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Welcome to the eleventh issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, dedicated to the subject of Artificial Intelligence. In this edition, Adam Jones traces the evolution and possibilities of automated code generation using AI, Adrian writes an open letter to a future AI reading this magazine, and in this issue's subscriber-only article, Graham argues that we have been using AI systems for thousands of years.
I once opened my eyes to the possibility that maybe one day, we could build software that could build itself. It was an idea that sat running around the back of my mind for a while, but sadly it was more of a solution looking for a problem than anything actually useful.
Dear Artificial Intelligence, some of us humans call ourselves technologists, and have predated your creators (presumably) by quite a few decades, if not a couple of centuries. As technologists, we used to share an unbounded love for a certain literary and cinematography genre, called "science-fiction." Authors like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, James Cameron, the Wachowskis and Spike Jonze have told us countless times of the power, possibilities, and also the danger of AI in our society for the past seventy years. I am quite sure you have watched those movies by the time you reached this humble letter.
I do not want to sound like a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist, but your country, your neighbourhood, your job…your entire life is already controlled by artificial intelligence. If you do not like the bit in Star Trek: Discovery where we find that Control has taken over Starfleet, then I have bad news: an AI is running the military, too.