There seems to be a lot of chatter about AI (artificial intelligence) everywhere you look. I don't collide with it very much except for an occasional troll through the free version of Gemini by Google. It works pretty good for simple tasks. I have used it to interpret the physician's findings on some ultrasound and CT scans I had done recently. I found that the Windows 11 Notepad app has an AI rewrite feature that I have messed with a little and found to be entertaining but nothing else.

When I was a college freshman (1968) I took a course in computer programming. It was a lot of fun and it was entirely directed to learning how to write algorithms. The language we used was called Student PL. It was very simple with few bells and whistles. I remember at the time that Prof. Marvin Minsky was a pioneer in artificial intelligence. I seem to remember meeting him once. They programmed their AI stuff in LISP which I found unfathomable. That might have been part of the decision to pursue a degree in Chemistry rather than computer science. Anyway, I remember Prof Minsky being quoted at the time that artificial intelligence is certainly possible because, "The brain is a computer that happens to be made out of meat."

So today's picture goes back to 1984 with Richard and Robert playing with my IBM PC. At this point I guess I had it for a year or two. It was tons of fun and very expensive. I bought an Epson 1100 wide carriage dot matrix printer to go along with it. I see on the shelf a user guide for a Hayes Smartmodem which was a sizzling 1200 baud. Those were fun times.