A different prespective to Life

Every year, those of us who graduated from our medical school in a particular year set meet in different parts of the world for reunions, and occasionally we have an international reunion. This year's meeting was in Toronto, Canada, and I was asked to give a virtual presentation. I have given presentations at previous reunions and usually try to make them light, enjoyable and memorable. I intended to do the same this year, especially since I spoke about AI and its dangers at a previous meeting. However, as I prepared this presentation, something had changed. The people developing AI, including senior executives and researchers in the technology industry, were increasingly issuing warnings. Various whistleblowers, almost as if on cue, raised concerns about AI's dangers and called for strict, enforceable regulations and safeguards. Many of us might dismiss this as the usual scaremongering that accompanies technological advances. But this time, one cannot help wondering whether th...

  Mike Judge wrote, produced, and directed Idiocracy , a 2006 science-fiction comedy that was meant to be an absurd satire of what America might look like 500 years in the future. The premise is deliberately outrageous. Natural selection, combined with changing reproductive patterns, supposedly causes intelligence to decline. Humans no longer have significant natural predators, while the more intelligent and highly educated increasingly have fewer children. Meanwhile, the less intelligent reproduce in enormous numbers. The film begins with  Joe Bauers,  played by Luke Wilson, an American soldier described as "remarkably average" in virtually every category; he works as a librarian in the USA Army. He is unmarried, has no children, is an only child, and both his parents are dead. As a result, he is considered an ideal candidate for the Human Hibernation Experiment. The Army cannot find a suitable female participant, so it turns to the private sector and recruits Rita,...

Some stories become family legends—not because they are true in every detail, but because they are too good not to be retold. Growing up in Bacita, near the River Niger, I saw my father travel constantly between our home and Lagos. As Chief Accountant and Company Secretary, he seemed to spend as much time on the road as he did in the office. Acquisitions, shareholder meetings, board meetings—you name it, he was there. In those days, despite the occasional danger, people routinely drove through the night. The journey took five or six hours, depending on the roads and how many relatives, friends, or roadside food stalls tempted him to stop. If I happened to be at secondary school in Offa, he might decide on a whim to branch off and see me. He never travelled alone. One of his favourite drivers was a cheerful fellow called Abiodun. Spend that many hours together on Nigeria's roads, and your driver soon becomes more than an employee. They became family—our unofficial uncles and older b...

One of the books I have read more times than I probably should have is 1984 by George Orwell. Orwell was deeply concerned about the dangers of authoritarian government, and that concern runs through much of his writings. An earlier novel, Animal Farm, explores the same theme through political allegory. The animals overthrow their owner, Mr Jones, and establish a society based on equality. Their vision is that every animal should be treated with dignity and that none should be exploited for labour or slaughter. At first, the new society is full of hope. However, the animals lack the knowledge and experience needed to manage the farm effectively. Over time, the pigs assume leadership, claiming they are best suited to make decisions. Through propaganda, slogans, and the gradual rewriting of history, they consolidate power while convincing the other animals that every sacrifice is for the common good. By the novel's conclusion, the revolution has come full circle. The pigs have become ...

Social media has fundamentally changed the nature of public debate. It is becoming increasingly difficult to have reasoned discussions on controversial topics because many users are exposed primarily to information that reinforces what they already believe. Recommendation algorithms, combined with AI-powered search and personalised content, create environments in which individuals repeatedly encounter viewpoints that confirm their existing opinions while filtering out or dismissing opposing evidence. Genuine dialogue becomes increasingly difficult when people are no longer sharing the same factual foundation. A further problem is that much of the most widely shared content is designed to evoke emotion rather than encourage understanding. Short videos, memes, headlines and clickbait often reduce complex political, scientific and historical issues to simplistic talking points. These are frequently produced by bloggers, influencers or commentators whose success depends on attracting atten...

A good example is how AI is affecting our daily lives every minute. Those at the forefront of highly specialised roles have found that more junior, repetitive tasks can be handled by AI and incorporated into their workflows. As a senior software developer, I need to review, refine, and develop complex algorithms. You will begin to notice that some of the simpler, easier tasks can be done by AI. This has been happening for years. Automated code generation in Microsoft Excel has been available for more than 10 years, and most of us have used it to generate baseline code for various features. Then we just refine and make alterations to make it more optimised, specific and refined. Now, a large part of the world has left Microsoft Excel behind and is using Google Sheets with C#, but that did serve as a baseline. The AI can help convert code from Excel/VBA to Google Sheets/C#. The Google Sheets/C# combination offers greater security, greater flexibility, and always keeps the documents up ...