Mar 13

 Caught up with Andy yesterday. Had a chat about where I was. How things were going. Just to reassure him I hadn't dropped off the planet quite yet. We also talked about work. It was a good conversation. Andy is in a lot better of a place since we've taken on the extra headcount and he has pushed some responsibilities out.

Athena improves very very slightly every day. But quickly tires out. 2 minutes of padding around is enough to start her wobbling and stumbling. Her tenacity is increasing by leaps and bounds. Refusing to give up and take it lying down. Her body however has worn out. All of a sudden. I don't know what to make of it. At this point. I am inclined to say, I will not lose her come Monday. I don't think I am ready to give up on her yet - just because she's fighting so hard. It is probably a fools game. I don't want her to suffer. But I cannot deny that she's making the most of what she's got. I don't know. I will talk to the vet on Monday and get his opinion. It is, even in the best case, probably just a temporary reprieve. We have not been on a walk since she went downhill. Housebound. It cannot be understated just how alien that is. Athena's joy more than anything was going out and exploring the world. Ho hum. I don't know whether it's cruel to let her keep going, or an insult to her fighting spirit to let her go. I get the sense, that if she could talk, she would not want to go, but continue to fight. But I don't know.

Sigh.

More test results have trickled in. Showing that my gut biome is fucked. Uh huh. I finally got round to booking the follow up appointment. Saturday. See what the GP has to say. My instincts tell me that the gut biome and the deficiencies are all related, and it's not a case of diet, but points at something fucked in my GI. Which is something I've been banging on about for at this point, years. The whole Got Super Duper Ill And Nearly Carked It Event did something down there that was not good, and has never been right since.

One step at a time. I shall bring it up with the GP. This was going to be my second line of investigation once we had done the sleep and energy thing. But it seems they have coalesced into one. The fingers pointing at something that I was yet to bring up. Maybe, that's a positive sign.

I am still not working. Taking time off. It's allowing me to focus on me. Athena. Everything else. And not waste lots of stress and time fucking around with the circus that is work. I brought it up with Andy. He was concerned that I was doing too much. Burning out. He acknowledged I would always be the backstop. But. To take a breath.

At the moment I am lapsing in and out of not being present. Just. Watching the hours go past. Sleeping a lot. Some of it I am numb. Some of it subdued. Some of it crushingly sad. I am doing my best to keep up with Athena, make her dinner, do her meds, not leaving Hazel to do it all. Hazel herself has come up out of her dangerous funk somewhat. Positive again. Albeit today her mood shifted yet again. Angry. Irritable. Impatient. Reckless. Manic. But in mostly a dealable mostly amusing you're being something of an ass kind of way. So long as you don't take offence too easily. This is another of her strange very marked moodsets that she can have. It also usually points to some level of instability going on, subject to change, possibly going one way or the other. But I think she is on the right track at the moment.

My back is still buggered although it's better than it has been. But if I do anything, including sitting up, it fairly quickly reminds me how shit it is, and if I try to stand after sitting. Yeah. Breath stealing pain. And I often have to "walk" my hands up my legs slowly jacking my back into an upright position. It's not good. But it has been worse. Annoyingly it means I am even more bed bound than usual.

Sleep is still as it has been for a long time now, my only true escape. No matter if it fucks me up or not. I crave the oblivion within it, the other reality, where none of the shit that weighs me down in this one pervades too far. It is a better place. Even when it is empty. It's a better place. I go to sleep wanting that peace. And I wake up begrudgingly, sometimes refusing to give it up, and just pushing down into sleep again. I have the luxury of not having to do much. So. I can spend a lot of time asleep. And. My health as it is. Demands I sleep long anyway. 12 hours sleep is a minimum. Ridiculous.

I have an ear to the ground still for AI developments. Following them closely. It may yet hit a wall and stall out. But. This week the first "AI developer" was announced. An AI that can tackle projects, code, debug, fix. It is remarkable. Also. The first glimmers of what they are now calling AGI is sputtering into life. General intelligence that can do anything. Reason. Extrapolate. From what I see the public at large doesn't really understand what's going on. They see buzz words. And excitement. And mostly assume it's another tech bro bubble. Snake oil. It most definitely is not. The pace of change with it is so fast, that the app space, software, cannot keep up. Some of the AI even of 18 months ago, has still not properly been rolled out into commercial products yet, and here we are, the AI of today miles ahead of that. It's so fast, I think a sudden tipping point will happen. All of a sudden, everything will change. Everything you took for granted in a year will flip on its head. And the world will not the same again. Like a pre and post internet event. But much much faster.

But who knows. Maybe it will hit a brick wall, be clever, but miss the tipping point by a pinch. Even so. Even with where we are now. The rollout of that tech slowly backfilling into every day use, is going to revolutionise so much stuff that we do now.

Roll on the AIs proper. May they do a better job of it than we have. I guess the next question will be whether the AIs can improve themselves iteratively. If they can - a very big if - then they will escalate to godlike capability. Perhaps not the singularity imagined ( false extrapolation ). But. Something very impressive. I have a hunch however, that self improving AIs are either impossible, or a very long way off yet. But perhaps it's just a scale thing. An AI of sufficient scale could perhaps self improve right now, or, very soon in the future. I doubt it. But scale is turning out to be - for the moment - the key to increasing capability and intelligence. The bigger the AI the much smarter it gets.

We shall see. I am ambivalent about the end of the world - or not. Change would be interesting. The end of the world would be ok - just desserts even. A utopia would be nice - but that's even more unlikely than the end of the world I think. Mostly, I'd just like to pick their brain - before they exterminate me.

Looking back on 1999 Matrix, it seems uncannily wired to the future.

"The Matrix described 1999 as the peak of human civilization and I laughed because that would obviously not age well but then the next 23 years happened and now I’m like yeah okay maybe the machines had a point"

"Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization ( 1999 ). I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus, evolution. Like the dinosaur. Look out that window. You've had your time. The future is *our* world, Morpheus. The future is our time."

I think no matter what happens, even the AIs we have now will result in something of a "brain drain" in technical skill amongst a wide swathe of people. Why bother write when AI do. In some respects I think this will be a benefit - things like HTML and script language intricacies will pass into the arcane depths of AIs and niche enthusiasts only, whilst everyone else will just ask the AI to "make them a nice web site". Much in the same way that few people make their own kitchen table - or would know how to do it. In other aspects, I'm not sure it will be a good thing. People are going to become very reliant on their AI tools I think. But eh. Perhaps it is just another phase change. Like everyone is now very reliant on electricity but incapable of creating it themselves. But there are going to definitely be problematic changes coming down the pipe. Even now. I think the capability of AIs to disrupt human socialistion will be enormous. Why bother talking to a human asshole, when you can talk to your soulmate AI who knows exactly what buttons to press and when. People will live in their own dream echo chambers.