Mallory's Camera

Grief turns out to be remarkably productive. Who knew? The world is utterly dull, bland, uninteresting, lock-step. So, you might as well make money, right?

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Finished yet another Remunerative Project and negotiated a contract for a multi-thousand-dollar project. Even though I don’t care about anything, some part of me recognized: This is good.

The type of work I do is notorious for vanishing over the holidays, so it’s prudent to collect a nice little stash of acorns. This particular client lives abroad and wants me to shine my apparently fabled (in some tiny circles at least) powers of analysis on a healthcare system that is not in the U.S.

International healthcare will be a first for me. I got half the $$$ up front: It’s nothing personal! I can tell you’re completely honorable and trustworthy! But if a meteor fell and took out all means of transcontinental communication…

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Afterward since it was still raining, I toddled off to the movies and watched The Creator, which was so-o-o-ooooo dreadful, I nearly walked out, the pleasures of heated recliners and stale Raisinets notwithstanding.

Complete rip-off of Spielberg’s AI, plotwise.

Plus, it always irritates me that people are so unimaginative that they anthropomorphize artificial intelligence.

There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that AIs will be hostile toward humans.

Hostility is an emotion that derives from the turf protection instinct—and unless a turf protection instinct was programmed into an AI—and why would it be? Though I suppose one might have some fun with intellectual property there (hastily scribbling notes for science fiction story I will never write)—an AI would not manifest hostility.

An AI would not manifest attachment as humans understand attachment, either.

Though I suppose an AI might model hostility and attachment as part of a learning sequence (scribbling more notes.)

No, I think the only structured sequence of actions an AI would carry out is the objective it was programmed to carry out. It would have no self-determination as such, no matter how “intelligent” it became.

Hal, the 2001 mega-computer, is probably the most realistic AI in all of fiction. And Keir Dullea's (and the audience's) perception of Hal as malevolent is pure projection.

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Only other noteworthy thing to report is that I decided to stop using half-and-half in my morning coffee.

This will knock out a significant source of overlooked calories and also cut my coffee consumption down to one morning cup since I don’t much like coffee without half-and-half.

Gotta keep that flesh mortified, you know!