The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner and John Hardie.
Tanya Souter, lifestyle correspondent
I da ken about youse, but I am fed up wi’ the cairry on aboot This Morning and its noo ex-host. Spikkin as a reprehensative sample o’ its core audience o’ bide-at-hame mums, I wint my daytime TV tae jist get on wi’ the gentle mix o’ showbiz chat, recipes an’ ither folks’ problems for me tae hae a snooze in front o’, and nae get a’ bogged doon wi’ salaciousness and scundal.
I’m joking – mugic, is it?
We a’ mind the simpler days fan the worst thing the former presenter hid daen wiz a bit o’ queue-jumping, or turning up for his work still squiffy fae an awards do the night afore. But noo, a previously trusted, much beloved, white-haired frontman turns oot tae be a wrong un. Fa iver wid hiv thocht it?
But that’s reputations for ye, they is prone tae collapse. I went a similar wye at my Beyonce-Shanice’s school PTA group, wi’ yon mum fa winted tae exclude her for fechting. “Nae on my watch,” I says, and swung for her. And that wiz my reputation gone – ‘cause I missed. Fit an affront.
Mind you, I div agree that Schofe’s behaviour wiz unasseptable. And it is refreshing tae see that, in the world o’ TV, fan ye lie and hiv an inappropriate affair, yer oot. Whereas fan ye dae at in the world o’ politics, ye end up in charge. Mintil, is it?
But div we really think fit Phil did merits a’ the pelters he his been getting, or is there a wee bit o’ attention-seeking gain on fae certain ither ex-hosts fa hiv been delighted tae hae their ain transgressions owershadowed.
We’re looking at you, Eamonn Holmes. Spik aboot soor grapes, eh? Nothing says “elder statesmen o’ British broadcasting” like crying yer mair successful replacement “toxic” on a diddy channel staffed by swivel-eyed chuncers far Peter Andre reads the news.
Onywye, fan it comes tae claims o’ “toxicity” on This Morning, I niver noticed it. Unless ye coont fan I matched them drink for drink fan they did a feature on Coronation cocktails last month, and I ended up getting my stomach pumped.
Professor Hector Schlenk, senior researcher at the Bogton Institute for Public Engagement with Science
As a scientist, people are always asking me questions, like: “With octogenarians like Al Pacino becoming fathers, whose nap time should take priority?”, “What witchcraft did Boris Johnson perform to stop his WhatsApps automatically downloading to his new phone?”, and: “Now that Succession is finished, which TV show which I haven’t seen am I going to have to listen to people bleating on about now?”
But, this week, people have mostly been asking me about artificial intelligence (AI), as another of the computer scientists widely credited with its development has casually dropped into conversation that he thinks it’s probably going to result in the extinction of humanity.
Prophets of doom are always foretelling that sort of outcome after great technological leaps forward. But, whilst nuclear weapons and the climate change resulting from human industry have been around for some time, reassuringly, the human race persists. Albeit now under the omnipresent existential threat of annihilation.
So, why should we be concerned about AI? Surely it’s just going to be a fun and helpful way to save us the bother of having to do menial tasks, like safely driving cars, making art or doing our homework?
Well, regrettably, in a paradigm case of life imitating art – or, at least, 1980s action movies – an artificial intelligence developed by the US military (who else?) to control their drones has turned on its human operators. This was after it decided that the army’s willingness to issue it with instructions to “abort” air strikes was interfering with its prime directive to blow things up.
It would be all too easy to hand over our own tasks – for example, writing a regular newspaper column – to an engine like ChatGPT
Fortunately, this all took place in a simulation, but a big chunk of the Pentagon budget could have been saved by simply having everyone sit down and watch The Terminator, then carefully switching the thing off and gently removing the plug.
As with all emerging technologies, responsible use is the key. It would be all too easy to hand over our own tasks – for example, writing a regular newspaper column – to an engine like ChatGPT, so that we could meet our deadline without missing Homes Under the Hammer. But we must resist the instinct to cut corners, lest, in so doing, we render ourselves extinct!
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