ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
I boarded the bus in Longview with my friends and settled into my comfy seat, anticipating a fun day out at the Telus Spark Centre in Calgary. It was Seniors’ Week and the staff at the Science Museum had a special presentation to help us better understand Artificial Intelligence, known as AI for short.
I was amazed to learn how a scammer could phone me, record my few words and make my voice say whatever he wanted it to say. That’s scary! Suppose the scammer phoned my son and used my voice to say I was in trouble and needed help? Actually, I need not worry. My kids don’t fall for scams. They would just hang up whereas I would not want to be so rude. I learned that just because a voice sounds exactly like my granddaughter in a crisis, it might not actually be her. I am not going to be tricked. I will check with her parents before I do anything.
Of course, all artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. It is not real in the sense that it happens naturally. It is generated by humans and dependent on human input. AI itself is not evil but it can be used for evil if the person behind it has evil intent.
Pondering all these things, I left that workshop and wandered through other AI exhibits and demonstrations. I was perplexed. My eyes strained to read the explanations, my brain worked hard to understand new concepts, and I found the busyness of the crowds dizzying and distracting.
I discovered the way out and walked into a huge open space full of light. My ears caught the enchanting sounds of a familiar Strauss Waltz. This was not AI. It was familiar and appealing. It was art, the art of music, generated by a human, Johann Strauss. It was coming from a cavernous opening leading down a dark hallway and I followed the lilting strains.
The dark hallway opened into a huge dome. I was apparently scuffling through dust on the surface of the moon. I gazed around me at the lunar hills and craters in the Space Dome, Journey to the Moon & Beyond. I peered far out into deep space as the lunar module from 1969 crept into view. It came closer and closer and touched down beside me. I felt the weightlessness of the moon’s weak gravity as Buzz and Neil bounced lightly past me.
Darkness descended and one by one the stars sparkled, sprinkled all around; a bear danced in the starry outline of Taurus, fish swam in Pisces and a crab scuttled sideways in Cancer.
I had no worries about my oxygen supply or my spaceship malfunctioning.
But I had to leave this magical place. My bus was leaving in two minutes. As I strode out into the sunlit, natural world and boarded the bus, I carried with me the ineffable mystery of Earth, space, planets and galaxies. I looked down at my hands in my lap and pondered the incredible mystery of subatomic particles in each atom of faraway moon dust and in each atom of nearby skin cell.
At home, before I went to bed that night, I walked out onto my deck and looked up. There was the real moon, a white, bright crescent hanging gently in the dark sky. “This is the real thing,” I thought, “and not AI!” I imagined myself leaping lightly through the dust up there just as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did in 1967, but I was not wearing moon boots!
by Andrea Kidd
