Robots

It’s the first day of May and it is starting off with a very much May Gray morning. There is a full marine layer covering the sky and no blue in sight. I thought I maybe saw some hints of blue beyond the overcast as I was walking my dog earlier but here we are at 10:00 in the morning as I write this and I’m not seeing any sign of clearing.

I get a little work done before I leave. Well I don’t know who I can say is working. Is it me or Claude - my friendly AI agent? I’m sure you have heard of this right? The fact that you are reading this shows that you spend some time on the internet and thus I assume you are aware of all the hype around AI these days. It’s more than hype. It is literally transforming the way I work and it’s honestly calling into question if I will still have this job in a few years. I’m really not nervous about this. Best case scenario is I am doing something even more exciting than what I am doing now.

Anyways Claude is working very hard and seems to have a great attitude and a lot of confidence in his ability to succeed. Me? I’m not so confident. Honestly, what AI can do these days is like science fiction. It’s amazing, but it can also fail terribly. The media hypes up how it can do everything perfectly, but that has not been my experience nor the experience of those I work with. When it works it is mind blowing and the demos are incredible. However, here is what happens to me all the time and is what is happening to me this morning: I tell it to do something rather ambitious and it produces a result that looks at first glance absolutely incredible. However after taking what it has given me and executing it, it completely does not work.

Now this does not mean total failure. Often this means that I just need to work with it to refine what it came up with until it does work. In the end, it still saves me hours and hours of work. Perhaps this should give me some comfort since it proves that you still need a human that knows what they are doing to hold the AI’s hand. So it’s a double win. I prove I am still useful and necessary and the AI saves me a ton of drudgery work that I really don’t find interesting. I am still working with it on this particular problem so we shall see if this is what comes ot pass. There have been times when I have had to set the AI to the side and just do the damn work myself. I hope that is not the case this time because I don’t want to work!

So after prompting Claude and getting him started on further troubleshooting, I head off for the beach at 7:30 in hopes that when I come back, he will have something for me to look at. This is the AI dream right? Let the robots work while we go to the beach! This reminds me of The Planet of the Apes. For a while the Apes were doing all the grunt work until they achieved enough self awareness to dominate the humans. Oh it’s just a movie.

So I get to the beach and it is all gray and peaceful and nice. For whatever reason I don’t feel as hesitant to get in the water today as I did yesterday even though today looks colder than yesterday. It’s not colder really. Also, according to this morning’s buoy data, we are back up to 65 degrees in the water. All the local buoys read 65 except San Pedro is 63. Well that’s just one more reason not to swim in San Pedro!

I’m looking at that water and thinking to myself that it might just be warmer in there than it is out here and it’s pretty nice out here. When I reach the shore, I come across a group of swimmers and we all say hi. It’s the same group I often see on Sundays. They say the visibility is good. As they leave another group of swimmers are finishing and coming to shore. Wow, I rarely see so many swimmers out. This is good to see. I wave but they are too far to speak to.

As I am getting in the water, it is obvious that the temperature is indeed warmer today. It’s not dramatically warmer but here in the mid 60’s it really does not take much to make a noticeable difference. It still has a touch of coolness to it but it is comfortable. Everything around me appears as though it is in black and white under these clouds. It’s nice. It just feels very calm and peaceful. With all that is going on in the world, I wish everyone could have the opportunity to experience what I am experiencing now if only for a few minutes. It just seems like there is so much turmoil and conflict and hate and greed fueling the powers that be to make things difficult for those who have much less power. It all seems so unnecessary here. I am here in the water with practically nothing and I have more than I need.

I swim south and in just a few minutes I intersect with another pair of swimmers. We exchange a couple sentences. One says he gives the visibility a 10 out of 10. I wonder if he swims here often (I have never seen him). I can think of some days that would be well off his charts.

It’s such a nice swim. I don’t see any more swimmers after those last two. I also don’t see any fish and hardly any birds. When I reached the headlands, I could see a bunch of them on one of those big rocks way out at the end of the point. That is very common. I think that rock is a favorite spot for local cormorants and pelicans. I see a few birds flying around the nearby rocks and wish at least one would head out my way to say hi. None come. Every time I stop I always pause and look both directions in hopes I might catch either one or a whole flock flying by me. I have had many instances in the past where birds just seem to fly from nowhere and are all of the sudden right on top of me. So I try to be aware. Finally at the north end of the beach I am rewarded with a single pelican who flies by quite close. So majestic.