THUMBS UP

Crazy Days is getting back to its crazy roots

New Ulm’s Crazy Days are back this weekend. They started Friday night with a street dance. The artificial turf once again rolled out for the celebration Saturday will feature the ping pong ball drop, craft vendor sales at multiple locations and more polka music. This year’s Crazy Days offering represents a step up from last year’s celebration. It seems like Crazy Days is starting to live up to its name again. For decades, Crazy Days was a huge deal in New Ulm. The streets were lined with shoppers for sidewalk sales. Then, around the 21st century hit and Crazy Days lost some of its spark. It is only in the last decade that New Ulm’s Crazy Days has brought back the ping pong ball drop. The street dance with artificial turf only came about in the last five years. It’s great to see the community resurrect this tradition and make it wild again.

THUMBS UP

Awareness of grain bin safety

Wednesday evening, a special safety program was hosted at Sleepy Eye Hockey Arena on grain bin safety. Area firefighters were able to practice extracting an individual trapped in a simulated grain bin. The program was led by Sleepy Eye eighth-grader Kylie Fischer and safety and security consultation specialists Jack Volz. The demonstration was planned over a month ago, but it was a timely demonstration, with grain bin accidents being a common occurrence. Volz said he had responded to four entrapment cases in Minnesota this year. Fischer said during the demonstration that awareness was important because grain bins can be unpredictable. Fortunately, awareness of the problems seems to be saving lives. Volz said that since 1995, the survival rate for those entrapped in grain bins has risen dramatically, from 5% to 65%. This improvement is because of educational programs like the one held in Sleepy Eye.

THUMBS DOWN

Artificial intelligence still not that helpful

For the last few years, tech industries have been promising the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution. The different AI tools would be able to streamline the lives of everyday people and make things easier. However, the more common these AI tools become, the more clear there is nothing intelligent about this technology. It’s coding and pattern recognition. That’s it. AI does not have the power to learn; it just “borrows” information from different sources. In some cases, this borrowing is theft of actual intellectual property. Yet, there are companies dumping a lot of money into these tools with the goal of replacing human workers. The ethical implications aside, it is not a great idea. For all the improvements and advancements in AI, these tools are not a lot different from the predictive text function on a phone. How often does the predictive text actually guess the correct word? There is a hard limit of what AI is capable of doing. The technology will likely improve, but the ethical issues surrounding AI use are not going away.