There is a great deal of excitement about the latest generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer programs and how clever and useful they are `especially for everyday tasks for just the average Joe. This morning before I was properly awake and was looking for smart things to say about yesterday’s interest rate hike, my laptop was offering me a dinner party recipe for 6 vegetarians and a chocolate desert. Well, this smarty pants computer has not learned anything about me in the last 10 years. What I really wanted to know and share with readers, was why we were hit with a double jump in the price of money (repo rate increased from 7.25% to 7.75%) yesterday) when it is obvious that just about everyone, who if not on the ANC “favoured cadre” list”, is struggling to pay the bills. One offered reason (and a gloriously asinine one) is that the Monetary Policy Committee members had been applying their minds to this thorny question since the previous meeting 2 months ago and it would seem indecisive if they resorted to a knee -jerk reaction because “The Fed” (the USA equivalent of the SARB) was battling its own demons, rescuing atrociously run banks.
But to return to mankind’s latest toy – artificial intelligence, a fierce test of its useful ness will be when someone asks what the gold price will be on Monday, whether Bitcoin has any real intrinsic value and whether long-dated US bonds are a buy. These tests can be run for any date , over any period with the provision that unlike political contests, aka elections, cheating is forbidden. The weather would also be an excellent test of forecasting . It has long intrigued me that no one seems to think it interesting to publish on Wednesday, Monday’s forecast for Tuesday alongside Tuesdays’ actual weather. One could give a score for accuracy. Note that we are as a civilisation we are confidently designing a whole new economy based on how hot we think it will be next year!
For a modest fee one may download various versions of these super smart search engines and I was about to do so when the headline popped up that GDP growth was tanking and that this was ascribed to the regular and lengthy morale-sapping power cuts. This is more than enough artificial cleverness for one man and a 10 year-old laptop, so I withheld my credit card and went searching for the rugby scores instead.
COSATU – the trade union movement -- thinks it would be a good idea to scrap the Ministerial Handbook. What a splendid idea, The Book is no more than a pre-approved expenditure list for qualifying politicians and bureaucrats who have convinced each other that their salaries are insufficient for supporting the life style to which they are entitled. Tax payers play no part in setting this list except for picking up the tab. The beneficiaries’ penchant for multiple wives, sleek cars, tasteless houses and complicated watches knows no bounds, so setting the list to zero seems smart for a nation a bit short of cash. After all, if the ministers feel hard done by, they can always go and join the line of state grantees, which this year set another record of recipients and occasioned another one of those weird ANC victory celebrations when what was needed was a lament.
Tidemarks must apologise for failing to spot that the Boat Race was won by Cambridge last weekend. Also dragging on is the really foolish idea of using SA taxpayers money to bribe the richest sportsmen in the universe to promote SA as a tourist destination. This smells like someone trying to fulfill a promise to get a football-mad grandson a season ticket to White Hart Lane.
James Greener
Friday 31st March 2023.
