Faced with a choice of writing about AI and the potential annihilation of mankind or about something lighter, I ... after minimal consideration ... have selected Bats as the topic of this week's blog. Speaking here from personal experience with bats ... I once was more than a bit startled to find one hanging from the ceiling in my sunroom ... and ... after serious consideration and donning multiple layers of protective gear including goggles and gloves, sucked it up in my vacuum cleaner while it was sleeping or maybe just hanging there already dead. I didn't check. Anyway ... Bats seem to be a part our lives here in rural NW PA. I am not alone in this. Example? I recently I received an email from a dear friend that had me laughing out loud all alone at my computer. She recounted that she was minding her own business, in the safety and comfort of her own home, when .... "whoosh" - a bat swooped by. Now, if you have ever watched bats come out of trees at dusk or have had the unfortunate experience of having one actually inside your home, you understand that "whooshing" experience. Outside bats are rather impressive to watch. One watches from a safe distance. Inside bats - NO! You can actually feel the whoosh as it swoops by. Personally, I think they enjoy aiming for the head of an innocent human.
This email (you will see it below) began with an emoji of a flying bat... not a cute bat emoji -- a creepy bat emoji reminiscent of Dracula. I found it hysterically funny... and to top it off, she wrote the email in the third person, referring to herself by her own name as if she were some sort of observer safely removed from the situation, recounting what she is observing when she actually was the one being "whooshed" and then self-imprisoned in a bathroom. Again -- hysterically funny. If you knew her, you would agree. She never cowers from anything. Hope you will find this as funny as I do. I should confess that I once thought that locking my porch door would keep the bear out that was running toward it. Luckily it opted not to jump the pasture fence on its way toward me and did a 90 º turn instead... much to my relief. Anyway ...
I quote that email paragraph now with names changed to protect the innocent:
🦇. So, Lucy is minding her own business, watching TV, enjoying her nightly g/t when.........whoosh........ a bat flies around the great room. As you know, Lucy is not a 'bat fan'. She shrieks and shuts herself in the bathroom, hoping Ricky (her husband) is a wee bit concerned. Long story.... shortened a bit...... bat lands in the closet in a bedroom, upstairs, the one with the mirrored doors. Ricky stands guard, holding a racket to give it a thump should it move, until Little Ricky (their son), the bat hunter, arrives to save the day. He has two rackets.... kills it dead .... and pitches it outside. .... Enough excitement for one evening. Good grief. Bats just need to just stay outside. They are not good 'indoor animals'. 😵💫
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Nothing controversial about that opinion. Wonder if AI has a solution to the problems that whooshing bats create when indoors? We should keep AI busy with solving those kinds of dilemmas instead of fretting about the power of AI in the future. We should make a To Do list to keep AI totally absorbed with finding solutions to problems that would make our everyday lives better across the entire globe. We could start with bats and move slowly through things like ant invasions and groundhogs that dig wherever they feel like it. Then there are also the more important issues like solving world hunger, creating lasting peace across the world, etc. A collective To Do list could keep AI busy forever. Nice, right?
