Independence… threat??

Well, here it is on Independence Day; your Eyewitness is “throwin’ back” in his hammock – Amerindian heritage – eating some pholourie – Indian heritage – and sipping his beer – European heritage – while he eyes his stew fish – Portuguese heritage – and fried rice – Chinese heritage!! In the background, Brother Bob – of African heritage – is crooning his meditation on what REAL INDEPENDENCE should mean to us in his “Redemption Song”!!
“Old pirates, yes, they robbed I/ Sold I to the merchant ships/ Minutes after they took I/ From the bottomless pit/ But my hand was made strong/ By the hand of the Almighty/ We forward in this generation/ Triumphantly!! Won’t you help to sing/ These songs of freedom? ‘Cause all I ever have/ Redemption songs/ Redemption songs!”
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds/ Have no fear for atomic energy/ ‘Cause none of them can stop the time/ How long shall they kill our prophets/ While we stand aside and look?/ Ooh, some say it’s just a part of it/ We’ve got to fulfil the book! Emancipate ourselves from mental slavery!!” What a powerful exhortation on the day we’ve been assured that we were finally independent from those pirates who’d kidnapped us all to toil in this foreign land that has now become our home!!
As he looks around his backyard – where he’ll soon be joined by some friends and relatives who he’d invited over for an “Independence Sport” – he reminds himself that he’d promised himself to drop his satirical, snarky tone – at least for this piece – for this Independence Day!! So in addition to the phoulourie and fried rice, he looked at the big pot of cook-up simmering slowly on his prized “outside” fireside!! This was as Guyanese as we could get, wasn’t it? He sighed!!
And this got him to thinking: what is it that makes us Guyanese? There was our accent, he figured. While we all got that West Indian lilt, he could always “make out” a Guyanese when he was walking around in the New York medley of peoples!! He remembered that video of an Irish politician from County Cork, Ireland, that had gone viral because he sounded, according to Jamaicans…well, so much like them!! Actually, there was something of his accent in all West Indians – including us Guyanese – because the English used poor Irishmen as overseers when we’d laboured on the plantations for them!! He now knew where we got “cyar” from!!
The irony was, your Eyewitness thought, that the English had tried out their “enslavement” on their Irish before us!!
Ah well… His guests were now arriving, and he’d be indulging in that most distinctive Guyanese ritual – the imbibed-spirit-induced “sport”!!

…for mankind
Just in time for our Independence Day, the Pope delivered his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas – “Magnificent Humanity” – on the topic that’s on top of the world’s agenda – including us! – AI!! Your Eyewitness was pretty chuffed that just like him, the Big Man dealt with AI just like he had – kind of like the Industrial Revolution all over again!! A technology with mega benefits but also even more mega risks, if it’s driven only by profit, power, or efficiency!!
He issued a warning to those of us who’re becoming totally smitten by AI to do all their thinking for them. He pointed out that AI is ultimately a product of MACHINES we have created and programmed!!! They can imitate reasoning and creativity, but they do not have conscience, empathy, or moral responsibility. As a result, one should never treat AI as equal to human beings or outsource moral decisions to it!!
Most critically, he argues that AI reflects the values and incentives of the people and companies building it – fellas like Musk!!
Chew on that!!

…of humans??
And on that note, your Eyewitness noted with not a smidgen of irony that we’re going to perform our first remote – most likely AI-assisted – robotic surgery from Guyana all the way to India!!