Thursday, July 25, 2024

Future History of AI

Greetings from "AI and Other Scientific Fables" at the ANU School of Cybernetics. We have tech storytellers exploring how AI is changing our lives. Note that the term "Cybernetics." is used in a more social was in this school, than the way the computing profession understands it, as being about technical control systems. The first reading was by Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker of "Campfire". The event ends with a screening of Moonrise and Requiem by Ceridwen Dovey and Rowena Potts (Dovey is the author of "Life After Truth"). The event is in person and live online.

I wrote some future history for an ACT Government project "Canberra 2020: World Information Capital" (Informatics Magazine, September 1993). In this I had Canberra as the capital of the world, with a massive computer complex providing world government from under the Bruce Technology Park. The original version had an automated missile defence system nicknamed "Skywalker" shooting down an off course light aircraft. In a case of life imitating art, decades later I was tutoring a team of students helping test the radar for Australia's anti-missile system (there is a test radar for this in Canberra).