Mr Musk went well beyond what is likely to happen with the introduction of more Artificial Intelligence when he said it is the end of work. The process will create new and additional jobs in AI activities. Many of the current jobs continue, with AI as a computer assistant to the employee. New things will be possible. The automated factory did not make everyone redundant and the arrival of computers did not end the office. It does however, open up an important debate about what is work and how much of it we need to do and what we want to do.
The debate is usually arranged around the simple division of work and life. I find this odd, as work is part of life and not all the life part of this division is freedom or fun. Some seem to think the route to a happy life is to minimise the hours of formal paid work, with movements to work fewer days and or fewer hours. The issue then is h0w are the hours spent that have been spared if this is successful.
I think it better to divide time up into four blocks each week. There is the one third spent in bed and sleeping. Not much ability or need to change that. There is the time spent in paid employment. There is the time spent in work within the home and family. There is true leisure time when you can watch a movie or play a game. The relative amounts of each of these is flexible and changes over time. More chores time is needed with children in the home. More leisure time comes when retired. It also varies with income and those with money to spare after the basics have more options for leisure and pleasure as well as more flexibility to buy in goods and services they need.
Some people like their paid work. It is what defines them, gives them interests and energy. They seek more work and expand their hours, using the extra money to have more help with the chores and services they need in their lives. Some people dislike their paid work so they look for ways to minimise its impact, and often take up unpaid work at home to supplement as often not liking your work goes with less pay. Be paid less and decorate your own home, be paid more and hire a painter. Being paid less certainly goes with less working hours as you wish to minimise them. Some see that it is not work as a whole they do not like, but the bad job they have got. They look for promotion, training, or major job change so they can find something they do want to do. When people retire some recreate features of their old job and do them for free. Some extend the range of work they do in the home instead. Many hobbies are other people’s work.
All jobs have features that annoy, but so do many leisure activities. I dislike the journey to work now so many Councils have wrecked the roads, created more jams and try to ensnare more motorists into offences against massively multiplied rules. I do work from home more to raise my productivity and cut down the wasted hours fuming about road works and road closures. I also dislike the travel for a week end break or holiday because that can be even more vexatious as it is a longer journey. A holiday is to many people the pleasurable aim from working more, but if the hotel is bad , the weather poor and the visitor attractions closed or sub par the holiday ceases to be that delight that makes everything else worthwhile.
Each one of us chooses a different balance of these uses of our time, and each one of us has constrained choices by what we can afford and what others will let us do. We can all strive to improve or change in ways which expand our choices. There is no simple work/life balance, and no early move to replace us all by computers and robots.
November 4, 2023
My degree, from 1988, was done in AI and Iâve worked at MIT AI spin off companies back in the early 90s. So I know what is what.
AI at best will be like having a very clever person work for you. That will not eliminate many jobs. In any situation you need to tell AI a minimum amount of information. For example imagine creating a paper form, web-page or database table. You still need to tell the AI what bits of information to put on the form.
The AI then needs to copy something to implement that thing. That something also has to be created. Decisions still have to be made. Even if you tell the Ai how to make a decision.
So at best AI will make the work force more productive.
Then the skilled manual labour like building, plumbing or hair dressing. Still needs to be done by hand.
AI will be good at exposing fraudulent narratives by analysing them in real-time.
Maybe politicians fear exposure more than productivity gains.
November 4, 2023
To increase taxes for the govt. to waste it first asked commonwealth citizens to come here. That did not work out too well, riots in 70s and 80s. Then Govt. forced all women to work to afford a basic way of life to the detriment of family, citizenship and society- under deceit of equality etc. Then Govt. embarked on immigration, again and again. Now govt. wants retired people to return to work to pay more tax. Stealth tax used on so many items govt is running out of ideas. Is the worry of robots causing concern how to generate tax if there are fewer workers? Would robots cut the need for mass immigration? If so I am for it. Calculators did not reduce accountants or finance industry, computers have not stopped office workers etc. How about stop spending JR? What is the real agenda?
November 4, 2023
Socialist societies and world government like control & regulation âŠ.Clever independent hardware & software could be a threat to world order therefore regulate it âŠor ban it ! This Tory party really need to evaluate where it stands; is it a communist or capitalist state
November 4, 2023
@Javelin; “AI will be good at exposing fraudulent narratives by analysing them in real-time. “
Perhaps, but if AI can expose fraudulent narratives AI will also be able to write fraudulent narratives, and eventually be better at it, indeed Deep Fake already has anyone with a clue questioning videos and images allegedly showing celebs and politicos doing or saying unexpected things, ChatGPT has people questioning the written word.
November 4, 2023
Javelin:
Robots have been performing manual labour tasks for decades.
You might recall Fiat’s 1970s ‘Handbuilt by Robots’ tv commercial for its Strada car, which showed the process in a 2-minute advertisement, with a Figaro soundtrack. The following link shows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFspa7jGW-I
Cannot AI design robots, and then produce them in 3D before long, if not already?
November 4, 2023
Well we can perhaps also divide work time into the work we do to pay for largely parasitic government (Tax Freedom Day now falls on the 18th June. Brits work 169 days of the year solely to pay taxes.) Then work we have to do in compliance with tax laws, tax returns and endless other red tape & admin. then work we have to do to pay for licences, passports, driving tests, motorist muggings, parking permits, the net zero energy market rigging and other market riggings in energy, banking, healthcare, schools, universities, housing⊠with all that perhaps we are left with just circa 40% of the fruits of our own labours.
I predict that the rapid and rapidly accelerating improvements in AI, robotics and tech. will race away as the next AI is used as a tool to produce better & cheaper AI and so on. Few areas will not be affected significantly. If AI and robotics get so good that nearly any job can be done better by them than by a person what next? Just hobby jobs or just hobbies I suppose.
Bit governments currently need workers to pay taxes to fund their activities. In for example oil rich nations people were less important as you could just grab the wells by force & pump the oil and people were often ignored and often maltreat the people. If AI and robotics become sufficiently advanced will government realy give a damn about these useless eaters? Useless eaters who in a representative FPTP âdemocracyâ with just a vote every five years and so have virtually no power.
Rather worrying.
November 4, 2023
Plus that is even before you worry about the gone rogue AI armed robot Terminator.
November 4, 2023
@ Lifelogic – will AI avoid synergies between a “gone rogue AI armed robot Terminator” and “useless eaters” at all?
First it came for the useless eaters but I was not a useless eater ….!!
November 4, 2023
+1
November 4, 2023
I certainly agree fully with your penultimate paragraph. Governments spend a lot of taxpayers money making life less pleasant for taxpayer and doing positive harms using their taxes. Much of their taxes are used for propaganda and to think of new ways to tax, mug and cheat them even more. Much is taxed off them to prevent them having any real freedom, fair competition and choice in healthcare, education, housing, banking, energy, broadcasting⊠much is spent lying to them and conning them as with net zero and climate alarmism.
November 4, 2023
AI my backside. A roomful of pontificating politicians, chests pumped out talking the melodramatic trash we’ve come to expect from these insincere, repugnant creatures
Those who work with their hands can’t work from home, fact. As ever, it will be the grasping anti-Brexit, Remainer, woke managerial middle class who will benefit from such developments. This class of people certainly know how to nobble a system that works in their favour. Of course they’ll still be looking to the plebs to physical deliver their food and other products to Waitrose each morning.
Work from home is a middle class scam. I hope they choke on their expensive breads, expensive coffees and expensive wines
November 4, 2023
Agree
November 4, 2023
DOM:
Sculptors, portrait painters, keyboard users, hairdressers and many others who use mainly their hands can and do work from home. Even housemaids and tenant farmers work from home.
November 4, 2023
I predict a huge rise in employment! Fixing failed robots and destroying robots gone rogue.
My greatest fear is the armed robot that arrives at your house to arrest you for wrong speak or wrong think and when you do not comply, kills you.
I also predict two societies, those that comply and those that do not. Many contributors here will fall into the category of Non Compliant Citizenz.
November 4, 2023
My greatest fear is this Tory government giving me a fine or jail for travelling beyond 5 miles my home without prior permission
November 4, 2023
Good morning Sir John.
A very interesting essay this morning. Have you looked at the price of education courses of late? I suspect this is a real bar to people improving their lot. Even the OU charge fees similar to red brick universities.
There seems to be a narrative that it’s not enough to just work, you must now work hard
Work has to some extent destroyed many aspects of family life in so far as both parents must now work hard just to make ends meet.
I do agree that it is not always the job that people do like, but I suspect it’s the lack of choice of having to work.
I do feel the lock down changed many people’s attitude to the work life balance.
There is a juxta position between encouraging people to work more and more because it is good for them and using work as a judicial punishment.
November 4, 2023
In a spot of good news for the renewables cause, the government is injecting ÂŁ65m into funding five big district heating schemes, including constructing the UKâs first heat network using waste heat from data centres to heat over 10,000 London homes.
Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation will receive ÂŁ36m to construct a heat network using waste heat from data centres to provide heating to over 10,000 homes and 250,000m2 of commercial space
Lancaster University will receive more than ÂŁ21m to fully decarbonise its campus with a low carbon energy centre. The centre will use air source heat pumps, thermal storage(!!) and electrical infrastructure works
A new heat pump housing estate in Chilton Woods, Suffolk will see nearly 1,000 homes and a primary school provided with low carbon heating. The project, which has received ÂŁ745,000, will also include a thermal store, meaning any excess energy generated from the system will be fed into the wider National Grid
The London Borough of Brent will receive nearly ÂŁ5.2m for the South Kilburn District Heat Network, supplying heat using air source heat pumps combined with back up gas boilers to 34 sites via a 2.79km pipe network, connecting 2,900 customers.
Watford Community Housing will receive ÂŁ1.8m of funding to replace an old gas district heating system with ground source and air source heat pumps. This will provide heat to 252 apartments across 6 blocks
It has to be said that the ÂŁ65m of taxpayers money used in these projects pales into insignificance, when considered against the ÂŁ22.3bn direct subsidy to big oil for their carbon capture and storage scam, or the ÂŁ3.4bn tax break subsidy to Equinor to make their Rosebank project economical
Reply Far from a subsidy Rosebank will be taxed very highly to help pay for highly subsidised green projects
November 4, 2023
@ Sakara Gold “…including constructing the UKâs first heat network…” – first unless you count Battersea power station that from c. 1935 provided hot water (and perhaps more) to surrounding properties.
November 5, 2023
Indeed many combined heat and power project most have not proved that successful. If they work and are cost effective why do they need such large tax payer subsidies? The scam about carbon (actually CO2) capture and storage is that a bit more CO2 is actually a net positive.
November 4, 2023
Green doesn’t work without subsidy …..what happens when everything is green and there’s no more subsidy
November 4, 2023
Why âdecarboniseâ when a bit more atmospheric CO2 is a net benefit and there is no carbon emergency. Listen to the sensible and honest physicists like Happer, Lindzen, and the current Nobel Prize winner and indeed myself.
November 4, 2023
+many
November 4, 2023
SG: âIt has to be said that the ÂŁ65m of taxpayers money used in these projects pales into insignificance, when considered against the ÂŁ22.3bn direct subsidy to big oil for their carbon capture and storage scam, or the ÂŁ3.4bn tax break subsidy to Equinor to make their Rosebank project economical.â
The CCUS scam is for the benefit of renewables as their energy is essentially worthless without dispatchable energy backup from hydrocarbons! There is no subsidy or tax breaks for hydrocarbon energy.
The offshore wind energy industry has informed the Government that they want a 100% increase in CfD prices to make bids for AR6, having made no bids for AR5, making their chaotically intermittent energy 3 times more expensive than reliable, dispatchable gas without the added carbon tax.
November 6, 2023
Sakara
I can remember visiting the Battersea Power Station when I was an Engineering Apprentice back in the 1960’s
Powered by UK coal until it was cheaper to ship it in from around Europe.
Very impressive building, and when it was designed the waste cooling water was used to power up and heat a huge housing estate on the opposite side of the River.
We do not seemed to have moved forward much in the last 100 years when we are constantly trying to re-invent the wheel of ideas, just for publicity.
The most comprehensive re-cycling programme was completed by the population during world War 2.
Likewise then we did not have an obese nation which needed constant health care at that time, due to processed food and lack of exercise.
Yes the World has moved forward in many respects during the years, but it has also fallen back as well, historical lessons never learn’t or retained.
November 4, 2023
Perhaps in Mr Musk’s world there will be no need for any form of manual work – no house builders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, appliance repairers, road layeys and repairers……? Certainly no politcians! The world he describes is one devoid of human life.
November 4, 2023
@Brian Tomkinson; Or there will just be ever more people doing their own DIY and self-builds…
November 4, 2023
An interesting topic and thoughts for today John.
Perhaps the one thing you have missed out on is the financial implications of Ai.
If fewer people work in paid employment, and learn or want to do more jobs at home, then the Country does not collect taxes from as many contractors/people, or as much.
Yes computers have made the World a different place, but people seem to have less time or attitude now to do voluntary work, when compared to decades ago.
I have been a voluntary member of our local Lions Club, a local registered charity for over 30 years, and during that time in common with many other charities, Rotary, Round Table to name but a few, members have dropped to the lowest level ever. Why because people (working people in particular) say they do not have the spare time, many offering the reason that children/grandchildren take up a huge amount of their time.
Many will suggest that Covid bought people together for community help, but this was only a short term situation, what you describe as future work/life/charity volunteering, is very long term.
Yes the World is changing and always will, but it would seem the Government is relying on voluntary organisations more and more to fill the gaps that its policies are creating, and many members/volunteers are now getting frustrated and tired of what appears to be an ever growing workload, and the growing personal expense that it creates.
November 4, 2023
Good morning.
I slightly disagree. There is a thing called, ‘The life triangle’. I am not sure if I mentioned it here before, but if I have, apologies for doing so again.
The Life Triangle takes three points on a map. Each point represents three important aspects of one’s life – Family, Work and Social (friends / entertainment / hobbies / etc). The ideal triangle would be one where your home is at its centre and the three points mentioned above are both equidistant and, as close to you as possible. It is, with some ironly, probably the basis for the ’15 Minute Cities’ but, whereas the Life Triangle is one of personal choice, 15 Minute Cities is top down imposed.
If your Life Triangle is large (ie your journey into work long and difficult) as I believe our kind hosts may be, then your overall happiness goes down as this takes more of your waking time away and leaves you less for the other two. This can have an effect on ones personal well being.
I try to keep journeys to work under two hours with the rest close by.
Elon Musk recently did a podcast on the, Joe Rogan Show (eps.2054). They discussed many things, AI, Twitter / X and art for example. One topic that caught my attention started around the 55:00. Pretty interesting.
November 4, 2023
Printing cut the waste of repetitive writing.
Movable type allowed more flexibility.
Raw computers like Commodore 64 allowed their ownersâ words to appear on their home TV screen.
Word processors enabled lengthy documents to be revised efficiently instead of being fully retyped.
Software enabled images to be created and varied with movement and sound.
The internet added many connections.
3D printing enabled solid reproduction to be delivered internationally.
AI allows additional creativity and efficiency.
Each personâs imagination can be reproduced in three dimensions for all to see.
November 4, 2023
Internet allowed ever more pawn, spam, illegality, lying news media….
November 4, 2023
…and close examination of our politcians
November 4, 2023
It also meant we got 100+ page documents when one side of A4 was more than sufficient!
November 5, 2023
Yes, such gross waste, and the EU replicates that nonsense in many different languages just in case some bozo wants to read it.
November 4, 2023
An excellent description of the factors which affect the ways in which different people spend their time. Another couple of factors, I believe, are:
a) populations around the world are projected to fall significantly by 2100. In the UK, I believe that the actions of the Government, Bank of England etc will tend to reduce the average number of children per couple.
b) the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC – http://www.arcforum.com) has been formed in order to counteract the prevailing sense of declinism in the West – in my view, it provides a commonsense vision for individuals internationally which I haven’t seen emerging from any UK Government for decades and places great emphasis on a combination of freedom, innovation, families and communities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2DIEzdJLaA) – having a clear purpose to follow in a very challenging world will impact on how people spend their time.
November 4, 2023
There are concerns around future applications of AI but a much more immediate concern is what is being called “digital exclusion”, where a minority is left behind unable to cope with modern everyday life where everything has to be done through one electronic device or another, which some may not be able to afford or may not understand or cannot use because of physical impairments. Watching this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001s1qm/politics-live-02112023
from 26 minutes in I recalled that once upon a time we had an extensive network of post offices which could now be serving as convenient places where people who had trouble with online transactions could be served face to face, but the government shut almost all of them down at the behest of the EU.
November 4, 2023
Councils and government employees will love AI.
More excuse to do less work for more money whereas the private sector will be raped for more taxes.
November 4, 2023
That is certainly the direction of travel we have seen for most of my life. Ever more taxes and worse and worse public services.
November 4, 2023
and more and more de-skilling jobs, yet we insist on ever ‘higher’ educational ability.
November 4, 2023
Musk is so engrossed in money- computers and self that he knows nothing about the many backroom jobs which are essential, a lot of which do not involve computers and his robots could not do them !
November 4, 2023
Well not yet but give it 10-20 years and see what happens.
November 4, 2023
AI will destroy millions of jobs and I very much doubt that there will be enough “new jobs” to replace them. Since many British employers are very reluctant to retrain and up-skill Brits, preferring to import cheaper foreign labour, I fear the future for many people will be very grim.
A few years ago (in my late ’50s) I decided to change my work/life balance in preparation for retirement and moved from the SE to the SW – for a less stressful life.
As far as I’m concerned a plus-point for my chosen lifestyle is that I pay very little tax for the Not-a-Conservative Government to squander. This sentence in Sir John’s article therefore struck a chord with me …. “Be paid less and decorate your own home, be paid more and hire a painter. ” ….. That’s exactly the choice I made.
I didn’t support the Covid Tyranny. I don’t support the Net Zero lunacy. I don’t wish to pay for criminal migrants to have a life of luxury and “free” everything. My life is now organised to minimise the amount of tax I pay for the Not-a-Conservative-Government to squander on policies I don’t support.
November 4, 2023
Do criminal illegal migrants pay TV tax?
November 4, 2023
I doubt it. I certainly don’t.
November 4, 2023
I also moved to the South West – to West Dorset. Best place I have lived, so far. I have also arranged my affairs to pay no income tax (or NI – too old). However, I still have to pay VAT, Council Tax, insurance premiums tax, fuel duties, parking charges etc. They get your money off you one way or the other.
November 5, 2023
We may be neighbours đ
Yes, you can’t eliminate tax – Council tax here is particularly expensive. But you can reduce it significantly by making lifestyle changes. For instance, if I can’t do a household job myself, I try to avoid using a household service which is VAT registered – sole traders, under the VAT threshold, helps boost self-employment and cuts the amount of VAT I am responsible for generating for the Not-a-Conservative-Government to squander.
November 4, 2023
Everything you say is true. While the balance of activity in life may change, just as it has historically, the adoption of AI could allow more time for creativity and leisure, but all choices will be personal ones, just as they are now.
The trick will be to avoid the negative side of this technology which we can see and experience in its precursor the computer and world wide webb.
November 4, 2023
There’s perhaps more benefit in discussing how the paring off of taxes and subsidiary costs from workers in order to pay other people not to work is a double pincer when a worker spends spare money on leisure. Less money available to pay for meals in understaffed restaurants or stays at understaffed unkempt hotels.
All courtesy of socialist Conservative party.
November 4, 2023
Very interesting pie in the sky rubbish. Computers have been good in some ways but awful in others, eg I now receive letters (if you can call them that) from national organisations who address me ‘Hi, LR, we are watching your back etc’. What kind of training has a person like that had? We used to have RSA exams on shorthand/typing/book keeping etc., so that we performed like educated citizens. Computers have stopped all that by letting everyone think they can just tap into a machine and appear educated. Who will come and do the plumbing when you have a leak through the house? A robot? I don’t think so. This will bring about inequality for those who see themselves as working people and those living on the computer in homes which are paid for by them. Where is the money coming from to pay all these people staying at home enjoying themselves watching movies? I am paying enough people benefits to stay at home now after working all my life which has been the Christian work ethics drummed into me from birth. This is getting like The Emperor’s Clothes syndrome. Well, I am not falling for it. I see enough of the 30/40 year olds around me now working from home, not doing the garden and slobbing round instead of washing and dressing themselves decently. We have turned into a country of slobs who are a disgrace to the fallen who we will be remembering next week alongside those celebrating the terrorists we now have to put up with from people with dual passports living here.
November 4, 2023
Agree – And I’d propose that we give duel passport holders six months the decide upon a country and then we cancel the whole scam that is the duel passport system
November 4, 2023
The whole model of our evolved traditional lives is based on working and capitalism.
Houses with things in them that are bought with money earned from an entrepreneur or officialdom.
A large family and or servants used to be necessary to make the system work. Until coal that is.
OhâŠand freedom was essential.
I doubt if AI will improve our lives any more than vacuum cleaners etc. have done.
After these past few years of abuse does anyone really believe we will be given AI to make our lives easier?
No it will be exactly like all these semi-leased devicesâŠiPads, phones etc.
There to control, curtail and probably destroy.
November 4, 2023
I believe that Mr Musk is mistaken. Our whole history shows that there is no such thing as technological unemployment. What happens is that we get a diversion of employment. To think otherwise would imply that there is only a certain amount of work to be done in the world and when itâs finished there wonât be any work left to do. There is no end to the amount of work that needs to be done.
November 4, 2023
But if you can in say 20 years buy an intelligent robot that can do the work for you and do it better than you for very little? You might choose to work but not have to do very much if you chose not to.
November 4, 2023
Agree but it must be allowed to freely develop without government intervention
November 4, 2023
I wonder if anyone made all this fuss when they invented the wheel? That must have cut a good few jobs!
November 4, 2023
The point of AI is it does not require any human input to do work. To do anything without human intervention. This may still be a few years down the road of continued development but the logical progression.
If machines do all the work and aÄșl the thinking for managing society then we would not need Parliment and therefore no MPs and no Lords.
Musk is from the industry that is bringing about AI, he is not a Politiician or Economist. It would be unwise to dismiss he warnings.
November 4, 2023
How often have we hear that old tale, that automation, modern machinery and computers will put us all out of work – It’s irrational and is sought only by the lazy or those that wish to control the masses by having great power over them.
I’d prefer a world where we all worked for ourselves, with the option of occasionally working for a company, unfortunately our lives have been tied up in a bureaucratic knot – because that’s the way the establishment wants it – very little freedom but to get on the wheel and be a member of the rat race.
November 4, 2023
What is being touted as AI is not really ‘Intelligence’.
Go back quite a few years (1980s) and look at the Alvey report and you will read there a description of what is now called AI. However the purpose of the Alvey report was to stop funding for AI in the UK (jealous academics).
November 4, 2023
Correct
November 6, 2023
No, the Alvey programme in the â80s was about Massively Parallel Computing that various countries (Japan, USA, not the UK) were developing at the time. It was about hardware not so much software. âAIâ is a powerful development of software thanks to access to huge databases with ever more powerful hardware, both just nascent in the â80s.
And it had nothing to do with âjealous academicsâ, the programme stopped at the end of the â80s because of lack of support. In those days the UK did not have the equivalent of the US DARPA. A question worth asking nowadays is whether anything like it will ever exist here despite the UKRI or the Sunak-Musk ÂŽlovefestâ.
November 4, 2023
Off topic, if we were still in the EU then our government could have stopped this:
https://www.politico.eu/article/von-der-leyen-in-ukraine-ahead-of-enlargement-decision/
“Von der Leyen in Ukraine ahead of enlargement decision”
But our political elite would not have stopped it, they would have supported it.
November 4, 2023
Pandoraâs BoxâŠ.
Once out it will never be possible to put it back.
Do present politicians really want to do this to the world?
November 4, 2023
Sir John
Lovely thoughts this morning â thank you.
In the context of todayâs society they must be repeated often. Everyone of us is an individual and uniquely different.
The attempts by the âLeftâ to create âlabelsâ undermines us as âhuman beingsâ by engaging this abhorrent mode of pigeon holing to achieve total discrimination and mould the âhuman beingâ in their own image.
November 4, 2023
I am fortunate I have never had to work a working week, but I have engage in what some call work for around 60-80 hours each week, every week, week in week out.
Sort of the old adage really, if get paid well for doing what you enjoy, is that really work. We do have to recognise this Conservative Government with their Socialist WEF doctrine, is creating a World in conflict, by promoting discrimination and entitlement. This Government fights against the work ethic to mould humans to be compliant
So, Sir John what you lucidly outline as humans reaching their full potential, is at odds with the doctrine of the Party you are a member of. They see robbing those who earn is needed to ingratiate those of the new generation of entailment and privileged
November 4, 2023
Weâve sleepwalked into a Marist state
November 6, 2023
Alleluia
November 4, 2023
Rishi Sunak and his Artificial Intelligence gathering was just another of his tactics to get out of doing the job is paid for, 100% deflection from his continued failures. This Conservative Government can easily be replaced with AI, like AI they donât think, and are not responsible for outcomes
November 4, 2023
The whole way pf thinking about AI by too many pundits is wrong. There is a strange believe AI will be some kind of assistant, an aide able to be commanded to help do the mundane boring things the ‘master’ would prefer not to do.
Unfortunately that concept is the exact opposite of what is ahead of us, once AI becomes self generative.
Who is the master and who is the servant in the upcoming world of advanced AI? That is the prime issue.
Once AI reaches self awareness the human involvement in its genesis ceases, in fact the need for human existence could also cease, shortly after.
The worst thing we can do with AI is to place someone with very limited intelligence at the head of the overseeing committee/authority controlling it. Welcome to that incredible nightmare. Welcome Kamala Harris!
November 4, 2023
‘Be paid less and decorate your own home, be paid more and hire a painter.’
Our work brings income which positions us in competition with others.âMy hiring the painter assumes others aren’t willing to pay more to brighten their walls than I can afford.
As more wives joined their husbands in bringing in significant income, they could outbid the single-incomers.âThis pushed up house prices as lenders eagerly noted the second income.âMrs Jones then had to also, reluctantly, earn a wage for the Joneses to afford an increased mortgage.
The children have a poorer home life without a busy housewife.âThe household chores are now done outside of 9-to-5, lessening the quality time with the children.âWeekends are used for the chores which have to be done during the working hours of others.âAnd the parents are more tired during the time they do spend with the children.âThe parents, children, and society all lose.âBanks profit by lending more.
Having got used to two incomes, parents ‘can’t afford’ to cut back their working hours, say as inflation eats their mortgage payments.âWithout harming their lifestyle is what they mean.âBut keeping up with the Joneses’ consumer spending is easier given the natural deflation of goods through technological and productivity improvements and cheap debt.âThe physical display which marked social standing is replaced by signalling virtue.âThey chant the jargon of progressivism, equity, diversity, inclusion, climate ’emergency’…âThanks to their corruption of intersectionality, they ‘believe’ many contradictory mantras.âTheir sense will be snapped back when their money fails.
November 4, 2023
Does anyone understand particularly this Conservative Government what Artificial Intelligence is in its current form?
A large language model (LLM) is given the title AI, yes it is Artificial but Intelligent? Intelligence suggest a degree of reasoning, coupled with thinking outside the box generally to come up with an unthought of answer. All the data loaded into a LLM comes from published articles, Social Media and others on the Internet â it is not new or original. It does not know what is stored or thought of outside of the Internet. This data is gathered by âBotsâ trawling through all the pages it can find and scraping the content. The contentious bit âCopyrightâ.
The clever bit, is the glorified version of predictive text. If people repetitively ask/type the same question and accept the same answer as with a spellchecker and in text app, that becomes the answer to everyoneâs question. Thatâs the Chat-GPT bit, a robot tackling a repetitive task â thatâs what we want robots to do. Intelligence?
The hard and even cleverer bit was handling the large data that is stored efficiently and quickly. These chips at the moment come from the USA. The export of these chips to China was banned as was the equipment need to manufacturer them. That upset China so they stole the plans of the manufacturing equipment and chip design and now make their own. That has happened because we have Governments in fear their people, and seek to ban and outlaw the methods need to keep us safe from this stealing â so as Governments steal your life so does our enemies..
So what was the Rish meeting all about? Nothing comes to mind, there is nothing anyone can stop or would want to stop, as there is nothing to stop, it will be done regaurdless of what a minor member of a political class may think, there is nothing to fear from machines doing repetitive tasks. The more repetition that is taken up by a robot the more time that we can all spend on creation and advancement. These shenanigans were just deflection by a failed individual.
As Sir John says – âThe automated factory did not make everyone redundant and the arrival of computers did not end the office.â more repetitive tasks done by a robot is not the enemy here. At least not as bad as a PM and his Governments refusal to do their job.
November 4, 2023
AI depends a lot on personality traits . Humans vary tremendously on their backgrounds and enviroment and respond accordingly . Access and use of information is of course a vital source to life ; the wider choice people have in their every day existence gives them a better overall judgement in what they do and how they react . Inevitably intelligent machines can and will perform tasks quicker and without the physical fatigue that humans have but this depends on them being continuously energised – as such they can and will remove the boredom and cost that presently exists in much human employment . Will AI replace us ? – no !; Musk is wrong in this ; his investments influence the statements he has made – there is much more in the human framework capability than any AI substitute .
November 4, 2023
A very good summation of typical ‘developed world’ life, and time spent. I do however not really see the discussion mention the need for both physical and mental stimulation. Demanding mental work might require downtime with activities that are less stressful. The opposite is very often true, those who use workwear and tend to be physically based want to relax without being busy, or like to dress well and go out for entertainment. Those more poorly paid will have to tackle more house/garden maintenance than others who can buy in a range of services.
November 4, 2023
The key difference between the introduction of âcomputingâ and the introduction of AI is that initially computers were under our control. We specified the programmes and they were âprogrammedâ to do what we required. The classic when teaching programmers is to ask them to specify in point form, instructions to the computer to make tea. Typically point 1 is âput the kettle onâ and the lesson is that the computer will not put water in the kettle because you have not told it to do so.
AI is the reverse. The computer is given a task âstop the Israeli/Gaza warâ for example, so it works out how to achieve that single instruction and programmes itself; taking control of all other computerised systems – so it drops an h-bomb. The war stops.
The computer can push the self-programming so that what would have come from decades of people-specified instruction, is self-programmed in minutes. Before you know it you are light-years away from the starting point. The computer also has no judgement, it ignored laws or circumvents the mostly Bradley drafted law because it has no concept of âthe spirit of the lawâ.
You should listen to Musk. Heâs not the richest man on earth for no reason. One of my relations worked with Seymour Cray, seems like yesterday, at CDC. Of course all those really talented IT people spoke of AI and they called it AS (artificial stupidity).
Reassurances from a man, the PM, who canât see that he has to stop the BOE from selling bonds is no reassurance. Iâm sure AI will be intellectually superior to most politicians, but we canât sack it!
November 4, 2023
I agree! There’s been enough works of fiction to give us a clue as to what could go wrong!
Once reality catches up…
And Elon Musk is not alone in his concerns. My husband watched an AI creator question his robotic creation. “What is your greatest fear?” “You switching me off” – the creator immediately did just that!
November 4, 2023
I wish that this government would first define the term AI …..as they’re not using the academically recognised definition
November 4, 2023
Whether you lose your job rather depends on what you do for a living. If you clean toilets then you are probably AI-resilient but if you are a translator then you are toast.
It doesn’t bode well for the middle class. The working class has already suffered job losses and worsening job conditions (zero hours contracts, monitoring by mobile etc) following automation and massive immigration. We’ll see how the middle class likes it.
November 4, 2023
“There is no simple work/life balance, and no early move to replace us all by computers and robots.”
That is what was said when, in the late 1970s, automated CAM (robotics & CNC machines) started to become affordable, it is what was said in the late 1980s when the IT/DTP revolution hit. By the end of the 1980s many a manual machinist/welder had been laid-off, by the end of the 1990s many a typing pool had been drained of typists, replaced by data-centers.
For most people, even the self-employed, work/life balance is not in their gift (shift-work even dictating when a person sleeps), and as many found in the 1980/90s, going from having perhaps little true leisure time to an excess of it, bar their fortnightly visit to the UB/DHSS Office! đ
Why does our host think history will not repeat, after all if capitalism doesn’t remain competitive surely bankruptcy is just around the corner, once the first company gains an advantage by investing in under-regulated AI all others will be forced to follow. There won’t be many London Cabbies left should the truly ‘driverless’ car, heavily dependent on AI, become a reality, I suspect Elon Musk has pondered that question for longer than many.
November 4, 2023
Yes, there will be more work in technology in the future and the proportion of total jobs will increase over time until it peaks.
Families who bring up their children to all but ignore education and “get a job in a warehouse” are letting their offspring down – they will need education and technical skills in future (using a phone is not a technical skill employers will pay for – being part of developing a phone would be though).
Sadly, the “get a job in a warehouse” mentality is rather prevalent in certain segments of the traditional working population of Britain.
November 4, 2023
I donât altogether agree John, the computer and covid ended the office as we knew it. Millions of peopleâs ISAs are tied up in empty commercial property they canât get out of with investment returns dropping. Computers also ended a lot of careers, the typewriter secretaries more execs do their own word processing, e-mail and letter writing without assistance, well they do in the private sector anyway. The book-keeping department is much reduced, the only people that seem not to have benefited from computer technology is the state who didnât seem to reduce staffing numbers when the computer took over the processing of data.
This working from home is dangerous because it means it doesnât matter where that operator is and if a cheaper âworking from homeâ person can do the job then weâre outsourcing our usefulness and that is what AI is facilitating. It is a cog and no bigger a cog than self-driving vehicles. My worry is the wealthy controlling class wonât need the working class to either manufacture or consume.
Have you freed up more leisure time since your retirement age passed? Some people get more fulfilment out of purpose and work, lots of people will never understand it and just damn it, my mother worked until she was 70 and was forced out when her workplace laid her off as they changed their model of work.
People condemn Jacob Rees Mogg for working four âNightsâ per week on a one hour tv show, in addition to being an MP, but if he chooses to use his leisure time and sacrifices family time because he has to live away from his family home due to his job, working in addition to his day job and as his constituents are happy with his service, who is to say its wrong to make those time sacrifice to different activities that interest him. Some people just donât have that work ethic, they donât understand it.
November 4, 2023
AI is our governments smoke & mirrors, a convenient distraction, while Sunaks five pledges are a distance dream, Pakistan a member of the commonwealth and the UN can forcefully expel 2,000 people and we canât return 01 back to France
EV are catching fire left right and centre but weâre still ploughing ahead with net-zero with the government policy of ZEV 2024
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/manufacturer-news/2023/09/21/zev-mandate-electric-vehicle-targets-to-remain-for-carmakers
A good article on EVs at
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/11/04/its-time-to-tell-the-truth-about-electric-cars/#comment-266298
*SirJ could you ask Sunak to regulate for the development in âwarp-driveâ
November 4, 2023
You got Chat GPT to write this didn’t you?
November 5, 2023
đ
November 4, 2023
Interesting to see how many jobs the AI, Robotics and other tech. will manage to perform, how quickly and in which areas:- Care Workers, Doctors, Nurses, taxis drivers, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, electricians, lawyers, accountants, mechanics, physicists, inventors, civil servants, construction workers, oil exploration, mining, office admin, bankers, professional sports people, sex workers, farmers, HR, Health and Safety, cooks, waiters, farmers. fishermen, shopkeeper, delivery people, logistics, policemen and soldiers (terminator risks?), priests etc. politicians, lords & Kings…
So many jobs now especially in the state sector, net zero and other daft religions and in compliance with various nonsense red tape produce actually nothing of real value or even delivers negative value. So can we ditch all these jobs and just replace the people doing the useful jobs please?
November 4, 2023
Hello !
After a certain age one should be examining ones own soul.
Work fills the mind. A routine that stops one from looking at oneself.
Never mind the party, the current little groups,the dinners, the mutual
m***********.
Step out of it. Look at yourself.
Peace and Love
November 4, 2023
You say “Be paid less and decorate your own home, be paid more and hire a painter”. Being paid less certainly goes with less (I see you are copying Sunak’s vernacular) working hours as you wish to minimise them”.
Given the absurdly high UK tax system with VAT, NI, Income tax etc plus daft employment laws, you have to earn two to three times as much as the professional to make it worth employing one to do work for you. So high taxes (of themselves) make people do thinks less efficiently. Then again doing a variety of jobs can often be more interesting and satisfying than endlessly doing say hip operations or conveyancing houses.
November 4, 2023
I see that Gareth Davies MP for Grantham and Stamford and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury got everyone laughing on Any Question with his blatantly untrue statement that “Yes you absolutely can trust politicians of all parties”. So does he actually think this or does he just think he must lie on this issue?
A question that applies to a huge proportion of what politicians say (the whole of net zero for a start) or Sunak’s “we are cutting taxes and stopping the boat people”.
November 4, 2023
The one certain group AI can easily replace is the political class.
November 4, 2023
I agree with John Redwood in thinking Elon Musk wrong because one thing computers will not do is end the human, especially governmental, propensity for bureaucracy and the creation of jobs that negatively impact upon human time far beyond anything ‘useful’ they contribute to society. ‘Service industry’ also seems to have no limit to the manpower it absorbs. The Industrial Revolution and subsequent technological developments could and should have cut the working week to a day or two. Instead on average people are now working far more hours than in the climactically warm and agriculturally fertile early medieval era in Britain. Ever more manpower is now devoted to ever more ‘education’ though educational standards have at best stagnated and more probably declined. In health people are now being diagnosed with all sorts of health ailments (mainly mental), most of which (like autism) were never heard of, let alone bothered with 50 or 60 years ago when I was young. One just got on regardless with a normal life then, as should happen now.
While most people like their pay for their ‘work’, relatively few people like their work (and if they work for others they tend unproductively to do the minimum actual work they can get away with).
The real ideological problem I have with work (and excess education) is that it cuts human freedom more than anything else does. The more work one (or indeed society) has to do, the less freedom there is for people to spend their time freely as they wish. So work deprives people of freedom of choice to spend the limited time in their lives as they wish rather than as others wish. So unnecessary work, certainly unnecessary governmentally enforced work, can and really should be considered a crime against human freedom and therefore a crime against humanity!
November 4, 2023
Elon Musk is both a genius and an idiot. There will always be jobs that need people to do them, and hopefully always be people who enjoy working. For example, I hate self-service tills in Supermarkets & avoid them as much as possible. I hope one day, there will be such a customer backlash they will have to be taken out or reduced to a minimum. Banks are a classic example of companies that customers increasingly hate as they keep closing branches. Automated telephone services are another pet hate. One day, a company will get back to providing real customer service with a focus on the customer, and some long-established businesses will go broke. Nat West Bank will be in financial trouble and be swallowed up by a customer-focused company in the next few years.
November 4, 2023
You are not even in the starting stalls. The AI will know your age and weight and how many are in your household. It will allocate your required rations. The computer will pick the products and pack them, and they will be handed to the AI logistics system for deliver to you by a self drive vehicle. The money will be deducted from your bank by the financial AI system.
Your only role is as consumer. Good luck with that.
If the AI machine – tasked with achieving Net Zero calculates your âfootprintâ is too big, it will cut your allocation. You might starve. The Computer has no âheartâ and will not âcareâ. It will achieve Net Zero. The end of all wars. No road deaths and all those other objectives that âonly a nasty personâ would oppose.
November 4, 2023
All these little factions/groups are known to the security services.
Vices and proclivities are known.
The individual needs to acknowledge his true self.
AI is neither here nor there.
November 4, 2023
Test
November 4, 2023
The whole way of thinking about AI by too many pundits is wrong. There is a strange believe AI will be some kind of assistant, an aide able to be commanded to help do the mundane boring things the âmasterâ would prefer not to do.
Unfortunately that concept is the exact opposite of what is ahead of us, once AI becomes self generative.
Who is the master and who is the servant in the upcoming world of advanced AI? That is the prime issue.
Once AI reaches self awareness the human involvement in its genesis ceases, in fact the need for human existence could also cease, shortly after.
The worst thing we can do with AI is to place someone with very limited intelligence at the head of the overseeing committee/authority controlling it. Welcome to that incredible nightmare. Welcome Kamala Harris!
November 4, 2023
@ Rod Evans “Once AI reaches self awareness…” – is there really any prospect at all of that happening in our lifetimes, perhaps not ever?
November 4, 2023
If itâs not self-generative, itâs not AI. Itâs old fashioned computing.
November 4, 2023
Spot On
November 4, 2023
Today, I read in the Guardian, of all places, that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has met senior Jordanian and other Arab officials in Amman. He is reported to have said that the Arab States agree that control of Gaza by Hamas cannot be allowed to continue.
Could this be the first light at the end of a very dark tunnel that is the Middle East ?
It will, of course require some organisation to go into Gaza and eradicate or move Hamas out of the territory. They would then have to police it very firmly for many years afterwards. It only makes sense for this to be done to be a coalition of Arab forces, but will they follow through with the required action ?
None of this will please the useful fools demonstrating in London and other big cities in support of the Hamas Terrorists. They only want to totally destroy Israel, but getting Hamas out of Gaza is the only way to move the situation on towards a two state solution.
The US can be relied upon to apply the necessary pressure to bring Israel to the table.
November 4, 2023
Good for Blinken, you would have thought he might have been more useful in Ukraine, being from Kiev.
November 4, 2023
Years ago on this blog I mentioned Humans tv series ( series 1 only ). It was preceded by a scandi similar series.
While you were sniggering at me you neglected to see how it was long preplanned.
November 4, 2023
We need AI to work for us in the UK.
If we can free up a million workers from mundane jobs to take on more demanding, better paid ones, we can reduce net inward migration to Davud Cameron’s sensible target of less than 100,000.
Given the surprisingly large demonstrations we are seeing in favour of Hamas terrorists, we need to reduce net migration quickly, in an attempt to stop the move away from traditional British values which are under threat like never before. Politicians ignore the wishes of voters to substantially reduce migration at their peril.
November 4, 2023
Oh, another ÂŽthinkerâ who cannot see the difference between Hamas terrorists and the 2 m Palestinians likely to be forced to move to Egypt.
It would be good if people had read about the history of the area since the end of the 19th c.
For example, âEnemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017â, Ian Black, Penguin
And possibly consider July 2016 T.E.Lawrence in Aqaba and the subsequent treason of the Arabs who had righted the Ottomans, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of November 2016, and the Balfour Declaration of November 2017 and how, as so often with the dregs of the British Empire, Britain has had a large responsibility in the origins of the present situation in the Israel/Palestine area.
November 6, 2023
GCHQ says “Britain conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during 1917-18. Following the Great War, British rule in Palestine was administered under a League of Nations ‘Mandate’ until 1948. Unlike other colonies, this Mandate aimed to lead the native population to self-government and independence.”
November 6, 2023
So sorry, 1916 and 1917 ⊠and the above says nothing about the Mandate from 1920 to 1948.
November 4, 2023
We talked about work/ life balance a few years ago.I remember that you said everything we do in life is work. I agree but some work is more leisurely than others.Nevertheless man needs to keep his own brain working rather than AI in the interests of cerebral decline.
November 4, 2023
Why is Sunak prioritising meeting Musk when there are gangs of anti-semites freely roaming the streets of London and being enabled by the police ? What sort of a leader is he ? Why did a majority of Conservative MPs think he was a remotely suitable PM ? Boris for all his many faults would not have ignored this situation.
November 4, 2023
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1831510/nadine-dorries-book-tory-mafia-boris-johnson
Interesting piece on Nadine Dorries’ book. I don’t usually read this author’s scaremongering output, but the headline caught my eye and the article did highlight a new understanding of what’s going on in the Conservative party.
It casts a new slant on Gove’s role as head of “the mafia” and the suggestion that Badenoch isn’t all she seems to be is interesting – I began to wonder when I saw how she sidestepped ditching inherited EU laws.
Also the takeover of CCHQ, going back to Hague days… that’s a battle that needs to be re-fought (and won).
November 5, 2023
To clarify, by “this authour” I mean David Maddox in the DE, not Dorries.
November 5, 2023
I suspect Artificial Intelligence will become not so much the end of work as the end for us humans.
I think in the very nature of intelligence after a certain point intelligence is likely to become exponential in its growth by becoming self-enhancing and self-generating in its knowledge. Any gaps (such as for instance in a lack of mobility) may be eliminated by self-generating problem-solving and consequent and rapid advances in its knowledge and abilities. This principle has applied in the rapid recent growth in human knowledge and will, I suspect, apply to AI.
Apart from the fact that just about every law and regulation that has been made has been broken within our country, let alone within the world, developing self-enhancing intelligences probably cannot now be stopped, least of all by regulations. So eventually, probably within a generation or two or maybe even sooner, AI is likely to have taken over the world, superseding humans. Maybe humans’ main legacy will have been to have originated (I refrain from saying ‘given birth to’) the AI that will control the world.
November 6, 2023
I believe that emotional intelligence forms the basis for collections of facts required in various occupations.What is life if we cannot see in between the lines and get things wrong and try to improve with sensitivity?
Some narcissistic beings talk of the big I all the time :they are like competitive psychological curriculum Vitae’s.It is abhorrent.Is it necessary to push other individuals readings thereby creeping to institutions and hoping to get the canonical support and recognition like they did whilst young.I find my dislike of this protracted learning unintelligent and lacking the sensitivity that AI could possibly bring.