The doom merchants are having such a great day. Wars, rumours of wars. End of the world nigh. Again. Take to the bed. It’s over. Sure!
They say the only certainties are death and taxes. There’s a third: “the end of the world”. Passed from generation to generation, even as we’re still here.
AI is the latest harbinger of doom. Artificial Intelligence to you there at the back and stop sniggering. You’re not the only one here from a rural background.
There, AI has a different meaning. It is how many cattle come into being, following a visit by the AI (Artificial Insemination) man.
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Yes, Artificial Intelligence will put us all out of work, take over the world, and make us its slaves. Of course.
It seems every advance in human invention has been accompanied by promises of doom.
Listening to RTÉ Radio 1’s Bowman: Sunday recently was to be reminded of this where radio, the car, and gramophone were concerned. It included excerpts from a 1952 debate on these “advances”.
All three were “damnable” explained one panellist, and “disastrous for mankind”. People “were much better off when travel was slower”, pronounced another. “Radio is an invention of the Devil” said a third, and had “reduced people to a moronic state”.
With radio too, the “rapid development in the speed and transmission of news very probably is one of the most potent factors for war, which will probably ensure the destruction of the human race in the end,” said another.
You thought I was exaggerating!
That last observation about news on the radio was by no less a figure than then leader of Clann na Poblachta and former minister for external affairs Seán MacBride. Bless his timorous soul.
No less timorous was then president Éamon de Valera who, in his opening address at the launch of then Telefís Éireann on New Year’s Eve 1961, did so with the hairs standing on the back of his neck.
“I must admit that sometimes when I think of television and radio and their immense power I feel somewhat afraid,” he said.
To date, we’ve survived radio, the car, the gramophone, and TV. I have every confidence we will survive AI.
Doomsday, from Old English domes dæg, [once expected 6,000 years after creation].
