Tag Archives: technology

You can’t vibe code a garden

AI is everywhere. It feels like I can’t go a week without someone telling me I must use it: it will save me time; it will make my work easier, and my writing better; it will help me think through problems, and act as a free therapist; it will create posters and images and flyers in a flash; it will help me find information and learn faster; it will save me having to think so much or remember things. This is not particularly appealing: I like thinking and designing, and writing for myself. And what I see of AI is that it is ruining everything. It is destroying institutions, destabilising economies, erasing job opportunities, creating a permanent underclass, eroding societal trust, strip mining the planet, pushing some people into psychosis, and making us all more stupid and less able to think critically.

A recent experience illustrated the problem perfectly.

Bart Fish & Power Tools of AI / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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An alternative day: how technology could enhance healthcare

Real day: 

I arrive at work, and quickly check my emails on my phone before I enter the signal black hole that is the hospital where I spend my working life. The SHO is not in yet, so I persuade the ward clerk to briefly give up one of only 3 functional computers on the ward and update the patient list with the details of the 2 new patients, whose names are scrawled onto the whiteboard. I skim through their notes, and cast my eyes over them to make sure nothing urgent is required. I leave a note for the SHO requesting her to arrange some tests, before I go to the secretaries’ office to hunt for a working dictaphone and a spare tape.

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