Will the development of AI technology by companies, governments and the super-rich improve society? asks Kevin McKenna

The other day, two of my younger colleagues were discussing the strengths and weaknesses of assorted Artificial Intelligence products. Not for the first time, an icy finger of fear began slowly to whelm me.

Nor was this the feeling of mild unease that gnaws at you when you stumble into your 50s and discover that you’ve begun walking up the down elevator.

My colleagues kindly sought to include me in their discussion and solicited my opinion on the matter, bless them. All I could contribute was that I’d need AI to help me work AI. Every time I want to say ChatGBT it comes out as ChatGBH.

In all those other crossroads moments in my life where technological advances have intruded, I’ve managed to gain a working knowledge sufficient to maintain my membership of modern society. Computers (obvs), social media (FOMO); automatic check-outs (FFS); on-line banking (Afaic); millennial acronyms (YOLO).

I actually embraced online banking. This was because for a few years prior to its introduction, I’d had to cultivate an estuary English accent to make myself understood by my Scottish bank’s telephone facility.

I think my resilience and relative insouciance when encountering technological upheaval is probably rooted in the science-fiction novels and films that captivated me in my childhood and my youth. Indeed, the best output in this genre probably performs a necessary social function: that of equipping us for the chaos of the new.

The futuristic concepts in several of them are now woven into our human existence: A.I. Artificial Intelligence; Minority Report, I Robot, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade........

© Herald Scotland