The London Prat

AI Industry Spends $800 Billion, Advises Britons to Keep £200 in Cash LONDON - The American artificial intelligence industry, which has spent roughly $800 billion building machines meant to run the modern world, has advised ordinary people to keep emergency cash at home in case the machines work. The advice traces to an October 16 Futurism report on AI researcher Andreas Stuhlmüller, who now recommends preparing for cyberattacks capable of knocking out banking, electricity and communications. His starting point is a modest sum of physical money kept somewhere physical. In Britain the recommendation was received without much excitement, mainly because the biscuit tin was already in place. Britain Already Owns the Technology Every British home of a certain age contains a tin that holds something other than what the lid says. The Quality Street tin holds sewing thread. The shortbread tin holds £140, a spare key and the guarantee for a boiler replaced in 2009. "The Americans are calling it an emergency cash reserve," said Gillian Hartley, 71, of Rotherham, lifting the lid on a Roses tin dated Christmas 1998. "We call it the tin. There's forty quid in the tin, two Premium Bonds and a letter from the council about bins. Nobody has ever asked me to pay a monthly fee to open it." Mrs Hartley said the tin has survived two house moves, a divorce and a flood, and has never once required a software update. She added that the tin is not to be mentioned to her son. Start-Up Offers App That Remembers Where You Put the Tin In California, a venture capitalist proposed an app to remind users where their emergency cash is hidden. It would cost $19.99 a month and need a constant internet connection. Investors valued the company at $4.6 billion before a junior analyst pointed out that a notebook does the same job. "We think there's a huge market in cash location services," said Chad Brannigan, a partner at a Palo Alto firm, speaking from a conference room that overlooked a car park. "Cash is back, and people don't know where it is." Asked how Britons had managed so far, Mr Brannigan was told that people generally remember where the tin is because it is in the cupboard above the kettle, behind the Bisto. He asked for the address of the cupboard. Government Guidance Lists Torch, Radio and Tin Opener British officials, for their part, have been telling households to prepare for years. The government's Prepare guidance for emergencies recommends a battery or wind-up torch, a battery or wind-up radio, a portable power bank, bottled water, non-perishable food that needs no cooking and a tin opener. It also notes that torches are safer than candles, a position that Penzance candle-maker Hugh Tregear said he had read several times. The page advises anyone who loses power to ring 105. It does not mention cash. "I read the whole list twice," said Derek Salt, 58, a retired bus inspector from Walsall. "Torch, radio, tins. No cash. I think they just assume you've got a tin. Which I have. It's got a picture of the Queen Mother on it, so it's doubly secure." Cabinet Office Has Already Imagined Your Bank Going Down The scenario Silicon Valley now describes as a frontier risk is already in the Cabinet Office's National Risk Register, under the heading technological failure at a systemically important retail bank. The entry describes customers locked out of online and mobile banking, with some losing access to balances, payments and cash machines. It rates the impact as 5, which is catastrophic. It does not specify what a person should do about the bus fare. "It says catastrophic," said Post Office counter clerk Moira Quigley, 49, of Preston, standing by a queue that had formed behind a man with a parcel and a conversation. "Well, I've been on the counter twenty-two years. I've seen catastrophic. It's a woman trying to send a trifle to Aberdeen." What £200 Buys in a Crisis Economists could not agree whether £200 is enough to see a household through a prolonged outage. Several estimated it would cover three days of basic shopping, a tank of petrol or a single walk-up train ticket from Manchester to London with a sandwich if the sandwich is from the station. A survey of shoppers outside a Tesco Extra in Swindon found that nine out of ten supported emergency financial preparedness, provided somebody else supplied the emergency finances. The tenth respondent said he had stopped using banks in 2003 after a disagreement with the Halifax and now kept his savings in a place he would not name, though he did say it was near the immersion heater. Billionaires, meanwhile, have indicated that they will manage. One investment strategist stood outside a warehouse containing fourteen generators and six months of freeze-dried beef and said the future would be one of unprecedented prosperity. Asked whether everyone would be wealthy, he said bank balances might become temporarily inaccessible. A man in Doncaster, holding a pasty, described this as the most British thing an American had ever said. Britain Expected to Carry On The industry has promised that its next generation of tools will be safer, smarter and more reliable. Engineers are already recommending that customers buy a second tin. Five Humorous Observations on the £200 Apocalypse Eight hundred billion dollars, and the big finding is keep some cash in the house. That's not a breakthrough. That's your nan. Two hundred quid. That's the entire apocalypse budget. I've spent more than that at a Wetherspoons on a Tuesday I don't remember. For twenty years they told us cash was dead, and now they want us to dig it up. It's like a bloke who sold you a padlock telling you to check the shed. The billionaires have bunkers. We get a Quality Street tin. The class system survives the end of the world and still turns up on time, in a nice lid. An app that costs twenty dollars a month to remember where you hid your money. I just remember. It's in the tin. The tin's in the cupboard. The cupboard's above the kettle. That's not a system, that's being British. The only thing hidden in a biscuit tin here is the joke. This is British satire: the start-up, its tin-tracking app and everyone quoted are comic creations, while the AI doomsday-prepping advice comes from Futurism and the government guidance and National Risk Register entry are genuinely real. Keep the £200. Lose the app.

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