Gizmotica
A little girl, whose formal education has barely started, may know more about computers and Artificial Intelligence than the world’s leading experts, whose post-graduate degrees continue to accumulate.
I noticed this while the little girl was speaking, evidently into a camera and microphone in her kindergarten class. Her teachers and the “AI” experts were doing experiments on her, and on her classmates. Some other professionals were making a documentary. The children were told to “play,” with heavily monitored equipment, to show the experts how their brains work. This wee thing — incorrigibly white and blonde — gave a voluntary aside. I sensed a future Idleposter.
She was defending the continued biological existence of her best friend. Already over-familiar with a variety of gizmos from school and home, she observed that one must use different gizmos to do different things. And as there are lots of things to do, one acquires many gizmos. She was on the verge of discovering the aesthetic concept of “clutter.”
Though only five years old (or possibly six or seven), she was already wearing that look on her face, that we associate with another series of tests. More equipment! We must all be tested. Or so I discerned (accurately?) from a moment when her face was presented, in high resolution, close up. She looked somewhat complexified.
Whereas, her best friend was singular. She could do everything. The two of them together could do everything, plus. And while they probably couldn’t do anything as well as a specialized machine — for instance they couldn’t tell you how many seconds there are in a year, or leap year — she implied, Who needs to know? She would need another machine, anyway, for the next function, after hearing this answer from the talking gizmo, to a question that her best friend hadn’t meant to ask.
But her best friend was good for everything. She wouldn’t have to be replaced. The little girl could just keep her best friend, day after day. No need to install a more efficient model.
Depending on one’s core outlook — determined by the algorithms at Google — one might be hopeful about this revelation from a post-millennial child; or alternatively, frustrated. Their machines can tell which you are, and will feed you videos to confirm your bias. (For instance, videos on how to build an off-grid log cabin in the northern wilderness. And on how to make a successful YouTube documentary about it.)
Yes, the little girl may continue to exist, and her best friend might, too, even after the current phase in the Age of Biological Infection. (The documentary must have been made before the Batflu; no one was wearing muzzles yet, even in the segments shot in China.) Will she be able to hold on to her profound and searing insight?
Or will she turn out like me, watching idiot documentaries on the Internet late at night? Or tapping on a keyboard first thing the next day?
Now, the “AI” experts will guffaw at my examples. We won’t have these things much longer, after all. Soon, the sensors embedded in our household appliances will know everything we want, and supply the goods immediately (or at least order them for rapid delivery), while extracting payment from our electronic bank. Even before we ask!
My (hypothetical) toaster will compose and upload an Idlepost, every day at precisely seven o’clock, using the advanced language-search tools and missing-word fillers that Google is developing. It will even translate this into Gaelic and Estonian. As the machine already knows that I am a fascist, racist, religious zealot, and Trump-enabler, it will also know just what I would say. And then cancel it — all within a nanosecond.
I advise gentle reader not to buy a toaster.
But how long can I keep one out of the High Doganate, once Nanny State finds out? Or Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter — they’re all my “best friend,” don’t you know? Already they can correct a “wrong answer,” by an electorate of more than a hundred million.
Will the little girl still sort-of understand, when they have finished programming her?