Thurs Jan 9, 2025
Hi Gang! As you all know, we love sea days! Sleep in, have a relaxed day, get educated and eat great food, who wouldn’t love that! We woke up to sunny skies and warm temps. We started our day with the first of many enrichment lectures. This one was on the Cuban Missile Crisis and how the confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
It all started back at the end of WWII on Aug 6, 1945 with the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima which caused the Soviet Union to develop thousands of nuclear weapons to keep up with the US.
Fast forward to 1960, where the CIA had a Plan to oust Castro from Cuba and have the US take over. John F Kennedy was the president and executed the plan which entailed bombings of Cuba and US assisted Cuban militia invading the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. All that went terribly and wasn’t successful.
Soon after the US had been gathering intelligence and spy photos that showed a huge build up in missiles on Cuba pointing toward the US. Oct 16, 1962 is considered day one of the Cuban Missile crisis. It lasted 13 days out of the entire 45 years of the Cold War. On Oct 22, JFK briefs the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis and uses the US Navy to create a blockade around Cuba. That’s when the term DEFCON was created and it’s the only time a DEFCON 2 was announced where it’s estimated that we are approx 6 hours from a nuclear war. On Oct 25, Kruschev writes a personal letter to JFK asking to reduce the movement toward a nuclear war. JFK responds and agrees. On Oct 28, Kruschev agrees and removes the missiles from Cuba. So the crisis is averted. Whew!
The second talk was on a brief history of the Caribbean but we missed that and had an amazing sit down lunch in Compass Rose. They only do that on sea days and we had some delicious split pea soup, goat cheese and Chinese Barbecue Pork Ribs. So yummy!
In the afternoon we listened to the talk on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The speaker felt all the news about AI we’ve read so far is wrong and misleading as well as doom and gloom. Can computers evoke an emotion? Good question!
He felt the birth of AI started in the 1980’s when IBM created “Deep Thought”, an unfunded chess playing game. Then Gary Kasparov, a chess master, stepped up and challenged IBM to a 7 game chess match and it went to game 7 and the IBM computer won! IBM then created Watson and developed a human vs computer Jeopardy game and the computer kept winning since it could hit the button sooner! Lol
He then discussed the moral dilemma of whether it’s right or wrong to use ChatGPT to write a term paper. What do you think? What about if a doctor uses AI to diagnose you? Is that OK? He went thru a lot of interesting moral dilemma scenarios.
What is AI good at? He suggested things like Genome analysis and drug development. He also mentioned how Beethoven died before finishing his 10th symphony but left a couple pages of notes of the start of it. Many artists tried to finish it but none sounded right. So they used AI to take in all of his prior 9 symphonies and created a beautiful new 10th symphony! Such an interesting new technology!
We then got ready to attend the Captain’s Welcome Reception and go to dinner. Tonight is formal night so we get to put on our fancy duds. I’ll do another update tonight after dinner. Happy Thursday to all!
The Wandering Italian 