A Blog by Gail Cushman
I don’t know what all the hype is. AI? Are you kidding? When you turn on almost any newscast, you will hear about the coolness of AI, and the reporters want you to think that AI is a brand-new concept, innovative beyond belief. It isn’t. AI has been around for a long time and my father first exposed me to it when I was a mere babe of about four-years-old. He was an AI specialist and proud of what he did. In fact, he was one of few people in my hometown who indulged, (if indulged is the right word in AI. Some might even have called him an AI Wizard. If there had been an AI Hall of Fame in those years, he would have been number one on the wall. He had farmed for years, but when the AI opportunity arose, he was there, ready, willing, and able. It seems so easy now, but in those years, it was new and rare.
Training in AI was imperative, and Dad’s boss teamed him with a friend named “Actor” to get the best result. Actor was a no-nonsense partner. I remember him as being a big brute, and a terror, which was probably necessary to help my dad fully understand and use AI. My dad saw Actor on a regular basis, and the two were quite successful as they launched one of the first AI businesses in the Boise area. Actor was a specialist, one of a kind. Dad couldn’t do his AI work alone, and I remember that my dad’s eyes would grow large when someone requested AI, and he’d use his Nebraska drawl, “I’d better go see Actor.” As a four-year-old, I knew Actor’s mean-spirited temperament, and could only hope that Dad would return unscathed. To this four-year-old, AI was a scary business, and you should beware of Actor.
AI is an awkward vocation, one that many dismissed as too unseemly, but my dad relished it, and in the early fifties, at $5.00 a pop, it surely put food on our table. I remember his being called out late in the evenings and someone would say, “It’s time, we need AI, can you come now?” As a four-year-old, I didn’t quite get it, but my older brother and I thought it was cool and begged to go with him to deliver AI services. It was sure to be a fun ride, often to the Hankins family, and Mrs. Hankins often offered us ice cream before we returned home. The Hankins family were very proactive and used AI a lot. I wore my AI experience like a badge of honor as I went to school, bragging that brother Tom and I had been involved in AI the night before. I’m sure my friends were impressed and jealous, although they didn’t say anything. They probably didn’t realize the importance of AI.
Dad would put on his costume and tell us to stay in the car and he would go into the barn, and minutes later he would come out, all smiles, stripping off his costume and tossing it in the trunk. “All done. AI came through again.” If he was lucky, he would be able to deliver AI services several times in the same night. Boy, was he happy to do that. Mom would celebrate with an apple pie or something even tastier, like rhubarb pie.
Fast forward to today. We see a lot of news about AI, and I began to wonder about it. Computerized AI? I know computers do a lot of funky things, but it seems a stretch to provide AI, if you ask me.
They say that AI can write books, songs, poems, and compute all kinds of information some of which might be useful, other useless. But really? Can computerized AI provide the same thing that Actor and my dad did? Artificial intelligence is new, but the original AI was Artificial Insemination. Actor was a prize bull, a very expensive cow-breeding bull, and his AI would provide the opportunity to make lots of little Actors and Actresses. I want to see that AI Robot put on his sleeve, warm that straw in his coveralls and approach the back end of a cow, (talk about a computer crash), they would be picking up bytes over in the next county after Bossy let loose with that left rear hoof and swiped that manure laden tail like a kid throwing the ball in the air and swinging a bat. AI is not for nerdish sissies.
If you enjoy Gail’s blogs they are available on her website gailcushman.com. Her books, both paperback and electronic, are available at Amazon.com.
