Today was the first day that really started feeling like autumn here. And we’re most of the way through it already, with winter just two weeks away. There are fallen leaves on the roads and footpaths. Glimpses of autumn colour with the liquidambars, camphor laurels, and ginkgo trees turning. (Although these are the minority – most of the trees around here are evergreens.)
And it’s turned chilly. Today only reached 16.2°C in Sydney, which is about average for a winter’s day, and it was windy which made it feel even colder. We had heavy rain in the morning, but the middle of the day was dry, though overcast. The heavy rain is back in the evening, and is expected to get heavier overnight and we will get some very heavy falls over the next two days.
We took advantage of the break in the rain to go for a drive at lunch. I suggested we go to Allambie Pies to get some pies. Unfortunately the traffic was bad. The few blocks near our place in that direction seem to always be choked on weekends nowadays, and it took us about 20 minutes to drive as far as we could have waked in the same amount of time.
It eased up and I thought we were okay, but we hit a big traffic snarl further on. This one turned out to be caused by a serious car accident ahead. By the time we crawled past, two cars were being towed and police were directing traffic around the obstruction. It looked pretty bad. But I just saw on reddit’s Sydney sub that the driver of one of the cars had posted to thank a good samaritan who stopped to check everyone was okay, and directed traffic around the obstruction until the police arrived. One driver was taken to hospital with minor injuries, but nobody was killed or badly hurt, thankfully.
This evening I had three more ethics classes on the “Socialising” topic. An interesting observation I’ve made: One of the question I ask if it’s okay that some people might treat an AI chatbot like a friend, conversing in a natural way, telling it secrets and emotions, looking for advice, etc.
- Almost everyone in the 10-12 year old classes answered very much: No, that’s bad, an AI isn’t a real person, it doesn’t understand like a human, it could be harmful, etc.
- But several kids in the 13-15 year old classes gave more nuanced responses. Some saying it could help shy people or people without friends to express their emotions in a useful way, or to get some advice for things they might not have thought of themselves (although they should filter it for sensibility themselves), and so on.
I’m glad pretty much all the kids have a healthy scepticism about AI tools. I suspect that’s not the case for kids whose parents don’t invest so much in their education, though.