Scenes shifted quickly this past week. It started out as an unimportant, but standard mid-story phone conversation between Mark and Cherry; then jumped to Mark attending Vendor’s Day at the AI Conference center; and finally shifted to an open door where Mark spied one of his former nemeses on an angry, panicked phone call.

Mark’s preconceptions about the harmfulness of AI were challenged at the Vendor’s Day exhibit by several young vendors talking up their pro-environmental projects, all supported by AI technology. Their testimonials got Mark to start having second thoughts that AI may not be all bad if it can support good ideas. Is it right for something considered harmful to be used for something not harmful? And is the tradeoff worth the price?

Weighty issues for this strip, given that most of the stories Mark handles are wrapped in layers of parody, absurdity, and cheap puns. The point here is that whenever something serious comes up, instead of exploring it in a serious manner, Jules Rivera shifts the focus and heads back into comic land. And so it is that Mark eventually spied one of his former nemeses, Sid Stump, on the phone trying very hard to dump some AI technology as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was seeing Stump, but Mark’s position on AI returned to his negative position very fast. He seemed to conclude that AI developers were in it only for the money, not for any long-term benefit to humanity. Will Rivera take the story back to crazy land? Let’s see how things continue this coming week as the conference begins and Mark presents his own take on AI. But first …

Oh, wow. New York has wild animals, excluding the human kind. So, sure. New York City used to look like a lot of the rest of the East Coast before it got developed. Got it! And New York State still has lots of rural areas left. And there are still all kinds of unusual animals in New York City these days. Okay, so maybe readers (if there are any) will get educated on the fact that New York is not just skyscrapers and street gangs, but has woods, forests, rivers, streams, and animals like other states.