Past, Present, Future. 01/27/23

This week we took a step into the future with Al. He discovered Tik Tok (which John has and I have not). It’s funny, these days even the name Al looks funny. It looks a lot like AI, which for the uninformed stands for Artificial Intelligence. To me, artificial intelligence is like asking a smart person to write your term paper. You are artificially presenting yourself as more intelligent than you actually are. Way back in college I took two courses in the same semester, something like The History of China and The History of Chinese Politics. I needed the latter to complete my poly sci (that’s what we cool kids called Political Science back then) degree. For the first course I wrote “How Confucius influenced Mao.” For the second course I merely reversed the names and wrote about “How Mao Incorporate the Teachings of Confucius.” Guess what? It was almost the exact same paper. As the final semester of my senior year was approaching, I went in to the office of the professor who taught The History of China to collect my term paper and was shocked to find he shared an office with the Chinese Politics professor!!! As luck would have it the shared office was empty and I picked the already graded paper off the history professor’s table before my larceny could be discovered. He gave me an A! The other guy didn't like the same paper as well and it got a B or B+. But I digress. The point is, that’s how I cheated BEFORE artificial intelligence. Does it count as AI when you rip yourself off? And what does that have to do with Tik Tok? Although Tik Tok has a lot to do with recent Chinese history. And it certainly has a lot to do with the future. But I digress, as usual.

The second comic today is another multi-part adventure, this one into the past. In this one, Marv (which auto-correct, a form of artificial intelligence, keeps trying to change to “Mark”) takes a look into his past. How on earth did he, a Black man, end up with the last name “Mandelbaum? “ Suffice it to say you will learn that next week. But it started innocently with a trip to the attic, where Marv discovered some photos from his past. Wonder why all those programs—Ancestry.com, 23 and Me — are all so popular? It’s because of guys like Marv. John has taken a trip to his past through one of these, and I have yet to take the plunge, but we had a lot of fun inventing a past for Marv and his ancestors. We will reveal it in the two comics to come next week. Until then, enjoy your DNA and revel in this fact: you will no longer be bombarded by “Go Giants” missives on this website. They went alright. Straight into the trash can. Sigh.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John