Sarah Sands, the new producer of Radio 4’s Today current affairs programme got into the news this week because of the controversy over her intention to expand the range of topics the programme covers. Sands has plenty of experience in the arts, but little as a political journalist. She’s already expanded the programme so that its coverage includes the arts, science, culture and fashion. The programme’s got 7 million listeners, and there are fears that she’s dumbing the show down. The I quoted John Humphries as complaining that she was filling it with ‘girls’ stuff’, as well as a fashion designer or journalist, who described how, when he interviewed her, it was clear he had no understanding or interest in the subject.
Sands has also said that she intends to line up a series of guest editors for the show, one of which will be an A.I. This was followed by a quote from her where she said that it was certain that Artificial Intelligence would outstrip human intelligence as sure as night follows day, but should humans bow to the superhumans?
Despite repeated assertions by computer scientists that next year, or perhaps the year after, no, wait, by the mid 2020s, or sometime soon at any rate, computers will be more intelligent than humans, I remain unconvinced. They’ve been saying that ever since I was at school in the 1970s and 80s. And even before then. The philosopher Hubert L. Dreyfus wrote a book, What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Intelligence, detailing the repeated failures of the attempt to recreate human-level intelligence in machines. One edition of his book was published 20 years ago in the 1990s, but I’ve still got no doubt that nothing much has changed in the intervening years. And looking round Waterstone’s a little while ago I saw a similar book on the shelves, with the title Humans Are Seriously Underrated.
So I really don’t see computers overtaking human journalists any time soon.
And then there’s the question of who this automated editor will be. Somehow I don’t it will be the great, computer-generated vid jockey, who appeared on Channel 4 in the 1980s: M-M-M-Max … Headroom!
Yes, the AI presenter with the big hair, big suits with massive shoulderpads, and an ego to go with it, as well as a fixation with golf and S-S-Severiano Ball-ll-ll-osteros. And also a massive electronic stutter.
Max was one of the biggest things on TV at one point, talking to Terry Wogan, David Letterman, and had his own chat show, whose guests included Boy George and Rutger Hauer.
Here’s a reminder from YouTube what the big guy was like.
This should be the only AI to guest edit, and front, the Today programme.
And yes, I realise it was actually Matt Frewer in rubber mask, suit, and wig, and the only thing that was really computer generated were the patterns behind him. But even so, he had style. And if you can bring back Elvis by hologram, you should be able to do the job for real and generate Max properly on computer this time.
Tags: 'Humans Are Seriously Underrated', 'What Computers Still Can't Do', Artificial Intelligence, Boy George, Channel 4, Computers, Culture, David Letterman, Fashion, Golf, Hubert L. Dreyfus, John Humphries, Max Headroom, Radio 4, Rutger Hauer, Sarah Sands, Severiano Ballosteros, Terry Wogan
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
October 1, 2017 at 1:25 pm |
I share your position on this. From the 1950s being told nuclear power would produce energy so cheaply it would be given away (I don’t think they meant in school milk) to the 1960s enormously optimistic “Tomorrow’s World” programmes where by 2020 we would all be wearing Lycra jumpsuits and living on Mars, I have always had a sceptical view of uninformed journalists making specious claims. The role and capacity of AI being claimed is more from Asimov than the laboratory. Humans, especially the ones with reproductive organs on the inside, are seriously underestimated, as I just thought when looking at my caffitiere.