I remember the days when AI meant Artificial Insemination
John Arnold’s uncles were AI men back in the 50s, when for the first time a bull wasn’t needed on a farm to produce a calf. Now the word AI has a totally different meaning!
Agriculture in Ireland in those years was very different from today. After the War it was barely subsistence farming - eking a living from the land making profit was only a dream! The mantra of ‘one more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough’ still resonated in the countryside where mixed farming was still the norm.
My grandfather John Twomey had been a Senior Livestock inspector until his death in 1943. His sons continued then in the vanguard of changing farming in Ireland especially with breeding better cattle and cows. So the Artificial Insemination was seen as a huge step forward in the selective breeding of livestock.
My uncles worked from their base in Castlelyons Creamery, travelling to farms all over North East Cork.
Growing up in the 1960s the AI man calling in spring and early summer was very matter of fact, like the postman or Woods’ grocery van. I suppose we were lucky here because Finn Adams, our local AI man, lived only over the road from us. The term we used when a cow was ready to be mated was ‘she’s going to dairy’ and when the tell tale signs were observed at the morning milking we knew the services of the AI man were required. It was easy for us as, all we had to do was put a white flag on the ditch at the top of the boreen. When Finn was passing on his way to Castlelyons he’d see the flag and get the message.
Two other AI practitioners, Donal Barry and Patrick O’Regan, lived in our area too so no cow was never left unserved in Bartlemy. Ah yes back then a bull was a bull and an AI man was a good substitute and we all knew clearly what AI meant. Alas and alack how things have changed. Could we ever imagine, even twenty years ago, that something natural, personal and individualistic like human intelligence, could be created or replicated in a laboratory or a workshop somewhere? Truly it beggars belief!
Scrapie was disease in sheep and scraping was what we did to boots after a hurling game to take the mud off! Well my mind boggled and bent over backwards the other day when I heard me man Elon Musk say that too many people were ‘data scraping’ so he’s limited the number of Twitter posts users can see a day - to 6000. In the name of all that’s Holy, unholy and in between has the world gone mad altogether? What kind of an oinseach or gombeen would be fingering their phone or tablet (formerly a pill) six thousand times a day? What do people be looking for at all, at all I ask ye? Last time I checked there were just over fourteen hundred minutes in a day, and that’s every day, seven days a week? So where would you be going twittering six thousand times a day, without a bell on yer bike?
On Monday I met a sheep farmer from Ballarat in the state of Victoria in Australia. Meg told me that in her area sheep-stealing had become an all too frequent occurrence. What with huge open areas of land and vast flocks of sheep prevention of this nocturnal crime was proving to be very difficult both for the farmers and the local police.
Hey presto Artificial Intelligence arrives and it has created a tiny radio ‘active’ implant or chip which is put under the skin of each new-born lamb - the procedure takes about thirty seconds to complete, she told me. Then if an attempt is made to steal any of the sheep the implant ‘recognises’ it’s owners trailer or sheep-box and if any strange vehicle approaches an alarm is sounded. Meg added that within two minutes the flock-owner and nearest police station are alerted. The farmer and police station might be distant but the deterrent element has been enough to dramatically reduce animal thefts.
Meg is in Ireland trying to trace her family as she has discovered her great grandfather was born in this area in 1834. So far we’ve been unable to ascertain exactly where her ancestors lived so I suggested that she do a DNA test and any possible cousins still living around her might show up as ‘matches’. She laughs at this suggestion and rules out the DNA route because she fears that too much personal, family information is being ‘harvested’ through the multiple companies offering DNA tests - that’s data scraping apparently. She thinks it’s truly like ‘big brother’ getting to know all about us and possibly selling on this information to commercial entities.
She’s a writer and historian as well as being a very wise woman and she has genuine concerns at the use of Artificial Intelligence in terms of its relationship and possible dominance of human beings. To be honest as a non-tech guru I shudder at the thought of the way things are moving so fast. You know the saying ‘if you don’t use it you’ll lose it’- well in terms of the human brain and ‘ordinary’ intelligence, will this too become redundant?
If we get AI fuelled and led yokes to think for us, sing for us, write poetry and books for us, solve all our problems - what’s the point in we being here at all? Where’s the role for photographs in the future? AI can create a picture of anyone, anywhere in the world - you needn’t have been at a match or concert but AI can convince the world you were there! Where will it all end - no one knows of course and while I am always open to progress and things that help humanity in the long run I have me doubts on this one.
Maybe Musk, Zuckerberg and their trillionaire friends will put people before profit, maybe their long term goals are to solve the problems of the world rather than increase their personal wealth but that’s a very big maybe I’m thinking.
I know we can’t go back to the blackboard and chalk, the horse ploughing, the penny farthing bicycle and light from candles but let’s make haste slowly. The EU are talking about a Digital Euro, you cant get in to a GAA match anywhere now with cash, ‘tapping’ is all the craze and now Artificial Intelligence is set to dictate our lives into the future! There was lot to be said for the time when a smart cow knew the difference between the bull and the AI man!
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