From Typewriters to Talking Tech: Why AI Matters (Even After Retirement)

In the video and transcript, we've deliberately left certain mistakes and mispronunciations to prove a point about the use of AI. If you've picked up our mistakes, let us know in the Comment section how many you've noticed. (Some of the mistakes are South African-specific, and would not necessarily be picked up if you don't have the cultural reference yourself.)

Transcript:

Let's start with something important. This isn't about teaching you anything. If anything, it's the other way around. You've lived through decades of change and your generation knows how to adapt, how to think and how to stay strong when the world shifts around you. But since this thing called artificial intelligence keeps popping up everywhere, in banking apps, in whatsapp chats, even in how your grandkids do their homework, it might be nice to know where it all came from.

You might be wondering, when did all this talking computer stuff even start? Well, believe it or not, the idea's been around for quite a while. Back in the 1950s, when Springbok Radio was still playing on the wireless and everyone knew who the Duprees family was on The Men from the Ministry, a British fellow named Alan Turing asked a big question: Can machines think?

He came up with a clever test to see if a machine could hold a conversation with a person without the person realising it wasn't human. That was the first real step towards what we now call artificial intelligence. In 1956, a group of clever academics met at Dartmouth College in America, and they gave this idea a name: Artificial Intelligence. From that moment, the dream of building machines that could think like people started to take shape.

In the 1960s and 70s, AI was still crawling. It could play simple games like chess. In fact, in 1967, a computer called MacHack actually beat a human in a chess tournament. Not Jan Hein Donner or Bobby Fischer, but still impressive stuff. Now, this was the era when folks were driving Cortinas and Beetles, reading Who Is Gnoot? and having braais, where the only AI was a mate asking if you wanted another beer. People imagined robot helpers like Rosie from the Jetsons, who could vacuum, cook and sass back. But real-life robots? Not quite there yet.

By the 1980s, computers got a bit smarter thanks to something called expert systems. These were programmes that followed big sets of if-this-then-that rules. Think of it like your old Bosch washing machine with a thousand buttons, except digital. These systems helped with diagnosing illnesses or working out problems in engineering, and people started to take AI seriously. But the hype didn't last. Computers were still expensive and a bit slow, and interest in AI faded, a bit like the disco phase at a Matric farewell.

Then came a big moment in 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue, a fancy chess-playing computer, beat world champion Garry Kasparov. Suddenly, AI was back in the headlines. It was like watching Naas Botha kicking a drop goal from halfway. Unexpected, impressive, and a bit worrying if you were the opponent.

In the 2000s, things really started changing. Computers got cheaper and more powerful and the Internet brought in an avalanche of data. And with data, AI could finally learn fast. It started to recognise patterns, voices, faces, even cats on YouTube. In 2011, a computer system called Watson beat human champions on the quiz show Jeopardy. In 2016, another system called AlphaGo beat the world champion in a game called Go, which is even more complex than chess. It was a bit like watching someone win "Noot Vir Noot" without knowing how to read music.

Now, in the 2020s, AI is everywhere. It writes poems, answers your emails, helps doctors with diagnoses, even helps your grandson with his science project. And yes, it helped make this video too.

But don't be fooled. AI isn't thinking in the way you or I do. It doesn't have common sense, it doesn't understand right from wrong, and it certainly doesn't have lechergies. It just learns from patterns, massive amounts of information that it's been fed.

So what's next? Well, it'll keep growing, but like every tool, from the microwave to the mobile phone, it's not about what the thing can do, it's about what you do with it. And let's be honest, um... If you've lived through petrol rationing, landline party lines, the arrival of TV in 1976 and the move from cheque books to Snapscan, you've already handled change like a champion. AI might be clever, but you've got life experience and that still counts for more. Who knows? Maybe one day AI will learn from you.