Some of you may remember the sketch from the TV comedy, Not the Nine O’Clock News, featuring a car plant assembly line where everyone was called Bob – hand built by Roberts was the tagline.
Today, you are less likely to see a bunch of Roberts on an assembly line where there is barely a human to be seen except the lonely one staring at a computer screen.
This isn’t a recent change to working habits.
In the late 18th century, social reformer and academic, Jeremy Bentham, sketched out a prison where all the inmates could be seen from a central position, and none ever knew exactly when they were being observed. This, Bentham claimed, meant they behaved. He called this prison a Panopticon.
This also meant that the numbers of guards could be significantly reduced.
Today, no longer do you see banks of typists in the sales department, bank managers in their glass offices where mere mortals did not dare to tread, or even council workers filling in potholes in the road.
The typists and the bank managers have been replaced by computers, with the latter very good at saying ‘no’, and the potholes can now be filled by one person in a lorry with laser guided chutes and compactors.
On the Docklands Light railway, in London, we have driverless trains, something the train operators would like to see across the country as long as the taxpayer pays for the multibillion costs of the technology required.
And, from next month, the bus route across the Firth bridge… but, hang on, there will be two staff members on board. One a driver to oversee the technology and make sure the bus stops at the bus stop, and one to make sure everyone pays. So, from single crewed buses, Stagecoach Scotland will increase the worker ratio by 100 per cent. Perhaps they’ve missed the point?
Even the shop at the corner of the galaxy is planning to deliver your parcels via drone which will be fun for those who live in blocks of flats.
All this is to do with something called artificial intelligence or AI.
We have now become used to the two dimension digital world. The computer and TV screen where we can call up millions of hours of ‘content’ as we recline on our sofas. But what AI is doing now is linking the two dimensional world into the three dimensional physical environment of the world about us.
Just take buying a house. You used to get the local paper and look for the estate agents adverts to see what was for sale in the area you might want to buy, phone up for the details and book an appointment to view. You then met the estate agents at the appointed time and walked around the property just like they do on ‘Escape to the Country’.
Not anymore. Covid saw the expansion of something called ‘virtual viewing’ where, from the comfort of that sofa, you can ‘walk’ around the property without having the very annoying estate agent babbling in your ear.
And what’s more, you don’t have to make an appointment, and no one knows who you are. Billy Burglar can now plan his heist online!
Apart from helping Billy Burglar, you might say that AI takes out the drudgery and monotony of the daily grind and gives us more and more leisure time. True. BUT, with decreasing work and less money earned, how can you enjoy this new found free time?
Well, we could close the Lake District to real, physical, visitors and offer online, 3D, virtual visits where we control the drone footage and where we can scale the heights of Scawfell Pike or glide across Windermere without the fear of the mountain rescue call out. We wouldn’t need mountain rescues or an ice cream van on Whinlatter or White Moss Common.
Stick on your Virtual Reality (VR) headset and away you go, all from the comfort of your trusty sofa and without harming the precious ecosystems. George Monbiot, Chris Packham and their eco pals will wet themselves at the thought of it.
Want to eat or drink? Call up the delivery services who will fling you a pizza right to your front door where you can see its arrival on your Ring doorbell camera.
You won’t need a car – instead of going out into the world, the world will come to you, digitally and virtually. Working from home, if, indeed, you actually work, will become the norm. Offices will cease to exist, replaced by data centres in places with loads of solar panels, probably covering what used to be car parks.
We even have a robot dishing out the meds at the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven and we now have AI assessing scans and X-rays and assisting in the most delicate of surgery techniques. Let’s hope if we are to be treated by AI it isn’t Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey!
And, instead of slaving away at the trusty typewriter, this cat can press three buttons and have a column written by AI in seconds leaving me more time to pursue that pesky mouse that lives behind the skirting board behind the sofa where the redundant Editor (who has to be obeyed), now lounges.
In this brave new world the only thing we will need is a sofa. DFS/Sofology/Oak Furnitureland (many other sofa sellers are available) will not have any staff. You will plant your nether regions on a range of sofas until you find the one you want, be served coffee by a Robert, sorry, robot, select the colour and material from a touch screen and have the money taken directly from your bank account without even taking the debit card from your trouser pocket or purse.
Of course, they will need a shop but once AI sorts out how to replicate the feeling of the finest Italian leather on the same nether regions, even those shops will vanish alongside all of mankind.
Perish the thought.
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, now, back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t. After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county. I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
