Lunch With Cousins Ted & Sue Marcus, Followed By Artificial Intelligence At Ethical Reading, 27 February 2018

The weather was getting cold and frightful – the Beast From The East and Storm Emma were on their way.

But did that make me even the slightest bit nervous about driving beyond Zone 3 of Greater London to Reading in Berkshire? Well, yes, to be honest, I was slightly nervous, except that the weather report was pretty sure that we weren’t to expect too much snow to the west of London until Wednesday or Thursday.

In any case, I had arranged to have lunch with cousins Ted and Sue in Woodley and then go on to talk and lead a discussion at Ethical Reading on the ethics of artificial intelligence.

I needed to do some work before I set off, otherwise I’d have taken up Janie’s suggestion and popped in to see George and Amal at Castle Clooney before seeing Ted & Sue – it’s only a couple of miles up the road and I’m sure Amal and George would have been pleased to see me.

Anyway, Ted and Sue were glad to see me, as was the newest member of the Marcus family, little Max.

Little Max Marcus

Little Max showed his approval of my visit by yapping at me incessantly and giving my shins a violent hug.

It is a tradition in our tribe to name youngsters after passed but fondly-remembered family members. Ted and I share the Grandpa and Great-Uncle shown below, the latter being Max Marcus; Little Max’s great-great musical forebear.

Grandpa Lew, sitting, with Great Uncle Max standing

Janie says she can see the resemblance between Little Max and his Great-Great-Uncle Max.

Lunch was a rather grand affair – pumpkin & butternut squash soup followed my salt beef & trimmings, followed by a spotted dick pudding.

Janie remarked afterwards, when I described the meal, that it was a miracle I was able to get up and drive to Reading after that meal, let alone give an address and lead a discussion.

Ted, Sue and I discussed the family genealogy project, with which Sue is making slow but steady progress. She seems to be getting further with the other side of Ted’s ancestry at the moment, having recently traced some Dutch ancestors back to Baroque times.

Ted and I also talked about music, as most often we do. Ted knows a bit about almost any genre you can name, as he has always enjoyed exploring different styles and periods. Like me, he has inherited from our impressively talented musical family a love for music but not the talent for playing it…

…other than playing music on the hi-fi of course, for which he (and I) have an abundance of talent.

Every so often, Sue would gasp that it had started snowing, but in truth these were small flurries rather than troublesome snow proper – it was just horribly cold out of doors. Still, soon enough I did need to set off for Reading, so Sue, Ted and I said our goodbyes.

The Ethical Reading people seemed a very friendly and thoughtful crowd – only to be expected I suppose as the introduction came through Gill Ringland. There were more than 20 people on the night which, given the weather, I thought was a pretty good turnout.

Before the main group of people arrived, I chatted with Gill, Jim Bignal and Gurprit Singh, who comprise the founding team. Gill kindly asked after Janie’s health; I explained that Janie is well and keeping healthy by doing lots of exercise, such as her latest hobby, pole dancing. I think Jim and Gurprit thought this was a turn of phrase rather than a literal remark, as they seemed most surprised when I showed them pictures Janie had sent me from her lesson the day before:

 

But Janie’s physical gymnastics are/were no more impressive than the mental gymnastics demonstrated by the Ethical Reading group, who grappled with truly challenging ethical dilemmas around artificial intelligence with aplomb.

Once Ethical Reading publishes its promised blog piece about the event, I’ll link that piece through to this piece. In the meantime, here is a link to the Ethical Reading events page.

The journey home looked a bit more treacherous than it was – the snow was now falling but not too hard; I got home and to bed long before the worst of the snow landed in London overnight.

I sensed that the event had gone well, but I was still very pleasantly surprised to receive a kind e-mail from Jim Bignal the next day which read:

Many thanks for talking to us last night – you got 100% on the scoring.

…now there’s a first for me.

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