more competent.

The car I’m driving these days comes equipped with a number of driver aids such as Lane Assist, Parking Assist and…as it turns out…Headlight Assist.
The main User Interface to the Car’s brain is the Map screen and the Sat-Nav that sits behind it.
Due to the mandatory female voice, it has been christened Sally.
The name has stuck, even though I’ve now found the menu option that turns the voice off.

what follows is an account of a recent journey we took in the company of Sally. I believe that the events I describe support my point that SkyNet is not quite ready to murder us all in our beds.

It’s Friday evening. We’re driving down to Cornwall in the West Country for a weekend break.
We’ve never been to our destination before, but that’s OK, we gave Sally the postcode and she confidently claimed to know where it was and how long it would take us to get there.
The Autumn night has closed in and the last of the street lighting on the M5 is fast becoming a distant memory.
Suddenly, Sally pipes up, suggesting we take the next exit and join some A-road. No worries. She “knows” what she’s doing…

As instructed we turn right at the top of the slip-road. Without the motorway traffic, the darkness is really crowded in.

Alarm bells start ringing at this point. Rather than some nice, straight well-light strip of tarmac, we’re faced with a series of switch-backed corners, and hemmed in by dry-stone walls.
As we progress through the twists and turns, Sally decides to be helpful.
The full-beam headlights are designed to dip automatically to prevent dazzling drivers of oncoming vehicles.
Apparently, Sally believes that the same consideration should also be given to any houses at the side of the road. Oh, and the Moon, which has now emerged from the canopy of trees overhead.
The road has opened out and dry-stone walls have become ditches.
Sally has decided to take us across Dartmoor.

Trying hard not to think of every Werewolf movie we’ve ever seen we’re forced to slow to a pace that’s consistent with driving along an unlit road with normal dipped headlights as Sally seems to have got bored and is “playing” with the headlights. Full-beam goes on and off, seemingly at random.
Dartmoor’s natural inhabitants are out in force this evening. A large creature suddenly looming in the middle of the road turns out to be a cow. Several cows in fact. Rather relieved that the Werewolves now have an alternative nibble, we negotiate the herd and are on our way once more…taking care to avoid the sheep, foxes and ponies also wandering around.
Eventually we reach the other side of the Moor.
We pull over at the first opportunity and reach for the AA Road Atlas.

Sally is ignored for the rest of the journey.

I’ll leave you to decide whether this was an act of dumb insolence on Sally’s part in revenge for being silenced or whether I just have a Silly Sally.
I really hope she’s not reading this…