I was promised a Jet Pack

Watching a lot of Science Fiction in my formative years helped me to formulate a strategy for survival should the planet earth actually be 

a) invaded by Martians,

 b) hit by an asteroid 

c) overwhelmed by a virus, 

d) succumb to the insidious influence of plants, 

e)engulfed by the melting ice caps, 

f) be infiltrated by reptilian shape shifters 

and g) attacked by weaponised Clangers from the Moon. 

Little did I expect that any of these would cause me concern in my adult life but in recent years I have been disturbed by quite a few of the above. There is frequent coverage of a near miss by a large lump of space rock and the Ebola outbreak has been a tragedy for all of those caught up in it. (This was written before Covid 19) 

Genetically Modified crops could I suppose upset the ecology of the world and be our undoing in the longer term. 

Climate Change is already causing significant damage through unpredictable events which can scorch or inundate dependant on where you reside on the globe. 

It is some relief that Martians, in the words of HG Wells, keeping a watchful eye on the Earth may just feel there is too much going on to make an invasion feasible. 

As for the Clangers.....well, I remain on alert as they are, I understand,intending a bit of a comeback. 

Shape shifters, according to various You Tube videos, are already amongst us but are probably finding our social customs and human traits a bit difficult and may give up and go back to wherever they came from. 

I have omitted so far to mention that all of the above pale into insignificance in the face of the greatest perceived threat to mankind...from Artificial Intelligence and in particular in robot form. 

My immersion in Science Fiction included comic books and the big screen mostly black and white movies with depicted robots. They were quite intimidating and menacing and yet there was a faithful adherence to the notional Laws of Robotics which protected humans from harm. 

The defining differences between Man and Artificial Intelligence were the ability for compassion and imagination which could not be duplicated by algorithms, digitalisation or an ability to mimic reasoning or ordinary human traits. 

In many films where mankind was seemingly doomed to enslavement by the machines and robots the day was always saved by an act of self-sacrifice or an expression of love. 

What better way to distinguish humanity than through poetry of which there is a vast resource over the millenia. My childhood fears, irrational though they were, of a robot takeover have been reawakened by my stumbling across a website called "Bot or Not?". ]

This is a Turing Test type site. In 1950 the computer scientist Alan Turing devised the test bearing his own name as a way of verifying machine intelligence. It produces a situation in which a human judge talks to both a computer and a human through a computer terminal. Based on the answers alone the judge has to determine which is which.

"Bot or Not" features examples of poems and you, assuming the role of judge, have to guess if it computer or human in origin. Examples provided include classic poems from literature and also those formulated from algorithms or by using other automated forms of generating text. 

Submissions are invited from readers through notbotpoems.gmail.com. 

Can you decide who wrote the following- Bot or Not?

a) i feel great, today is a good day, i love you, i like this, nice to meet you

b) MY DESIRE BEAUTIFULLY LUSTS AFTER YOUR SEDUCTIVE ENTHUSIASM

c) The Moon rises like a small shore...Gulls travel like rough gulls.

d) I am the dark on the night. The past of love gone stale.

I have posted the answers on my Twitter Page for those interested. As a clue, the ratio of answers is three to one.

I am no more assured of the future now than when I was seduced by images of it through the Sci-Fi of my younger years. 

I am still a bit disappointed in it all because I am sure that I was promised a jet-pack .