Left to my own devices

The Verge recently had an article about AI - specifically, how humans perceive AI. It's been a pretty big topic of late, what with ChatGPT and the Bing Chatbot on a roll, having millions of users help them learn and become better... er, I mean just toying around with it for a bit. And major companies expanding its reach by the day. The aforementioned piece from The   Verge  considers the "mirror test," wherein we are faced with something that is really ourselves, and the test is: do we recognize it as such, or do we believe it to be an altogether different entity? Animals and other creatures below us on the evolutionary chain have been faced with such a test before, with a literal mirror. Sometimes, they may perceive themselves in their reflection, other times they're confused, and sometimes they flat out believe their reflection to be another being. The author of the article believes too many people are falling into that last camp when it comes to AI.

It's been nearly two weeks since my mom, Sally Newman, died. I've certainly written in these pages before about friends, family and loved ones who have passed on, and want to write something about my mother in these pages that is truly about her - the life she led, and the life that is now gone - but for now it will have to wait. There's still too much going on in my head and in my heart to write something cogent about her. For the best that I could muster, you can read her obituary . I do, however, want to write about me. Specifically, about how Sally's death has impacted me. That may sound odd, or even self-centered. And it is. But, nearly all mourning is at least partly fueled by our own self-pity at losing someone we knew. It's the difference between, say, someone telling you that a random 76-year-old woman on the other side of the world that you've never known has died, and being told that your 76-year-old parent has perished. Our feelings tend to follow th...