b'THE ELLESMERIAN The Headmasters Speech5Speech Day 2023It is a great pleasurefor the first time in three yearsto be here in Big School to introduce Prize Giving and to mark the end of a successful academic year at the College.Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen,It is a great pleasure once again to find myself at the conclusion of another very successful academic year and to be here in Big School to introduce prize giving and begin a day of celebration. As has now become convention, this speech will not be an attempt to summarise the years achievements at Ellesmere: if it was we would need to add at least another hour or so to these proceedingsandMr Brendan Wignall, Headmasterthat assumes a very concise summary of successes. my mistake before getting to that point.Last year we were operating still in the fading shadows of Covid,We are in the very early stages of artificial intelligence, and it has, of and it has been good this year to have felt back to normalor atcourse, been around for a few years, but it seems this year that the least to what might be called new normal. first genuine flowers bloomed, particularly into public consciousness. I remarked in my speech last year that I believe that we will lookThe development of AI will bring a whole host of challenges and I back on the period and not remember Covid so much as thedo not profess to know what they will be or how they will impact medical advancesmost particularly in mRNA technologythaton societyI think anybody who does make that profession is were accelerated as part of the response to Covid 19. What can beat the very least, and to put it politely, blessed with an enormous super important in the short term and while living through it canamount of self-confidence.often fade into history over a longer perspective. The Nobel Laureate in Physics, Nils Bohr, commented that How will people see our last twelve months?Well, there is quite aprediction is very difficult, especially if it is about the future. I am range of options. It could be the UKs revolving door arrangementssure he is right, particularly on this subject. AI, perhaps surprisingly for Prime Ministers; it could be the ongoing war in Ukraine; it couldgiven what most of us thought might happen, is already having a be global inflation; it could be interest rates and the cost-of-livingmajor disruptive influence in the creative and humanistic industries. crisis. It could, of course, be all of them, and all of them have beenThe writers strike in Hollywoodin which my own daughter very important this year.However, I would contend that there isis involvedis in part to do with how AI will be used in the a good chance that from the perspective of history this last twelveprocess of writing, and Marvel Studios has already come under months will be remembered for the major stepsalbeit I thinkheavy criticismand a boycottfor replacing animators with AI-very early stepsthat have been taken in the world of artificialproduced animation for its most recent TV series.intelligence. AI is only going to get smarter with each iteration. Chat GTP3 For the purposes of this speech, I will frequently shorten artificialhas already passed one of the Wharton Business Schools MBA intelligence to AI, although I have already realised that dealing inexaminations, and Wharton is one of the top MBA courses in the acronyms can cause potentially high-risk confusion. I was recentlyworld. That was Chat GPT3. We are now on version four with introduced to someone who specialises in AI and had not got asversion five to follow in due course.far as asking them to speak to people at the College, fortunately,It will be disruptive, but most major technologies are: the before I realised that their AI was actually artificial insemination.development of the car wiped out the horse and carriage business; A staff training session on AI illustrated by pictures of bulls andthe development of the mobile phone has devastated the camera stallions would have seemed eccentric, I fear. Fortunately, I realised'