Confronting the Small AI-Driven Dog That Threatens to Swallow the World
The other day I was laid up hacking and coughing in bed with a nasty bout of the summer flu. I wasn't in the mood to reflexively pick up my iPhone a thousand times a day as I normally do and read about yet another wave of moral and political outrages among the deluge of recent such news on social media. I think we can all agree, regardless of political persuasion, that neither Facebook nor Twitter are particularly conducive to tranquility or healing, save perhaps for funny cat videos. So, completely bored and a bit groggy, I grabbed a random book from my nightstand and re-read a short vignette from one of my favorite novels, The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I paraphrase here: The leaders of two warlike species were facing off across a negotiating table on the brink of intergalactic war, when a wormhole suddenly opened up and an English phrase–which just happened to be a highly insulting comment towards one’s mother in their language–was carried from