Cheers! Heidi Regan joins the Merry Men for a treetop cider in Sherwood Forest

Comedian Heidi Regan joins us this week for the chance to meet her hero Robin Hood. 

On a mission to steal the Sheriff of Nottingham’s treasure and free the Merry Men from jail, will she use stealth and cunning or brute force (or a little of both?)

Expect lots of tickling, plenty of gold and if all goes to plan a giant celebratory bonfire in Sherwood Forest.

Out tomorrow (Monday 8 July). Don’t miss it!

AI in the news

Content moderators are often fleeing urban slums or rural poverty in countries like Uganda (Photograph: Alan Gignoux/Alamy)

It’s easy to take for granted the AI programmes entering the public realm and becoming part of our lives like chatbots such as GPT and Claude.

But as this article in The Observer points out, there is a human cost to training AI algorithms. Especially in the horrible world of harmful content moderation.

Perhaps in the same way as the convenience of buying cheap clothes relies on thousands of people spending their lives in unimaginably oppressive conditions, a lot of AI programming relies on desperate people doing distressing work to train the computer programmes.

Something to keep in mind as more and more AI enters our world.

Robot villains

Midjourney knows exactly what an ‘evil robot’ looks like

Hollywood is littered with creepy robot villains, from the obstinate HAL in Space Odyssey and Ian Holm’s violent android assistant in Alien to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and the Smiths in The Matrix.

As AI advances it seems ever more likely that, in the event it does try to wipe out humanity, it will be as a result of following human instructions to a fault rather than out of a sense of self preservation. In essence it will look more like Mickey Mouse’s out-of-control mops in Disney’s Fantasia, than Arnie riding a motorbike while firing off a shotgun on a motorway.

I recently watched A Murder at the Edge of The World, available on Disney Plus. It has Ray, its own version of the creepy AI robot, but is set in a remote snowbound setting with a plot more akin to an old-fashioned Agatha Christie whodunnit than Rise of the Machines.

It’s a bit of a slow burn, but worth a watch as an interesting meditation on the flaws of tech bros and the AIs their fevered minds can conjure. Unlike the T1000, Ray feels like something that ChatGPT could one day morph into.

Hard mode, meet Claude 3.5

Hard Mode with Claude - a new level of difficulty

Next week we’ll be plugging our ‘Hard Mode’ game into Claude 3.5 – the slickest, most intelligent AI chatbot in the business.

Spoiler alert: if you think PastMaster has been too easy so far, stay tuned. We’re about to change gear.

Until next time, Tan and the PastMaster crew

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