Too Far Too Fast

 Warning: This content has been generated by a human

 

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

 

Is anybody else as royally creeped out by the exploding prevalence of artificial intelligence as I am?

 

AI is already busy churning out social media posts, classical music compositions, opinion essays and literature. It’s busy creating paintings, and it powers machine-generated trolls that are persuading people how they should vote.

 

It is posting videos and engaging in conversations with unsuspecting internet users.

 

AI is busy learning about you.

 

AI is busy learning about itself.

 

Some AI systems are teaching themselves skills. They have what’s referred to as emergent properties. Robots are learning on their own. That is worrisome and scary.

 

Yoshua Bengio, who some consider the godfather of AI, is calling for a pause on developments until artificial intelligence can be carefully regulated. Experts freely admit deep learning has come too far, too fast, and as this dubious technology blisters along, government regulation hasn’t even got out of the gate.

 

Bengio just spoke before a US Senate subcommittee this week, urging legislators to regulate AI immediately and to make sure regulation is coordinated internationally. He even urged the Senate to set up laboratories to research countermeasures and penalties for criminals who will certainly violate eventual AI regulations.

 

Governments and criminal organizations will, and probably are already, using AI for nefarious causes.

 

When experts themselves are urging caution, it’s time to slam on the brakes until everyone is certain we’ve got it right.

 

I get the feeling Yoshua Bengio is freaked out by the monster he helped create.

 

I had the opportunity to interview Yoshua Bengio in 2017 on a show I hosted. The founder of MILA, Quebec’s institute of deep learning, and professor at l’Universite de Montreal, was part of a panel discussing Montreal’s reputation as a hi-tech hub.

                                                  Yoshua Bengio appears on City Life with Eric Noel & Alain Tapp

 

Today, Bengio concedes machines could have human level intelligence within five years. Can you imagine a machine that thinks the way you do?

 

Using AI, machines are already threatening democracy, swaying people in their political beliefs, spreading falsehoods.

 

People ought to be told that the content they’re digesting is machine-generated.

 

Granted, industrialized AI can have unfathomably huge benefits as much as it can have shockingly devastating consequences. It can help with health care, engineering and environmental projects, to name just a few, but it can just as effortlessly and efficiently spread poisonous disinformation and misinformation.

 

Even experts warn we don’t really know how bad it can get.

We humans must protect ourselves from this transformative technology.

 

As I was learning about AI and its increasing prevalence, I vowed not to be among AI enablers, the ones who cheer unreservedly for more artificial intelligence in their, and our, lives. There are those who encourage AI to write blogs, social media posts, share conversations, drive cars, and enhance dreams.

 

Not me. 

 

I want to drive my own car! Sue me.

 

I want privacy. I want safety. I want me.

 

I want to be in control of me. I want to be in control of what I say, do, and think. I do not want a machine thinking for me, or acting as me.

 

As I say that, I realize, naively, that it’s already too late for me. I wholeheartedly use translation apps and even as I text, my smart phone offers me a choice of words with which to finish my thought.

My smart phone has learned the names of people, organizations and acronyms I routinely refer to in my texts. My smart phone is already learning. About me.

 

Our machines are getting to know us. They’re learning our tendencies.

 

I was aghast, realizing that I am already using and even appreciating artificial intelligence. 

 

Do we care enough, do we think enough, about the ethics of our advancements? 

 

I’m really not sure. The atomic bomb. Penicillin. The internet. 

 

We’re not cloning human beings. Or, are we? 

 

There are always scientists who want to push the limits of possibility to see how far they can go, morality and ethics be damned.

 

I’m not even sure whether stem cell research has been sufficiently and ethically regulated. Has it?

 

You may be reading machine generated content, you may be involved in a machine generated conversation. 

 

Humans have never been able to leave well enough alone; it’s terrifying to think robots may develop the same flaw.

 

What’s to become of us?

 

Yet again, before it’s too late, we must save ourselves from ourselves.

 

Hasta la vista baby.

 

A Wavy Year

It was June 29, 2022, one year ago on this date, when I underwent bilateral hip replacement surgery.

It has been a year highlighted by relentless waves of gratitude, appreciation and disbelief. 

 

Did my joint pain really happen? Was I really unable to do all those things I can do now and had always done before osteoarthritis? Did surgery really happen?

 

It wasn’t necessarily a blip when I was going through the process of surgery and recovery, but a year later, it is barely a blip.

 

The surgery brought a colossal improvement to my quality of life and I shall always be so grateful to Dr. Zukor and his team at the Jewish General Hospital.

Three months after surgery, I was playing ball hockey. I played once a week all winter long and into spring, with our last game on May 1^st, when I had this photo snapped. 

 

There was a time when I was certain I would not play ball hockey, ice hockey, or even ride a bicycle again. When I sat at my drums, I was not able to open my legs wide enough to put one foot on the bass drum pedal and the other foot on the hi-hat pedal at the same time.

 

My mind had reluctantly sunk into a cloud of bleak resignation.

 

Now, incredibly and so thankfully, I am playing ball hockey, enjoying long bike rides and playing drums, not to mention going up and down stairs, picking things up off the floor, walking the dogs, and sitting and standing the way I used to, as though I had gone back in time.

 

Words can never express my gratitude, but I hope that by resuming all the activities I love to do and the things I have always loved doing, I am somehow showing Dr. Zukor and his team how much their dedicated efforts mean to me.

 

I saw Dr. Zukor last week for my one-year follow-up and, after briefly studying the new x-rays, he expressed his satisfaction at the condition of my hips. I did learn during the visit that there is more physiotherapy I can, and should, do.

 

It certainly has been a year highlighted by waves of appreciation, gratitude and disbelief and, for as long as I am healthy, I am certain those same magnificent waves will continue crashing on the shores of my life.

 

I Stand Corrected

When free agent Claude Giroux was signed by Ottawa, I was indifferent at best.

I was no Giroux fan and didn’t see why I should be. I didn’t see why the Senators would want him in their lineup. Ottawa Citizen sports reporter Bruce Garrioch insisted at the time the trade would “reinvigorate the Senators brand”, an opinion at which I roundly scoffed. From my perspective, there was no way the signing was all that.

 

I admit now, Bruce nailed it.

 

Giroux has been fun to watch because I get the feeling he’s been having fun. His competitive fire and effort are in plain view every game and he seems to be a good complement to the young stars on the team who I have enjoyed watching for the last three or four seasons.

Through the pandemic and into now, it has been fun to watch the young guys fly around the ice.

 

Stutzle (39 goals 51 assists), Batherson (22 goals 40 assists), Norris, Pinto (20 goals 15 assists) are talented and play with zeal.

Captain Tchachuk (35 goals 48 assists) is a glowing credit to the team on and off the ice.

Jake Sanderson (4 goals 28 assists) is smart and cool with the puck, and just so effective without it.

Even Kelly never took a shift off.

 

Chabot, to me, doesn’t always play like he cares. Maybe I’m wrong. 

 

It’s thoroughly disappointing that the Senators didn’t make the playoffs, but how are you supposed to make the playoffs when your goalies give up…

 

Two goals on seven shots.

Four goals on eleven shots.

Two goals on two shots.

Seven goals on nineteen shots.

 

Does any of this ring a bell? Is it a gigantic alarm bell? It should be.

 

Now and then, goalies for the Senators have played some absolutely stellar games but, overall, the goaltending this season was shoddy; sorrily inconsistent.

 

I’m looking forward to next year and I’m hoping the same names will be in the lineup. Go Sens Go!

 

BTW - in case you’re wondering how a Montrealer became a Sens fan, you’re welcome to read my September 25, 2010 blog, titled “You Can Keep Kovalazy”. 

 

I was happy for Claude Giroux and the team when he tallied his 1000^th point at the end of the season, becoming the 96^th NHL player to reach that milestone.

 

As far as his signing by the Senators is concerned, I stand corrected.

Ice Storm Twenty-Five Years Later

We don’t seem to bounce back from ice storms any quicker than we did before, although, true, I did not hear of any hydro towers crumpling this time.

You would like to think that each time these storms happen, Hydro Quebec is diligently taking steps to make certain the extent of future outages will be significantly reduced.

I get the feeling Hydro much prefers to let it happen, counting on powerless clients to muddle through as best they can, whether the temperature is -2, -25, or +35. It’s a thermal crapshoot. This time we lucked out, with a temperature mild enough that heat wasn’t the desperately vital issue it could have been in the dead of winter.

 

Our ice storms typically happen in early January. I really thought we had made it through this winter without a major ice storm. Yes, there were several instances of mild wet weather during the day followed by freezing conditions overnight that made the following mornings, tricky. I spread pet-friendly salt on our back deck and stairs a few times this past winter to make sure our doodles didn’t risk their limbs when we let them out the morning after wet surfaces had frozen overnight.

 

I was just flipping through the book published by The Gazette after the terrible January 1998 ice storm, when power was out for 33 days in some areas of Quebec. That things were not that bad this time is more a tribute to Mother Nature than Hydro-Quebec. Twenty-five years later, I have zero confidence that Hydro customers are any more likely to have power, or lose it, in our next ice storm.

 

This time, we lost power for 40 hours and, as frustrating as we found that, I cannot imagine being one of the households that lost electricity for six days! 

It was strange during the outage to go off to the grocery store where there was power and a slew of employees packing shelves with food. Everything seemed normal while you were filling your cart and then you’d leave and pull into your driveway and remember, oh yeah.

 

It was the same when we ate at Harvey’s restaurant in Laval at the height of the outage. It was certainly busier than usual, but everything seemed normal until we rolled back into our driveway and remembered, oh yeah.

 

Thank-you to whomever invented the toilet, James Jonathan Toilet perhaps, for not making them electric.

 

Hydro should be making a far greater effort to reduce the extent of future ice storm outages while improving grid resilience, a term that, as far as I know, I just made up. In that area, it would be nice to see a surge.

 

 

 

 

Bound to Happen

I will accept that it was bound to happen, although, darn it, we were doing so well.

I felt fine as I eagerly went off to ball hockey the night of March 13^th. As a rule,

I try not to eat too much beforehand, so that I’m less likely to resemble a bloated hippo as I play. 

 

About halfway through the game, my energy sagged seriously, I felt lightheaded and as though I might fall asleep while waiting for my next shift. I ended up leaving early but was hit by an intense cold chill as I stepped outside.

 

By the time I had reached home, the car was toasty warm so I continued to drive around just to delay having to climb out of the car and into the cold again.

 

When I finally did go home, I thought I would regain some energy by eating but I soon discovered I had no appetite. A hot shower did little to ease the uncontrollable shivering.

Wouldn’t you know it, Susan tested positive for COVID and I did a short time later. My son also developed symptoms. It was the first time any of us had contracted the virus.

 

My main symptoms were intense cold chills, general aching, a loss of appetite and some coughing. My son also manifested cold chills, along with a persistent sore throat. Susan had nasty and prolonged bouts of intense coughing, along with general aches, sniffles, headaches and chills. Both my son and Susan reported a diminished sense of taste and all of us seem to have lingering occasional coughs.

 

I didn’t eat much for the week that followed and tended to have chills at night.

 

To improve our nights, my son and I tried cough syrup but, far easier than ingesting two consecutive spoonfuls, was putting the stuff in shot glasses and downing the recommended dose in a quick gulp. We’re practical people.

The next Monday, March 20^th, I wanted to play ball hockey and though I had tested negative earlier in the day, going to the supermarket proved exhausting. I decided I didn’t have the energy to play.

 

I returned to ball hockey the following Monday. Some of the other players asked why I had left early two weeks ago. When I explained I had COVID, some of them began sharing their stories, and the stories of their loved ones who had caught the virus.

 

The stark numbers show COVID is not a thing to mess around with and even now, even for the vaccinated, it is quite an ordeal for many people.

 

All in all, thankfully, we didn’t do too badly. I’m sure the vaccinations helped.

 

We determined Susan brought the virus home after getting it from a fellow fitness instructor where she works.

 

I suppose. 

 

It was bound to happen.