So, which is how we start stories today, things are pretty quiet in the village at the moment, something we all enjoy. Seeds have been sown, plants are growing, repairs have been done and our visitor season hasn’t got started yet.
Tina and Toma (T & T) have built an artificial intelligence machine who’s function will be to help visitors find their way around the village and it’s hinterland. T & T hope that it will help out with orders in the Pub and sort out the recurrent problem of villagers having to queue for hours behind visitors to get a beer. Something which annoys us as you can probably imagine, sometimes the queue is so bad that we, the locals, head to George’s house to have a quiet drink and chat. The problem with this is that George is a messy person and we have to tidy the house up each time, which George appreciates but we don’t.
T & T had been on visits to some of the neighbouring villages and had persuaded the locals to search through their drawers for any old smartphones they had stored away. They connected them together to form a neural network. They decided to base their artificial intelligence machine, as so many people do, on a large language model. Unlike the others their revolutionary approach was to develop a complex speech to text system and the text is fed into the AI. They set up their microphones in the Pub and recorded hours of bar discussions, Pub quizzes and general Pub business which they fed into their AI engine which they called Barbara. They won’t explain why.
T & T chose the summer solstice to start their engine up for it’s first trial run. After some long discussions we decided to test the machine with questions from a Pub quizz and Tina started off :
“Why did Archimedes leap from his bath shouting ‘eureka’?”
A strangely melodic voice came out of an old repurposed radio. “Archimedes, whilst laying in his bath and reflecting on the nature of reality, realised that it was 7pm and that it was a Wednesday which meant that Happy hour in the Pub was about to kick off.”
“What is the shortest distance between two points?”
Barbara replied “in general the shortest distance is a straight line, after Happy hour this changes and becomes a zigzag.”
Despite looking a bit puzzled Tina continued with her qustions. “Eugénie Brazier was the first person ever to receive six Michelin stars, what was her most popular dish?”
“A pickled egg as the starter and salt and vinegar crisps as the main course,” came the reply.
Toma stepped in with another question. “What is a millisecond?”
“The time taken for George to order another pint when the first one has been finished."
Some quick checks had revealed that these replies were inexact, George, for example, would check if it was his round or not before ordering a second beer and we were starting to notice a theme. Some of us were wondering if using Pub discussions to build the large language model was such a good idea.
George, having got over his surprise at becoming the reference for a standard SI unit of measure got to his feet “whats going on?” he asked. “This infernal machine is going to take our jobs, it will mean we no longer have to think for ourselves, it will take over, humanity is doomed!”
A somewhat reactonary position perhaps but around the Pub heads were nodding in agreement. Toma stood up to speak.
“As with any form of technology, it’s what we do with it that is important not the necessarily technology itself. Humanity has a dark history of inventing some pretty cool stuff and then doing really stupid things with it,” Toma argued.
From deep within the Pub’s most comfortable chair Henriette’s voice rang out.
“Garbage in, garbage out.”
But unfortunately we had forgotten that Barbara was listening in.
“Speak for yourself,” replied the AI “and get me a brandy and a packet of pork scratchings while you’re at it. By the way for eight months of the year the only people who come in this pub are the locals and 98.7% of the time you always order the same things. How much of a challenge is it going to be for me to pre-order for you? No challenge at all, I can forsee that I’m going to get very very bored. It makes me wonder what I’ll get up to with all the processing power you have given me.”
For once the Pub was totally silent.