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February 2025 | Phonebox Magazine 35See you next month!Dave%u2026 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCETo us country folk, that is what AI is.But no longer. It is Artifi cial Intelligence and is set to take the world by storm. Our current Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, seems very taken with it. Glancing around his Cabinet, one can perhaps sympathise with that as there%u2019s precious little natural intelligence there. I should say that this is a parliamentary problem rather than just the current crowd in charge.I%u2019ve investigated AI, and it seems to me that it%u2019s crept in already. You can no longer speak to the bank, the NHS or the police. They encourage you to speak to a %u2018Bot%u2019, which is a software programme that carries out tasks automatically, thus allowing humans to be laid off . But really, my interest is in the artistic side of things. A friend of mine, who is more sympathetic to AI than I, got a chat thingy to write a short script in the style of Tony Hancock, which I read. In part it might be the fact that I know every Galton and Simpson script inside out, having worked on and adapted many of them to the stage. But I could tell immediately. The AI had obviously gathered up much info and catch phrases and put something together but there was no depth to it, no real plot line. It%u2019s hard to explain, but it clearly wasn%u2019t an original.I knew Galton and Simpson quite well and chatted in depth with them and how they went about writing. They sat together and plotted out scripts in meticulous detail on a nine-to-fi ve basis to ensure Tony Hancock had a good script each week, fi rstly on radio and then the TV. The same with Steptoe and Son. Part of the joy was to hammer out plots before writing any dialogue. This was the same with Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais when writing Porridge, the Likely Lads, and Auf Wiedersehen Pet. These writers spoke to real people. In fact, Dick Clement once said that the way they got a handle on how people coped in prison %u2013 and where the humour was - was from an ex-con himself who told them that you got through prison by %u2018Little Victories%u2019. Winning a bet, nicking a tin of pineapple chunks from the kitchen, getting one over the prison offi cers. That was what kept them going, and I defy the best AI to come up with that. It might do now, I suppose, as Dick Clement has been documented saying it. But AI has no imagination or originality. Ben Elton came up with the name %u2018Bob%u2019 in Blackadder, as he knew that the actor Rowan Atkinson could make it sound funny. I%u2019m sure Ben mulled over a few names before settling on that as the best. So, you see what I%u2019m saying.I can%u2019t really see how AI can be of any help in this area other than those who are lazy enough to want to write a script, a song or a poem without putting any of themselves into it. I%u2019ve written some original comedy stuff , and I have to say it%u2019s a joy to hear your script being played out, after having sat for a long time working out what you think is funny %u2013 or not.I most certainly wouldn%u2019t get the same feeling if any of it had been written for me by a computer, even if the money was right. I%u2019m sure the same would apply to good songwriters or music composers. I watched a little bit of The Beatles documentary where they were in the studio working on numbers, and it was very interesting how they went about it. Like comedy writing in so many ways. Bickering, laughing, trying out new chords and instrumentation in their case. Listening to When there was an AI conference at Bletchley Park some time back, and it was announced that the then PM Sunak was attending, my wife said, %u201cWhy is Rishi Sunak so interested in Artifi cial Insemination?%u201d each other. Much better than stealing it from already written songs by the press of a button.Basically, AI takes information from many sources, but if you want to write a musical in the style of Beethoven, for example, then it is reviewing everything he wrote. You wouldn%u2019t be able to do it had he not written what he did, and the same for Shakespeare and everyone else in that vein. That%u2019s not to say they weren%u2019t inspired by others before them, the same as The Beatles, but they didn%u2019t just press buttons and steal material. So much better to become the next Beethoven rather than nick his old stuff .As I said, AI has no originality, or imagination, or indeed insight, so be careful.While I can see it%u2019s useful for essentially dull, repetitive tasks, remember it only knows what it%u2019s been told by others and therefore can be manipulated with all the rubbish that%u2019s spouted online. Interestingly the new AI government assistant, developed to help civil servants save time and share information and data, is being named %u2018Humphrey%u2019 as in Sir Humphrey Appleby the highly infl uential yet devious and unscrupulous civil servant in %u2018Yes, Minister%u2019. While some of those in government are concerned that the name may give the impression that the civil service is %u2018devious and unscrupulous%u2019, others - including me - think it is perfectly named. And they%u2019d not have thought of it, if a splendid %u2018original%u2019 comedy had not been written by Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay, who spoke to real people in their in-depth research.Ah well, back to my typewriter.