ON THAT AI

I wondered why I wasn't at all interested in picking up AI and trying it out and it struck me that it's like deciding to test drive a car where the steering wheel doesn't work at all and the brakes only 30% of the time and mostly when nobody is applying them and then starts ignoring your inputs altogether.

I was the Senior Watch Officer on a ship where 25% of the crew changed every single month for years and I had to write a new watch quarter and station bill every month and had no more than a day or two to get it published before we started going back to sea. It was detailed intensive work because the qualifications of the men had to match the watch station requirements more or less exactly. 

I would draft it and submit it to the yeoman in the ship's office who would then fire up his first generation laptop computer and call up the previous month's watch quarter and station bill and then change it to match what I wrote and then I would proof read it and it would be wrong. Back to the office, back to the computer, and back to me and I would proof read it and it would be wrong. Next time we had a little chat me and the yeoman and we were not going to call up the previous version and "fix it" we were going to start from scratch and simply transcribe exactly what I wrote and if there were any errors I would watch him eat the hard copy.

Admittedly I was getting right around 3 hours of sleep back then and little things could irritate me. Spending 2 or 3 times longer proof reading a work then it took to draft the damned thing was an irritation I wasn't going to put up with anymore.

So there you have it, AI is the ship's office yeoman from my dark past and I would kick it downstairs before I would spend any time with its make believe realities.