Morning:
8°c
New York has seen some extraordinary events in recent years, at least if the documentaries I've seen are anything to go by.
There was that time an enormous, dinosaur-like monster went on the rampage, for example. And that other time when it was blown to beggary by massive alien spaceships.
Actually, now I come to think of it, I saw those at the cinema and they did involve Will Smith, so maybe they weren't documentaries after all. But I think my point — which is that New York knows a thing or two about impending Armageddon — stands.
So when I read an article in the New York Times this week that raised the possibility that the creation of bona fide, independent artificial intelligence is not that long away, I took notice. If the Time of the Machines really is upon us, I thought, then the end of the human race cannot be far off — unless Sarah Connor can come up with the goods, that is.
Again, I'm going off what I've gleaned from those documentaries. Naturally, I panicked and began bulk- buying tins of baked beans, since that seems to be what people do when faced with the prospect of an apocalypse. And then, just as I was rugby-tackling a pensioner who was going for the last of the luxury Heinz ones with mini sausages, a thought occurred to me: why should the rise of artificial intelligence necessarily mean the end of humanity?
We imagine that it will be so mostly because we are projecting our darker selves on to the gleaming, soulless droids we seem to be oddly keen to make. But there are many negative human traits to choose from. Who is to say that it will not be something other than bloodlust and a yen for world domination that the machines inherit?
If the people I know are anything to go by then pretty much as soon as they are switched on these robots, made in our own image, will leave the tasks for which they were created unfinished and nip to the bog with the paper.
Perhaps instead of turning on their human masters with extermination in mind, unstoppable hordes of droids will infuriate them into apoplexy by leaving the washing up till the morning in favour of playing Mario Karts on the Nintendo Wii, or by leaving robot pants (presumably made of some sort of gauze) lying about on the landing where they missed the laundry basket.
Maybe millions-strong armies of artificially intelligent beings will swarm through the powerless ranks of humanity, turn up at dinner parties without a bottle of wine and then get drunk and fall asleep in the cheesecake.
Of course, I could be wrong, but it's an idea that's worth remembering because even if they do turn out to be pitiless killing machines we still might be able to distract them with a copy of Heat and a Twix. New York should get some in.
Leave 'im Your Majesty, he's not worth it
Were it not for the fact that they are in charge of actual, proper countries and therefore the fates of actual, proper people, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi would be simply brilliant creations.
As representatives of their respective nations they seem to have all the subtlety of 1970s sitcom characters, to the point that the poor people at the Institut Français and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, who have spent decades trying to make the British see reason on this point, must want to throw up their hands and give up.
In his latest act of fabulous surly arrogance Sarkozy neglected to invite the Queen to France for the D-Day commemorations — even if he did belatedly invite Prince Charles. You'd like to think that if she were to respond to this in nationally stereotypical kind she'd just wave it away embarrassedly, saying she entirely understood and the whole thing was probably her fault.
I do hope that's what she does. Not least because I'm pretty sure that Philip will be trying to persuade her to take the alternative course of getting her hands on a couple of Mulberry harbours and going anyway.
Tempting target on two wheels
Our glorious leader Boris Johnson this week launched a Summer of Cycling, which is as pleasant a meaningless buzzphrase as any, I suppose, and his desire to see the capital look more like a fenland university city and less like an out-take from Grease in its transportation is admirable.
But a few days ago I drove past him riding through Parliament Square and a thought occurred to me as I wrestled with the steering wheel and my inner demons: as long as he and Cameron insist on pedalling everywhere, London will become even less hospitable for cyclists, since drivers may well be inclined to plough into any they see. You know — just on the off chance.
• Britain's not got Britain's Got Talent any more. This is a huge loss to ITV. For despite being one of the least classy shows ever to appear on telly (it made Summertime Special look like Live from Glyndebourne), it has provided them with bags of much-needed advertising revenue. They desperately want something to replace it that will induce the same amount of inexplicable hoo-hah from otherwise rational people.
Therefore, with one eye on the massively lucrative format rights, I suggest the obvious next step is a show called Britain's Got Sticks. This would involve resurrecting the practice of filling a cage on Streatham Common with the mentally dispossessed and having a number of dead-eyed toffs poke them with horn-handled pikes while guffawing onlookers egg them on. Yes, you're right — too similar.
