Absent Messages

The media often ask
'when Artificial Intelligence will arrive?'
And 'How they will we know it is here?'
But this question has already run past us 
-when television was a new mass medium
many parents assumed it had intelligence
-because it spoke to them in a language
they they thought they understood.
Many made it the child-minder-at-the-press-of-a-button.
Another labour saving gadget to give them ease
through disengagement. And it was sort-of free
(via an annual license fee paid by all to the BBC).
Most vitally it saved parents the awkwardness
of asking relatives they privately disliked depending on
to look after their children, and give them free time,
particularly when they knew that their relatives time
was just of just as much of value to them.

Parents only began to complain
when children went on the blink,
from overuse of this distant, absent, minder
-by which time it was too late.
What parents unthinkingly mistook
for artificial intelligence reflected
their own well nurtured lack of thought.