Other than being a major breakthrough for Radiohead it was also (more or less) a punchline in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Scotty is attempting (spoiler alert for anyone still stuck in the 1980's... which would be some of our dear readership...) to engineer the glass panels necessary to create a huge water tank inside a Klingon Bird of Prey. For various reasons this is the ship which Kirk and the gang find themselves piloting at this point in their heroes journey. Now they have a need to return whales to the Earth's oceans back in the future.
Scotty sits down in front of a computer and asks permission to design the glass composite he needs. The factory owner grants permission to proceed, and Scotty smiles as he starts talking to it... this being 1986 the computer is not voice activated. Looking on in confusion as the computer does nothing, the factory owner offers Scotty the advice to "use the mouse", Scotty smiles, thanks him, and with a flourish picks up the mouse and starts speaking into it. A classic comedy moment, which just happens to have the foresight to predict where we are now.
Huge shout-out to Leonard Nimoy (director, co-writer and co-star), and Harve Bennett for this comedic moment of profound insight.
Now we have chatbots, ChatGPT, supportive AI and things like Gencraft and Canva filling this void. The electron-powered robot army is slowly turning us all into hamster-wheel running energy sources. A sort of Matrix meets Squid Game meets 1984 moment for us all, with the twist being none of us think this is what's happening...
Everyone's favourite crazy aunt, the FIA, has recently had a sherry too many at the parish Christmas party. You know the one. It's the helper's Christmas party whereby the church is decorated and ready for Christmas so a brief celebration is held. A pre-Christmas party for the helpers and the sherry is flowing, so Aunty FIA has a gulp too many and suddenly feels now is the time to let the world know... What is Wrong with Christmas!
Thus commences the; "One thing we need to change about Christmas in this Godforsaken parish is..." speech to everyone, but no one in particular... which, worse than the Grinch stealing Christmas, is set to define blood-feuds in the parish for generations to come.
Now both the FIA and Liberty Media are filled with Sherry and starting angst-driven rants at anyone silly enough to stand next to them in the parish hall. Less of this, more of that, don't touch the art works, do buy the cheap seats... an endless carousel of new rules. The Sherry is powering an endless stream of complaints from them both. Trying to force new everything for 2026, trying to engineer racing this season, trying to turn another dollar a touch faster than last week. And everyone with an opinion is going to court it would appear.
So what are our Sherry-filled Aunts going to do when Red Bull refines ChatGPT into a wind tunnel genius? Adrian and his fleet of pencils, aided by Bongo the amazing talking and designing computer?
You've only got 1,000 computing hours a year, so heck. Better use them to good effect. Any reader yet to experiment with the array of Artificial Intelligence (AI) out there is missing an inflection point in human existence. Sure, like self-drive cars are "just around the corner", and the T-1000 Terminator is not about to start running a grocer's store near you any time soon... still the robots are coming.
Modern myth has it Adrian still uses a drawing board and pencil. I can believe that. There is something about how the brain engages when the hands are being used to directly create, not simply type. I love a sheet of A3 and a self-propelling pencil for sketching ideas, linking concepts, mind maps, influence diagrams... I'll then type them up, or pop them in a spreadsheet, but the creative act is analogue.
The Linn LM-1 Drum machine released by engineer Roger Linn in 1980 was supposed to be the end for human drummers. Given the revered tones with which Keith Moon and John Bonham are still talked about, and the outpouring of grief and support for Taylor Hawkins, drummer for the Foo Fighters until his death in March 2022, I believe news of the demise of the human drummer is premature. The machines compliment, not supersede.
So Adrian uses his mighty intellect, coupled with his hands and a pencil, then some Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) time. He then passes the output to his trusty AI sidekick - let's call him HAL - and boom! A fine idea becomes a mighty fine idea! Adrian kicks it around some more, and iterates with HAL some more.
HAL could even go consult for the other teams, helping each to improve on their own concepts... The point being that it is the human seed of the idea which starts the journey down the path to greatness. Adrian's start point is better than anyone else's... so his endpoint, even when AI enhanced, will still be ahead of them. The FIA limit each team to 500 hours of CFD, plus 250 hours of AI processing...? Well Adrian's idea was still the best to start with. It is just each idea on the grid will be less evolved than it could have been given more time. The daylight gap, due to Adrian's genius, will not be erased by the machines.
Same with traction control, driver aids, active suspension... Yes, each makes a driver faster... but if you put Senna, V. Max. and me in the same computer enhanced cars around the Nordschleife I'd still come dead last by a number of country miles. Get rid of all the computers, have us all in 1970's manual gearbox F1 cars...? Well the same result, except your scribe might well be last and dead without the computers to save him from his worst driving failures!
The ballpoint pen did not kill the ink pen. The Quartz watch did not kill the mechanical Swiss watch (that's a wonderful story for another day...). Video did not kill live theatre. So far reality TV has not killed reality. The Linn drum machine did not kill the drummer. It actually highlighted the beauty and brilliance of human drummers when they reach mastery.
Mastery, V. Max has it. So does Adrian, Senna, Mansell at his peak. Gilles, Gordon Murray and Patrick Head in their finest hours.
We already have the technology to map a circuit to the nearest 100th of an inch, generate terra bytes of video data... feed it all into a self-driving Audi track car... and beat all human lap records with a carefully staged managed pre-learned lap of glory. Lone car on track, solo effort time trial.
Now get that same car to dive into the first corner at Monaco with 19 other cars flying around it, and the track damp due to a pre-race shower and you're going to see a real world computer crash!
Just as planes didn't make walking obsolete, us sleepy old humans and AI will work out how to share the world. AI will enhance the work of the genius while making the work of mortals less awful.
Adrian will still be Adrian. His idea made 3% better by AI will still be better than everyone else's labours made 3% better by AI.
Right now we have more chance of bumping into a whale in a Klingon battle cruiser than we do of a computer beating Adrian or V. Max, at their own games.
We humans are an imperfect bunch of crazy hairless apes. Yet when we hit mastery it is a brief moment of awe as the human touches the divine. A divine which, for now, continues to elude our silicon-based AI curios. And the computers simply have to be OK with that.
Max Noble
Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here
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