Anti-AI: Desk Set

My first corporate job was to write code for an antiquated Univac computer relegated to a dedicated room on the second floor of the manufacturing plant where I got hired into.  The computer required, in 1983, IBM punch cards to feed the code into the machine, which then got turned into binary signals stored on giant reels of magnetic tape, to then get fed back into the computer for processing.  I actually loved this work; though I did not have the knack for COBOL, the company had a whole bevy of other hardware where I was able to excel in my coding skills for RPG and micro-computer Basic.  

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon the 1957 romantic comedy, "Desk Set", starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn!  Set in corporate America, with the premise of a mainframe computer coming into the office environment "to free up the staff of their tedious, day to day functions".  LOVED IT!  (Still do!). 

But on hindsight, the movie was a portent... in 1957... of the AI revolution.  Artificial Intelligence was only a concept that came into being just a few years prior to the movie.  I never really gave it much thought until I caught the movies mainframe image as a widget on the YouTube video, "The Machine That Came For Our Jobs".

Almost verbatim, word for word, what was seen on screen is now parroted by the AI drivers.  How the concerns of the ladies in the research office are echoed by today's staff, working to enter the tedious information about their jobs into the AI model.  

I will always have a soft spot for this Tracy / Hepburn classic, but the to realize that 70 years ago, our future was then.

Remarkable!

Rade