Whether we like it or not, Artificial Intelligence is going to make big advances and huge changes to business . I see many wins from it, enabling as it will a productivity advance and a quality advance in many clerical, administrative and analytical functions. It is a greatly enhanced Google Search facility and an improved Microsoft software package with more capacity to help. Like all such big families of invention it will costs us some old jobs but throw up many new ones.
Some worry that it will be used by the criminals and the tyrants for evil purposes. That is of course possible, just as they use current computers and communications systems to try to disrupt our lives, steal from us and threaten us. We will still need a police force in the age of AI, and that force will need to be AI savvy.
I would not leap into legislating to regulate the businesses and create new offences. It is too early to know if that might be needed and what shape it might take . In the meantime be reassured. Theft, fraud, sexual exploitation, terrorism and violence are all against the law. The police can still track and arrest even if they are using some AI as part of their crimes. Using AI will also offer a new way to detect them as use of computers leaves footprints back to the original criminal user.
The issue we should be discussing is why are the world’s three dominant AI/Cloud computing companies all US? It is good news there is lively competition to control costs for the users and drive faster innovation from Microsoft, Alphabet Google and Amazon Web Services. It should alarm the EU and worry us that no large company from this side of the Atlantic is seriously in the game and gaining substantial market share.
October 28, 2023
I think the EU and UK governments are worried that the AI answer to “Open the pod doors, HAL”, will be “I can’t do that Dave” – and they will have lost control. Consider that a competent AI would be able to undermine an incompetent government by revealing just how its policies were injurious to the common good. The US government probably thinks it can use AI to maintain control – while the EU and UK merely hope, but fear it will take revenge.
October 28, 2023
I’ve nearly finished watching Emergence, whereby a young AI girl learns and re-programmes herself despite her maker trying to make changes to her programme. The worry is if the AI is programmed to do bad things and becomes unstoppable!
It’s interesting that the creators are the ones most alarmed by their creations and want to stop it! Surely, that should be a warning wake up call?
October 28, 2023
Cabinet Office apologises to JBH for smearing and trying to censor her. JR, this was allegedly a Tory Govt. under Johnson (former journalist!). What does this actually prove about your party and totalitarian govt.? Please tell us.
GB News you have made a huge mistake.
AI for PM.
October 29, 2023
Have you read the sequels to 2001? It turns out that God has placed several obelisks sprinkled around the universe as tests of species like mankind so as to decide which are worth continuing with. I recommend them.
October 28, 2023
Good morning.
Artificial Intelligence means as much to me as artificial cheese. I nice idea but I would sooner the real thing.
It is not the technology that concerns me, it is use and those that use it. Governments of course being the main source of my worry. Too much power and little oversight.
October 28, 2023
Look at the appalling powers this government wants to hand over to the dire, unelected WH0.
October 28, 2023
My degree was called Psychology With Computer Models. It’s intent was to combine Cognitive psychology (thinking, vision, language etc) with Artificial Intelligence by using neurology as a guide. It turned out both Cognitive Psychology and AI ended up where my degree was by using neural networks. I’ve worked at MIT in AI startups back in the early 90s and doing quant software on trading floors since then.
My take on AI is that it can be used to expose lies and narrative peddling. For example in real time a bit of AI can analyse a politician on the news and come up with brilliant questions and examples to expose the politician as not having very good policies.
Alternatively it can analyse every bit of output from a news organisation to analyse bias and justify every bit of analysis by referencing every single bit of bias instantly.
AI is the destroyer of narratives.
This is why the West fears AI.
October 28, 2023
The AIs being talked about are only as good as the training data used to create them. For example, if you ask ChatGPT “Who is Liz Truss” it doesn’t say anything about her time as PM (maybe that’s a good thing).
The consequences of a badly trained AI model based on incomplete data could be serious if such models are used in decision making about our daily lives. In such situations, what redress do we have for any errors made and any subsequent negative consequences or losses?
Without effective regulation of aspects such as these, ordinary people will suffer through no fault of their own while having no means of getting compensation for the impact on their lives of the failings of others.
October 28, 2023
AI will end up costing us many more jobs in the longer term. With only a handful of Humans in each organisation overseeing the AI operations.
Many jobs in areas such as Warehousing, Construction (it is possible to ‘3D print’ a house), finance, marketing, and even in IT will go to AI.
Therefore why do we keep importing more people ‘to do the jobs’, when the future indicates that there will be less jobs to go around in an ever increasing UK population.
Are we going to see unemployment figures of 20 million+ in a decade, or two?
October 28, 2023
well the population will be in excess of 100m – so not quite as bad as it might sound.
October 28, 2023
@ Mark J …”why do we keep importing more people ‘to do the jobs’…” – not for jobs but against the day the NHS looks as if it might clear its waiting lists. They also work who only stand and wait!
@ Mark J “…see unemployment figures of 20 million+ in a decade, or two… – the Gen Z-ers will love that! Expect more pressing demands soon to introduce universal (not so)basic income payouts.
October 28, 2023
‘Are we going to see unemployment figures of 20 million+ in a decade, or two?’
If we do, it will only be because of intervention by the Government akin to FDR’s New Deal.
I recommend Matt Ridley’s book ‘The Rational Optimist’. He covers several ages of technical progress. None of them resulted in high unemployment and he explains why. https://www.mattridley.co.uk/books/the-rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves/
October 28, 2023
Indeed it is a very good book and pretty much how I tend to see things.
But if you get too optimistic reading this try Marin Rees “On the future”
On the future of humanity and on potential dangers, such as nuclear warfare, climate change, biotech, and artificial intelligence, meteor impacts… and the many other possible ways for human extinction.
October 28, 2023
I have a nasty suspicion a case could be made that they have plans for the surplus population.
October 28, 2023
to match Chinese army (sarc).?
October 28, 2023
AI has the possibility of helping humans make huge advances in many fields, such as cancer treatment, astronomy, fusion research, weather forecasting, even agriculture. These will benefit humanity.
However, there are downsides. Actors working in Hollywood have recently been on strike over AI, fearing that the technology when linked to CGI will replace them in film and TV.
World militaries also wish to apply AI to warfare and it is this application that worries many people. The brilliant 2013 Tom Cruise film “Oblivion” shows how AI could be misused in this way.
The Americans are good at tech. The fact that we did not produce monopoly companies such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon is more a reflection of the anti-entrepreneurial culture in Britain, where innovators are knocked and constantly obstructed. And if someone manages to accidentally produce a worldclass firm, particularly in a strategic field such as chip design (ARM), the government allows it to be sold off for the foreign currency that such sales bring in to the Treasury
October 28, 2023
There are too many taxes and too much hostility from greedy bureaucracies in the UK and Europe.
The bigger question is where the technology will go. The Internet seemed a good thing at first. Now I look longingly at the way many things were before it. Sure there are advantages, but it has changed society markedly for the worse. AI is rather terrifying. We don’t need it. I don’t want it.
October 28, 2023
In the 1970s a simple calculator was the size of a heavy metal typewriter and cost about one third of its user’s annual salary.
Today that user can find 50 plastic scientific calculators stacked in a car boot sale bucket offered @ 20p each. When AI allows people free access to what they want theft has no purpose.
October 28, 2023
Given the demographic trends of declining fertility, declining working age populations and increasing retirement age populations that characterise most developed economies then AI is needed to sustain the efficient supply of goods and services. It already exists in the form of the machine learning that is embedded in some current software. It will succeed if it replaces workforce shortages and makes the work of skilled people more efficient. This seems very likely.
The USA is home to the biggest players in AI because it offers a very large market base, profit is not a dirty word and the leading companies invest significant sums (double digit as % of revenue) in research and development and because they must operate in a highly competitive market.
October 28, 2023
My experience with AI booking systems has been pretty dismal.
The places I go to have mostly readopted appointment cards.
Whoever has done all this has created a pretty darn DISMAL world!
October 28, 2023
a very simple example of admin using poor ‘rules’ – online booking for jabs. Typically you get given times to pick from but for one, yet most I would guess want to attend as couples? Why can’t the useless systems offer a time for one or two?
October 28, 2023
That’s not AI, that’s just straight computing. AI is when the computer specifies and programmes itself independent of any human input.
October 29, 2023
I responded to ‘booking systems’ not AI. I think you are imagining AI to be like HAL ….
October 28, 2023
You have admitted that AI will destroy clerical, administrative and analytic jobs, SJR. That’s clerks, administrators and analysts put on the dole. But you say it will ‘throw up’ many new jobs. I’ve been looking to see what AI jobs are out there. There seem to be quite a few university posts dealing with AI, then a lot at senior engineer or managerial level. Perhaps in a future post you can share with us what your crystal ball tells you about how the workforce it displaces will find work within the AI industry. Or perhaps you expect their needs to be looked after by UBI?
October 28, 2023
If it prompts mass removal of Civil Service ‘jobs’ that often seem to be sinecures for the selected, educated, socially approved – then it must be good.
October 28, 2023
AI also does creative work, such as writing a wedding or political speech, producing entertaining film scripts, visuals and much else. If AI provides such services free, who needs work and income to pay for them? Who is the best man?
October 28, 2023
Yes, it’s going to produce legislation. Once the computer is the lawmaker, who are the ruled?
October 29, 2023
Computers and AI should be used as tools to propose what is sensible and practicable. Voters’ elected representatives could then be better informed to assess and decide what to enact as law.
October 28, 2023
Has the improvement in Google actually taken place?
Or is that tomorrow’s jam?
As far as my use of Google goes …it is a mere shadow of its former usefulness.
October 28, 2023
And worldwide internet freedom is becoming more and more compromised by the use of AI.
Is that really such a good thing?
October 28, 2023
I was happier when several ‘browsers’ search engines in effect provided choice.
October 28, 2023
No choice, no innovation.
All the walls are closing in.
No new yogurts either!!
Life has become grey and Soviet.
October 31, 2023
Safari, DuckDuckGo, Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi, Aloha, Opera … all available on 24/10/2023. Do you really need more?
October 28, 2023
When I was at school we were assembled for a group of visitors to talk to us about automation and how it would change our lives, and as I recall there was a worry about how we would fill our leisure time when machines were doing all the work. They may have been from the Royal Society of Arts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Arts
Anyway I’m not particularly worried about AI now, in general, and I don’t think its development and deployment should be held back without specific good reasons in specific cases. So maybe we need enabling legislation so that restrictions could easily be put in place when and where necessary, on a case by case basis?
October 28, 2023
I don’t know when you were at school but I do remember the Tomorrow’s World idea that we would all have leisure because of robots.
However now we’ve reached that point there isn’t the money for leisure except for the very rich and those on benefits.
And if Starmer gets in he will continue with the task of obliterating an educated middle class.( See his plans for VAT).
They always wanted the majority and uneducated.
October 28, 2023
Why would any company want to start up in the UK or EU with heir insatiable lust for tx and regulate
I see the latest whim of Brussels is to ban non standard packaging effectively banning iconic branding such as coke bottles and the like.
Dull, grey uniformity is the EU mantra and we will surely follow
October 28, 2023
Ah yes wonderful predictions, but the reality ?
Computers would mean a paperless society, and more efficientcy, but looks like we now use more paper, and those who are not computer savvy or cannot keep up, are being left isolated, and are we really more efficient, if so why do we need so many government employees/civil servants.
Then we have a new breed of crime where identities can be stolen, cash payments are being declined, personal and National debt has increased.
Then the promise, Nuclear power would be so cheap to produce it would mean free electricity for all. No need to say any more.
Wind Power, solar power was also going to be much cheaper to produce, the reality, the same cost to the consumer as any other process.
Water treatment was going to improve the health of the Nation, but then we dump human waste in our rivers and seas.
So many examples of the promised land made before, I will wait and see !
October 28, 2023
Do people really want a world of no human interaction?
I don’t really even like going out any more.
All this automation isn’t about making life easier or more pleasant.
It is just a sort of financial extrusion like oil was ( forcing every product under the sun out of it from washing up liquid to skin cream)
A desperation to make profit out of anything. Biofuel from grass when we have coal.
Resetting our world with naked greed.
October 28, 2023
Money, willingness to take risks with it and a society willing to accept technological changes.
We waste the first, through overtaxing the wealthy, are culturally anti- the second and are just head above water on the third.
October 28, 2023
perhaps AI gives us the best excuse for terminating the need for the House of Lords?
October 28, 2023
Robots in ermine?
Whoops! Only fake fur now!
October 28, 2023
@Mickey Taking – please, I get fed up being insulted by people that are there because they cant get a real job and are friends of friends. Still it reminds us daily that the UK is not a Democracy
October 28, 2023
yep …a House looking for unintended Bill consequenses? but has become a retirement home, dumping ground for awkward (senior) politicians, a gong rarely deserved. Easily replaced but for all those hopeful thousands.
October 28, 2023
Good Morning,
The talking heads don’t mention risk to ‘encription’; it is the essential element in all electronic transfers. Can Blockchain maintain security from AI?
October 28, 2023
@Peter Wood – the UK Government is anti encryption, it stops the snooping. Some of the more aware Banks block Ai tools scarping(so it can be done) they don’t want the headache of user/passwords sold here there and everywhere.
Weirdly the BBC bans these same Ai tools from scraping their recipe pages – they don’t want their content used by others.
October 28, 2023
Blockchain to consume all the electricity we want for other things..
October 28, 2023
“Like all such big families of invention it will costs us some old jobs but throw up many new ones.”
I wish I could be so certain, given the evolution of the simple word processor and calculator into the virtual reality computers we have today, all evolving from a single IC chip back in the late 1950s, can we be sure that many new jobs will be created. AI is not normal computer data crunching, the end findings to be scorned over or approved by ever more humans as the endless data is spat out, AI will both crunch the data and make final decisions. Canary Warf could be empty in 20 years, as much a waste land as the docks were in 1980.
Of course humans can always pull the plug, or will we, without wishing to go to Orwellian or Hollywood; AI with a built in UPS anyone, and who needs a human tyrant when we can accidentally create an any number of AI tyrants, if we have put them in military drones for example, what have they become, an autonomous air-force, perhaps answerable to no one…
Rishi Sunak is correct, the world needs to be very cautious, worldwide regulation has to start now, before any nasty genies get released, for once put humanity before monetary gain.
October 28, 2023
As for why the US dominates AI technology, at least in the West, might it be because the advances in AI have come from hardware innovation, not software or Firmware innovation. Whilst both the EU and the UK do have companies making and designing integrated circuits many now have their boardrooms in the USA or the Far East, who naturally put their own regional interests first?
October 28, 2023
“The issue we should be discussing is why are the world’s three dominant AI/Cloud computing companies all US?”
Because as soon as the UK invents something good we don’t grow it but we sell it to the highest foreign bidder.
Maybe we should have a law like Germany that restricts the sale of companies to foreign countries.
October 28, 2023
They’re sold to foreign bidders because UK companies have had all their wealth taxed away.
October 28, 2023
To pay for welfare and immigrants in all forms and all their minority needs. Goodbye Tory’s, your time is up.
October 28, 2023
Exactly! You will see Germany go the same way very soon.
October 28, 2023
@Christine – Its Conservative Governmentpolicy to sell the UK off, just like banning UK Industry and importing
October 28, 2023
If you are expecting AI to reshape the jobs market why is your government still importing hundreds of thousands more people? I read yesterday that planes had been chartered to bring loads more Afghans here from Pakistan. When will you realise that this country cannot support the population it has nor integrate cultures that will never assimilate? Are you trying to provoke a civil war?
October 28, 2023
They know we don’t want them but defy us. Then the audacity to tax us to pay for their stupidity at our expense. Goodbye Tory’s you blew it big time.
October 28, 2023
I was talking to an engineer recently who made the observation that AI in isolation is not much use (he described it as hype) and that it’s really useful application will be for Machine Learning (ML), for which huge amounts of valid data are required (eg in drug discovery). I take the view that the optimal commercial positioning in relation to AI is to a) be a generator of data (eg leakage in a water pipe), b) use ML to automate the conversion of data into actionable information, and c) distribute that information to the people who need to take action. The UK has many businesses which can benefit from AI in this way.
There was similar excitement to that currently surrounding AI about graphene in 2004, but it has taken twenty years to learn how to use graphene to solve major problems – its capability is now starting to emerge as being quite remarkable.
The problem with regulation when applied to a matter such as AI is that law abiding people try to observe it and criminals ignore it!
October 28, 2023
The fact that some politicians want to regulate (ie control) artificial intelligence frightens me more than artificial intelligence itself.
October 28, 2023
@Ex-Tory – exactly
October 28, 2023
Indeed and the main thing to remember is this AI will run away with faster and faster improvements. As we get better computers and AI these become the tools to design even better AI and even better tools for even better computers & thus AI production and so on.
A positive feedback loop that means better and faster improvements each day that passes. Exponential improvements that speed developments up every day.
In the same way “The cost of a human genome sequence decreased from an estimated $1 million in 2007, to $1000 in 2014, and today it is approximately $600.”
Soon it will doubtless be under $1.
Note this does not mean you get such vast improvements in say batteries (or wind farms or solar cellsI with batteries it has taken about 100 years to get only about 10 times better. This as the laws of physics, chemisty and engineering in these areas give certain limitations (unless we get some very unexpected break through).
We have hower does very well with the costs of lighting from candles to LEDs as Matt Ridley points out:-
“Lighting used to be expensive and pretty dangerous. Today, ultra-efficient LED lighting coupled with lower energy costs has reduced the costs of lighting 12,000-fold in the UK.”
Vast gains in technology & efficiency, but so much is alas wasted or stolen by idiotic and wasteful governments.
October 28, 2023
AI is the most over-hyped concept since climate change.
We’ve always had some form of artificial intelligence since computers started to calculate our sums for us. They gradually advanced, of course, to make intelligent decisions based on yes or no answers, but we shouldn’t get overwhelmed at the idea that the programming can get more complex and produce databases of information that the computing system then makes use of.
In AI it is not the hardware or box, that gains intelligence, it is the ability of the programming team to code the software so that more cognitive and better conclusions can be made.
When the programming team fail to include all possibilities then AI will crash, just as computers do now.
What we should remember is that AI is not a simple expansion of computing power – it requires expert coding, and even then we have to be wary of glitches that may have been built into the code.
October 28, 2023
@Bryan Harris – Hysteria created by the Political Class that are in fear of their electorate, when in reality it should be the people in fear of an overbearing controlling State, as all their freedoms are salami sliced away.
October 28, 2023
@Bryan Harris; “it requires expert coding, and even then we have to be wary of glitches that may have been built into the code.”
Indeed, but humans might only need to do that once! The problem with AI is that learns that it needs to make changes to achieve a goal, one that it might have it sets its-self and because AI can already write its own code, without human intervention, then install and run it, even sending copies to other devices. When personal computers & devices can already automatically update their operating or software systems without the need to shutdown and re-boot, and even when a restart is necessary, the process being automatic. If you are not actually looking at the device you might not even realize it has happened, all your previous programmes, even work, have reopened etc. Can you really not see the problem?
October 28, 2023
At the end of the day, AI is only as good as the programming created by humans
October 29, 2023
@Bryan Harris; But AI can, autonomously, improve upon (or make worse) what the human created. AI is not a fixed set of code instructions, that is why it is called artificial INTELLIGENCE, just as the human brain at birth does not contain all the knowledge, experiences etc that any child needs to grow, adult needs to survive.
October 28, 2023
Artificial means made by humans. People make themselves intelligent.
Given a choice, would you rather sacrifice memory or imagination?
Memory is merely storage. Imagination compares, enabling assessment for decisive power.
Memorising 1000 facts is useful, but is limited without assessment.
Intelligence is the ability to reflect and juxtapose any two or more facts with others. It is those images that create our ability to foresee and understand.
October 28, 2023
Indeed! Think of the constant updates on Apple, think of the garbage in, garbage out computer modelling!!
October 28, 2023
Exactly, Sharon
October 31, 2023
Sharon:
Elections are slightly different.
Often with those the sequence is garbage out followed by more garbage in.
October 28, 2023
Agree –
Given that AGI remains a theoretical concept, opinions differ as to how it might eventually be realized. According to AI researchers Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin, “‘general intelligence’ does not mean exactly the same thing to all researchers.” However, “loosely speaking,” AGI refers to “AI systems that possess a reasonable degree of self-understanding and autonomous self-control, and have the ability to solve a variety of complex problems in a variety of contexts, and to learn to solve new problems that they didn’t know about at the time of their creation.”
https://www.investopedia.com/artificial-general-intelligence-7563858
We need to establish correct definition before we can regulate ….otherwise you produce bad law
October 28, 2023
08.45
Like all new ground breaking inventions there will be the positive and beneficial and conversely the negative. Think longbow and atomic energy. There will also be the luddites who cannot see opportunity in progress. T’was ever so.
I agree with your balanced comment, but moving to your last paragraph I should also highlight why the UK will fail to be a major exploiter of AI. Government as ever will rush to shackle it with legislation. A tax situation is already in place to discourage anyone from becoming a prime creator/operator. The institutions and their mindset in the UK are not conducive to a balanced exploitation of innovation. Por exjemplo, look at what a complete disaster we have made of North Sea Gas and Oil, in comparison with that of Norway. We in the UK are historically and to this day, exploiters rather than long term investers. So leave it to others and don’t complain if what they do does not please us, we left the field around the time of I.K.Brunel.
October 28, 2023
Why in earth are Sunak and this government going allong with the vast WHA power grab? What is the point in leaving the EU just to give vast unelected powers to the WHA, who made a complete mess of Covid and are a totally undemocratic dictatorship? See the speech by Andrew Bridgen on Dr John Campbell latest video.
Rather depressingly Charles Moore today.
The race against time to stop Xi Jinping from putting an end to Taiwan’s ambiguous freedom
The Taiwanese case is different from Ukraine, and Beijing may have learnt from Putin’s mistakes
October 28, 2023
WHO rather.
October 28, 2023
“Right now there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for a hundred years and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Parting comment from Xi Jinping to Vladimir Putin at the state banquet at the Kremlin,March 2023.
The integration of North Korea into the defence/security and economic structures of the Russian Far East(expect announcements over the next twelve months) will also make South Korea’s long term position untenable.
What the US is currently doing in the Middle East is the last throw of the dice.
October 28, 2023
The empowerment of the WHO is indeed worrying. It’s very odd the Govt are going along with it.
There is no evidence for the anti-vaxx theories of Messrs Bridgen and Campbell and others, albeit it’s correct the vaccines did little or nothing for younger people.
October 28, 2023
I understood that this was Sunak’s idea. There will be a vast amount of money transferred to the pharmaceutical companies if these proposals go ahead. As usual, follow the money to see why this power grab is happening. The rest of our politicians are just useful idiots who will be wringing their hands when all this plays out. This isn’t what people voted for and any transfer of sovereignty should be treated as treason.
October 28, 2023
AI is as intelligent as a adding machine, AI is a pale reflection of the people who constructed it, at best they are a clever library, an information retrieval machine.
Intelligence seems to emerge from complexity of our central nervous system which contains several peta links, crucially they are concerned with survival i.e. directed not just a heap of memory chips and logic circuits.
The current lot will become useful tools.
October 28, 2023
No so. They already beat humans at almost any specific task. Plus, as I say above, the positive feedback loop means they will get better and better quicker and quicker as one AI system can improve the design of the next one and so on.
Anyway people’s brains are really just advanced and evolved calculators too.
October 28, 2023
Sir John,
Your views on AI are far too narrow.
There is a very strong and active development of new Ai applications across the UK and Europe.
The Americans have the capital but not the edge in SW development
October 28, 2023
So Boris is to join GB News. A shame he got everything wrong on Covid (net harm lockdowns, serious net harm vaccines, test and trace, eat out to help out…). Plus he it totally deluded on Net Zero or became so then he went off with Carrie. He appallingly wasted his 80 seat majority given to him by Farage and delivered only a botched Brexit.
I would far prefer Dan Wotton and Laurance Fox back myself far cheaper and far better too I would have thought.
October 28, 2023
LL, ++++++
Dan and Laurence were worth watching. Boris has never been that. He waffled such as to confuse us and his colleagues as much as himself on HIGNFY, and with Brexit he was similarly unconvincing.
His Carrie On up the Creek with net-zero places him squarely alongside Ed Milliband as a not to be taken seriously actor.
Could GB News be looking at Steve Coogan or Eddie Izzard as a likely substitute for the aforementioned DW and LF and Mark Steyn? Lol
October 28, 2023
+1
October 28, 2023
+1
I also don’t trust daddy Johnson not to meddle in the background. He’s already said Boris mustn’t deviate on China and environmentalism (net zero?)
October 28, 2023
I won’t be watching the Tyrant who removed our Civil Liberties – without so much as a cost/benefit analysis – over a virus his Government had already downgraded to a Low Consequence Infectious Disease because it had low mortality rates.
The only presenters I now watch are Nigel and Neil Oliver. And I doubt if Ofcom/GB News will permit Neil Oliver to voice his opinions for very much longer.
October 29, 2023
+1
October 28, 2023
Like water, he has found his own level. Now let’s see if he can find an audience.
October 28, 2023
Artificial intelligence doesn’t yet exist, optimised search does. Professor Lee Cronin FRSE, argues that artificial intelligence does not exist. The current advances in software and hardware technologies for solving well-defined problems using large datasets is producing incredible results. 17 Jan 2023
The Royal Society – Artificial intelligence doesn’t exist
https://rse.org.uk/resources/resource/blog/artificial-intelligence-doesnt-yet-exist-optimised-search-does/
October 28, 2023
“Some worry that it will be used by the criminals and the tyrants for evil purposes“ – well obviously it will just as all other manner of tools are. Will law enforcement do much to stop it? They do virtually nothing to stop endless fraud attempts in emails, on the internet, phone calls… in my experience.
It will also be used by government tyrants for evil and mugging purposes against its own citizens. With things like ULEZ and other motorist muggings.
October 28, 2023
Transhumanism is already on the WEF agenda! “You will have a chip in your brain so we can read your mind!”
October 29, 2023
The chip on the shoulder has always been more obvious.
October 28, 2023
Ai is not what some would perceive it to be. It is a tool it can help, but at the moment that’s it. In reality it is just an evolved glorified version of the basic predictive text seen on text apps and spell checkers.
Large language models, or LLMs, as they are in practice provide an improved search logarithm on things that have actually been published on the Internet. If something is not in the public domain via the internet this artificial intelligence cant guess it, create it or evolve it.
If Ai was as implied how come it can’t tell us what tomorrows weather will definitely be.
The only danger is in that people get to believe, what is churned out, in the way they believe what is said on Social Media
October 28, 2023
http://www.ecmwf.int 13/10/2023 ‘ECMWF unveils alpha version of new ML model’.
Obviously people really in the know don’t call that ‘Artificial Intelligence’ but in meteorology ML (machine learning) has been in use for more than 15 years with the first uses of neural networks.
And I can only find ridiculous a person not likely to be conversant with this type of technology asking his daily contributors, likely to be even less knowledgeable on the topics, what they think of ‘artificial intelligence’. A case of the one-eyed king among the blind.
October 28, 2023
I think that the scope of AI will be far wider than that indicated and may be sooner than we think. What about Self Driving which is already in use on public roads in the USA? What provisions are in place for self driving on British roada and when wiil we start?. In the UK self driving will enable long distance transport over night, relieving road congestion during the day, without cost in new infrastructure. When is the UK going to start?
October 28, 2023
Surely all is well for did not Mr. Sunak just recently establish a new quango to keep an eye on AI?
October 28, 2023
I note Hollywood script writers went on strike because of the use of AI taking away their jobs.
The film producers have discovered that predictable and unimaginative scripts can be generated more quickly by a computer.
October 28, 2023
The Police using AI without a Court Order that defines a specific suspicion is a dangerous precedent.
Even then AI should not in itself be considered evidence. Recent real world events also demonstrate that video or photographic evidence should not be considered as part of any evidence of crime. Maybe an aid to finding evidence but not evidence in its own right. All these can be easily and readily manipulated to fit with need.
October 28, 2023
Recent events in Parliament show that there is a trend to salami slice away freedoms, they start from one well meaning position that then opens the door to more sinister trends.
The Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, known as the anti-BDS bill is one such direction. Most rational people abhor those the bill is trying to stop, but is another ban, another law the answer in a democracy that pretends to defend free speech?
In a free society it is better we hear and see the dissenters. It is far better that there was more democratic control over the public authorities in question, then it well be the people through the ballot box with full knowledge that become the deciding factor.
This Conservative Government, this Parliament has got step back from its apparent Marxist control of society. Expose things, yes. Voice an alternative view, yes. But ban, outlaw, control are all elements dictatorial freakery that has no end. We all lose.
The Political Class are not making us safe, by pushing all dissenters underground they are reinforcing a greater more dangerous chain of events to rear it head
October 28, 2023
Iain Duncan Smith today also highlights similar concerns –
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/27/britain-is-ignoring-the-real-chinese-ai-threat/
The UK is very leaky in that it allows either its technology to be bought and moved abroad. Alternatively it allows foreign agents to scape their requirements directly from the UK by not allowing the UK to have a safe secure internet.
The main technology that allowed ARM to dominate the World, is now in Chinese hands, Softbank sold them all the underlying IP. While the UK Government refuse to listen of recognise what happened until it was to late
October 28, 2023
Artificial Intelligence was inevitable . Talent and innovation will always emerge ; change happens out of everyday procedures . My next door neighbour used to run a computer based system created from medical records , today it has been developed to assist hospitals here and on the Continent deal with cure programmes . In my consultancy business in the early 60s CV records were kept of 100s of key individuals – it was an administrative time consuming nightmare ; eventually someone from Shell joined us and introduced a coding system that eliminated the problem and enabled a much speedier accessibility to the information ; the result was a benefit to all of my clients . I agree that there must be control mechanisms to deal with criminal activities – the sooner the better , but development and change will always continue .
October 28, 2023
“Artificial intelligence” is of course just hype and scaremongering. A computer program is not “intelligent” – it doesn’t understand anything, it just blindly processes information according to its programming. It can’t do anything that requires the ability actually to think like a human being can. Look up the philosopher John Searle’s “Chinese room” thought experiment.
These techniques are useful tools, but no more. They are not a threat to our existence like something out of a corny science-fiction movie, and are no more a threat to all our jobs than any other form of mechanisation or automation. The Luddites were wrong, and their heirs are still wrong.
October 28, 2023
“OK Google” can never be held accountable for its actions, unlike a human being. It doesn’t remotely have any such capacity.
October 28, 2023
There was a headmaster in the newpaper a couple of weeks back with an AI digital assistant with a chat to parents function, there goes the school receptionist and the Heads PA.
It is not a stretch therefore to see AI answering the phone at GP practices, no more long waits at 8am as it deals with several calls at once and allocates slots to nurse practitioners that are available, you will have to tell it all your symptoms if you just ‘have to’ see a doctor and it will decide whether to allow you to or to triage you to a phone call. GPs will be fewer with lower grade medics on that front line of the service.
Same in A&E, people go in that could be dealt with quickly they just need prescription medication quickly at night and a day referral the following day, all could be done by AI. When they answer the phone or an AI face talks to you on a screen and you can talk to it without typing your symptoms will people mind so much?
October 28, 2023
One of the issues for me is that you say AI cheats would be found and prosecuted but are they? The other week a recording was circulated said to be a senior politician, completely denied said it was made up by AI, everyone believed it, but what evidence was there, who was prosecuted for making it. It is a very dangerous thing indeed if a leader of anything can be replicated to such a convincing degree.
I have seen photographs circulated of atrocities in this current war in Palestine a man carrying five children with arms and legs all the wrong size, someone claimed it was Ai generated, other people said not, who checks, how is the truth verified, who is charged if it was built by Ai. These are all too serious to be ignored, what if you were imitated and lost your job over something, your life could be ruined before you got a chance to defend yourself properly and how could a person prove a false video, phone recording?
The biggest concern is Ai is given too much freedom and starts to decide we humans are the problem, perhaps I watch too many films, but people believe what they see and deep fakes are so dangerous.
October 28, 2023
The EU’s attitude to AI and more broadly to tech regulation might prove a unexpected brexit benefit, and we’ve seen very few of those. The EU’s digital services act eg – uncommented on in the U.K. as far as I can see – provides for an officially established censor, for for the first time (outside wartime) since the establishment of democracy. It’s attitude to AI seems to resemble the medieval church’s reaction to the printing press. We certainly need to diverge from the EU in this regard.
October 28, 2023
Something has gone very wrong with our parliament, and I challenge our host to define it.
Sir, can you explain what is different in the way that things are done now, to when you first came into Westminster?
October 28, 2023
The real question is why the three biggest internet companies are all American. As stated earlier, in part because we sell our most promising companies before they have reached anywhere near their full potential, but even more because we have a so-called “conservative” government that strangles the life out of private business because of the high taxes demanded. We then have a useless Chancellor who is not interested in cutting government spending to make room for tax cuts. On a budget just short of 1.2 billion, any serious Chancellor could find 10% savings as a minimum! For 20 years we have run big deficits, and now have huge debts, so the only way forward is to cut spending. But since the PM has not sacked the Chancellor, the PM also has no desire to cut spending & make the tax cuts he waffles about. Get tough & take action, talk is cheap & makes no difference!
October 28, 2023
I think you and the political class are being badly advised and manipulated.
This whole hype is sadly hilarious.
October 31, 2023
Iain did you see this “ Rishi Sunak’s Bletchley Park summit is wasting time by overreacting to the dangers of artificial intelligence, Sir Nick Clegg has said.”
October 28, 2023
Israel and Palestine
Perhaps Starmer (and Sunak) should tell the Arabs a few home truths?
There can never be peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs while the rockets still fly into Israel and until the terrorists are killed, or at least disarmed and sent back to Iran and Lebanon. The US could then put pressure on Israel to agree to a two state solution. But the area would need firm paramilitary policing for decades.
Only the Arabs can do this, collectively, but they show no signs of even caring, let alone intervening.
In truth, the Arabs are hoping the IDF will do the job for them.
All we see is a ringing of hands and synthetic ritual protests. None of them will even accept a single Palestinian refugee!!
Sadly, the wider Arab view of the Palestinians is that they are, at best, a nuisance, or, at worst, something unpleasant that has got stuck to the bottom of their best shoes.
That is the real problem.
October 29, 2023
The UK has a long record of being poor at innovation, particularly in technical fields, despite the success of private equity and venture capital sectors in UK. The reasons are complex and very much to do with culture and government. Factors such as risk aversion, the stigma of bankruptcy or business failure play a part. Another factor is the influence of large companies – like Microsoft – who dominate government thinking so there is little attention given to small businesses. For many British inventions the best path to commercial success is take it overseas, mostly to the USA. The decline of manufacturing and dominance of service industries also mean few in the UK think about making new things and it is difficult to get financial backing for technological development and commercialisation. There are plenty of UK inventions but that is not innovation. There is a much confusion about the difference.
There is also a certain snobbery about people who make things – people who do things with their hands. Innovation requires people like that but the emphasis in the UK is on pushing everyone into university – even third rate university is considered better than manual and technological skill and knowledge development.
October 29, 2023
Thank you for posting my off-topic contribution on Gaza yesterday, but could we please have an opportunity to hear your thoughts and contribute ours on this important historical event?
October 29, 2023
Given the lack of any evidence of intelligence in the Commons, can we put half a dozen Raspberry Pi 5s in a cluster and run an Artificial intelligence algorithm.
From time to time it could generate rowdy snorts and shouts of derision, on a loop. Just for tradition sake.
Cheaper and superior results.
October 30, 2023
The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”, is the “first principle” of René Descartes’s philosophy
However computers don’t think they follow programming, and if they did ‘think’ they’d be self-aware
Be careful using terms like ‘AI’
October 31, 2023
You should read a bitty more about neural networks, in particular about the difference between ‘Forward’ and ‘Backward propagation algorithms’.
Then you might revise your judgment and possibly stop looking like a Luddite.
There are many sites explaining such things, a simple to understand one is
neptune.ai 22/08/2023 ‘A comprehensive guide to the backpropagation algorithm in neural networks’.
November 3, 2023
People are still needed to take heed of AI ,or not, but with a general lack of understanding of fairly simple day to day matters and stupid approaches by the hoo hoo hoorah brigade, perhaps true logic will find an unbendable way.
November 4, 2023
Folk ought to pop over to ‘Nobody Special Finance’ and read some of the articles about some firms involved in the AI mania, before putting any money in what might just turn out to be a scam.
Hop over to Youtube, and search for ‘Nobody Special Finance’, then, if you still want to invest in ‘AI’, fill yer boots!