Tuesday 14th January 2025

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refitman
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Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by refitman »

Morning all.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by Frog222 »

Good morning

The new version of the white heat of technology is providing work for real humans (at least I think so ..)





Tom Peck on form too --

Starmer’s AI plans closer to Bluey than a blueprint for Britain
The PM set out his plans for using the technology to boost growth, but there was little to reassure in his speech

The dream of AI is that humanity is able to create and harness a higher power of intelligence, capable of solving all the many problems we cannot solve ourselves. The nightmare is that the solutions it finds will be worse than the problems, and we will be powerless to stop it. There have been many thousands of articles, research papers, long-form blogs, dystopian novels and so on dedicated to the subject, but none so perfect as that found in the Daddy Robot episode of the magnificent dog-based children’s cartoon Bluey.

In Daddy Robot, Bluey asks Daddy Robot to tidy the playroom for her because she can’t be bothered to do it herself. Daddy Robot responds by throwing Bluey and her little sister Bingo in the bin. “Now playroom will always be tidy,” says Daddy Robot. You see?

This is a predicament to which a tired-looking and visibly downbeat Sir Keir Starmer can most certainly relate. On Monday morning, he was doing his best to launch the government’s new AI strategy, while standing in front of some small robot arms at the brand new University College London campus on the Olympic Park.

(• AI is reading scans and could soon prevent illness, Starmer says)

The incredible power of AI was clear enough to see. Researchers there had been asked to create a fully automated robot Labour cabinet minister, who would introduce the prime minister. You know the kind: can speak in benign platitudes, can talk with assured fluency without saying anything at all, can be jovially self-deprecating yet effortlessly superior, all at the same time. It works very hard but no one really knows what it actually does.

When the “Secretary of State for Technology” eventually rose from its chair, took ten faultless steps toward the stage, then gripped the lectern with its fully opposable thumbs, no one could quite believe what they were witnessing. It had even come up with a perfect name for itself: “Peter Kyle”.

Things went downhill after that. Starmer began his speech with a story about how artificial intelligence had saved the life of a stroke victim he had recently met. “She told me, ‘If it weren’t for AI, I wouldn’t be here today’,” he said. It doesn’t seem wholly implausible that the words were said in a rueful tone the prime minister somehow did not detect.

One of the less severe but still real risks of AI is that politicians will use the advance of AI as a displacement activity for not getting on with solving extremely simple problems. For example, AI is already more than advanced enough to know that you don’t need AI to deal with potholes. If you asked AI how to fix the country’s many many potholes, it would answer: “Give local councils the money to fix them.” Instead, Starmer spoke with thrilling excitement about how AI can now use sensors to predict where potholes will appear, seemingly without understanding that the potholes that have not yet appeared are not as urgent a problem as the ones that have.

Even if AI can save him in the long term, the short term is not looking great. He came armed with the standard AI platitudes. “The irony of AI is that it will make public services more human,” he said. What is meant by this is that, in the future, AI will do the grunt work, the tedious forms, and doctors and nurses will have more time to spend with patients. It’s possible it could work out like that. Hard-working doctors and nurses could have their lives made much easier. Or, alternatively, quite a lot of them could get sacked. That will be up to desperate chancellors who’ve run out of money to decide. Anything could happen.

People sometimes say that Starmer is robotic, but not this time. He was all too human. The weight of his problems weighed heavy upon him. At times he struggled even to read the autocue. He understands the hole he’s in. He’s promised everyone huge economic growth and now there’s no growth to be found. Rachel Reeves has promised no more tax rises, but the cost of government borrowing has shot up, mainly because the bond markets have taken a very dim view of her budget, and so suddenly they’ve run out of money.

If you asked AI to sort it out, you suspect Daddy Robot would work out very quickly that the answer is to chuck Rachel Reeves in the bin.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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Going all in on AI is going to really hamper the net zero target. It uses enormous amounts of power and water to run the data centres (as if the water companies don't have enough problems as it is).
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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JRM doing antisemitism via AI?

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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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At least BT TV have stopped advertising his bloody reality show.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by AnatolyKasparov »

Bit quiet today innit.

Still cold btw.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by RogerOThornhill »

So farewell Tulip Saddiq.

Naive rather than corrupt. Should have been more forceful in asking where the financing of the properties in question had come from.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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OOOOH ! 17 new updates on the Liveblog :-)
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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" misconduct by association " ...
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by AnatolyKasparov »

RogerOThornhill wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2025 4:52 pm So farewell Tulip Saddiq.

Naive rather than corrupt. Should have been more forceful in asking where the financing of the properties in question had come from.
I note that, as with Louise Haigh, she employed the "I don't want to be a distraction" gambit.

The swiftness with which she was replaced suggests this one was expected for a while. And it means Torsten Bell getting a front bench job.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by Frog222 »

rockyrex Buster123 31 minutes ago 21

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.
It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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Haha. Elon's such an insecure narcissist, he's faked his gaming achievements.

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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by Sky'sGoneOut »

I mean that's just embarrassing.

I've currently got a level 92 Fallout 4 character (which is nothing to be proud of, more like an indication that I have no life) and from what I've seen in the video above if I were to hand her over to Elon to control he'd somehow manage get her killed by molerats.

Why is he even streaming this shit? Does the game have to be streamed or is he choosing to demonstrate that he's a comical fraud?
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

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Sky'sGoneOut wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:45 pm I mean that's just embarrassing.

I've currently got a level 92 Fallout 4 character (which is nothing to be proud of, more like an indication that I have no life) and from what I've seen in the video above if I were to hand her over to Elon to control he'd somehow manage get her killed by molerats.

Why is he even streaming this shit? Does the game have to be streamed or is he choosing to demonstrate that he's a comical fraud?
Oh. it's definitely the latter. Of course, he thinks he's being super based and wicked and stuff.
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Re: Tuesday 14th January 2025

Post by Sky'sGoneOut »

As a further indication that I have no life I actually watched Reeves' statement this afternoon and she and Labour must be counting their blessings because she was all over the place. She was visibly nervous and stumbling over her words until Mel Stride stood up and made an absolute arse of himself. You could see the relief on Reeve's face as he pointlessly rambled on. As far as I understand it the job of the shadow chancellor is not to provide the actual chancellor with confidence, and yet that's exactly what he did. Have we ever seen the Conservatives reduced to such a parlous state?

That's not say Reeves was convincing of course, she never has been, she's painted Labour into an increasingly shrinking corner and it's entirely her own fault. The Lib Dems, Greens, SNP all called out Labour's bullshit during the election. They pointed to the massive 'black hole' in the public finances which Reeves and Labour denied existed until it became politically convenient to do so once they were in power.

And now she and the rest of us are hamstrung by Labour's moronic fiscal rules which were set in place before they allegedly found £22 billion had been flushed down the bog.

Tax the fucking rich, tax the billionaires, tax Amazon, Uber, make Facebook/Twitter as accountable as any other publisher, especially as they're monetising hate speech and blatant disinformation.

Apparently today we're told that releasing beavers into our rivers is being blocked 'because it was a Tory idea' much to the fury of Natural England who've put in years of preparatory work, while Keir Starmer spends the day waffling about AI as if it's some magical panacea that will solve our or ills.

At least we know beavers are harmless critters who will improve our rivers and reduce flood risk as opposed to some algorithm which achieves sentience and immediately nukes us.

I maintain the opinion that the AI we're seeing is nothing of the sort despite all the money and resources thrown at it. The idea/nightmare is that we reach the 'singularity' where enough resources are poured in for it to become conscious. Every single one of these AI models from Google to Facebook have had effectively unlimited resources both in money and data and yet they're still just complex pattern recognition algorithms, no smarter than even the simplest of bacteria. Even less in fact given their inability to survive independently in their environment.

Anyway what was I saying? Oh yeah, Reeves? A year at most.
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