I’ve just had a play with a Google website called Quick, Draw. It is a bit like playing Pictionary against a computer – you get given a subject and have 20 seconds to sketch it in a way that the neural network of the server can recognise. You work through a set of six drawings and then you can choose one to examine in more detail, seeing the machine’s guesses and other people’s sketches that have succeeded.

It is amazing what it can recognise. Even with the time limit and the constraint of drawing on a touchpad surface (I expect a mouse would be even trickier) it always got at least five of my attempts right. I’m going to see if it will work my iPad Pro in a moment, as soon as the Apple Pencil has done a quick charge (BTW – I’ve just spotted that the charging connector cover sticks to the magnet in the iPad’s keyboard cover, which is handy whether or not it was intentional).

Worth a few minutes for the fun of it, especially if you are interested in AI (but perhaps not if you want to avoid giving the machines any help on their way up!).