I have been going through some of my half-finished posts. Some are no longer relevant. Some I am finishing. This one was about half-written in April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ending, also in italics, is from this year.

It was the Google Translate message that threw me.

I know my online activity is being monitored. Yours is too. It is the price we pay for being connected. But do you know just how pervasive the surveillance is?

Simple German messages I can puzzle out myself, but I’m lazy. If someone sends me a long message I’m probably going to save time and brainpower by running it through Google Translate.

Yesterday I received a long (to me) update on a hospitalized friend who had surgery last week. She had been moved to a new room – her old one was being used for COVID-19 patients.

There’s nothing unusual about that. And there was nothing unusual about the translation – until I got to the end.

Once the translation was finished, there was more. the message read: “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Get the latest information.

Do you find that disturbing? If I wanted information on the pandemic I would have searched for it. But apparently “Covid” in the translation triggered the message.

I think we are going to have to get used to the fact that Big Brother is watching with an all-seeing eye that George Orwell couldn’t have dreamed of. And the rise of artificial intelligence will only make it worse.

AI is watching everything you do online. And it might have a pretty good idea what you are up to when you are not online.

I’ve been reading a lot about AI recently. I’ve even attended a couple of webinars, though I confess I only half-listened to those while doing something else. The printed word is my preferred medium.

There is no consensus on just how harmful AI will become. Or even a consensus that it is harmful at all. Even that worries me.

AI has been with us for a long time now, but didn’t receive much attention when it was an algorithm that powered social media. The publicity came mostly after it became interactive and accessible to the average person – the tech companies had been using it for years.

I’m not convinced those who are working in the field really understand what they are doing and how they are doing it. They are standing at the top of a snowy hill and making a snowball which they then push downhill. That the snowball grows as it rolls and picks up speed, becoming uncontrollable, isn’t their problem. Though maybe it should be.

New technology is frequently disruptive. And hurtful.

In the early twentieth century, workers who made lamps were thrown out of work with by the popularity of the electric lightbulb. In the early part of this century the digital photo revolution cost thousands of people their livelihood -when was the last time you took a film to be processed?

Humans are adaptable. With each technological “breakthrough” there has been a period of adjustment, then things have stabilized.

There are those though who suggest that artificial intelligence may be different. That we may actually invent something that will take over from humans, just like in some science fiction stories.

Theologically I don’t think that is likely. Technologically I wonder.

Do you have any opinion on the matter?