Vanity Card Crops at Marion
Or should it be Simulated Aptitude? Or perhaps Pretended Acumen sounds better to the ear. And maybe we should just call a spade a spade and make it Fake Brains. Take your pick, all those names mean the same thing. I guess it’s a matter of what you think, if anything, about computers running things, dispensing information and having the ability to think about it.
AI is, for all intents and purposes, a computer with a truly giant brain. It is bigger than WATSON of Jeopardy! fame. This computer was given some parameters and a big piece of the accumulated knowledge of the world to absorb. By the way, this is knowledge learned, written down by real people, gathered and preserved over millennia. The AI brain assimilated all in no time.
When asked to write a poem about a particular topic, AI turned out a reasonable, and somewhat feeling poem about spring and it did so faster than a person can write. No matter how clever it may become, AI will never replace Walt Whitman or Emily Dickenson’s thoughts and words about spring.
Of course AI, and the common use thereof, is not quite this simple, or in our daily lives, yet. That is unless you consider automated answering machines…press #2 for another automated voice. Any appliance, computer, Alexa or device that talks to us does so with a generated voice. They are all simple, specific, and helpful forms of AI.
But could AI give you a Postcard from the Pines? Or Pat’s Bits and Pieces and all the other news Pat Maurer provides? Could AI give you a thoughtful, pertinent Musing from Mike? I’m sure it could turn out reasonable facsimiles for us all. In fact, with a little time to ‘study’ the process, and given its head, AI could probably compose the entire Press and send it to print without a human. And that should not be a thing any of us wants. Not one of us.
The folks who bring you the Press, just like everyone else on the planet, have spent their lives gaining knowledge, intuition, connections and all of the countless things that make up a person and a writer. Every week we bring our individual stories and ideas to our papers.
We do not need AI as the sole author and source of the news and information we receive each day. One AI viewpoint will never serve us well. Let’s protect all forms of writing from Tech to Haiku and everything in between. The last thing we need is one giant know-it-all.
Okay, rant over.
As I worked on this weeks’ Postcard, the morning’s cold temps and gray misty skies gave way to sunshine, blue skies and the warmest temperatures in a week. In short the blue skies have brought hope for an end to wintry weather. Seeing such bold snow in May was not the kindest thing Mom Nature could have done for us. The local weather forecast says that this is the end for the cold weather. We sure hope so. Tender leaves and buds are more than ready to pop. Our daffodils and other blooming bulbs are the only things to have gained from the prolonged cold. We’ve enjoyed several bouquets of sunny daffodils and there will be more.
It’s been a tough stretch for the lilacs and all flowering trees. If things go well, the great north will soon explode in bloom. We can’t wait to get on with the business of weed pulling and lawn mowing. We’re even ready for the annual fight against mosquitoes, ticks and their nasty friends. Bring on the sunshine and break out the bug spray! It’s morel hunting season!
This week’s photo is a postcard from the 1920’s touting a huge crop of something, grown at Marion, Michigan. Sorry we don’t have cards of the famous giant pickle and huge potato. Both were shipped by rail on flatbed cars from here, or so the card maker wanted us to believe.