The party is over

Hay Festival is over for another year and we are en route back to Scotland.
 
Guess what popped out of M’s lunchbox on the train?https://www.instagram.com/p/Bjng1_DlE5l/?taken-by=annshaw2017
 
If I had to sum up my overall impression of the week it is the growing concern over the impact of artificial intelligence on our society.
 
This was a constantly recurring theme every day.
According to some scientists we are only at the very beginning of these changes, which will have a far more profound impact on humanity than either the printing press or the industrial revolution.
 
Moreover it will happen faster and globally.
 
Unless we devise an internationally agreed moral and ethical code for dealing with them there is every likelihood that the machines will simply infantilize us (look what’s happened with maps and Sat navs) and they will treat us as we treat ants.
 
But a bigger danger, said others, is not the machines but the people who run them-witness the sale of private data for commercial and political gains (Facebook and Cambridge Analytics).
 
Yesterday Geoff Mulgan, CEO of NESTA and Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham asked for a show of hands following their discussion on Artificial Intelligence and Our Future.
 
Did we feel less or more optimistic after hearing them speak?
 
The audience were roughly divided 50-50.
In other words a hung jury.
 
I am optimistic. M isn’t.
 
Finally, here is an encouraging fact from Hay relating to age and intellect:
Many of the key speakers this week were in there 70s and 80s.
 
Salman Rushdie- 70
Simon Schama- 73
Germaine Greer- 79,
Chris Bonnington- 83
Richard Rogers-84
Richard Holloway—85
Joan Bakewell- 85

 This is a link to  some Hay Festival podcasts.https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/hay-festival-podcasts/id600478477