I was talking last evening to a US specialist in AI who had come to the UK. asking about what it would take for the UK to catch up with US AI and digital success she made two interesting responses. Lay on more electricity and water.
If the UK is serious about building on its relative success over the rest of Europe in now being the third tec hub a long way after the US and China tge UK needs to expand its web capacity. This needs large increases in electricity supply to power the Cloud servers and storage centres, and plenty oof water to cool. It is also going to take more broadband capacity.
I would add that it would help to take corporation tax down to 15%. The Republic of Ireland has proved this generates a lot more revenue than 25%. If the golden triangle of Cambridge, Oxford, London is to be the new hub it takes more homes, trains and road capacity too.
The UK is far behind the US in tec and so in GDP per head, growth and numbers of large companies. Much of the necessary extra capacity can be financed in the private sector, but it will take more energy by government to get it going.
March 16, 2024
Well what a surprise….. to the PCP and cabinet at least….
Trouble is Sir J, and to your credit, you and we have been calling for better and more infrastructure from this PCP since coming into office. Sadly, this government is more interested in virtue signalling, getting rid of industry and farming and chasing windmills. We are creaking so badly that we’re heading for the backroom of the world’s antique shop!
Vote Reform!
March 16, 2024
In short we should ditch net zero and go for fracking, drilling, mining, ditch the EV and Heat Pump agenda (subsidies and enforcement pushes) that will free up electricity.
So the nutters in Government & the NHS is to introduce vastly expensive short lived electric ambulances, raising concerns that its drive for net zero is being put above patient safety. Paramedics fear patients will be forced to wait longer because of the hours lost recharging the vehicles, with particular concern about coverage of rural areas, given the limited range. Not that EV vehicles reduce CO2 anyway!
An excellent letter from the sensible Sunetra Gupta etc. to the £400m sick joke Climate Inquiry it is an evil farce.
March 16, 2024
LL – EV ambulances are a potential nightmare for patients and defy common sense – let alone with the risk at some point of being liable to catch fire when charging at a hospital.
An EV ambulance goes to collect a patient, say 20 miles away, as can be common for Oxford hospitals. It returns to the hospital covering another 20 miles, at which point its battery could be 45-50% discharged. It delivers the patient and has then to be charged, at which point it becomes unavailable for however long it takes to top up the battery.
Worst case in winter when demands are high, maybe 1 in 2 ambulances being unavailable? Madness, all is madness and this is nothing more than virtue-signalling that may well cost lives.
March 16, 2024
That makes it a win/win for our cruel establishment.
March 17, 2024
NHS has some form of green unit where it will force those who sell to the NHS to have green credentials!
These morons are not about what is best for its patients or the service it provides. It is all about them, their virtue signalling, their rights, their work pattern etc etc. This is what is wrong with All public services. They have been consumed, directed by govt inspectorate bodies, to force through equality rot in DEI to the detriment of the each and every service. Quota appointments to all jobs, particularly those at the top. No merit but women and ethnics first. Guess what? The services are now useless, a bit like the Tory govt. which is also driven by quota appointments!
Tories could and should have scrapped Blaire and Harman’s EU equality rot. Instead we recently saw Sunak introduce more EU equality rot into domestic legislation when he should have scrapped 4,000 EU laws and diverged from EU in every way. He was appointed to drive lock step and this is where remainers in Tory and Labour are united as they were in 2019. The traitors went to Brussels on a joint mission to undermine leaving the EU against the public mandate. Starmer and his front bench wanted to overthrow the referendum, now lock step is the mission to prevent divergence. The U I party must be defeated. Reform is the only answer.
March 16, 2024
Fewer patients and vehicles…what more could they wish for?
March 16, 2024
I know a couple of paramedics they all think it is insane. Does the NHS not consult the workers at the coal face as to what will actually work? I assume some green loon at the top who have never done an ambulance shift made the decision. Let us hope they do not catch fire too often. All virtue-signalling over what works.
Gove’s mouse will bit him on the backside says Mathew Parris in the Times. I thought for once Libdim Parris was on the right track but then he went on to say “The cabinet’s one serious intellectual” (English Graduate and Greta disciple one Michael Gove who inflicted May on us) “has been hung out to dry in having to perform the impossible: define extremism”. You are surely joking Parris
Do they actually have any intellectuals in the current Cabinet at all? Hardly any brains compared to Thatchers administration. All of them seem to swallower the net zero lunacy and clearly non understand economics or even politics. Heading for under 100 MPs at this rate and this against appalling opposition too.
March 16, 2024
When the electric bus get stuck in the snow and goes flat will all the heart monitors etc. fail and the patient freeze to death?
March 16, 2024
+1
March 16, 2024
JR,
Get real.
The EU control environment policy and the UK is now a vassal state to to the EU. Sunak, stated UK will not compete with neighbours ie EU. The current situation on taxation, employment, equality rot etc etc was not a mistake it was a deliberate policy by remainers in your cabinet/party to act in lock step to the EU. Your party and govt have betrayed the nation. Either oust Sunak and act on the public mandate or call an election and leave.
Please stop pretending and carrying on the sham that your party/govt. will act independently in our national interest for the people of this country.
March 16, 2024
They can now free up electricity anytime they want …..smart-meters
March 16, 2024
Indeed but a really smart meter would be able to cut of somethings like heat pumps, car charging, freezers and similar for a few hours but leave you with essential lights, TV, wifi, computer, medical equipment, central heating pump and gas or oil boiler that might only need say 200w anyway.
Or we could stick with gas and piles of coal have have on demand electricity all the time as we always had well at least since they kicked out the dire Ted Heath after his three day week fiasco.
March 17, 2024
Those smart-meters are more clever than you know, they’ll target the poor housing estates first, the pool that hasn’t got a voice
March 16, 2024
“The “climate disclosure” fraud.
In the name of “climate disclosure,” Biden’s SEC is coercing companies into spouting anti-fossil-fuel propaganda and committing to anti-fossil-fuel plans”
Says the sensible ALEX EPSTEIN.
So what here make the BBC and MSM spout absurd propaganda every single day. No programme on any subject news, nature, weather, music, science, interior design, dancing, couture… is exempt. Yet still they wrongly think that EVs save CO2, that CO2 is “pollution”, that renewables are cheap, that grid energy storage is remotely practical, that public transport, heat pumps, wind farms, solar and walking save sig. CO2… that China, India, Africa, Russia… will follow our suicidal agenda. What planet are these nutters on!
But all we get from Socialist Sunak is a tiny touch on the brake before elections. See the public comments on Sunak’s Telegraph article the other day. Not a single positive comment that I noticed.
Sunak has to go. Even if he changes his mad policies on tax levels, net zero, the size of government, employment laws, housing, the vast immigration levels no one would trust a word he says or any promise he makes.
March 16, 2024
BBC very excited by the new black Welsh Labour leader. “No region of the UK is now led by a White Man” they bleat in excited BBC tones. Though Humza Useless looks rather on the white side to me – but perhaps that is just living in Scotland – not much electricity from Solar Roof Panels up there!
I could not care less if the new Welsh chap is black, yellow or red so long as he has vaguely sensible policies. Not hard to have better ones than the appalling Mark lockdown 20MPH Drakeford. Gething is however trade union lawyer, so indications and hardly encouraging. So we have four Net Zero supporting tax to death Socialists – Sunak (PPE), Yousef (Politics), Gething (Law), O’Neill (Sinn Fèin no degree & a trainee accounting job it seems).
March 16, 2024
There’d be more social & community harmony if we got rid of race monitoring, race labelling and race identification ….just report a ‘man’ or ‘women’
March 16, 2024
+1 well man, woman or other/not sure perhaps.
March 16, 2024
Quangos cost about £78 billion could they be scrapped or replaced with anything including AI
March 16, 2024
Or replaced with a working parliament
March 16, 2024
Why replace them?
March 16, 2024
Voting Reform = Starmy Barmy!
March 16, 2024
It just needs enough of the electorate to say the two main parties are unacceptable, and vote. Look what Macron did with En Marche.
March 16, 2024
Labour aren’t Labour and Tories aren’t Tories ….I welcome Reform which I see as having the best of both the old labour & tory policies while completely respecting the will of the winning majority
March 17, 2024
Parliamentary elections in France are not run with FPTP but with a two-run system in single-member constituencies.
Under such a system, UKIP/TBP/Reform would have had MPs possibly from 2010, certainly from 2015.
March 16, 2024
Indeed Sunak is mainly interested in distractions from:
The huge numbers of Covid Vaccines injured and dead.
The economic and health lunacy of the long lockdowns.
His inflationary QE as chancellor taking inflation for 1-11%+
His 4 out of 5 failed promises immigration & boat people, NHS queues, growth, reducing the debt..
His foolishness in kicking out the excellent Andrew Bridgen and Lee Anderson.
The dire state of public services, taxes highest to 70+ year yet dire and still declining public services.
His latest distraction is Gove’s Extremest Definition. I hate all sorts of things like muggers, stabbers, drug pushers, socialists who push the evil politics of envy, irration belief system than often do vast harms, politicians who lie (we have cut taxes, Covid vaccines are unequivocally safe), incompetent or conflicted net harm vaccine regulators and government “experts” who it everything so wrong, people like Gove who made us suffer may and like Starmer wants private school parents to pay four times over and listens to Greta for energy and climate advice.
So I am clearly an extremist according to English Grad. and private school product Gove. What is the point of a new definition the police do nothing with existing laws why they apply very selectively if at all.
March 16, 2024
LL : “His [Sunak’s] latest distraction is Gove’s Extremest Definition”
The next administration will be definining “extremism” and as a reult shutting down this blog and many like it.
As Orwell may or may not have saId :
“In times of universal deceipt telling the truth is a revolutionary act”
Such as 97% of “scientists” agree anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing the oceans (Al Gore) and the planet (UN Sec Gen) to boil.
March 16, 2024
+1
March 16, 2024
your right Richard +1
March 16, 2024
LL,
It will be used against us complaining about immigration or illegal immigration or about trans rot being brainwashed to our children etc rather than who they claim it is intended for!
A bit like May’s snooper charter was allegedly intended for terrorists and the like but she gave powers to councils, fast food agency and Host of others to spy on us to see what we are using our computers for! Mayor of Bristol used it to attack critics of his education policy! What next extreme political views if we do not vote for Socialist promEU Uni Party. Will we be forced to accept all EU dictate or extremists to pose it, or the WHO or the UN?
Woolly wording not addressing Islamist extremists at all. Sunak just gave them a £1 million memorial to single them out for WWII and £117 to protect Mosques!! Where were security services concentrating on for hate preachers! Sunak and co not fit to govern full stop.
March 16, 2024
+1
March 16, 2024
Oppose and undermine the green communists and unleash the power of private capital by reducing burdens, reducing taxes and getting the woke state out of the god damn way. Then John’s vision might be realised. Personally I doubt it with a viciously woke Labour on the verge of power who have no doubt will criminalise and make illegal all public opposition to the woke and green agenda
I note the now green Carney has raised $10bn for his green-investment fund and recently climbed into bed with Labour. This incestuous political and personal parasitism will put a stop to an expansion of cheap power from nuclear and gas.
The Tories must replace the gormless, geeky Sunak with a ballsy, vicious leader and then portray Labour as an existential threat to the future of this nation
March 16, 2024
+1
March 16, 2024
The drift to being the party of Blair, should have been arrested after Cameron. Instead each new leader has been worse than the last.
It’s far too late in the day now for them to do all they need to do.
March 16, 2024
DOM, +++++ Any worthwhile advance out of the trough will require pretty much what you outline.
Remember, back in the day the huge changes effected by Margaret Thatcher and her team did seem to so many to be extreme, the privatisations and the reduction in union power and the Lawson tax simplification. In fact those changes were deemed to be altogether impossible, ‘managed decline’ was the fashionable mantra of the ‘intelligentsia’.
The decline is now precipitous and who could even call it ‘managed’ ?
March 16, 2024
Look at the declining availability of cheap fossil fuels and the decline since 2005 or earlier is more explicable. See, e.g. Dr Tim Morgan’s blog. He’s ex-Tullett Prebon where he was an oil and gas analyst.
Many economists, lawyers, historians, classicists and others who make up the UK or US ‘political class’ are ‘energy-blind’. The much-vaunted improvements in the UK economy in the 1980s/90s were largely attributable to high rates of extraction of North Sea oil and natural gas, not to a fundamental change in the nature of the UK economy. The market value of these resources to the UK was far higher than the actual cost of pumping them out of the ground.
Energy is the ‘master resource’. As far as I know, the three countries with most oil left in the ground are Iran, Iraq and S. Arabia. Iran and Qatar have the highest remaining natural gas reserves. Europe is very poorly-placed, in relation to its high population and cool/cold climate.
March 17, 2024
Venezuela has the most oil reserves.
March 18, 2024
I don’t know where you are getting your info from but Russia has by far the world’s largest natural gas reserves.Around 100 years worth.
March 16, 2024
Another sphere in which the UK is surely short of capacity is construction. I don’t believe Britain now has the capacity to build the promised 300,000 new homes a year – labour bottlenecks among the numerous necessary trades in construction would I strongly suspect make that impossible.
During the Covid years many construction workers retired but almost nobody was trained as training amid social distancing rules was impossible and it is impossible to learn such trades remotely by internet from home. After Covid when so many people get away with ‘working from home’ which often means doing little actual work for one’s pay, having to do sometimes hard physical labour in often bad weather is an even less attractive choice than hitherto.
March 16, 2024
GB
You could say the same about Engineering, the millions of skilled people we had designing, manufacturing, managing and producing goods here in the UK, have now all but gone.
Aware that computerised machines have to a degree taken over some of the more basic work, but manufacturing seems to be a dirty word now, and with our present cost of electricity large manufacturing plants prefer to be located abroad rather than here.
The consequences of the dash to Net Zero are only just coming to light, if our Governments continue with such polices and timescales, we will continue to slide down the wealth league as a Country.
March 16, 2024
But Alan, they do not care as they want the beach to themselves!
We must stop complying and fight back!
March 16, 2024
We don’t have to build brick upon brick. Far quicker and less labour intensive to factory build and just construct on site. I’m sure the quality control in a factory would be far superior to the rubbish that is being constructed at the moment and no doubt cheaper too, but the big builders are wedded to 19th. century systems.
March 16, 2024
Graham 1946
Be careful what you wish for, building in a factory also has its problems, and a different skill set and supervision is required on site to erect such buildings correctly.
Remember the early days of timber frame, many forgot to install the fire breaks, and damproof membranes not fitted properly on site leading to rot.
Precast concrete paneled buildings with thousands of damp issues and rain ingress, remember the Rohnan Point collapse.
At least with traditional build you can usually rectify on site as you are using standard products !
Not decrying factory builds if they are designed and then built/constructed correctly.
March 17, 2024
Do you consider that it is being done properly now? I said a week or so ago that a consultant surveyor checked an estate and on one house found 500 errors and one where the cement was 11 parts sand to one part cement and could be scraped out with a fingernail. Of course it would need to be done properly, just like traditional building ought to be but is not. Instead of surveyors, the individual trades now sign off their own work as up to standard. Nothing wrong with timber frames, some hundreds of years old still stand. No problems with Huff Haus, but they are German and do it properly.
March 17, 2024
No, planners are wedded to traditional builds. They want all houses to look the same. You can build really cheaply using SIPs but the planners want bricks and mortar.
March 16, 2024
Or the engineering capacity to increase the electricity grid capacity by 10 times or electricity generation 20 times to cope with EVs and Heat-pumps as will be needed if we all switch to them as out moronic leader suggest we should.
March 16, 2024
I do not see this government doing anything dramatic in this area, they have their own funeral to plan.
First I would question whether those involved in the development of AI would want to be scurrying about in the golden triangle demanding roads and trains. Much better sort out our dreadful anti enterprise tax regime which is wholely in government hands. While you are at it, make sure it is not a job opportunity for post graduate chinese or others of dubious intent. Unlike the computer, the WWW, and supersonic flight, make sure it is not sold out to the americans who would be far better at exploiting it and getting us to pay for the result. An area in which our government have a very anti British track record.
Lastly if power and water are critical, give both Oxford and Cambridge each, their own Rolls Royce SMRs. Then build two coastal desalination plants, with Israeli technology, in the Channel and Norfolk. Any excess could be fed to the grid or agriculture.
Past experience suggests that government should limited to facilitation. Tax dscimation being their prime role.
March 16, 2024
Agricola
First line says it all, problem is they want all of us to pay for it in advance !
March 16, 2024
There is no chance of getting either a sensible tax or energy policy for the UK because a large majority of MPs of all parties are against it. The Labour party, as the author of the current policy that causes inexorable decline, will accelerate that decline if/when they get back into office. That is what they have pledged to do. It is no surprise there is an exodus of businesses from the LSE or of CEOs and other senior people quitting their jobs ahead of the next GE. Get out while you can is the watch word.
March 16, 2024
Ed Miliband and Labour with the climate change act then May with her evil net zero laws. But almost all our energy ignorant art grad MPs (but a tiny handful like JR, Peter Lilley, Anne Widdecombe…) voted for this lunacy or nodded it through.
So as to freeze the poor and destroy the economy I assume.
March 16, 2024
Agree – almost all our MPs are to blame ….and they’re still pro the green revolution
March 16, 2024
OK we will need more server farms, they will generate a lot of heat so the planners will be locating them close to where that heat is needed, wont they? Perhaps on new industrial estates or close to housing estates. The availability of cheap heat should be attractive even to the most hardened nimbi.
But I don’t yet see any practical application of AI coming out of the NHS, just 1970’s IT that struggles to work at all. This stuff is happening fast, we need to think in terms of weeks and days for advancement not decades or years.
March 16, 2024
Having witnessed the debacle that was the NHS Patient Record system some 20 years ago (which cost £6-10B before being abandoned) why on earth would anyone believe that they can successfully implement ” AI ” (whatever that really means) . They struggle to transfer patient (my) records from London to Reading currently….
March 16, 2024
+1
March 16, 2024
Server farms managed by big internation business or government …not for the people
Under net-zero regulations the actural land ‘farmers’ can’t dredge rivers, grow what we need, cut fire tracts or allow cows to fart …have you seen the cost of tomatoes
March 16, 2024
The point I was making is that this government mucks-up everything it does
March 16, 2024
Indeed electronics need lots of cooling the more “thinking” they do and so an ideal heat source for heat pumps to pump heat cooling the computers and suppling heating and hot water for local buildings. With input heat at say 30C they could give a very high CoP making heat pumps very sensible in these circumstance. Pumping heat from -10C to 60C for a bath is not so clever.
See maximum Carnot efficiency for heat pumps. Typically you might get circa half this in practice.
March 16, 2024
So from 30C to 60C you might even get 7 KWH of heat out for each 1 KWH of electricity needed to drive the heat pump. With the benefit of cooling the electronics too which you would have to do anyway.
March 16, 2024
Off subject but I see you are in the news today, Daily Sceptic:
” new Hope Not Hate report warns that Conservative MPs like Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith are part of a “Right-wing insurgency undermining minority rights” – showing what’s so dangerous about Michael Gove’s new definition of ‘extremism’, says Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.”
What will a Labour administration do, armed with a wide-ranging (in)definition of extremism?
March 16, 2024
Gove really is a silly boy thinking he can create a law based on the position of both ends of the Overton Window from the London Westminster bubble on the 16th March 2024.
March 16, 2024
+1
March 16, 2024
A good question, Wanderer. I do hope that a Conservative government which has rigged the rules to suit its own definitions will not object when an incoming Labour administration does exactly the same thing.
March 16, 2024
Mr Redwood, sue them.
March 16, 2024
We never see a report detailing how groups like Hope not Hate (and why govt. should be taking any leads from them and their ilk is another issue) ANTIFA etc are interfering with majority rights, labelling people who don’t subscribe to their views as a threat.
March 16, 2024
Just seen that vile piece of Stalinist denunciation
Disagree with out esteemed host but you can never, ever question John’s decency, morality and humanity. He doesn’t deserve to be libeled by a scum Labour organisation who thinks they can indulge in this type of extremist hate-mongering.
I also note white, straight men are now being demonised in Scotland. This surely cannot be lawful?
Hate is now anything the Left say it is. The Tory party are now being skewered by an ideology that they themselves have endorsed. I despair
When will the Tory party elect a proper leader who treats the illiberal left like the enemy they are?
March 16, 2024
You can just look to what’s happening in Germany to see what the left have in store for anyone adhering to traditional right-wing values: the power-that-be are seriously trying to ban the Alternative for Germany political party. The latest is that a 16-year-old schoolgirl who represented this party using Smurf characters on TikTok was hauled out of her classroom by the police to be “re-educated”. Anyone not on message (‘The Right should be demonised”) is closed down or worse. At least JR-M has spoken out against being branded as a right-wing insurgent extremist (!). I look forward to seeing JR’s response.
March 16, 2024
Wanderer :
Any vote for any of the existing Parliamentary Parties will be seen by these parties as a vote to continue with Net Zero and massive immigration, both legal and illegal and the voters viewed by these parties as turkeys voting for Christmas.
Authoritarian rule is not a necessity to implement Net Zero but its sole reason as CAGW simply does not exist.
Any new extremism legislation will be used as a tool to end freedom of speech for quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
March 16, 2024
Talking about capacity, a check on the national grid shows 30.8% of our electricity is currently being imported. Why do they insist on dependency when the gas fired power stations are quite capable of supplying the country’s needs?
In regard to the private sector financing capacity, they can’t in the UK because the profit they need to do this is taxed away by government and wasted.
March 16, 2024
“The NHS is rightly the biggest reason we are proud to be British” said Jeremy Hunt in his dire Budget – the daft PPE graduate is clearly totally deranged.
The NHS prefers electric ambulances to saving your life
The health service’s net-zero drive illustrates how far down its list of priorities patients are
KAROL SIKORA today.
So now they are closing the M25 during the day for many hours, road blocking is now a favourite government activity – so as to reduce productivity, waste valuable assets, kill emergency ambulance patients, delay deliveries, frustrate motorist and harm the economy one assumes.
March 16, 2024
Good morning.
As someone who has worked on Data Centres (their construction) I can confirm what our kind host has repeated from the lady. We need plenty of ‘cheap’ energy and water.
Many may not know this but, many Data Centres in the UK are based around the Slough area. Why ? Because of its high water table. Many Data Centres drill down and use vast amounts of water to cool them.
If AI is to kick off in the UK, Slough will be its epicentre.
March 16, 2024
everywhere has a high water table in the Thames Valley!
March 16, 2024
KAO Data campus is in Harlow, Essex.
Next Generation DC is in Wales.
GTP3 DC is in Birmingham.
Telehouse North DC is in London.
Virtus DC is in Hayes, London.
Telehouse Metro is in Hackney, London.
Ark-Cody DC is in Farnborough, Hampshire.
Ark DC is in Corsham, Wiltshire.
Dockland DC is in … Dockland, London.
RedCentric DC is in Shoreditch, London.
Equinix DC, Rewire DC, Volta DC are all three in London.
There also was a DC in the Reading area that never had to drill down to the water table, before it moved to Bologna, Italy.
Moreover since the end of the ‘10s telecoms technology has been such that data centres do not need to be near the ‘desktops’, which is why Keflavik and Njardvik (Iceland), EcoDataCenter (Sweden), GleSys and Lefdal Mine (Norway), Verne Global (Finland) have DCs serving European companies.
iteuropa.com, 31/10/2023 ‘Iceland makes a more serious European services play’.
March 16, 2024
I have a degree called Psychology with Computer Models from 1988. It was maybe 50 or 60 years ahead of its time. The intention of the degree was to figure out how to create AI based on human psychology and neurophysiology.
The degree was rolled back to Cognitive Psychology, which is studying thinking, vision, language etc. I got a scholarship to several US universities but ended up working at MIT in a start up AI company doing financial modelling. I have been working on a theory of consciousness based on neurology and the physics of nano technology as a hobby. My theory is that being right wing borrows off the ability of consciousness to self calibrate itself better than any AI could do.
Anyway. The theory behind AI, which is simulating very simplistic neural networks doing very simple things hasn’t changed in 40 years. AI is literally huge arrays of weighted connections and many layers of those arrays. The actual core software is literally a loop of code less than the text in this paragraph. The thing is it needs to execute billions of times a second because it’s a sequential process running over billions of weighting values and is not a parallel process like synapses in the brain. This processing is very similar to visual processing of pictures and videos which are arrays of values.
So what you need is very fast and very large computers. Plus you need lots of teaching materials. The first learning was done against stuff like wikipedia and google images. In fact categorising google images was once done by hand but in the past ten years computers have learnt from those categorised images.
So what you need as a long term plan is to support manufacturers of chips, such as ARM in Cambridge, then teach AI in every university. Then cross your fingers.
Modern AI is experimenting with how to combine various bits of learning. For example reading in text using neural networks then convert it into a “model” which then produces music or video. More recently researchers are teaching AI about learning how to learn and making plans. All stuff in cognitive psychology.
However it’s only going to be when AI computers take on all the various aspects of human psychology in the emotional/limbic system, such as fear, love, that they will be able to understand us properly.
But they will never be conscious until we figure out how the brain works. AI is a long way off that.
March 16, 2024
Sound advice.
March 16, 2024
A large new data centre is being constructed in Acton. Serious power requirement and lots of heat. Don’t know what they are doing with the heat. Other countries, Portugal for one, are building data centres on the coast – plenty of water for cooling. Here it would take 20 to 30 years to get planning permission.
March 16, 2024
Until I realised that certain family members ( early signatories to HnH) hated me ( family scapegoat)for my political views, I had always assumed that people were entitled to believe exactly what they wished.
Exclusion is not a pleasant experience and it spreads.
Maybe the MPs involved should sue or similar. Look into that organisation and wonder why this “report” is being pushed.
Freedom Not Fascism.
March 16, 2024
Should be reply to Wanderer.
March 16, 2024
You’re falling into the trap again, like net-zero, that AI has to be led and regulated by government or massively subsidised by government …stop intervening in business ventures, stop intervening in society …let free market forces shape our country
March 17, 2024
And what if within the ‘free market forces’ some are not so friendly?
March 16, 2024
Does anyone else remember that “Not the Nine O’Clock News” sketch about robots.
Set in a busy, humming car factory the central theme was a play on the name Robert and the robots that were apparently taking on all the work. I never did really understand the joke.
And hey…all the A I enthusiasts out there ….maybe THIS is the joke?….Look at our car industry now!!
Still, on the bright side…AI has proved the most effective way of stopping me wasting money on large internet retail sites. There’s no one to sort out problems any more ….just bots!
March 16, 2024
Another impediment to AI development in UK compared to USA is that our government will regulate it to death and will align with the EU who are even more keen on regulation. Also the EU and hence UK (who want to stay aligned) will via taxes and competition regulations create a hostile environment for the USA big players to establish local operations which could be served by local UK companies.
The cloud server point is not really relevant, they will always be in places like Alaska or Norway which have access to natural cooling.
March 16, 2024
Could someone ask Sunak to step down and allow Liz (the members choice) to return as PM until a membership election another leader ….toot sweet
With the backing of the party MPs she’d get things done !
March 16, 2024
Sunak was brought in to force through Treacherous May’s EU lock step. He has done it, the remainer cabinet will not allow a leVer near the controls of power. Tory party is done.
March 16, 2024
Hope : “Tory party is done.”
Yes, the “heir to Blair” who said “vote blue get green” (=red) has achieved his goal to destroy the Conservative Party.
March 17, 2024
and the Party has been in a virtual coma with the electorate reaching for the plug in the wall.
Worse the relatives ignore the outstretched hand after sacking the staff days before.
March 16, 2024
With you on corporation tax. Lowering the tax would mean that more projects pass their investment appraisal, so our productivity should improve over time. So why did we ever commit, at that Cornwall G7, to put a floor, aligned with our competitors, under our corporation tax-rate? The next Conservative PM should scrap that commitment.
March 16, 2024
Sir John
Your Government is against UK growth in any form, therefore by default so is the Conservative Party for allowing it to happen.
A little(well not so little) the Conservative Government supports is the fact the Chinese Government has given its own car industry £78bn in subsidies to disrupt and undermine all other Countries involved in car manufacture. This Conservative Government lats year offered the Worlds largest polluters £1billion of our taxpayer money, to remove industry from the UK and import it back into the UK.
Now the UK has decided to fund the removal of Ai & IT tech to the EU – European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is now in control. Its similar to all the UK’s former defense contractors, energy resources and supply they have sold them off to the EU . The UK will only get what the EU permits – well done this Conservative Government
March 16, 2024
That can’t be right, the people had a referendum to leave the EU ….next you’ll be telling us that we’re still sending money to the EU
March 16, 2024
While we’re on the subject of giving in to left wing control….
Who knew that the ONS is threatening to strike because the workers have been told to go into the office for TWO days a week?
Productivity?
PLUS …this rotten “I know what you want to write” autocorrect type of AI is driving me bonkers!
March 16, 2024
A strong government could reverse that tomorrow …but then again its probably against the ECHRs to even ask them to return to 5 days in the office
March 16, 2024
How can we hope to achieve anything remotely close to the USA, when we have a government which is willing to sacrifice our country on the alter of the treasury. Where is the desire to encourage business, to cancel the destructive zero carbon religion, and make bold decisions on immigration. We are a failing nation thanks to The Conservatives and Labour.
March 16, 2024
Correct. Not easy to compete with energy 3 times the cost, planning so restrictive and taxes and red tape so absurdly high.
March 16, 2024
“Lay on more electricity and water.”
A classic case of the wrong question getting, quite by accident the right answer.
The fad for ‘AI’ is simply a tacit acknowledgement that the UK ( Western ) education system has failed. We don’t need ‘AI’, we need more STEM qualified engineers. What we don’t need are any more Oxbridge PPE graduates.
There was on this blog, some years ago, a discussion about the last Aluminium smelting operation in Wrexham closing down. That operation could have continued if we’d had more inexpensive electricity ( energy ).
It is a shameful indictment of successive British governments ( and the political class), that the country that was in the forefront of the peaceful use of Nuclear technology opening a slew of Nuclear power generating plant in the ’50s in the UK, has to ask France and China to build it’s next generation of nuclear generating plant. Even the Canadians with their CANDU nuclear process have advanced over the UK.
The next time you rabble in Parliament discuss your pay and remuneration package, consider a package linked to your performance, because if you did, you’d all be on minimum wage.
“water”
By the way, the Tory policy of privatisation of the water infrastructure, has proved to be an utter failure to everyone but the oligarch class. Have there been a single new reservoir brought on line since privatisation ?
Yet, under this Tory administration since 2010, the population of the UK has exploded, but there has been no provision for extra electricity generating capacity ( other than the useless wind generation folly ) nor any additional water storage capacity.
So, don’t give me that ‘we need more electricity and water’. Your party has had fourteen years to do that, but you’ve sat on your backsides doing nothing but twiddling your thumbs.
What an utter waste of space!!
March 16, 2024
I see that National Grid are going to import grid scale transformers from Korea for their Yorkshire Green project to transit wind generated power southwards. I recall when GEC was a major manufacturer of them, exporting worldwide.
Meanwhile DESNZ is finding new ways to dole out additional subsidies for offshore wind farms via so called SIR CFDs for the AR7 round onwards. I had responded to their consultation with a long list of reasons why this is a very bad idea, and I know I wasn’t the only one to submit such a response. I accused them of handing out subsidies in the manner of a medieval monarch doling out royal warrants and charters to preferred favourites. In their summary of responses they failed to acknowledge that anyone was not in favour.
March 16, 2024
John, So if you can see it, we can see it, why cannot other Politicians see it as well, surely they are not all deaf, dumb, and blind to it all are they. ?
March 16, 2024
Behind in AI is only one thing ; the truth is we face a major turn in so many directions to get this country back on its feet ; as things stand it is not possible under our present leadership . The voices of despair are all over the country and we face the huge problem of a Labour Government unless those who can be trusted to put thing to right move now . Loyalty to the country is far more important than allowing the Sunak/Hunt regime to continue – long live the Rees Moggs and whoever else grabs the initiative .
March 16, 2024
Well we’ve got plenty of water but is it clean and to whom does it belong? Are our reservoirs watertight?
As for electricity …where will AI get it from?
We are already short of it.
Think of the amount of electricity bitcoin mining needed. As much as a whole country ( Denmark?) used in a year.
We are throwing money at the able bodied yet pursuing the berserk luxury of greencr*p and aiming to rush into AI.
Meanwhile having totally destroyed the work ethic with wokery.
Bought a pack of frozen strawberries. Message from NHS on packet…”If you are pregnant or have small children you may be able to get this free”
March 16, 2024
But this would require politicians who are motivated by practicalities, rather than being driven by what they ( and one has to ask, what are their qualifications to be the judges on this?) think is good for people.
That the NHS has now made it clear that it considers the fuel of its ambulances more important than their ability to get patients to hospitals quickly, says it all. But why have the politicians supposedly in charge of the Department for Health and Social Care allowed this to happen? It is they, ultimately who are to blame, and I see little to give me any confidence that any of those now in office are really interested in doing the things that are necessary to make this country prosper. I think there could well be more to hope for from Labour, because they will want to demonstrate that they are better than the present lot.
March 16, 2024
Sir John
What little tech the UK did have has been sold or allowed to be sold by the Conservative Government. Remember ARM, the Worlds most used processor design, they are also a World leader in Ai.
UK energy creation and supply is in the hands of foreign government owned enteritis, the UK will only be allowed more electricity at the whims of these governments.
Sunak/Hunt are all about kicking the UK electorate in the teeth
March 16, 2024
So why do we have a PM and Government that won’t listen to basic common sense? Until you take on the fraud that is Net Zero the UK will go nowhere. AI will be another lost opportunity. This Government kills enterprise but Labour will be worse. A PM and Chancellor who can’t even understand the damage the Tourist Tax is doing, who don’t understand the viciousness of freezing tax allowances for ordinary people, who produce a damp-squib budget when dramatic action was needed will never reduce cooperation tax to 15%!
They are both intellectual lightweights, put your letter in now, as it is the last chance to change. With Sunak/Hunt the next GE is already lost.
March 16, 2024
So many of the suggestions made here are so blindingly obvious that it is amazing to me that they are ignored of dismissed. The problem is that at least half of the UK Establishment, including many MPs, Civil Servants and academics, don’t want the UK to succeed, otherwise they would all be proved wrong about Brexit.
We are so far from being the dynamic Tiger economy we could be because those in charge are so lethargic, almost to the point of being geriatric. ( Although that would be an insult to the older generation ).
We have at last had the Treasury acknowledge the existence of the Laffer Curve, they just need to look around and realise that Corporation Tax is the prime candidate for raising more revenue by lowering tax rates.
The 4% reduction in CGT rate was too small to have much effect. Instead they should have restored taper relief which would create a much more significant upswing in the property market, leading to much more revenue from stamp duty.
March 16, 2024
For a start the Tories will need to repeal the Climate Change Act. The power grid should also be nationalised; there has been no benefit from privatisation and the private sector has neither the will nor means to make all the investment needed to power a new industrial revolution. Secondly, the water supply needs to be nationalised and the foreign spivs that bought it from the Tories, kicked out.
When will the Tories learn that private industry is good at innovation but not at providing essential utilities which are now largely in foreign ownership and being used to rip us off.
Another thing the Tories need to learn is that when a great British company arises through technological innovation, they block any possibility of it being sold off to the highest bidder like ARM Holdings.
That could even be applied to any successful British company in any field of productive industry.
March 16, 2024
The power grid is already nationalised. The government will be the sole shareholder in NESO, the new system operator from July, in a model that follows Railtrack. I expect it will prove to be a similar disaster. All energy investment is controlled by government that issues permits for approved projects and decides which ones will be subsidised.
What we need is not nationalisation, but proper competition so that the system (including gas and oil) meets our energy needs at low cost with system resilience through diversity of sources of supply where we are unable to supply from our own resources, and where our own resources can compete on a level playing field with imports, unlike things like the cost exemptions applied to interconnector imports.
March 16, 2024
OT: Seeing reports that “right-wing” Tory MPs are considering replacing Sunak with Mordaunt.
That’s hard to believe – she’s a “One Nation” (haha) Tory. Any such animal would be a retrograde step for the Tories. And Mordaunt has never actually done anything but a few jibes at the SNP in the Commons. The SNP are the softest of soft targets.
Mordaunt has a reputation for being lazy and woke. Her brother’s influence will be thrown at her if she steps further into the limelight. Also, replacing PMs who are elected by the people (Johnson) or by the membership (Truss) with people who have been rejected in leadership races… simply won’t fly.
Sunak or Mordaunt, that will make no difference.
March 16, 2024
A change is needed to limit the wipe out.
March 17, 2024
Mordaunt is too close to Bill Gates. She goes to events with him, and supports his views on ‘transforming’ agriculture. He and Blair wrote the foreword to a book she published a few years ago. She even once told Dan Wootton that Gates ‘doesn’t have too much influence’!
No thank you.
March 16, 2024
We will fail on this, just as the Tory leadership and government has failed on everything else and ruined our country. They are deaf and blind to all good sense. They are elitists, and do not wish to understand others.
March 16, 2024
yep – – ‘let them eat cake’.
March 16, 2024
AI not working too well in 2 UK supermarkets today …don’t trust the tories nor big IT systems
March 16, 2024
No, they do tend to put all their eggs in one software system basket. It is usually rather a bad strategy.
March 16, 2024
Coordinated activism / protests across a number of countries taking place against North Sea oil and gas extraction reported today. Green taxes destroying industry. Claims that the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. Apparently. Utterly blinkered but bring on those pylons and all the rest. Money being wasted left, right and centre. The public not being told the truth nor being made to fully understand that the costs for this lunacy and the increasingly hysterical narrative and language that goes with it, are much, much more than can be imagined but plenty of drooling entities with their tunnel vision set to fill their already bulging pockets. Change of leader will bring nothing. Change of the likely replacement party even less. Any other party looking for change will not get past the reams of signed up for legalities, internal and external opposition and screaming mobs.
March 16, 2024
I worked in the US for a tech giant. I know the score completely. I have been telling you over time on here.
In the US it is much more of a meritocracy, nobody gets hired or promoted for old school ties, accents, or which regiment daddy was in. there is plenty of proper diversity at all levels.
sadly when the US tech giants set up here they hire the same old recruitment consultancies and their senior UK staff tend to be dominated by the same old boys net and public school crowd. Its very hard for them to do anything else.
In the US tech workers swap jobs far more often, a long term perm job is 2 years, a freelance role is maybe 3 or 6 months. There is a proper market in skills.
BS is tolerated far less. Even in buzz word bingo things like AI.
They protect their IP much more, and work far harder to stop in leaking to countries like India.
All their programmers can touch type, they all learn to type quickly on Computer Science courses. Our equivalents type with 2 fingers. The good news is ours can turn out the same volume and quality of code in this way, its weird but true.
Far easier to get funding. Far easier to bin something that isnt working.
etc
March 16, 2024
The Sunak v Mordaunt argument is a diversion.
Assuming that the membership and voters would regard our host or David Davis to be too old to lead the Country, I cannot see anyone currently in the party who would make a good leader with the right policies to get growth back into the economy. Penny Mordaunt is just another One Nation Wet but she would make a good defence minister, although Shapps appears to be doing a good job.
March 16, 2024
The UK is becoming Third World before our very eyes.
March 18, 2024
Thanks, Sir John. I would add too that ‘the regular person’ should also subjected to a tax much lower than he/she is paying at the moment. You say the Irish economy thrives because companies pay their 15% while the British 25% ‘hit’ is not so successful at bringing in the money. It’s pretty obvious why this is the case. (I shan’t insult the Reader by explaining). Hong Kong and Singapore have shown us how taxing people fairly and ‘psychologically soundly’ (oo) is ‘it’..I mean: ‘it’. Let’s get it into our heads that people are – mostly – going to spend more money when they’ve got more money in their pockets…and Bingo!..Everyone suddenly starts getting busier (the ‘virtuous circle’ appears from nowhere)..and – By Jove, Waddyaknow? – payment of tax (whatever sort it is) goes up. Governments have more in their coffers. Those big infrastructure projects suddenly seem practicable. The national ‘feelgood factor’..feels good!
March 19, 2024
‘US specialist in AI… [said] Lay on more electricity and water.’
There are two distinct aspects here. Encouraging expertise in AI techniques, research, and use. We already have Oxford Nanopore Technologies and others benefiting from all three. I don’t think her suggestion helps them as they rent AI compute from across the Internet.
And then there’s building more compute centres chock full of computers with hardware specifically designed for the calculations wanted by AI. These compute centres are distinct from datacentres and factory units.
– Their workload is ephemeral and short lived. One of their computers does not grind on a report for an hour or index, search, and serve up files stored in the cloud. The short-lived nature of each task allows them to be stood down to near zero power consumption very promptly without much loss of work.
– A factory takes materials and produces widgets. Both require transport and so the factory’s location is important with good road access, short journey times, etc.. The factory may also need significant manpower which must live nearby. These costs sit alongside the charge for energy. A compute centre needs only a fibre connection to the Internet for its materials and product and a small or part-time staff. This is unconnected with attempting to bring fibre to every doorstep and can be done much more cheaply.
The key marginal cost for a compute centre is power. First to run the machines and then to cool them. Those who build them most profitably will seek the cheapest energy which is either energy which has been produced but has no other takers or could be produced but there is no other demand.
– A power station could happily run with higher output but this could exceed demand and it can’t ramp production down quickly. The excess over the existing demand can power the neighbouring compute centre, with hardly any transmission loss, with the centre happy to idle their units piecemeal within seconds.
– Flared gas from oil rigs is burnt off because capturing it for shipping or piping is uneconomical. Instead, it can be harnessed on-site for powering computation. An Internet connection is a lot cheaper than a pipeline. Other sources are methane from cows through anaerobic digestion and landfill gas. Both problems due to methane’s high greenhouse effect.
The above are already being used by those who have built compute centres for Bitcoin mining. They exist, today, in production, making a profit, and even lowering greenhouse emissions because methane has more effect than their by-product. They contain mining ASICs, specialised chips for the task. To switch to AI, the mining ASICs are replaced with TPUs, tensor-processing units. Other than that, they’re very similar which is why suppliers like NASDAQ’s IREN are now building AI compute centres using their knowledge of cheap-energy co-location from mining.
This ‘stranded’ energy is often cheap because of its awkward location. The geography which creates geothermal and hydroelectric also scuppers good transport and workforce. Using the traditional trade offs when building a datacentre is not a good fit.