{"id":5283,"date":"2021-09-01T10:12:46","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T00:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=5283"},"modified":"2021-09-04T07:36:22","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T21:36:22","slug":"rear-window","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=5283","title":{"rendered":"REAR WINDOW"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I pause, waiting for the kettle to boil, standing at the kitchen window and looking out into the gathering dusk. This part of the house is set up high on stumps so that it\u2019s almost at second storey height; I can overlook our unruly garden right to the back of our neighbour\u2019s house. Homing birds zoom between the shrubs and trees across my line of sight but my eye is drawn to a brilliant rectangle of light within a dark frame. It\u2019s Joe\u2019s* kitchen window; I can see from mine into his.<\/p>\n

And now as I pour boiling water into my cup, I see him. He\u2019s there, maybe fifty metres away, all lit up but unaware, and he\u2019s bobbing up and down and then twisting sideways in what could be an odd kind of dance or exercise routine but probably isn\u2019t. I stare, fascinated. What is<\/em> he doing? I have to know, I have to make sense of these movements of his \u2013 in spite of my uneasy feeling that I am about to enter voyeuristic Rear Window<\/em> territory. Though I don\u2019t know for sure, with my lifetime knowledge of kitchen floorplans I think I can safely assume the window is in front of the kitchen sink. So it\u2019s got to be something sink-related. Or undersink-related. I keep watching. Then I see the flash of metal and he stops the weird dance and turns away. My brain works furiously and then it all falls into place. He\u2019s been looking for an oven tray. He\u2019s been sorting through a low cupboard, taking out non-tray items, putting them on the bench and then going back in again until he finds the right one. A kind of relief floods through me. Puzzle solved.<\/p>\n

And I think about artificial intelligence, about robot brains. I know they can look at CCTV footage of every person who passes every camera in a city and put a name to each face. But could they interpret the data \u2013 the time of day, the weird movements, the flash of metal \u2013 and make up the story, as I did? \u00a0Creativity does not depend on rules or algorithms \u2013 it\u2019s a leap into the dark, informed by personal, lived, felt experience. A computer can\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to grow increasingly more frustrated as you clash and bang through piles of irrelevant bakeware in an inconveniently low cupboard, but I do.<\/p>\n

My neighbour Joe, leisurely now, puts something onto the tray and places it in the oven. He goes to the fridge but his back is to me, so I can\u2019t see whether he\u2019s reaching for a lettuce or the butter or a jar of pickled onions. Ah, yes, here he is, pouring liquid into a stemmed glass. A glass of wine is a good guess. Red or white? I\u2019m not close enough to tell.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s enough now, Susan,\u201d I say out loud. I\u2019m starting to feel bad even though my neighbour has no idea he\u2019s been spied upon. Everyone deserves to drink their pre-dinner wine in peace, I decide, drawing the blinds and reaching for my lukewarm tea.<\/p>\n

But now, I start to wonder…what’s Joe having for dinner?<\/p>\n

*Not his real name!<\/p>\n

https:\/\/mindmatters.ai\/2020\/08\/six-limitations-of-artificial-intelligence-as-we-know-it\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I pause, waiting for the kettle to boil, standing at the kitchen window and looking out into the gathering dusk. This part of the house is set up high on stumps so that it\u2019s almost at second storey height; I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5283"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5293,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283\/revisions\/5293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}