‘A new phrase for the new phase’. That’s my own. Sharper ones, introduced by others over the past years, were phrases like: That’s a ‘piece o’ cake’ (an easy task); always ‘bite the bullet’ (get the job done) before you ‘hit the sack’ (go to bed). Such phrases remain fashionable, until overuse drives them into cliché status and eventually, extinction. Two of the more common modern phrases are ‘going forward’ which is self-explanatory and quite superfluous, with another favourite being ‘good to go’.
My former English teacher, mentioned numerous times in previous articles, would have had trouble with that last phrase. He didn’t ‘beat (only) around the bush’.
Those were the bad old days when getting beaten was not just at the hands of the school bullies, but also delivered by scowling schoolmasters, fully mandated to administer corporal punishment. Not generally allowed today.
Whether that is considered a good or bad thing varies across countries in the world. Anyway, regarding that teacher, he would not be happy today if I produced ‘good to go’ within a meaningful sentence. He would see it as grammatically incorrect.
However, as is so common in English – and I dare say in many languages of the world; I just do not know them – that expression ‘good to go’ has an amusing degree of ambiguity. For diversification from a single meaning, let’s just add three small words and we have ‘it would be good to go’. On the one hand, we could be talking about the weekend Mbabane Swallows match. Or it could be an expression, with an entirely different meaning, shared by members of a group of very tired and hugely challenged, 90-plus-year-olds. Who, in addition to their own physical difficulties, are faced with the uncanny speed with which society is changing. We’ll come back to them.
One kind of change that is on many human lips at the present time is artificial intelligence (AI). I have to say that I was hugely impressed when, last week, I asked a question to an AI app on my phone and received a compact, but fully informative answer to a financial query I had long been confused about. I asked the app many questions in the subsequent days and was entirely satisfied with every answer.
Apart from many other benefits, AI clearly has a place in the information and communication segments of a society; though to some, it is a real threat to society. To jobs, especially advisory work such as ‘how best to …’, I can also imagine it being quite intimidating to the old and infirm in today’s society, quietly agreeing – ‘things ain’t what they used to be’. If privy to their discussions, we might occasionally hear a whisper, ‘I think it would be good to go’. That would not, of course, be the right attitude and the ending of life must remain in ‘other hands’.
Nevertheless, looking ahead in an attitude of caring for our children and other young folk who will be here in 50 years’ time, it can be quite staggering to visualise realistically, against the existing pace of innovation, what might be happening then.
You see, at the present time, society could easily develop (or degenerate!) into an even more materially-divided society. That would be where the poor would have to make do with the basics in life – especially with foods and medical care and a life expectancy of the current 70 to 80 years. The wealthy, on the other hand, not only obtaining a steady replacement of body parts, even faces, during their lifetime are, in some cases, making expensive arrangements to be placed in deep-frozen storage – cryopreservation – at the time of death.
To one day be restored into life with further replacement of body parts. Without perhaps realising that there could be no revival without replacement of the most sophisticated mechanism on this Earth – the brain.
The brain may never be transplanted or even newly created. It is the one item preventing any hope of a complete replacement of the entire human body and thus removing the potential for the very phenomenon that some might wish for, but hopefully never obtain – permanent life. The brain is integrated into the body through millions of nerve connections.
Furthermore, the spinal cord would be damaged and even partial repair impossible. The body’s immune system would not accept the transplanted brain. Then you have the moral dimension. In the hugely unlikely event of a successful brain transplant, you would also be including the person who used to use that brain!
However, what if scientific and medical innovation does give rise to the creation of a brain; let’s say, in 200 years’ time. A direct replica brain in impersonal format would be a frightening prospect in many ways.
One that springs to mind is that, with a new brain and the financial resources to obtain new limbs and bodily organs, the rich (re-emerging from that deep-freeze storage!) could be linked up with the new brain and live for ever. Changing limbs and organs every now and then with parallel brain recharging, the wealthy of society could become the new animal; perhaps nothing more than a real-life robot; and eventually available to all. Now that is spooky.
My personal view is – artificial intelligence has its benefits, but creation of an artificial brain would be one massive step too far; a definite no-no.
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