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Good morning!

On this day in 1958, a little-remembered man applied for a patent for what would become known as an ‘integrated circuit’.

US inventor Jack Kirby is not exactly a household name in the same way that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk is.

But, his invention of the ‘integrated circuit’ – which was soon utilised in the first personal calculator – led to the microchip, which powers so much of what we rely on now in daily life.

Among the inventions that shaped the twentieth century, few can rival the microchip.

This tiny silicon component made possible the digital world we live in today: computers, mobile phones, satellites, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity systems.

Sometimes I wonder if life would’ve been simpler without the microchip.

I jest, of course, technology has made so many lives easier and has aided so many medical advances and improved the quality of life of so many people.

But technology is both a gift and a challenge. It can be used for so much good but can also cause so much harm.

Technology has made is so much easier to communicate, but it has also broken down boundaries to the extent where often we no longer know what is real and what is fake, artificial even.

Artificial intelligence is here to stay; it will revolutionise how we live our lives. It IS revolutionising how we live our lives.

But we need to have courageous conversations about how Artificial Intelligence can serve humanity, not the other way around.

So, today I pray for discernment – the wisdom to see technology as the gift it is, while accepting it must be harnessed for good. Amen.

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