16 February

People of a certain age (like my age) might remember a great sci fi TV show from late last century, called Blakes 7. One of the characters in Blakes 7, a favourite of mine, was a supercomputer called Orac. Only the size of a greengrocer’s box, made of perspex and circuit boards and flashing lights. Sassy, rude, dismissive - a super intelligence. It occurred to me today that in my own lifetime, this fantasy has actually come true. This is what AI is today, but it has even more capacity. I talked about this with AI, just for fun, and what it said was remarkable. I’ll share that in coming days. In the meantime, what’s happened to our sense of wonder? Things that in our childhoods seemed like impossible dreams are now everyday realities. The idea then of talking to a computer and it talking back with real intelligence? Nobody thought this would really ever happen. But it has, you can do it even on your phone, a tiny fraction the size of ORAC.