Member-only story
From Dick Tracy to AI: Out of Mind to Beyond Mind
Proem
Greetings. Welcome to the second episode in Health Hats’ occasional series, Artificial Intelligence Can Work for You. The first episode, AI: Neither Artificial nor Intelligent, demonstrated how I use artificial intelligence to make my multimedia DIY (Do It Yourself) sausage. A long-time reader, John, called to tell me he opens all my podcast notifications and emails yet never listens to anything smelling technical. But he opened this one, and for the first time, he had an inkling of what AI might be. Mission accomplished!
Let’s take another step and use our senses to picture this animal, Artificial Intelligence. How much can we recognize? What feels like sci-fi? What smells like BS? How much is inconceivable? Think of cell phone inventor Alan Gross, who conceived of the cell phone after comic strip creator, Chester Gould introduced Dick Tracy’s 2-way wrist radio in 1946? A path from nowhere in human consciousness to a figment of someone’s imagination in a cartoon (1946), then opening a mind to possibilities (1964), a concept and prototype (1973), and a product (1983). The Digital phone (1990), just thirty-five years ago. You know the rest
