Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We never run out of excuses. Well, if we ever come close to the end of the list, we can add AI.

Microsoft had a mistake. No worry as mistakes can be corrected. The source of the mistake? Well, people are always the source of mistakes, but now we can blame AI.

You see, Copilot (Microsoft’s entry into the list of current AI systems) added some code to something or other and that AI code ran the system off the rails or somewhere unintended. If it weren’t for that darn AI, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Any people involved? Of course there were. Let’s have their names so we can shame them publicly or something like that. No wait, let’s shame Copilot.

Shame on you Copilot!

Hmm, that is satisfying in a way, but sort of hollow. Of course there are nameless people here. We all make mistakes. We try to correct them before something truly bad happens. Why the mistake? Answering, “Because I’m human,” doesn’t seem to quench the thirst of the blamer. Oh, but if we can name something specific like COPILOT DID IT! Well, now that is satisfying.

People write software. People call software to do things. Sometimes people don’t test software enough to find and fix mistakes. We can do better.