Not a day has gone by without Artificial Intelligence making the headlines – but enough about Dominic Raab.
So what if the former Brexit secretary “hadn’t quite understood” how much UK trade relied on the Dover-Calais crossing or that he lacked the concentration span to read the 32-page Good Friday Agreement?
Or that as foreign secretary he thought the main problem people had with him holidaying in Crete as Kabul fell to the Taliban was that they’d heard he’d been paddle-boarding?
And maybe it’s to be expected that someone who spent much of his time “doing karate” after gaining a place at Oxford would think ‘taking the knee’ is from Game of Thrones.
Not so savage
So it was no surprise this week that he got Paul O’Grady’s name wrong, calling him Paul Grayson, and suggested migrants make the perilous journey to the UK because they fancy a stay in a hotel.
I’ve long suspected that Raab is putting on that weirdly whispery voice and now I know why – he’s hoping no-one actually hears what he’s saying.
It’s just a shame we can hear Grant Shapps perfectly well, because if that nonsense doesn’t make your ears go down, nothing will.
The spectacle of the net zero secretary boasting he was “no eco warrior” and that he wouldn’t be shelling out for a heat pump despite urging the rest of us to do so, made me want to throw something, but then I’m not Dominic Raab.
Deeper thought
Cheaper, cleaner and sustainable energy is just one area in which AI company DeepMind is involved.
Its name has been popping up all over the place this week and at first I confused it with Deep Thought, the supernatural supercomputer in Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.
The similarity in names is likely not lost on its creator and child prodigy Demis Hassabis, a science fiction geek if ever I saw one.
This week DeepMind researchers joined Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and others urging a temporary halt in AI development.
In an open letter they say: “Recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no-one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”
So exactly like Deep Thought then, although at this rate it looks like we won’t have to wait 7.5 million years to find out the answer to the Ultimate Question is 42.
Frankenfood
The UK Government has ruled out setting up a new AI regulator, saying it’s all covered by existing bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a tad concerned about leaving the oversight of “systems with human-competitive intelligence that can pose profound risks to society and humanity” to the people in charge of fire drills and scaffolding.
On the plus side, World War Three is no longer the thing I’m most worried about.
Science is advancing at an alarming rate and this week we had a meatball made out of mammoth DNA (it’s a good thing apparently) and a 3D printed cheesecake.
Retiring early
At least there’s little chance scientists will print out a bottle of Irn-Bru as only three people know the recipe.
One of them, the founder’s great-grandson Robin Barr, is to step down from the board at the age of 85.
Obviously he didn’t get the memo from the chancellor about oldies having the effrontery to retire.
Doris, a cow on the Isle of Wight, pretends to be asleep to get out of her day job and has become an internet sensation in the process. This is now my new plan for when I come up to pension age.
Spaced out
Still raring to go is Mr Pickles, a tortoise at Houston Zoo who has become a dad at the age of 90 and along with Mrs Pickles welcomed three hatchlings to the world.
And in more science news, astronomers at Durham University have found an ultramassive black hole using a new technique called gravitational lensing.
I know some people get really excited about stars colliding and collapsing but if I wanted to watch something implode I’d pay more attention to the SNP.
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