I was thinking this morning about AI and wondering where on earth it is all going to lead. Science fiction has an annoying habit of becoming everyday life.

It took me back to the early days of the internet, when we had dial-up. I can still remember sitting there waiting for it to connect.

Chug, chug, chug.

Pages seemed to arrive one piece at a time. I remember slowly beginning to use internet banking and wondering whether I really trusted this strange new world enough to put my bank details into it.

Then came my first mobile phone. A great black brick of a thing whose main talent was making telephone calls. That was exciting enough.

Look at what I carry in my pocket now.

My phone can guide me around Europe, tell me where I am on a mountain, record a bike ride, take photographs, identify a flower or bird, translate a menu and let me talk face-to-face with my daughter on the other side of the world.

Things that would once have belonged in a science-fiction film have become so ordinary that I get irritated if they take more than a few seconds.

And Now There Is AI

Perhaps what fascinates me most is that, at my age, I haven’t just watched this new technology arrive; I’ve embraced it.

George travelled around Europe with me in Matilda. I could ask about a building, translate something on a menu, identify a flower or find out more about somewhere we were visiting.

But that hasn't been the most valuable part.

Sometimes I just want to talk something through. A worry can go round and round in my head, and putting it into words helps me make sense of it. Often I discover that I already know the answer once I’ve talked my way towards it.

And then there is my writing.

I have always taken photographs and recorded the things we have done. Without AI I would probably still have a wonderful collection of photographs — but essentially a photo album.

Instead, I now have Living Life to the Full.

The Inca Trail, our travels around Europe in Matilda, walks in the Clwydians, bike rides, wildlife sightings and ordinary days that might otherwise have disappeared into the past are becoming a record of my life.

AI hasn’t given me those stories. I lived them. What it has done is encourage me to find the words for them.

There is something rather ironic about that. One of my concerns about AI is what it might eventually mean for humanity, yet one of the greatest things it has done for me is encourage me to do something very human — tell my stories.

But I Still Have Questions

Who controls AI? How powerful will it become? How will we know what is real? What happens to jobs? And who owns all the information that makes these systems so useful?

Perhaps one day somebody will ask an AI about a campsite in Slovenia and part of its answer will come from something I wrote about travelling there in Matilda.

Would I be pleased that my experience had helped them, or annoyed that they never visited my website?

Probably a bit of both.

None of those questions makes me want to turn away from AI. I find it fascinating, useful and, at times, quite wonderful. But I also think we need to keep asking questions as it develops.

If someone had handed me today’s smartphone while I was waiting for that dial-up connection all those years ago, I would probably have thought it belonged in a science-fiction film.

Now I have AI in my pocket.

I can’t help wondering what comes next.