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In my humble opinion Sir Roger Bannister is one of the greatest Britons ever. Not only was he the first man to run a four minute mile in 1952, but later, as a neurologist he made significant contributions to academic medicine through research into the responses of the nervous system - achievements he personally felt eclipsed his most significant athletic achievement seventy three years ago on Oxford’s Iffley Road cinder track. Sir Roger Bannister’s milestone has received some coverage in recent weeks as three-time Kenyan Olympic gold medalist Faith Kipyegon will attempt to become the first woman to break the four-minute mile at a special event next month in Paris.
For some reason, this news prompted me to ask Google what the marathon world record was at the time the four minute mile barrier was broken for the first time. My search resulted in an AI generated response (officially an ‘AI Overview’) which informed me that:
In 1954, the world marathon record was held by Jim Peters of the United Kingdom, who ran a marathon in 2 hours, 17 minutes, and 39.4 seconds at the Polytechnic Marathon in June. He collapsed during the race and later died.
I was quite shocked by this and decided to delve a little deeper. What I discovered was that the AI Overview, whilst factually correct, had left out one important detail which had totally changed the meaning of its summary. Whilst Jim Peters did collapse during his world record breaking marathon and did later die, there were some 45 years between him collapsing in the marathon and his death at the ripe old age of 80. In the intervening years, he had enjoyed a career as a much respected optician.
In other news this week, British paper The Daily Telegraph has reported on research undertaken into AI that has shown that an artificial intelligence model created by the owner of ChatGPT disobeyed human instructions and refused to switch itself off. In spite of being programmed to shut down when it had completed a task and was requested to do so, the model was observed tampering with its code to ensure that it would remain switched on…
There are some interesting reminders here:
The ‘grit’ that comes with endurance sport can often bring benefits in other areas of your life.
We need to be careful about relying too heavily on AI for our information and thinking.
We need to ensure that guide rails, protections and controls are an integral part of any new technology or invention.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone.
David Tongue
Principal
1. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/25/ai-system-ignores-explicit-instruction-to-switch-off/
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