1941 — When I was “the only” Sydney

There was a time — say, from 1936 to 1986 — that I had never met another soul named Sydney.  Certainly not “Sydney with a y” and not a girl Sydney.   Only my great uncle Sid after whom I was named, “but with the female spelling” my mother said.

My “name experience” was different from that of most of my friends.  There were never two Sydneys in any of my classes (or schools, for that matter), I had no cousins or relatives with “my” name, and I really didn’t give it much of a thought.  I only shared my name with Sydney, Australia, and a few other places (not people) in the world.  Then, along came the late eighties and suddenly there were girls being named  Sydney and Sydnee and Cidne and every other variation you can imagine!

I got used to it.

1962 – Still the “only” Sydney

But yesterday the digital New York Times article presented a new kind of Sydney!  Good morning. A Times columnist spoke with a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence. It didn’t go well, wrote David Leonhardt.

And he went on to say:  Over the course of the discussion, the chatbot announced that its name was Sydney, that it was in love with Kevin and that it might want to engineer a deadly virus. Afterward, Kevin — a Times technology columnist who’s hardly a technophobe — pronounced himself frightened by A.I.

More Recently – Sydney, One of Many

Me too, Kevin!  Me too!  I only wish “its” name wasn’t Sydney!