Image source: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal-water-garden/things-to-do-at-studley-royal
By now Dear Reader, you’ll know my penchant for curious titles!
Today is 4th July. For our US readers Independence Day! For me, it is an anniversary of a different kind. Twenty years ago this PM I drove my father out to Studley Royal for a walk. Well, a walk for me. At 97 he was wheelchair bound and I was the one doing the pushing. I’ve used the NT’s image as it was around that water feature that we had a good long talk. A week later he was dead.
That was exactly twenty years ago.
A LOT has changed in those twenty years.
For instance, I was the UKIP branch chairman in Leeds. The UK was a member of the EU and the idea that in 2023 we’d be outside the EU would have sounded like a pipe dream!
Similarly, on a personal level, my life has changed. This evening there is a meeting of the leaseholders of the development of apartments/flats I live in. It’s being held in a local pub – in the far west of Cornwall! Back in 2003 I never thought I’d end up living out my retirement north of Penzance.
I’m pleased it’s a rainy day. The reservoirs need the water – as does the landscape. Furthermore the contrast mirrors the change in world events for on Friday 4th July 2003 it was a brilliant sunny day, the height of an English summer, when I pushed Dad around that parkland.
If one looks ahead twenty years one wonders what the world will look like then.
One could say, expect the unexpected!
Today the Prime Minister was quizzed (amongst other subjects) about AI. He claims to be optimistic.
The British authorities are rarely open and transparent about national security.
It is of great interest that the UK has formed an alliance with Japan. The UK did that at the begining of the 20th Century as well.
Japan has a big problem. And it is a BIG problem! It’s a demographic problem. Japan’s birth rate is far below the level of sustainability. It’s numbers are shrinking, it’s population is ageing. That means a shrinking number of taxpayers has to sustain an increasing number of pensioners.
Faced with such a situation, such as Sir Keir Starmer would suggest an obvious practical solution: Immigration!
Japanese politicians – with the full backing of their voters and the media – are against this solution. Instead they have put all their eggs in another basket: AI and robots!
The Japanese are determined not to go down the Road to Diversity. Therefore with a peculiar East Asiatic logic they’ve come to the national conclusion that if they cannot make babies, they’ll make AI robots instead! AI robots have the following advantages:
#1: They don’t require wages.
#2: They don’t require living accommodation.
#3: They don’t get sick.
#4: They don’t need food.
#5: They don’t need water.
They do need oil and they do need electricity!
There are other advantages:
Robots make good soldiers: They don’t mind getting damaged or destroyed. The Japanese General Staff can take the attitude of the Imperial General Staff of Tsarist Russia – the soldiers are expendable!
Mr Musk and others are warning people about the dangers of AI. Faced with the demands of demography and national security, Japanese politicians have decided it seems to throw caution to the wind.
British politicians like the idea of robot workers who don’t go on strike, don’t require holidays or wages. British politicians like the idea of robot soldiers and autonomous aeroplanes and military vessels. I would not be at all surprised were it to be discovered that someone in a UK defence company is at the early stages of research into an autonomous nuclear submarine. The boat could be much smaller than a conventional nuclear boat and could remain submerged from leaving port until it’s return.
To a UK politician, robot soldiers and robot aircraft and submarines solves the problem of recruiting human beings and paying those human beings. It a robot is destroyed there are no grieving parents or spouses.