Ye all know that I know very little about this new AI (Artificial Intelligence) thing, but apparently it can be used in several beneficial ways like helping to scrutinise X-ray results and other medical tests.

A warning of a possible Doomsday scenario in relation to AI came just last week from an unlikely source.

Two years ago, Geoffrey Hinton won a Nobel Prize for Physics for his pioneering work on ‘learning machines to think’. Indeed, many regard Hinton as the real ‘founder’ of AI. But lately he has come out basically regretting the ‘monster he has created’.

Well, whatever about the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence, I can make one very definitive judgement and that is AI is fecking useless when it come to forecasting the results of horseracing!

I know because after a recent day’s racing ‘guided’ by AI tips, I am €60 worse off!

Six races I backed - €2.50 each way on two horses in every race - so a nice even €10 a race, and absolutely nothing in return!

In fairness, I had a wonderful day out enjoying ‘the sport of kings’ in the company of the plain people of Ireland. My recent venture at a National Hunt meeting was in the picturesque setting of Kilbeggan in Co. Westmeath.

It all began long, long away from the little town where they started making whiskey in 1757 and started racing horses in 1840. What, you may well ask, have Kilbeggan races and Lourdes in common? The answer is one man - Dr Jerry O’Flynn.

A Kilworth native, Jerry was in school in Fermoy but a few years behind me. He followed in his father Sean’s footsteps in becoming a Medical Doctor - and a good one too.

I only met ‘The Doc’, Dr Sean O’Flynn, a few times but the stories I’ve heard about him are legendary. Back in the 1950s, he was one of the founders of the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to........

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