  The field of machine learning has achieved striking progress in recent years,
witnessing breakthrough results on language modelling, protein folding and
nitpickingly fine-grained dog breed classification. Some even succeeded at
playing computer games and board games, a feat both of engineering and of
setting their employers' expectations. The central contribution of this work is
to carefully examine whether this progress, and technology more broadly, can be
expected to continue indefinitely. Through a rigorous application of
statistical theory and failure to extrapolate beyond the training data, we
answer firmly in the negative and provide details: technology will peak at 3:07
am (BST) on 20th July, 2032. We then explore the implications of this finding,
discovering that individuals awake at this ungodly hour with access to a
sufficiently powerful computer possess an opportunity for myriad forms of
long-term linguistic 'lock in'. All we need is a large (>> 1W) data centre to
seize this pivotal moment. By setting our analogue alarm clocks, we propose a
tractable algorithm to ensure that, for the future of humanity, the British
spelling of colour becomes the default spelling across more than 80% of the
global word processing software market.
