In the English language, you capitalize nouns when they are very important. You don’t write, for example, god if you are talking about God. When slavery was in fashion, slaves were black, but now their descendants are Black. And the white slaveholders are now White. You get the picture.

This is how I know that artificial intelligence is important. It is more and more often being called Artificial Intelligence. As I understand it, Artificial Intelligence is the flawed intelligence demonstrated by machines, rather than the flawed intelligence demonstrated by human beings. With the right machinery, you and I could converse through artificial intelligence. We could teach each other, argue with each other, comfort each other, or just shoot the breeze. While we were talking, real you and real I could do other things, and not have to deal with each other at all. Our artificial conversation could go on for years and we would have know idea what what the artificial we were talking about. Our conversation could be turned into press releases, or essays or even books, our ideas could be spread abroad in our name, people (or artificial people) could argue about which of us is correct, and which of us should be locked up. We would have no idea that this was going on.

In the meantime, Artificial Intelligence can now be used to make videos, as I understand it. Not with animation, and not with real characters being photographed, but artificially created representatives of ourselves. These videos could be released, with the sound track from our artificial conversation, to prove that it was the real us, not the artificial us, who were talking. Again, we might not even know about it, and nobody would believe our alibi , because it is just too easy to create artificial alibi.

Now, let’s get a bit more devious. Artificial Intelligence could have me admit to a horrendous crime that the artificial me committed, as shown on video that has been spread around the world. Artificial me could scam old ladies out of their inheritances, or scam young women out of their trust funds.

Artificial Intelligence could even show Vladivostok being obliterated by American bombs, and this video could automatically trigger the OK for Russian bombs to head towards New York City. Artificial Intelligence shows the promise of so confusing our world that we won’t recognize what is artificial and what is not (if there will be anything remaining of the real world to identify).

With this in mind, we subscribe to the New York Times so that we will keep up with all the news fit to print. I assume that our subscription is to the real New York Times, but maybe it isn’t. When I looked at the front section this morning, I saw many articles which I assumed to be (relatively) accurate. And I knew they were important – after all they were selected for the front section by the Times’ editor. Or maybe it was the Times’ artificial editor?

It doesn’t really matter. At least we can keep up with the news, and I can all your attention to important stories that you may have missed. Such as the full page (!) story on page A9 entitled “A Former Parisian Finds Her Goats Enchanting. Her Neighbors Don’t”.

Once you get over your surprise of a two sentence headline (alors!), you focus on the news behind the news. What can be in this story, what’s the back story, how is it relevant to me and my dear ones? Well, don’t spend too much time looking – there just isn’t much there. The headline says it all. The story was written by Catherine Porter. The real Catherine Porter, I am sure. The artificial Catherine Porters (all of them) would never have spent so much artificial mental energy on a story about a former Parisian and her goats.

And, oh yes, I did not read the entire full page story about the goats. I am leaving reading (and absorbing) this crucial tale to the artificial me. He/she/it will bring your up to date on its artificial blog.