Country Living with Francis Farragher

It’s amazing how even grumpy old men like myself get sucked into the world of technology and are semi-perplexed with little dilemmas we face.

There I was last week, quite cross with my iPhone, when each time I wanted to open it, the screen demanded my passcode, even though the device had been programmed to recognise my noodle.

Already, I can hear the cynics that it was far from facial recognition that this lad was reared, but help had to be enlisted to resolve the difficulty.

It turned out that there was a little crack and air bubble on the protective plastic cover where the phone’s camera was located preventing the device from recognising me.

A new protective cover at a cost of €25 resolved the issue but that evening through a gentle reflection, the thought dawned on me of how dependent I had become on technology.

All this, prompted by ongoing debates about that tiny two lettered word AI, that’s going to determine a lot of our futures over the coming years and decades . . . or at least so we’re told.

AI is something that I was familiar with as long as five decades ago when we’d wait patiently for a man to call to our farmyard with his own version of modern technology.

The AI man (artificial insemination) was always a bit of a legend around our farm as he arrived with the semen from some prize bull to impregnate – very unromantically – one of our cows. A lot has changed since then as regards AI.

Artificial Intelligence is, I have to admit, slightly beyond being scanned on my mental comprehension meter, but yet when I glance back at things and technologies that have changed this world, it will inevitably become part of our lives.

As far back as the 15th century, German craftsman Johannes Gutenberg got the first printing press rolling that led to the mass production of books and later newspapers in what was the start of the information revolution.

Pictured: © JFF Deep Green AI