rare AIr

A good day today, with the tension from yesterday dissipated. Maybe everyone just needed a good sleep. Many of the group are following the World Cup (the Ghana crew were SO ecstatic when they drew with England) and there have been late nights in the pub for some to watch the games. The programme director starts each day with a question about the highlights from the day before, hoping for feedback on content. Invariably, the first response is about highlights from the soccer matches played overnight. The programme content for today centred around AI possibilities and threats. There are a few heavy hitters in the room for this topic and they stepped up to share their knowledge. The takeaway? That  unplugging your system is still the key crisis response. We have people running security for global banks in this room, and while I’m oversimplifying it, if a world wide system gets hacked, our best response is still to pull the plug.  

For our last evening together, there was a formal dinner at Christchurch College. Christchurch is one of the larger, fancier colleges. It’s a breathtaking venue, founded in the 1500s when Henry VIII was breaking up with Rome. There are a couple of original portraits of him hanging on the walls. It’s steeped in history but also very much alive with a Great Hall of long wooden tables, high ceilings, portraits staring down… and scruffy students stealing our prosecco as they walk by on the way to dinner. The prosecco was pretty ordinary, so in my opinion they were welcome to it. The food in contrast was actually really good and beautifully presented. Fun facts, gleaned from the pre dinner speech: Lewis Carroll taught here, first telling Alice’s in Wonderland stories to Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean. It’s also produced an unusually high number of British Prime Ministers.

There was an orgy of photo taking, with various “groups” , ranging from “Asia Pacific” to “tall people” to “old white men”. A few competitive souls made every effort to be included in as many groups as possible, with ever more ridiculous justifications of why they fit in the category. 

This is just a short update today as I have to pack. I’ve included more photos, and you can see the Henry VIII portraits in a couple of them and the “Asia Pacific” three.