Nisi Dominus Frustra...

It struck me recently that it has now been eleven years since I retired, and I haven't written any programs, scripts, or even HTML pages in all that time. Not a single one. In a sense, of course, that is precisely what retirement means: you have stopped working, your accounts have lapsed, your administrator passwords have been terminated, and all the accumulated, undocumented knowledge you carry around in your head has been retired, too. Access denied! I can almost feel the empty space in my head where it used to be. But, still, I'm surprised: I had come to think of my modest code-cutting adventures as a core part of who I had become, and fully expected to continue them into retirement, perhaps even writing a few apps for smartphones that would make me stinking rich.

Do I miss it? All those operating systems, hardware configurations, and coding languages I learned, or the project management and highly-specialised data-handling expertise I acquired over 35 years? No, not at all; I'm happy to have become a civilian, where all that is concerned. So what has happened to the part of my brain that used to get such regular exercise? Well, I suspect it was quickly occupied and repurposed, like a defunct office space eagerly turned into an artist's studio.

Besides, if I'm honest, in my final years of working I found that coping with the constantly accelerating pace of change was making me anxious and unhappy. Working with IT eventually teaches you two profound life-lessons: first, that all your achievements are ephemeral, to be washed away in the next tide of change, and second, that nobody ever understands or cares what you have been doing, anyway, so long as it works and makes their life easier. Instructively, after 30 years of dedicated (and dare I say innovative) service to the university I received nothing more than a perfunctory retirement letter from the central administration, the main burden of which was to remember to hand in my keys before I left.

I suspect I may even have become a neo-Luddite. I now regret my role in the dumbing-down of university life, much as I enjoyed it at the time. What fun it was, to rise to the challenge of planning a major IT project, and what pleasure was to be had in meeting and overcoming all the technical problems thrown in our path! This, despite the knowledge that (repeat after me, young padawan) our achievements were ephemeral, to be washed away in the next tide of change, and that nobody ever understood or cared what we had managed to do, anyway. So long as it worked...

But, when the basic strategic direction is wrong, all this counts for nothing. As the motto of my secondary school (not to mention the City of Edinburgh) has it, nisi dominus frustra:

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it:
Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
Psalm 127

The planning and, um, execution of Stalin's gulags may have been perfectly brilliant, but history will award no prizes to those who actually devised and carried out such massively complex programmes of bureaucracy and logistics. Which, from an administrator's p-o-v, does seem a little unfair. Although, even if Stalin had turned out to be one of the good guys, I expect history would merely have sent them the standard form letter, thanking them for their contribution, and reminding them to hand in their keys.

Which brings me to so-called "artificial intelligence", or AI.

Like most sane and sensible people over the age of 60, even retired IT geeks, I really want nothing to do with AI. I like to think it's a tech bubble that will eventually burst, making a lot of bandwagon-jumping enthusiasts look very silly; but I've a horrible feeling I'm going to be very wrong about that.

Now, I've always been reasonably satisfied with the performance of my own internal, organically-grown "wetware", and where it does fall short – numbers have always been a challenge for me, for example – I've accepted this as a necessary cause for humility. You won't catch me bragging about my IQ, not least because I don't know what it is and AFAIK I have never been tested. If we were ever assessed at school, then they kept very quiet about it, no doubt for good reasons. In the context I grew up in, it didn't do to stand out too much, whether by being too far above or below the acceptable range of "normal".

Of course, that doesn't mean I reject the use of tech designed to extend one's natural capacities. If you want to draw a perfectly straight line, use a ruler; if you need to work out how much you'll take away from a picture sale on which a gallery will charge a commission of 40% + VAT at 20% then use a calculator. Let's be honest, anyone able to do either of those things unaided is a flippin' freak, innit, and well deserving of whatever painful levy the playground police choose to impose on them.

The troubling thing about "AI" – a catch-all term for various ways of instantly mining vast stores of data and sticking the results together in a convincing way – is that it puts extraordinary creative power into the hands of any sorcerer's apprentice who cares to give it a try. It's no surprise that the "creative" world is in a bit of a panic about it. Two recent examples have convinced me that this alarm is not unjustified.

First, my friend and ex-colleague Martin posted this on his Substack: It Was AI Wot Dun It. I confess I was sceptical at first: what I read there was too good – publishable, even – to be machine-generated, wasn't it? It was funny, dammit. But Martin assures me that he didn't tinker at all with what ChatGPT came up with in response to a minimal prompt, which was – get this – "Q and A interview with a retiree as a rock star". What you read there (go on, follow the link) is pure AI cut 'n' paste. I was shocked. [1]

Then, on another Substack belonging to journalist David Aaronovitch, I noticed some rather impressive AI-generated illustrations he was using. Sadly, his Substack is "subscription only", so I can't link to examples. So I'll "borrow" a couple:

Trump as Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormon church)

Both also created by ChatGPT. These are impressive, I think, especially when "made" by a bloke who, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't know one end of a brush from the other (that's him, btw, in the second effort).  [2]

Worried yet, fellow "creatives"?  As we know, winners have already been disqualified from several art and photographic competitions, once it emerged their entries were AI-generated. How long before overwhelmed judges just say, fuck it, let 'em compete? Or double down on the "no digital, no photography" attitude? Let's just say I'm glad I'm not trying to make a living as an illustrator.

As ever, though, what makes AI a cause of real anxiety is the urge of employers and investors to maximise profits by employing fewer people, generally referred to as "efficiency". Nisi dominus frustra, guys... When, I wonder, will it dawn on them that the pursuit of efficiency, productivity and profits by automation and the elimination of expensive, fallible "human resources" is not the point? That people are the point, and not the problem? Not any day soon, it seems. 

As the TUC’s assistant general secretary, Kate Bell, said recently:

"AI could have transformative potential, and if developed properly, workers can benefit from the productivity gains this technology may bring." She added: "The alternative is bleak. Left unmanaged and in the wrong hands, the AI revolution could entrench rampant inequality as jobs are degraded or displaced, and shareholders get richer." (Guardian, 27 August 2025) 

Cleverness unconstrained by wisdom may yet be the downfall of our species. AI might usefully be regarded as humanity's attempt to outsource our own most distinctive feature, perhaps best represented by that traditional cartoon of a man sawing off the very branch he is sitting on. Over my working life I have witnessed several waves of happily-employed, ordinary, decent people being made redundant and their lives rendered purposeless by technology; some of it, I'm ashamed to say, implemented by me. It sometimes seems that clever technologists will not rest until the last opportunity to enjoy a meaningful life through work has been eliminated.

The advent of full-on, true "artificial intelligence", of course, will be their final ironic triumph: cleverness itself will have become redundant! In the words of everybody's favourite 13th century Sufi mystic, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī: Sell your cleverness, and buy bewilderment. You know it makes sense.

Hawk Satori

(not AI, but one of mine: but who would know or care?)

1. It's possible, of course, given the cavalier way the AI databases have been stuffed with the unacknowledged and unrecompensed theft of the work of thousands of "creatives" of various sorts, that this is merely a warmed up piece of work stolen from somewhere. I tried searching for "fire-breathing inflatable goat" (a fairly distinctive phrase, you'd think) but Martin's Substack post is the sole hit in the entire Web. 

2. Dave and I were friends for a year at university before he got himself "sent down" for failing his first year exams, but we haven't been in touch for decades. Besides, it seems his chums these days are the likes of Phillipe Sands... I was struck by his recent claim to be nudging 22K subscribers on his Substack. Even if only 5% of these are paid subscribers at the minimum rate of £75 p.a. that's a cool £82,500... Hmm... So how much would YOU pay to read my bloviations? Don't answer that...