Nice sketch Richard. I found the Monty Python version on YouTube at: Argument - Monty Python - YouTube[^]

I got the same message, so I just vpn'ed (I use NORDVPN) to the UK and was able to view the performance.

LOL. The sure way to insure that someone googles something is to tell them not to. I'm a perfect example.

Loved the link!! Where was YouTube when I was learning the Quick-Sort? Oh right ARPANET didn't have YouTube.

That is some amazing trivia to know

I used mostly addition for the entire problem in my head. Step 1: You add a zero to the end of each term & sum the them. 100 + 110 + 120 + 130 = 600 Step 2: you multiply each term by its second digit and sum the results. 0*0=0 1*11 = 11 + 2*12 = 24 + 3*13 = 69 + 4*14 = 56 + total = 160 Step 3: the value of the expression in parenthesis is the sum of step 1 and step 2 600+160 = 730 Step 4: 730/365 = 2 All this is possible to do in your head. Though at my age my declining memory required me to redo some of these steps several times to get the answer. A calculator is much faster. This was an interesting exercise though.

You said: "It obviously hasn't now, but it will". I'm not as sure as you are that "...it will". Before "...it will" we need to understand how we extract meaning from data. You might even have to explain what "life" is.

I have no problem with your notion that there are nefarious uses of computers. The issue I was addressing is, should we fear AI specifically because of the possibility that they will go off on their own and pursue goals that are detrimental to human kind and out of the control of their makers? I don't believe the state of technology has reached that point.

Today's computers can only do syntactic processing. They are not good at semantic processing, which is what is required before they can become truly dangerous. Semantic processing is what we do when we extract meaning from data. We still don't understand how we do this well enough to be able to build machines that do it. Context, which is important to extracting meaning is a good example of how difficult the problem is. Take for example the headline, "The Yankees Slaughtered the Red Sox". This can only be understood correctly if we know the context is baseball and not a physical skirmish. It's the reason why some of the answers SIRI gives to questions are sometimes so stupid. SIRI assumes a context which often is not correct. When you read about the dangerous potential of machines capable of AI, those machines require self awareness and intentionality which can only be achieved with semantic processing; something they are not able to do because we don't understand how we do it.