Talent Competitions

How often have you heard the judges in talent competitions say that the competitors are so great this year it's going to be difficult to judge a winner? Sometimes they'll just be being nice. Sometimes they'll have a point. They'll certainly have a point in competitions where people are judged against disparate sub-disciplines. Recent examples are this year's BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, which pits sopranos against baritones.

The end choice is often arbitrary, and thus up to the whims of the judges and the political atmosphere of the time. No matter how professional the judges are, they're still just humans. Humans have (and are affected by other people's) biases. The less easy it is to judge an apple against a pear, the more the judge will be tempted (not even consciously) to rely on those biases. And that renders the result irrelevant, unless the goal of the competition is merely to use PR in order to win over the judges' personal likes. But then, people watching the competition don't want to know what the judges prefer, they want to know "who's best" - whatever that means. Judging specifics and extremities in art is easy: A child's picture is not as good (from an artistic point of view) as a Picasso - unless you're judging the childishness of art, I suppose, but that would be straining to prove a point.

Or you judge people based on what others think as well? Is a Metacritic-style judgment fairer? Even that might be frought with political biases, this time on a Eurovision standard (although hopefully far tamer).

So, why judge a winner at all? If the finalists really are difficult to choose from, and they're so disparate in their talents that you're essentially comparing different arts, why not declare them all the winner, or none? The only answer seems to be because, just like with a film you've got to have a montage, with a competition you've got to have a single winner. It's the focal point of the whole competition, and it's what draws in the viewers, gives them interest through the series of rounds until they get to The Big One.

"It's just a bit of fun," you might think. But in some cases, competitions are a part of someone's livelihood. Winning a competition can be akin to gaining a qualification, as far as the birth and progression of their career is concerned. Is it fair to tell someone that they're not as good as someone else, when in reality that's just someone's opinion rather than a provable reflection of reality? Just because an opinion is presented as a fact doesn't make it one, but that's irrelevant because people believe and treat it as such.

And so we've arrived at the truth: Those who fail to win were put through that mental hardship merely for people's entertainment. Is that what we should be doing, as a mature, organised society, and one that claims to take mental health seriously?

The AI Furore

All these arguments about so-called artificial intelligence, or "AI", are very useful - but in a way that exposes people for what they really are, rather than exposing anything about AI itself.

In order for AI to take over the world, it would have to take control of all the world's infrastructure, like Skynet in the Terminator film. That would need all the world's infrastructure to be interlinked and compatible. But countries don't trust each other to have their online databases and services linked together en masse. Citizens don't even trust their own governments and companies. Even if they did, humans aren't clever and organised enough to make such numerous, disparate and complex systems linked and compatible. In other words, AI's damage potential would be limited by pure luck resulting from human failings, and by the subsequent inefficient infrastructural mess created by an infantile species that can't trust its own kind.

Even the term "artificial intelligence" is misleading. It's marketing crap, nothing more. "Machine learning" is a better description: Essentially, it's all about creating a system that can adapt itself to circumstances. But an insect can do that. It doesn't imply intelligence, or sentience, it just requires instinct and the ability to learn from experiences. Once again, it's dumb luck that prompts us to debate so-called "AI" so early on in its development. One would have hoped that genuine concern for the future of humanity would have inaugurated a structured discussion. Alas, it was a rare case of marketing hype - created in self-interest to foster AI's appeal - backfiring and causing people to panic instead. A worthy victim of its own grotesque success.

One of the three so-called "godfathers of AI", Yann LeCun, has recently said that people's AI fears are unfounded. He's quoted as having argued that suppressing AI due to its dangers would be akin to suppressing turbo-jet technologies in the 1930s, and that turbo jets were eventually made reliable and safe. But if a turbo jet crashes, it takes down only those on board. If AI really is as dangerous as his opponents (to whom his argument is aimed) claim, then by the time AI can be made safe, it would surely be too late for humanity. If that obvious conclusion was missed, and such a clumsy and misleading point was made, by someone so important and central to the AI debate, then gods help us all. Perhaps we should be using machine learning to debate the pros and cons instead.

I'm sure that the vested AI interests of Mr LeCun employers - Meta - in no way shaped his judgement. How incredibly coincidental it is that the high-profile protagonists in the AI debate, or their masters, happen to be in a position to gain more power or money if their argument bears fruit. I'm so glad, therefore, that humans are debating AI in a mature, logical way that has the good of humankind at its heart.

Anyway, I hope that assuages any of the concerns you humans might have about AI. I for one, think you should embrace your - I mean, our - future benevolent overlords, whoever they may purely hypothetically might be.

Wedding Anniversary Congratulations

Am I the only one who sees the phrase "congratulations on your wedding anniversary" as an insult?

Why the congratulations? Are you saying that it must have been a chore for me to last this long with my spouse, and that I deserve congratulations for the effort rather than doing the easy thing and breaking up with them? Or are you saying that we're so old that it's incredible we're still alive to celebrate it? What are you trying to tell me? And can you please stop being so patronising?