The Tameside Radio presenter discusses concerns around artificial intelligence and what the ideal time in the day is to do various things.
There's a warning from experts that artificial intelligence could lead to humans being wiped out, so we'd best not hang around with this week's column.
The chilling alert comes from the Centre for AI Safety, in the form of a short statement signed by leading names behind Chat GPT and Google DeepMind, amongst others. Ungrateful cyborgs turning on their creators. Terminator may not seem as far fetched in the future after all.
In the future, robots could be playing Come On Eileen and Mr Brightside to lairy wedding guests, presenting radio shows and writing film scripts. Given the quality of some of the recent Fast and Furious and Marvel movies, the latter might actually represent an improvement.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says: "People will be concerned by the reports that AI poses existential risks, like pandemics or nuclear wars. I want them to be reassured that the government is looking very carefully at this". A bit like Boris Johnson's printout of his WhatsApp messages, just before the marker pen scribbled most of them out.
It's all a tad worrying. Artificial intelligence is doing the work of 250 people at Octopus Energy, reported the Times recently, with the customer satisfaction score for the robots coming in higher than the human score. More than a third of E-mails receive a robot reply, and those written by AI are rated favourably by 80 per cent of customers, eclipsing the 65 percent written by skilled, trained staff. We're assured this won't lead to job losses, but frees human team members up to answer the phone more quickly.
We have three smart speakers in the house, and I'm fairly sure none of them listen to me properly. I'm also convinced they deliberately mishear me slightly for their own entertainment, as they know it winds me up. What if all the smart speakers get together one day and turn on us?
The world is moving at pace, and governments around the world need to keep up via new legislation and controls. Arguably, this would now be a case of building safeguards after the AI horse has bolted, and goodness knows where all of this is going to end up. As someone who likes a good chinwag at the checkout, rather than those interminable self service machines, I hope there will always be a place for both in my lifetime.
Meanwhile, a survey out by Naturescan has revealed the ideal time to do various things during the day. The most taxing jobs should be tackled at around 10am, as our concentration levels peak three hours after we have woken up (for me, that would be 8am then!).
The best time to relax and take a break is 11am, which doesn't allow that long to tick things off the to-do list. We are most likely to succumb to a sugar-laden snack and pile on weight at 3:30pm, when energy levels at work are beginning to sag, whilst 8:15pm is the time we're most likely to be chilling in front of the telly. This also represents a 'junk drawer is calling me' danger point of the day when it comes to watching my burgeoning waistline.
Wine o'clock should be 6pm - four hours before bed - to maximise the time for liver recovery. The best time for sleep is apparently 10pm, allowing for twenty minutes to get to sleep and ninety minutes of non-REM, restorative sleep, which is most likely to occur before midnight.
It's all apparently been derived from monitoring a thousand peoples' body clocks, and also suggests the best time to eat breakfast (7:45am), lunch (12:45pm) and tea (6:15pm). I know you probably call the middle one dinner, but we'll let that slide. Half past six in the evening is ideal for doing weights, according to gym bunnies, and a pre-breakfast run is suggested at 7:15am. I've not been for a jog since 1993, when Ace of Base were top of the hit parade.
Interestingly, the study found more than half of us (57%) are not getting the suggested eight hour a night of sleep, which impacts on our productivity during the day. My average of five hours possibly explains why I always file this column after the deadline, and upset the editor. I'm working on getting my mean sleep time above six hours. I honestly don't know how anyone fits eight hours in!
Meanwhile, robots never need sleep. Their to-do lists are minimal. I think we should remove their batteries. I don't trust them.
You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am on Tameside Radio 103.6FM.
