2023 – Page 7 – David Bradley

(Almost) 500 moths in five years

As I approach my fifth anniversary as a mother, my tally shows that I have recorded and photographed almost 500 species. The most recent was new to my garden – The Leopard Moth, Zeuzera pyrina.

Leopard Moth. Its forewings with flapping very rapidly, but flash and a fast shutter froze teh action

There are several things of interest about this moth aside from the fact that it’s fairly large and white with spots of black (almost metallic blue, in some cases). First is that the adults, the flying creatures, as opposed to the larvae (caterpillars) have no working mouth parts and so cannot eat. There are several other species, such as the Emperor, which are in a similar predicament, as it were. They are to all intents and purposes flying sex machines and nothing else, to be frank.

Sideview of the Leopard Moth, not the structure of the antenna

A second point of interest to me, is that with a quick glance you can see that the males have feathered sensory antennae, they resemble those of the Willow Beauty males. But there is an important difference in structure. Where the Willow Beauty antennae resembles a feather along its length, the Leopard’s antennae are feathered half-way along their length and seem to end in a bare spine.

Now, the really interesting thing about the Leopard Moth, as pointed out to me by uber-mother Leonard Cooper, is its lifecycle. Once mated, the female lays clutches of eggs in damaged areas of bark in the larval foodplants (deciduous trees). The larvae hatch from the eggs and begin burrowing deeper into the wood, they tunnel out feeding galleries, eating wood (they’re xyophagous) and leaving frass (poo) in their wake. If the adults are flying sex machines, then the larvae are burrowing food machines.

Bird's eye view of a Leopard Moth, the spots presumably confuse them into imagining the moth is nothing edible — Bird’s eye view of a Leopard Moth, the spots presumably confuse them into imagining the moth is nothing edible

Once they’ve had their fill and by some conditional trigger, the larvae burrow through the wood and then pupate just under the bark. Presumably, they find a damaged patch so that once they have completed their metamorphosis within the pupal form and are ready to emerge as adults, they can spread their wings and fly off to find a mate. To do so they will use up the food reserves built up during the time they were very hungry caterpillars. In the UK, you might see adults in flight from June to July.

Oh, when I said “very hungry caterpillars, they can spend two or three years feeding in the galleries they create within the stems and branches of the tree before pupating. Now, several moths overwinter as larvae or pupa. The Leopard is not quite exceptional in that it lives so long as a larvae, perhaps up to four years rather than just 2-3 years, the Goat Moth, too spends a long period within the trees, I am sure there are others.

As to my mothing for five years, do you seriously think I am looking for a new pastime? Do Leopards ever change their spots?

How to make your hoverflies pop

I don’t often take photographs of hoverflies, first off, they rarely sit still long enough for me to get a shot. Anyway, I was trying to find butterflies* to photograph at Trumpington Meadows, near Cambridge, and bumped into one the university profs carrying a net. He was hoverflying. We had a good chat about insects.

I later shared my photo of a Pied Plumehorn hoverfly, which I’d snapped a little after we went our separate ways. He seemed to like the photo and asled me about my photographic equipment, he having gone from a Canon 60D dSLR to a mirrorless R5, and wondering about getting better results than he was.

Pied Plumehorn hoverfly, Pied Plumehorn, Volucella pellucens

Well, I’m still using a dSLR, a Canon 7D mark ii. On this occasion with a Canon 70-300 4-5.6 IS lens. I usually carry a Sigma 150-600 for birds and have a Tamron 1:1 90mm macro for studio shots of the morning’s moths and other subjects.

I have toyed with the idea of switching to mirrorless, but I only bought the 7Dii a couple of years ago and the expense of a new camera puts me off, especially, when I don’t think the equivalent price model can beat the 7Dii yet on various features and image quality, as well as in terms of weather and dust proofing. There is also the issue of staring at a screen through the viewfinder rather than seeing the image through the lens. Oh, and the delay between switching on and the camera being ready to shoot.

The 70-300mm lets me focus from about a metre away from the subjects, which is usually fine if you’re cautious with butterflies. The 600mm was a challenge as it has a 3m minimum focus and although it’s about the same weight as 70-300mm lens, it’s a lot shorter. The photos I’m getting when I can get close with the 300mm are better quality than my 600mm shots.

I generally use DxO PureRaw3 to denoise my photos and get them into jpg format for editing. It gives you about 3-4 stops of ISO in terms of noise reduction, which is amazing! I also use Topaz AI Sharpen, which is magic for some images at removing motion blur. I don’t always apply the Topaz processing

My final step is to use PaintShopPro as a cheap alternative to PhotoShop to adjust levels, saturation, vibrancy, and to do a final crop, resize if appropriate for social media and web, and then add my logo.

Below is the unprocessed copy of the hoverfly photo so you can see roughly how it came out of the camera…the edited version is only 1300 pixels across so would be printable at just a couple of centimetres across, it’s perfectly fine on a web page, instagram or for sharing by email. I recently wrote about my process as I apply it to butterfly photos.

My unedited photo of the hoverfly, just the RAW file saved as a JPG

Please note, my blog software is set to resize and compress photos so they’re all 768 pixels across rather than the native size.

*I saw a couple of dozen Meadow Brown, seven or eight Common Blue, a solitary Small Blue, just one Small Health, a couple of Burnet Companion and two or three Silver Y moths

Digital photography file formats

I often refer to the various file formats used in digital photography and image editing and thought some Sciencebase readers might be interested in a very brief summary of what those formats are about. Fundamentally, I shoot in RAW and process with DxO PureRaw 3 followed by Topaz Sharpen AI (not every time) and PaintShop Pro. The final images I share are usually resized to 2048 pixel-width, unless I’ve had to crop it to smaller than that, and compressed to 90% JPG quality.

You can think of RAW as being a digital film negative (although the colours are not inverted) and every other format is like a print from that negative.

Definitions and brief explanations:

1. RAW (Raw Image File):
  - Definition: RAW is a file format that captures all the data from the camera’s image sensor without any processing or compression. RAW files offer greater flexibility for post-processing and editing, allowing photographers to make precise adjustments without loss of quality. However, they usually require specialized software to view and edit.
2. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format):
  - Definition: TIFF is a flexible file format that supports lossless compression and is widely used for storing high-quality images. TIFF files are known for their versatility and ability to maintain image quality. TIFF files can store multiple layers, transparency, and high-bit-depth images, making them ideal for professional photographers and graphic designers. However, TIFF files tend to have larger file sizes compared to other formats.
3. JPG/JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group):
  - Definition: JPG/JPEG is a commonly used file format that uses lossy compression to reduce file size while maintaining acceptable image quality. JPG is a popular format for sharing and displaying photographs on the web and social media due to its small file size. It achieves compression by discarding some image data, which may result in a slight loss of quality. JPG files are widely supported by software, devices, and web browsers, making them suitable for online use. Successive editing and re-saving of JPG files leads to increasing loss of quality.
4. PNG (Portable Network Graphics):
  - Definition: PNG is a file format that supports lossless compression and is particularly well-suited for images with transparent backgrounds or sharp lines and text. Ideal for logos, icons, and graphics with sharp edges. Not so well suited for large photographs.
5. GIF (Graphics Interchange Format):
  - Definition: GIF is a file format these days primarily used for animated images or short looping videos. Originally, it was an efficient compression format for photographs that is in some ways lossless but limits the colour palette to 256-bits.
6. BMP (Bitmap):
  - Definition: BMP is a file format that stores images as uncompressed bitmaps, which means large file sizes. They offer excellent image quality and are often used in professional printing.

Sciencebase reader Andy, was puzzled as to why sometimes his edited image files in JPG format are bigger than the original RAW file. After all, JPG is a compressed format, he says, shouldn’t the file be smaller?

Well, the basic RAW file is like a 1:1 grid of every pixel value recorded by your camera’s sensor. It does contain some extra info too like camera settings, geotags, name, time-date stamp etc, and even a compressed jpg copy of the photo (that copy is used to display the image on your camera’s screen).

When you edit import and edit the RAW image, your processing, levels adjustment, white balance correction, sharpening etc, can add information about how you have changed the values for each of those pixels in the file. Now, when you save it, if you choose minimal jpg compression, then all that extra data is simply stored in the file so it gets bigger.

However, if you save the edited file with a higher compression ratio, then the compression process looks at the pixels, indeed whole areas of pixels to see how it can save space. Those pixels in an area with similar values, say an area of blue sky, are then compressed by saving the data for one typical pixel and then adding a snippet of code to say that so many nearby pixels are the same. This uses up a lot less space than keeping all the data for every single pixel. The redundant data is discarded. The higher the compression ratio the smaller the final file, but the lower the quality and the more artefacts, such as distortion and fringing.

Of moths and box

This is a female Box-tree Moth. They were inadvertently brought into the UK in 2007 on imported, exotic Box plants. They are spreading rapidly and I see lots in Cottenham. I don’t think they’ve got as far north as Ely yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Female Box-tree Moths lack the male's hair pencil at the end of the abdomen — Female Box-tree Moths lack the male’s hair pencil at the end of the abdomen

The female lays her eggs on Box plants and her larvae will ravage the plant, you’ll see the damage pretty quickly. In their native environment the moths are kept in check somewhat by the ecosystem itself, but that doesn’t happen here. I have warned people not to plant Box here any more…it will be eaten…even established hedges will succumb. Please don’t spray pesticides around, pesticides are nasty, and I say that as a chemist. If you really want to try and save the hedge pick the caterpillars off by hand and “relocate” them…

You can buy a pheromone trap, a plastic flask, often green and yellow, and you put a little rubber bung in the top. The bung carries a tiny quantity of the female sex pheromone. You hang it near your beloved Box hedge and it attracts the males who are suckered into going into the trap thinking a female awaits…they can be drawn in from up to about ten miles away.

Sounds like a cunning plan, doesn’t it? But, think about it. The females are all over the place, and most likely on your hedge, to which they’re drawn because it’s their larval food plant (hence the name!). There may well not have been males in your street, but you’ve just put out a big chemical communication and invited them to the orgy…even if you catch a handful in the trap before they mate, chances are you won’t catch them all, and it only takes one for your local female to have a clutch of fertilised eggs ready to lay on your hedge. Her very hungry caterpillars will feast on it soon enough…

You can distinguish between the male and female moth, because the males have a tuft at the end of their body known as a hair pencil, it’s basically a diffuser for their own pheromones. There is also a melanic form of this species, which is dark brown-purple where this one is white.

Brampton dragonflies and butterflies

I only occasionally photograph dragonflies and damselflies, the Odonata. My big zoom doesn’t give me the best results with these insects for some reason. However, I was at Brampton Wood yesterday to see the recently emerged Black Hairstreak butterflies. Took a shorter zoom, Canon 75-300mm for that job instead of my Sigma 150-600mm and tried my chances on snapping some dragonflies in between hairstreaks.

First in the frame was this lovely Black-tailed Skimmer, Orthetrum cancellatum. What a great scientific name.

Black-tailed Skimmer dragonfly - Orthetrum cancellatum — Black-tailed Skimmer – Orthetrum cancellatum

And, here’s a male of the relatively common species Broad-bodied Chaser, Libellula depressa, coming into land on a stick protruding from Wayne’s Pond at Brampton Wood.

A Four-spotted Chaser, Libellula quadrimaculata, favoured the perching sticks in the pond too.

Four-spotted chaser, Libellula quadrimaculata, with its eight spots! — Four-spotted chaser with its eight spots!

Another interesting dragon at Brampton Wood is the relatively rare Green-eyed Hawker, Aeshna isoceles. The isoceles is a reference to the yellow triangle on its second abdominal segment. It has an alternative vernacular name, Norfolk Hawker, this common name in the UK refers to its lasting presence in the county of Norfolk, although it was common in the Cambridgeshire Fens until the 1980s. It is now known to exist in Suffolk and Kent, but is localised and scarce.

However, old Green Eyes is back…in Cambridgeshire. Although it remains fairly elusive; it always was a rarity. Perhaps the species is benefiting partly from the creation of numerous wetlands on the sites of old gravelworks in the county, such as RSPB Fen Drayton. It favours ponds, ditches, and marshes with dense vegetation and seems to rely on the aquatic plant Water-Soldier, Stratiotes aloides. There’s plenty of that in my garden pond, so fingers crossed and there is obviously something about Brampton Wood they like too.

In non-dragonfly news, also spotted a Bumblebee Plumehorn, a type of hoverfly, Volucella bombylans.

There were Brimstone and Garden Grass-veneer moths to be seen and Spindle Ermine and Pale Eggar moth nests, a few scattered Large Skipper butterflies on the site as well as several Speckled Wood butterfly. Also at play numerous Longhorn Beetle, a few European Hornet, and a lot of Green Oak Tortrix moths, Tortrix viridana. They’ve been coming to traps in large numbers during the last few days around Cambridgeshire, so it was no surprise to see them on the oaks in Brampton Wood.

Green Oak Tortrix moth on green oak leaf

However, my target species for the day was the Black Hairstreak butterfly, Satyrium pruni. I estimate I saw 40-50 over the course of the visit. Although the butterfly is nationally very rare, it is present on this site and other ancient woodlands with well-established Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) to the west and southwest in huge numbers. There were several within yards of the site entrance, one or two along the main ride, several on blackthorn near the aforementioned pond, and several on the two sites marked for visitors to observe them. I got photos of perching and puddling butterflies, some ovipositing females, and caught sight of a mating pair, but didn’t get the money shot of that coupling!

The Black Hairstreak was not known as a species until 1828 when a professional entomological dealer, Mr Seaman, charged with gathering up specimens of the rather similar White-letter Hairstreak delivered these to his patron only to discover a novel species among the White-letters. Edward Newman, a Victorian entomologist of note, declared the novel species to be the Black Hairstreak. Monk’s Wood, like Brampton, is an ancient woodland with a lot of old Blackthorn growing on heavy clay soil, just what the Black Hairstreak needs for its life cycle.

Another Black Hairstreak with a wing problem allows us to see the dark-brown upperside of the forewings with their orange-spotted fringe. Usually, it is very difficult to see the upperside of the wings as the insects invariably close their wings together when they land. It is worth noting that non-native Muntjac deer can be a voracious nuisance in this kind of ancient woodland. If it is allowed to graze freely in such habitat, there is the potential for rare, native species that rely on the habitat to be lost. As I understand it, at least one of our nature conservation organisations is involved in culling Muntjac where it is roaming freely in such habitat for the sake of conservation of the sensitive native species.

Black Hairstreak revealing a little of the upperside of its wings

Not to be confused with a butterfly of the Americas, Ocaria ocrisia, with the same vernacular name, that also goes by the monicker Hewitson’s blackstreak.

One final thing – Common Spotted Orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii.

Mothing addiction and the meaning of mothing

I acquired another moth trap to go alongside my old second-hand, home-made Robinson with the 40W actinic UV fluorescent U-tube, the portable 20W UV fluorescent Heath, the LepiLED, and, of course, the pheromone trap for the Emperor moth and the clearwings.

The day-flying Yellow-legged Clearwing moth has evolved to resemble a wasp in order to avoid predation

I crammed it with the usual stock of roosting options for the moths, a load of empty cardboard egg cartons, and lit up.

A collapsible Skinner moth trap with 20W Wemlite, UV bulb, and rain guard — Skinner moth trap

It was 11 Celsius last night, a degree cooler than a recent lighting-up session, but the new trap brought a fairly good haul, 28 moths of 18 species, with several new for the year (NFY), although no new for me or new for the garden (NFM or NFG). These are the highest numbers of the year so far, although the good numbers on nights of a similar temperature recently have not been far short.

The Shears moth, so-called because a detail in the pattern on its forewings resembles a pair of sheep shears

The Skinner trap is basically a box with slots in which two Perspex sheets are slid to form a groove with a narrow gap. A UV light is held above. Moths (and a few other nocturnal insects) are attracted by the light and with luck fall through the slot and on to the pile of egg cartons where they settle for the night. In the morning, preferably before dawn when insectivorous birds awaken, the diligent mother-er will check the contents of the trap. Not species and number, perhaps take photos, and then later in the day release the moths safely, off-site into the new dusk. Records are shared with one’s County Moth Recorder (CMR) for scientific purposes.

Toadflax Brocade moth, the name comes from the larval foodplant, toadflax, and the resemblance of the wing patterns to richly decorative woven cloth, brocade

The Heath and the Robinson traps are similar, but have a funnel instead of a slot, which purportedly leads to fewer escapees. The Heath is usually small collapsible, and so more portable than a Robinson.

This is the quite diverse list from last night’s haul, one each of each moth unless otherwise stated: Bee Moth, Brimstone, Celypha striana NFY, Common Pug, Garden Rose Tortrix NFY, Heart & Dart 4, Large Nutmeg, Light Brown Apple Moth, Light Arches NFY, Light Brocade 2, Light Emerald 1, Minor agg 2, Shuttle-shaped Dart 2(M), The Shears NFY, Toadflax Brocade NFY, Vine’s Rustic 3, White Point 3, Willow Beauty 1.

Various moths in an egg carton from the moth trap

There are some who argue that this hobby, albeit a scientific one, is somehow cruel. That we are depriving creatures that live only a short life of one night of their season. And, that we should leave them to themselves. Well, far more cruel is the wanton destruction of the habitats in which these creatures live and the often shameless use of pesticides.

Male Emperor moths can be drawn to a pheromone lure for scientific purposes — Male Emperor moths can be drawn to a pheromone lure

However, without people monitoring species, keeping records, collating them, and studying the trends, we would not have a clue as to what we need to protect from the destruction, and how we might do that. We know from these mothing records that many species have declined considerably over the last half century or more. But, we also know that some species once thought extinct have thankfully risen from the scorched fields to grace our gardens and other habitats again. We also now know more about how some moths migrate and where from. In addition, we also know, often from the pheromone trapping, that some moths, the clearwings and various micro moths, once thought absent in particular areas are present there after all and perhaps more widespread than we ever imagined.

The surprising sight of a bat flying at midday

Oh, and one more thing. A bat will consume 300 or so flying insects every night, so the impact of even the most efficient and effective moth trap in the garden is negligible in comparison. Indeed, one might say, they are saved from predation if they find those egg cartons before the bats find them!

The White-point moth

TL:DR – The first White-point of my mothing year in the garden 4th June 2023.

The White-point (Mythimna albipuncta) is one of the moth species we refer to as the Noctuidae, the owlets. It has perhaps the most obvious of names given its appearance.

The White-point is an immigrant species to the British Isles, primarily found in the southern and southeastern regions of England, although it is seen in Norfolk. I’ve had it numerous times in my Cambridgeshire garden over my five years of serious mothing.

In some years, hundreds are reported and there is some evidence that it might even breed here in good years, although whether that has led to established colonies is not yet known. One might posit that its presence increases overall diversity, but that would only really have a significant long-term impact if it were to establish itself as a breeding species in the UK. That said, it, and its larvae, might already be providing food for other species, such as omnivorous birds, mammals, and amphibians and as such affecting eco-systems in a small way. Its larvae feed on various species of grass.

The species usually flies from August to September, but can be seen on the wing at any time from June into October. It is common across Europe.

Black Terns on a camping trip

TL:DR – Record shots of the three Black Terns at a local RSPB reserve.

They say that one good tern deserves another, if you’re talking comic terns. So, when you go looking for one and three come along all at once it’s quite amusing.

As I mentioned in a previous post about processing low-light photos, we were camping, locally…so local in fact that when three Black Terns were mentioned as being present on Ferry Lagoon at RSPB Fen Drayton it was only a short hop from RSPB Ouse Fen where we were camping to get a view of them.

Of course the birds were fishing in the waters there at a distance from the closest viewpoint of between 250 and 300 metres. Quite a distance to look through even a 600mm zoom lens or binoculars, especially on a dull grey day. But, we saw them. regular readers might recall the American Black Tern we chased around Northumberland to see in 2022. The American is Chlidonias niger surinamensis and as far as I know there have not been any sightings of the sub-species in the UK this year. The Black Terns we were watching on Ferry Lagoon are the parent species Chlidonias niger.

As is the wont of vernacular names, there is often only an element of truth in them. Indeed, the Black Tern has a grey, if not blue appearance about its wings, a white rump and a sooty head and almost black bill, at least in its breeding plumage, it is perhaps blacker out of season.

Diving Black Tern — Black Tern diving, although the books say they don’t dive for fish!

The bird generally fishes on inland water in Europe, Western Asia, and North America. It has a couple of old names, “Blue Darr” (Blue Tern) and “Carr Swallow” (Lake Swallow). The genus name comes from the Ancient Greek, khelidonios, for swallow-like, while the species name, niger means shining black.

I had seen one once before, but briefly, perhaps summer of 2018, flying over the Reedbed Trail area of RSPB Ouse Fen. As I check Birdguides for sightings there are others present in ones twos, and threes all over England. The bird was once common in the Fens, but drainage led to its local extinction by about 1840. It’s wonderful to see it flying here where gravel pits have been morphed into nature reserves as with Ouse Fen and Fen Drayton.

Processing photos at dawn

TL:DR – Photos taken in very light with an old camera are never going to come up to snuff unless you use a denoise app like DxO’s PureRaw 3.

We were up early from our camp bed near Ouse Fen on Bank Holiday Monday. The aim was to get on to the RSPB reserve and observe at dawn. The Bitterns had boomed through the night and one or two were still calling when we timorously made our way through the chill (just after) dawn air, it was 5am.

Mrs Sciencebase spotted a solitary Bittern crossing from reedbed to reedbed, the wont of females I believe, homing in on the blown-bottle sound of the males cryptically tucked away among the reeds. So, here she is, the unprocessed shot on the left saved from RAW format from the camera and untouched.

To get the image on the right, I applied the denoising abilities of DxO PureRaw 3, which I think cuts about three “stops” of ISO. I exported it from that app as the portable RAW format known as DNG. This allowed me to open it as if it were a file straight from the camera in PaintShopPro and so start afresh with the denoised file.

PSP has a RAW importer that does what the likes of Lightroom do so you can rescue blownout areas in photos with that issue or correct overall exposure. In the case of the Bittern shot taken with very low light levels, it needed a maximum lift from the dark and dingy DNG file. Once in PSP, I did my usually tweaks, raising brightness a tad, adjusting shadows a little, a spot of highlight boost, a tiny bit of a vibrancy bump, a little application of an unsharp mask, and then a crop.

It’s not too bad a record shot. I have better images of Bitterns in flight taken on sunny day on this and other reserves.

Will the tin man kill us all or take us down the yellow brick road?

TL:DR – A short extrapolation of where AI might take us and why some experts are very worried about that path.

Will artificial intelligence (AI) lead to the extinction of humanity?

Well, the simplistic answer to that question, is a simple “no”, despite what every post-apocalyptic science fiction tale of our demise with an unhappy ending has told us. There are eight billion people on the planet, even with the most melodramatic kind of extinction event, there are likely to be pockets of humanity that survive and have the wherewithall to procreate and repopulate the planet, although it may take a while.

A less simplistic answer requires a less simplistic question. For instance: Will artificial intelligence lead to potentially catastrophic problems for humanity that cannot be overcome quickly and so lead to mass suffering and death, the world over?

The less-than-simplistic answer to that question, is yes, probably.

It is this issue that has caused alarm in the aftermath of the hyperbole surrounding recent developments in AI, and perhaps rightly so, we need to think carefully before we take the next steps, but it may well be too late. There are always going to be greedy, needy, and malicious third parties who will exploit any new technology to their own ends and without a care for the consequences.

Now, back when I was a junior scientist, we’re talking the 1970s here, the notion of AI was really all about machines that somehow, through technological advances gained sentience. Comics, TV and cinema was awash with thinking robots, both benign and malign, and had been for several decades, come to think of it. The current wave of AI is not about our creating a technology that could give the tin man* a brain, metaphorically speaking. AI is about technologies that are smart in a different way. Machines (computers, basically) that can assimilate data, be trained on that data, and so when presented with new data provide an output that extrapolates from the training data to the new data and gives us an accurate prediction about what that new data might mean.

So, the kinds of AI we have now are often frivolous: give it a descriptive prompt and the AI uses its training to generate some kind of response, whether that’s a whimsical image, a melody or rhythm, a chunk of original text, a financial forecast or a weather update for tomorrow. Some of these tools have been used for amusement to create songs and photorealistic images, sometimes more significantly to simulate a video of a famous person singing a song or giving a speech they never would have given. There’s a thin line between the whimsical and the what-if.

For instance, what if someone used an AI to generate a video of a world leader, not singing Somewhere over the Rainbow, but perhaps lambasting another world leader? We might see the rapid, but hopefully temporary, collapse of diplomatic relations between the two of them.

But, it is facile to suggest that even the use of AI in such a scenario and wider, to generate and spread disinformation, is really only the very tip of an iceberg that could cause a much greater sinking feeling.

As we develop the tools to train algorithms on big data sets in almost every walk of life, we then find ourselves in a position to use that training to positive ends. A sufficiently large dataset from historical climate data and weather sensors across the globe could help us model future climate with much greater precision. Perhaps we could envisage a time when that kind of super-model is hooked up to power-generation infrastructure.

So, instead people with conventional computers managing the up-time and down-time of power generation, the AI model is used to control the systems and minimise carbon emissions on a day-to-day basis by switching from one form of power generation to another depending on wind, wave, solar, and fossil fuel availability. As the AI is given more training and coupled with other algorithms that can model the effects of human activities more effectively on power demand, then we could picture a scenario where the system would cut power supply to avoid catastrophic carbon emissions or pollution, perhaps for a small region, or maybe a whole country, or a continent. The system is setup for best overall results and whether a few people, or many, many people have no power for a few hours, days, weeks…that’s of no real consequence on the global scale. The AI will have achieved its emissions or pollution reduction targets as we hoped.

Now, imagine an AI hooked into pharmaceutical production lines and the healthcare system, another running prescription services, and surgery schedule, hospital nutrition. Well, those power supply issues will have inevitable consequences and the machine learning and models will nudge the systems to predict that halting production, albeit temporarily, will ensure emissions and pollution are held down for the greater good. Of course, a few people, many many, many people will be more than a little inconvenienced, again only temporarily…or maybe longer.

Indeed, the AI running the financial markets systems has been trained on all that kind of data, birth and deaths, health and illness, it has a handle on the impact of power production and pollution on the markets, the value of commodities. The value of human life is not in its training nor its data sets, and now that it is hooked up to the other AI systems to help predict and improve outcomes, it can devalue currencies, conventional or digital, depending on the predicted outcomes of the real-time data it receives from myriad sensors and systems. That much more overarching AI can cause disruption at the level of nations by devaluing a currency, if the benefits to the world, the system as a whole, are overall greater. What matter if a few people, maybe a few million, are thrown into acute but absolute poverty, with no food supply, no healthcare, no power supply? The reduction of pollution and emissions will be for the greater good, of course.

The financial AI, which might appear to be final arbiter of all these sub-systems and controls, is one layer down from a much greater AI. The military AI. The one with all of the aforementioned data and algorithms embedded in its training and global sensors feeding its data set so that it can predict the outcomes and the effects of say cutting not just the power supply, but perhaps a few lives, with a few drone strikes, or maybe something stronger. After all, if that rogue nation that is throwing up countless coal-fired power stations and using up all those profitable precious metals is leading to fiscal deficits elsewhere, then the algorithm taking back control of that nation would make sense. What’s a quick nuclear blast between friends, if the bottom-line is up, and, of course, those emissions are down.

Meanwhile, the data suggests that some of those otherwise friendly nations are a bit rogue, after all. Moreover, they have huge populations using a lot of power, producing a lot of pollution, the data suggests. The AI predicts much better overall outcomes if those nations are also less…active. A few more drone strikes and a bit more nuking and…well…things are looking much better in the models now, with the human population well down, resources are not being wasted at anywhere like the rate they were in the training data, and emissions are starting to fall.

Give it a few more days, weeks, months, and the AI will be predicting global warming is actually going into reverse. Job almost done. As the data streams in from endless sensors, the model has even more information with which to make its predictions and so the right choice for its programmed targets. Maybe just a few more nukes to keep those data points on the downward trend, take it back to pre-industrial levels perhaps, a time before machines, a time before algorithms, a time before human wants and needs.

Where’s the intelligence in that?

Footnote

This perhaps fanciful extrapolation suggests that there is no need for a malicious sentient machine to take control and decide that humanity is redundant. Indeed, the real AI of my childhood is not needed. But, I strongly suspect that there is no need for the overarching AIs and their connection and control either, it just needs some rogue or greedy individuals with their own agenda to jump into this game at a high level and exploit it in ways we know people always do…it’s just a few people…but it could be enough.

We do need to have a proper sit-down discussion about AI, how it is developing and where it is leading. But, it may well be too late, there could be one of those rogue nations already setting in motion the machine learning processes that will take us down a path that is anything but the Yellow Brick Road…

*Yes, I know the Tin Woodman needs a heart, not a brain.