This is what happens when you talk to your mother about artificial intelligence

I have been chatting with my mother about the headlines around artificial intelligence and my own venture into the field. In this poem she has picked up beautifully, I think, on the idea is that any problems with AI will be because of our own inadequacies as we train the machines. 

 

Artificial Intelligence 

Artificial Intelligence

So we don’t need to think.

Everything is done for us

In just an eyelid blink.

 

Artificial Intelligence

So we don’t need to think.

Just take the Robot, plug it in

And go and have a drink.

 

When you come back your work is done;

You haven’t even thunk.

The Robot’s done the washing too;

Oh dear, I think it’s shrunk.

 

Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought this one,

I didn’t even think,

I got it second hand you see

From prisoners in the clink.

 

And when they programmed it you see

I think that they were drunk

‘Cos now it’s full of nasty words;

I really should have thunk.

 

So artificial Intelligence

Depends upon the thought

That someone programmes into it,

And that may come to nought.

 

And so beware when buying one,

You may be feeling sunk,

It may be right for it to think,

But you also should have thunk!

(c) K.A. Pickering, October 2017