Dear Editor:
I knew all about AI when I was a seven year old in 1950. It was when the tall man, dressed in farm overalls, arrived in his van, parked it by the pig sties, then walked towards the dairy cattle carrying a bucket with a long syringe.
He went straight into the stalls, and pulled on a very long rubber glove and arm cover, then, without even speaking to the front end of the cow, lifted her tail, and, once again without speaking, used his rubbered arm to investigate the cow’s birth canal.
Our dairy man, Mr. Ryall, always spoke to the cows before milking and claimed that if you tickled their udders, you always got a little extra. He also played music to them, or sang gentle songs.
The man with the long glove did none of these things. Instead, after removing his arm, he filled the very long syringe, and inserted that into the same place, still with no apologies, then removed his glove and returned to his truck. He didn’t even say good-bye.
That was AI – artificial insemination – a convenient alternative to having a live bull on the property, which would, of course, have been much more fun for the cows. The present AI is much the same, only they give it a different name: artificial intelligence.
Today’s AI, also based on convenience, provides an easy solution for students who consider that they do not have time to do real research, and who have never learned the pleasure of delving into archives, feeding them information the system wishes to impart, accurate or otherwise. Frequently the latter.
Insemination of the mind? Even the most professionally developed systems have their weaknesses, and one piece of inaccurate information can be carried a long way down the pipeline, before the embarrassed individual has a chance to correct the mistake, which has been inseminating other minds with inaccuracies.
There are, I am told, more professional AI programs than Chat GPT, GPT-5 for instance, but apparently none can be completely relied upon for accuracy – and remember, these programs are not just created to be helpful. The ‘A’ stands for artificial to begin with.
Carol Williams,
Elora