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Part 1/100, January 21, 2023, as published in the Mabuhayradio.com  Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/FilAmWebsite

By Bobby M. Reyes

T his writer cum journalist, satirist and pundit and book author will turn 77 by May Day. There are 100 days before the birthday comes. The planned 100 essays will include articles (as links or otherwise) that appear in "The Straphanger" column in the http://www.philippinedailymirror.com and the "Unsolicited Advice" in the http://www.mabuhayradio.com.

Some of the 100 essays are amplifications of past articles written and published in any of the two websites or in this writer's Facebook Timeline  or in on or more 70 Facebook Groups or Pages. Some of the topics of discussions might have been already published in part in the author's Facebook Notes.

Recalling bits of wisdom from teachers, professors and mentors is not only a trait of gratitude to all of them but it also demands an obligation. Yes, a duty to pass on to our descendants, especially the coming generation, the lessons learned. And related also to the Reading Public..

IMHO, there is a good lesson this budding writer learned from his English teachers (both in high school and college) and from journalism professors. The lesson? Almost all topics have been written before somewhere by an author or by a group of writers.

In this age of the much-touted "Artificial Intelligence (AI)," this essayist has coined a term called, "Acquired Intelligence Sufficiency" (AIS).

The Wikipedia reports: Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by non-human animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs

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AI applications include advanced web search engines (e.g. Google Search), recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), self-driving cars (e.g. Waymo), automated decision-making and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go).[1]

As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require "intelligence" are often removed from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the AI effect.[2] For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from things considered to be AI,[3] having become a routine technology.[4]

The problem with AI -- according to one of my literary mentors, Poet-pundit Fred Burce Bunao (now deceased) -- is that it is all housed in a computer. When the plug is pulled off from an electrical outlet or when its battery runs out of juice, the computer becomes silent. And it turns into "dead hardware." And I added to it a phrase, "Run silent, run deaf," which is a derivative of another literary coinage this writer did, as in "Deaf Throat," a supposedly-funny adaptation of the Watergate's "Deep Throat."

"AI" should be called "Acquired Plagiarism" (AP). Why? Because a machine that turns out a superb and well-written essay or position paper or term paper (with perfect grammar and spelling) in just a couple of minutes or so does not give credit(s) to the human author(s), the works of which are often "quoted" (as often rewritten) in it. The machine did not write the original idea or ideas in the said AI-generated piece or report or paper.

This journalist challenged an online friend in a Facebook thread to ask his state-of-the-art "super computer" about the connection or link between, and/or among, Jose P. Rizal, Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC-8 BC) and American author, poet and editor by the name of Albert Pike (1809-1891).

After more-than 24-hours lapsed, the AI advocate could not provide a common link.

H ere is the link among the three historical figures that the AI computer apparently could not come up. Jose P. Rizal, the first Overseas-Filipino doctor of medicine, and also poet, novelist and foremost Filipino national hero, used the words of the Roman poet, Horace (his popular nickname) before the former faced a Spanish firing squad on December 30, 1896. Dr. Rizal told the Spanish authorities, "Non omnis moriar." It is Latin for "Not all of me will die." The Horace quote became the motto of the Order of the Knights of Rizal. This writer is a Knight Commander of Rizal (meaning, the third rank ,out of five degrees of membership)

This author told his fellow Knights of Rizal his belief that an American author, poet and editor by the name of Albert Pike (1809-1891) rewrote Horace words. And Mr. Pike wrote: "What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

By tomorrow, we will discuss the difference between being intelligent and just a street-smart kid.