Norwescon 1—Supplemental

First a personal message:

Hello, HAZZARD. If you are reading this, it was pleasant to talk to you. You may already be familiar with the Medieval play “Everyman.” If not, I strongly encourage you to read it.

Mark

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Norwescon is the biggest science fiction/fantasy convention in the Pacific Northwest that has a good focus on writing. Interestingly enough, the subject of AI was big. Although, panelists who spoke about it did not see it as an end-of-the-world development.

What they said is we do not have true AI (artificial intelligence) yet. What we have is machine learning that can do specific tasks. This machine learning is becoming rapidly more sophisticated. A number of editors said they are getting submissions written by these supposed AI programs. They say they can easily spot them.

So it is not a threat. Yet.

As an odd coincidence, the hotel parking lot has a robot security drone. An anonymous source said they had had some catalytic converters stolen out of cars, but this drone took care of the problem.

One conventioneer said he looked out his window one morning and saw a Dalek in the parking lot.

Never fear, there was a real Dalek there.

I thought it would be cool to have designed the security robot like a Dalek. But it might not be taken seriously. The sleek functional look is better.