Apologies to Thomas Jefferson and Rembrandt Peale – www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• THE development of artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be stopped and, more importantly, should not be stopped, (Watch out for the rise of the robots, May 25)!

If work on AI doesn’t happen in the UK it will happen elsewhere and I’m happier having work done here rather than, say, China or Russia; we might be more able to control it, or at least hear more about it, if work is done here.

But AI is all around us already. A recent photographic competition was won by an AI-generated image. And the predictive spelling on your phone is already a form of AI that irritates many of us every day, but can also help.

I used to type “footloose and fancy…” and my phone would suggest “dress”! But now it has learned my ways and “free” is suggested! Not sure which is more worrying!

Also I recall one of the major proponents of AI being interviewed last year, saying he was working at home one day and his daughter was nearby watching a film on her tablet and said: “I don’t like this movie”, and a voice piped up from her tablet saying “neither do I, shall I switch it off?” He then recognised a downside of AI: our kids will be brought up by it.

But elsewhere I read that a robot can scan hundreds of women’s breast X-rays a minute, and point out any worrying defects with high reliability, while this could take a trained specialist as long as a day or more per case. So AI could save human lives and suffering.

But, like all human developments, there are concerns. The pen is not mightier than a hydrogen bomb, or the tiny minds that control them, present company not excepted!

We just have to remember that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance” – a phrase often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, although this is now in doubt.

When you read something, always ask who, what, where, when and why? And now maybe ask: does it sound likely that this person would say that, or could it be a fake?

But many of us appreciated the byline to the main article: “Tom Foot, or is it?”

DAVID REED, NW3