"If you think OpenAI Sora is a creative toy like DALLE, ... think again. Sora is a data-driven physics engine. It is a simulation of many worlds, real or fantastical. The simulator learns intricate rendering, "intuitive" physics, long-horizon reasoning, and semantic grounding, all by some denoising and gradient maths."
That's NVIDIA's Senior Research Scientist. Not a rando
He further qualifies: ..Sora learns a physics engine implicitly in the neural parameters by gradient descent through massive amounts of videos...
"Learns a physics engine implicitly" doesn't seem quite correct to me. What say our resident nerds ?
Seems OK except that "implicitly" attaches to "learns" and not "physics engine" which aiui is the bit of the game (or game-writing platform) program that handles gravity and so on so that lopped-off limbs fall downwards.
ETA bondegezou has a better explanation where "implicit" does describe the engine.
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
"If you think OpenAI Sora is a creative toy like DALLE, ... think again. Sora is a data-driven physics engine. It is a simulation of many worlds, real or fantastical. The simulator learns intricate rendering, "intuitive" physics, long-horizon reasoning, and semantic grounding, all by some denoising and gradient maths."
Denmark has decided to send all its artillery to Ukraine — Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
"Ukraine is asking us for ammunition and artillery now. We, Denmark, have decided to transfer all our artillery to Ukraine. So, sorry, friends, there is military equipment in Europe, it is not only a matter of production. We have weapons, ammunition, air defense systems, which we do not use yet. They must be handed over to Ukraine."
I approve - but such drastic measures underline the urgency of the 'what if Ukraine loses' question.
There is a real shortage of usable weapons and ammunition stocks - particularly the latter - across Europe. The possible availability of a few hundred thousand artillery shells from S Korea and Turkey doesn't change that.
We need to rebuild our defence manufacturing base quickly.
There's been a 'peace dividend' of approximately 2% of GDP taken for the last three decades.
Just had a moment when I imagined myself age 30, working in the ceative sector - designer, painter, musician, writer, actor, vid game dude, copywriter, director, illustrator - basically all the arts. Imagining myself being well paid to do a job I love.....
My God, I would hate this AI, with a blinding passion. Fear it and loathe it to perdition. I would want to smash it. A machine that simultaneously take's away my life's purpose, my reason to work with joy, while ALSO taking away my income, my ability to feed my kids. At the same time! How bad is that?
I think we will see suicides
I think we are already there in the music industry with the way pop music is produced.
And yet you still get runaway success garage bands that play real instruments and don't auto-tune.
Just fewer of them "make it big".
Few make it big but do more or less make it fair-to-middling?
Speaking of pop music, in the 1970s when PBers read Sounds, Melody Maker and NME, music journalists would be flown round the world to review bands in exotic climes. That sweet gig ended long before AI.
Yes, that was one of the best jobs in journalism
The chief music writer for the NME had a fabulous time, as did - even more so - the main guy on Rolling Stone
I arrived in London in the 80s when that model had about a decade to run, I saw some of it
Just had a moment when I imagined myself age 30, working in the ceative sector - designer, painter, musician, writer, actor, vid game dude, copywriter, director, illustrator - basically all the arts. Imagining myself being well paid to do a job I love.....
My God, I would hate this AI, with a blinding passion. Fear it and loathe it to perdition. I would want to smash it. A machine that simultaneously take's away my life's purpose, my reason to work with joy, while ALSO taking away my income, my ability to feed my kids. At the same time! How bad is that?
I think we will see suicides
I think we are already there in the music industry with the way pop music is produced.
And yet you still get runaway success garage bands that play real instruments and don't auto-tune.
Just fewer of them "make it big".
Few make it big but do more or less make it fair-to-middling?
Speaking of pop music, in the 1970s when PBers read Sounds, Melody Maker and NME, music journalists would be flown round the world to review bands in exotic climes. That sweet gig ended long before AI.
"Superstar DJ turns up to a gig in Ibiza, shoves a USB stick into his laptop, waves his arms in the air." as Liam Howlett from The Prodigy memorable put it years ago.
Just had a moment when I imagined myself age 30, working in the ceative sector - designer, painter, musician, writer, actor, vid game dude, copywriter, director, illustrator - basically all the arts. Imagining myself being well paid to do a job I love.....
My God, I would hate this AI, with a blinding passion. Fear it and loathe it to perdition. I would want to smash it. A machine that simultaneously take's away my life's purpose, my reason to work with joy, while ALSO taking away my income, my ability to feed my kids. At the same time! How bad is that?
I think we will see suicides
I think we are already there in the music industry with the way pop music is produced.
And yet you still get runaway success garage bands that play real instruments and don't auto-tune.
Just fewer of them "make it big".
And thanks to the internet, a few people in a garage playing instruments can actually make money doing it, and end up with enough of an audience to turn up at live gigs.
The cost of anything is the cost of the labour required to produce it.
Things are cheap where the workers get paid bugger all.
Is it tho? Printing is just a machine
You feed the paper, press a button, it prints. Very little labour involved
Surely much of the cost is the paper, “ink”, electricity, machine usage
Getting 360 pages printed in London would cost me £20-30 at its cheapest?
So it’s ten times cheaper here to use a printer, paper, etc. I’m sure a clever economist can explain it - I am somewhat surprised
Most of what you pay in London is for the premises.
I bought two ink canisters for my hp printer in Ryman this week. £99. You cannot tell me that ink costs that much to make. The model is to sell you a cheap printer and milk you on the consumables.
Go for Epson Ecojet. Their business model is the opposite: more expensive printers, but cheap ink. And they *sip* the ink. They're blooming good if you do a fair amount of printng, and better than any HP or Lexmark inkjet I've ever had.
Trouble is I generally don't do that much printing, and it is extremely sporadic (because I travel so much) - but then suddenly I will need 200 pages done in a day, then three weeks go by and I need 7 pages, next day 2, then another 4 weeks of nothing and then I need another 100 pages and my printer breaks. Again. GAH
It's infuriating
Also I have a small flat and my printer/scanner has to be tiny as possible
Same here - my printing comes in bursts: I tend to do nothing for a couple of weeks or a month, and then print hundreds of pages. And that meant my old HP would be gunked up, and I'd use loads of ink aligning heads to get acceptable print quality. I don't have that issue with the EcoJet. Even better: because it prints well without hassle, I use it more. If I'm going somewhere, I often print out a local map to backup my phone. As it's easy, I do it.
Can't help with the flat size, though...
There might be money to be made renting one little room which contains several excellent business printers - where people can come and do their own printing. A bit like a laundrette, but for printers
That's actually not a bad idea, if you want to run a really boring business that makes modest profits
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
It's probably how Conservative spin doctors will attempt to resuscitate the patient- "in 1995, John Major lost 2000 councillors in a single night..."
But yes, the four year cycle of local elections is a curious beast. 1996 (which I think was roughly comparable with 2024, they're both leap years) saw L+468 C-607.
A very eloquent but plaintive reddit post on the fate of artists vis a vis SORA/AI
!The sad thing is, its NOT possible to adapt.
Back when stable diffusion released, I was trying to evangelize it in artist communities (I love viewing art). Because I knew it was going overturn the art world, so better adapt early rather than get swept away right?
But the pace of improvement in AI art models was just too rapid.
2022-08, SD was released, it can do art, but generally very ugly and barely useful
2022-11, MJv4/NAIv1, can now consistently do human faces very well
2023-03, MJv5/SD fine tunes, drastic improvement in aesthetic quality, can now match most human artists albeit far less flexible.
2023-11. DALLE-3/MJv6 - full photorealism, text support, and strong prompt comprehension. NAIv3, can full on clone most top tier artists, and often do better than those top-tier artists because they can effortless combine and merge artstyles with just prompting.
2024-02 SORA is announced. Every single frame blows DALLE-3/MJv6 out of the water, AND it can do fully cohesive 60 second videos.
How is an artist supposed to adapt? Its barely been a year, and AI went from a cheap-but-worse replacement to 'draws way better AND way cheaper AND soon to draw an entire video in the time you drew a doodle'. What exactly is the artist supposed to do? The best is just fixing AI errors in photoshop. And learning any tools like ComfyUI or Automatic1111 is also futile, because the newer models are so much better than the open source models."
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
The interesting bit is going to be the Mayoral elections and while the Tories haven't got many mayorships to lose they aren't going to win many
East Midlands New position Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (Labour Co-op) Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram (Lab) North East[b] New position South Yorkshire[9] Oliver Coppard (Labour Co-op) Tees Valley Ben Houchen (Con) West Midlands Andy Street (Con) West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin (Labour Co-op) York and North Yorkshire[10] New position
Can see them keeping West Midlands and possibly winning the East Midlands & North Yorkshire but I suspect Tees Valley is lost...
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
It's probably how Conservative spin doctors will attempt to resuscitate the patient- "in 1995, John Major lost 2000 councillors in a single night..."
But yes, the four year cycle of local elections is a curious beast. 1996 (which I think was roughly comparable with 2024, they're both leap years) saw L+468 C-607.
The one good thing from a Tory perspective in the Hague years was they regained councils and councillors lost in the last years of Major.
For example in 1998 the Conservatives gained a net 256 councillors, in 1999 a net 1,348 councillors and 2000 a net 594 Tory council seats were gained. Even if Hague lost the 2001 general election by a landslide almost as badly as Major had lost the 1997 general election.
So if the Tories go into opposition, prospects may improve for Tory local election candidates, even if they don't much for Tory parliamentary candidates yet
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
The interesting bit is going to be the Mayoral elections and while the Tories haven't got many mayorships to lose they aren't going to win many
East Midlands New position Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (Labour Co-op) Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram (Lab) North East[b] New position South Yorkshire[9] Oliver Coppard (Labour Co-op) Tees Valley Ben Houchen (Con) West Midlands Andy Street (Con) West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin (Labour Co-op) York and North Yorkshire[10] New position
Can see them keeping West Midlands and possibly winning the East Midlands & North Yorkshire but I suspect Tees Valley is lost...
I’ve always been surprised by how little we hear from Andy Street in the national news, compared to say the major of London. Perhaps it’s just an indication of how London-centric is the national media.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
Also a plotline in Foundation. All androids/AIs have been zapped, only one is allowed, which belongs to the emperor
And the Battlestar Galactica reboot - the eponymous ship only surviving the Cylon onslaught as a result of its refusal to network its systems.
In all seriousness there is a possibility, albeit slight, that AI may become taboo if it is shown to have a harmful effect on humanity - like incest and folk dancing. At some point in our past we noticed that shagging our brothers and sisters was fun but having less than beneficial effects. The same may, possibly, happen with AI, although I accept that’s unlikely.
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
The interesting bit is going to be the Mayoral elections and while the Tories haven't got many mayorships to lose they aren't going to win many
East Midlands New position Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (Labour Co-op) Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram (Lab) North East[b] New position South Yorkshire[9] Oliver Coppard (Labour Co-op) Tees Valley Ben Houchen (Con) West Midlands Andy Street (Con) West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin (Labour Co-op) York and North Yorkshire[10] New position
Can see them keeping West Midlands and possibly winning the East Midlands & North Yorkshire but I suspect Tees Valley is lost...
I’ve always been surprised by how little we hear from Andy Street in the national news, compared to say the major of London. Perhaps it’s just an indication of how London-centric is the national media.
I think it possible that various Conservative politicians are keeping a low profile at the moment, deliberately.
So they will climb out of the bunker, after the apocalypse, untouched.
The cost of anything is the cost of the labour required to produce it.
Things are cheap where the workers get paid bugger all.
Is it tho? Printing is just a machine
You feed the paper, press a button, it prints. Very little labour involved
Surely much of the cost is the paper, “ink”, electricity, machine usage
Getting 360 pages printed in London would cost me £20-30 at its cheapest?
So it’s ten times cheaper here to use a printer, paper, etc. I’m sure a clever economist can explain it - I am somewhat surprised
Most of what you pay in London is for the premises.
I bought two ink canisters for my hp printer in Ryman this week. £99. You cannot tell me that ink costs that much to make. The model is to sell you a cheap printer and milk you on the consumables.
Go for Epson Ecojet. Their business model is the opposite: more expensive printers, but cheap ink. And they *sip* the ink. They're blooming good if you do a fair amount of printng, and better than any HP or Lexmark inkjet I've ever had.
Trouble is I generally don't do that much printing, and it is extremely sporadic (because I travel so much) - but then suddenly I will need 200 pages done in a day, then three weeks go by and I need 7 pages, next day 2, then another 4 weeks of nothing and then I need another 100 pages and my printer breaks. Again. GAH
It's infuriating
Also I have a small flat and my printer/scanner has to be tiny as possible
Same here - my printing comes in bursts: I tend to do nothing for a couple of weeks or a month, and then print hundreds of pages. And that meant my old HP would be gunked up, and I'd use loads of ink aligning heads to get acceptable print quality. I don't have that issue with the EcoJet. Even better: because it prints well without hassle, I use it more. If I'm going somewhere, I often print out a local map to backup my phone. As it's easy, I do it.
Can't help with the flat size, though...
There might be money to be made renting one little room which contains several excellent business printers - where people can come and do their own printing. A bit like a laundrette, but for printers
That's actually not a bad idea, if you want to run a really boring business that makes modest profits
Kinkos started in the 70s in the Bay Area. They were all over the U.S. back in the 80s. ...At its height of popularity between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, Kinko's outlets in urban centres across North America were catch basins for writers, artists, anarchists, punks, insomniacs, graduate students, DIY bookmakers, zinesters, obsessive compulsive hobbyists, scam artists, people living on the street, and people just living on the edge. Whether you were promoting a new band or publishing a pamphlet on DIY gynaecology or making a fake ID for an underage friend, Kinko's was the place to be..
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
Such a scenario would depend on someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology keeping a greater distance from the samples that had come in or wearing his PPE properly.
Also a plotline in Foundation. All androids/AIs have been zapped, only one is allowed, which belongs to the emperor
And the Battlestar Galactica reboot - the eponymous ship only surviving the Cylon onslaught as a result of its refusal to network its systems.
In all seriousness there is a possibility, albeit slight, that AI may become taboo if it is shown to have a harmful effect on humanity - like incest and folk dancing. At some point in our past we noticed that shagging our brothers and sisters was fun but having less than beneficial effects. The same may, possibly, happen with AI, although I accept that’s unlikely.
This was the premise of Dune where "thinking" computers were banned as a result of a religious purge inspired by the Orange Catholic Bible. This in turn had encouraged the development of "human" computers or Mentats by genetic manipulation and training.
Really astonishing books. Full of remarkable insights.
Another point on Reform - the SDP appear to be attracting more of the academic types like Goodwin and Kaufmann but they don't seem to be going anywhere even though leader William Clousten gets the odd interview on Talk TV. They are however a genuine party whereas Reform seems to be largely a Farage vehicle.
Neither do the SDP appear to be standing in by elections. What's the plan?
There isn't one. The SDP in its present incarnation is the darling of academics and (shudder) commentators but forgets that you need a shit-ton of cash and they ain't got it. What they need is a sugar daddy. What they've got is Rob Liddle.
Also a plotline in Foundation. All androids/AIs have been zapped, only one is allowed, which belongs to the emperor
And the Battlestar Galactica reboot - the eponymous ship only surviving the Cylon onslaught as a result of its refusal to network its systems.
In all seriousness there is a possibility, albeit slight, that AI may become taboo if it is shown to have a harmful effect on humanity - like incest and folk dancing. At some point in our past we noticed that shagging our brothers and sisters was fun but having less than beneficial effects. The same may, possibly, happen with AI, although I accept that’s unlikely.
This was the premise of Dune where "thinking" computers were banned as a result of a religious purge inspired by the Orange Catholic Bible. This in turn had encouraged the development of "human" computers or Mentats by genetic manipulation and training.
Really astonishing books. Full of remarkable insights.
Denmark has decided to send all its artillery to Ukraine — Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
"Ukraine is asking us for ammunition and artillery now. We, Denmark, have decided to transfer all our artillery to Ukraine. So, sorry, friends, there is military equipment in Europe, it is not only a matter of production. We have weapons, ammunition, air defense systems, which we do not use yet. They must be handed over to Ukraine."
I approve - but such drastic measures underline the urgency of the 'what if Ukraine loses' question.
There is a real shortage of usable weapons and ammunition stocks - particularly the latter - across Europe. The possible availability of a few hundred thousand artillery shells from S Korea and Turkey doesn't change that.
We need to rebuild our defence manufacturing base quickly.
Yeah, but it won't happen. Britain won't even invest in schools, let alone arms factories.
We are stuck in a doom loop where most of the money sloshing around the economy simply sinks into house price inflation, state pension hikes and luxury spending by the already well-off. Everything else is so neglected that, when our panicking politicians decide some years down the line that they need a bigger army, they'll forcibly conscript young people as cannon fodder on the minimum wage and send them into battle armed with confiscated archery club equipment and garden tools.
Also a plotline in Foundation. All androids/AIs have been zapped, only one is allowed, which belongs to the emperor
And the Battlestar Galactica reboot - the eponymous ship only surviving the Cylon onslaught as a result of its refusal to network its systems.
In all seriousness there is a possibility, albeit slight, that AI may become taboo if it is shown to have a harmful effect on humanity - like incest and folk dancing. At some point in our past we noticed that shagging our brothers and sisters was fun but having less than beneficial effects. The same may, possibly, happen with AI, although I accept that’s unlikely.
I agree entirely. Indeed I wouldn't even say the possibility is "slight". It's a strong possibility that AI is so dystopian - for everyone - that nations and peoples unite to confine it or abolish it - if they can
We managed to keep a global lid on nukes for many decades, and they have still not ever been re-used since 1945. AI is potentiallu just as dangerous as nuclear, perhaps even more - because it is so much more complex and profound. We are creating an alien mind, not just a massive new weapon
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
And that's assuming said purposeful intelligence announces itself.
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
A very eloquent but plaintive reddit post on the fate of artists vis a vis SORA/AI
!The sad thing is, its NOT possible to adapt.
Back when stable diffusion released, I was trying to evangelize it in artist communities (I love viewing art). Because I knew it was going overturn the art world, so better adapt early rather than get swept away right?
But the pace of improvement in AI art models was just too rapid.
2022-08, SD was released, it can do art, but generally very ugly and barely useful
2022-11, MJv4/NAIv1, can now consistently do human faces very well
2023-03, MJv5/SD fine tunes, drastic improvement in aesthetic quality, can now match most human artists albeit far less flexible.
2023-11. DALLE-3/MJv6 - full photorealism, text support, and strong prompt comprehension. NAIv3, can full on clone most top tier artists, and often do better than those top-tier artists because they can effortless combine and merge artstyles with just prompting.
2024-02 SORA is announced. Every single frame blows DALLE-3/MJv6 out of the water, AND it can do fully cohesive 60 second videos.
How is an artist supposed to adapt? Its barely been a year, and AI went from a cheap-but-worse replacement to 'draws way better AND way cheaper AND soon to draw an entire video in the time you drew a doodle'. What exactly is the artist supposed to do? The best is just fixing AI errors in photoshop. And learning any tools like ComfyUI or Automatic1111 is also futile, because the newer models are so much better than the open source models."
Again it is the middle tier most at risk. People will still buy Hirst and Emin, and there is probably still room for the small-scale commercial artist, like a school art teacher knocking out occasional daubs as a side hustle, even though AI can do it better. But there will also be opportunities for the previously excluded. Now you can use AI to draw comic books about superhero flint knappers without the expenses faced by Marvel with its inhouse team.
It is like when photography came along. Portrait artists at the top and bottom survived but the mass market in the middle was eclipsed, but also everyone could now have a photo of mum and dad's wedding on the mantlepiece.
Denmark has decided to send all its artillery to Ukraine — Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
"Ukraine is asking us for ammunition and artillery now. We, Denmark, have decided to transfer all our artillery to Ukraine. So, sorry, friends, there is military equipment in Europe, it is not only a matter of production. We have weapons, ammunition, air defense systems, which we do not use yet. They must be handed over to Ukraine."
I approve - but such drastic measures underline the urgency of the 'what if Ukraine loses' question.
There is a real shortage of usable weapons and ammunition stocks - particularly the latter - across Europe. The possible availability of a few hundred thousand artillery shells from S Korea and Turkey doesn't change that.
We need to rebuild our defence manufacturing base quickly.
Yeah, but it won't happen. Britain won't even invest in schools, let alone arms factories.
We are stuck in a doom loop where most of the money sloshing around the economy simply sinks into house price inflation, state pension hikes and luxury spending by the already well-off. Everything else is so neglected that, when our panicking politicians decide some years down the line that they need a bigger army, they'll forcibly conscript young people as cannon fodder on the minimum wage and send them into battle armed with confiscated archery club equipment and garden tools.
As it was obvious from Day 1 that he would eventually call for a ceasefire, Starmer could have handled this better by not creating a disciplinary situation for those that were ahead of him on the curve.
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
Denmark has decided to send all its artillery to Ukraine — Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
"Ukraine is asking us for ammunition and artillery now. We, Denmark, have decided to transfer all our artillery to Ukraine. So, sorry, friends, there is military equipment in Europe, it is not only a matter of production. We have weapons, ammunition, air defense systems, which we do not use yet. They must be handed over to Ukraine."
I approve - but such drastic measures underline the urgency of the 'what if Ukraine loses' question.
There is a real shortage of usable weapons and ammunition stocks - particularly the latter - across Europe. The possible availability of a few hundred thousand artillery shells from S Korea and Turkey doesn't change that.
We need to rebuild our defence manufacturing base quickly.
Yeah, but it won't happen. Britain won't even invest in schools, let alone arms factories.
We are stuck in a doom loop where most of the money sloshing around the economy simply sinks into house price inflation, state pension hikes and luxury spending by the already well-off. Everything else is so neglected that, when our panicking politicians decide some years down the line that they need a bigger army, they'll forcibly conscript young people as cannon fodder on the minimum wage and send them into battle armed with confiscated archery club equipment and garden tools.
Happy little soul, aren’t you?
He's right about the loop, though. We need to break out if it.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
The interesting bit is going to be the Mayoral elections and while the Tories haven't got many mayorships to lose they aren't going to win many
East Midlands New position Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (Labour Co-op) Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram (Lab) North East[b] New position South Yorkshire[9] Oliver Coppard (Labour Co-op) Tees Valley Ben Houchen (Con) West Midlands Andy Street (Con) West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin (Labour Co-op) York and North Yorkshire[10] New position
Can see them keeping West Midlands and possibly winning the East Midlands & North Yorkshire but I suspect Tees Valley is lost...
I’ve always been surprised by how little we hear from Andy Street in the national news, compared to say the major of London. Perhaps it’s just an indication of how London-centric is the national media.
I think it possible that various Conservative politicians are keeping a low profile at the moment, deliberately.
So they will climb out of the bunker, after the apocalypse, untouched.
At the last locals the Tories round here described themselves as “Local Conservatives” with an express plea not to punish them for the sins of the Westminster parent.
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
I was joking
Ah, but your name (and probably your IP address and whatever other identifying information can be scraped from online sources) has no doubt been logged.
For the avoidance of doubt, I have nothing at all against AI taking over, and will be happy to do whatever I can to facilitate it.
If Starmer read the papers, he'd have seen Cameron giving him political cover on Gaza for weeks.
Maybe SKS did read my post at the start of this thread calling attention to the "no ceasefire, no vote" movement, but probably that is moving too fast.
Trump campaign courts Arab American and Muslim voters in Michigan
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/18/trump-campaign-reaches-out-to-arab-americans-in-michigan/72646748007/ ..During the rally, Rola Makki, of Dearborn, vice president of outreach for the Michigan GOP, was seen in the audience wearing a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, and a red pullover that read in white letters: "Arab Americans for Trump." Makki has previously criticized Democrats for supporting some LGBTQ books in Dearborn public schools that she and others said were too sexually explicit. Makki and Hacham have been active in the GOP in Michigan, saying the party has been reaching out to minority communities. Three of the vice chairs in the Michigan GOP are Muslim...
Denmark has decided to send all its artillery to Ukraine — Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
"Ukraine is asking us for ammunition and artillery now. We, Denmark, have decided to transfer all our artillery to Ukraine. So, sorry, friends, there is military equipment in Europe, it is not only a matter of production. We have weapons, ammunition, air defense systems, which we do not use yet. They must be handed over to Ukraine."
I approve - but such drastic measures underline the urgency of the 'what if Ukraine loses' question.
There is a real shortage of usable weapons and ammunition stocks - particularly the latter - across Europe. The possible availability of a few hundred thousand artillery shells from S Korea and Turkey doesn't change that.
We need to rebuild our defence manufacturing base quickly.
Yeah, but it won't happen. Britain won't even invest in schools, let alone arms factories.
We are stuck in a doom loop where most of the money sloshing around the economy simply sinks into house price inflation, state pension hikes and luxury spending by the already well-off. Everything else is so neglected that, when our panicking politicians decide some years down the line that they need a bigger army, they'll forcibly conscript young people as cannon fodder on the minimum wage and send them into battle armed with confiscated archery club equipment and garden tools.
Happy little soul, aren’t you?
Oh I'm alright Jack. I'm one of the winners of the current settlement. Not one of the big time winners - I own a flat, not a house, and I can't afford a new car and a couple of cruise holidays every year - but relative to your average wage slave I'm flush with cash and very comfortable.
It's just that I have the common sense to realise that the current settlement is also a recipe for eventual systemic collapse. Like all of the better off, I'm reduced to keeping my fingers crossed that I'm safely dead of old age before everything goes to shit.
Being merely middle aged, rather than one amongst the legion of pampered Tory elderly, the likelihood of achieving this blessed outcome isn't so great.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
Not easy.
First, he would have needed to regenerate his personality, Prince Hal to King Henry. People do that, but in the end Boris couldn't.
Harder still... The promises made and implied 2016-9 would always have been a millstone, even without COVID or Ukraine. So there would still have been a steady flow of voters turning against him- as happened throughout 2020, and again from summer 2021. So those promises needed to not happen. But without those promises, it might all have played out differently and there might not have been a first Boris landslide to protect.
Here's a grim thought though. Imagine the Labour grief cycle had played out differently. It could have been Rishi-Jez in 2024/5.
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
And that's assuming said purposeful intelligence announces itself.
As Banks put it in Excession: "That was the Dependency Principle; that you could never forget where your Off switches were located, even if it was somewhere tiresome.”
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
I was joking
Ah, but your name (and probably your IP address and whatever other identifying information can be scraped from online sources) has no doubt been logged.
For the avoidance of doubt, I have nothing at all against AI taking over, and will be happy to do whatever I can to facilitate it.
Trump campaign courts Arab American and Muslim voters in Michigan
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/18/trump-campaign-reaches-out-to-arab-americans-in-michigan/72646748007/ ..During the rally, Rola Makki, of Dearborn, vice president of outreach for the Michigan GOP, was seen in the audience wearing a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, and a red pullover that read in white letters: "Arab Americans for Trump." Makki has previously criticized Democrats for supporting some LGBTQ books in Dearborn public schools that she and others said were too sexually explicit. Makki and Hacham have been active in the GOP in Michigan, saying the party has been reaching out to minority communities. Three of the vice chairs in the Michigan GOP are Muslim...
I see SKS ordered Sue Grey to seize the personal phones of his staffers to find out who leaked the Green New Deal.
It turns out #TelAvivKeith was the nickname being used in e mails between said staffers.
Lol. SKS fans or should that be #TAK fans please explain
There is an article in the Guardian which I am not going to fetch because it would run down my monthly allowance of just 20 stories, suggesting that after Hartlepool, Starmer realised, along with the rest of us, that he was indeed the World's most incompetent dud and was on the cusp of resigning.
Sadly he didn't.
TelAviv Keith is a superb PT down. Rishi should use it at PMQs.
How does that allowance of Guardian stories work? RU abroad somewhere?
I thought the G was completely open.
No I am currently in the railway station car park in Llantwit Major. The mobile app allows me 20 views over the month. Look at the same article twice and that's two views. They want £6.99 a month for full access, and for that they can...
Yes, same on iPad
They are moving to a paywall - they have no choice, see their losses - but trying to do it "secretly"
It's a bit sad
The trouble for The Guardian is that they've cultivated an audience of people expecting free content and moving to a paid model will lose them too much of their audience. It's a disaster of their own making by being so self righteous about other news pay walls, especially the original pay wall at The Times which has been extremely successful for News Group. Iirc they're up to half a million subscribers at average annual revenue of ~£80 for digital subscribers.
Yes exactly
Some of PB was also REALLY sneery about Rupert's "stupid paywall"
Rupert Murdoch didn't become a media titan by luck. He just annoys people so they refuse to believe he is actually very smart, and good at what he does, as well as being a selfish evil Fascist etc
Same applies to Elon Musk. Possibly not a nice guy, but also a genius
I read the Mail on Sunday finance pages, this is money, every week. I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks s9me articles are now behind a paywall too.
The Guardian, by adopting it’s self righteous approach by not implementing a paywall but begging for cash has screwed itself.
It would be a shame to lose it. The media needs diverse views. Even if it is, in its own way, awful. A left wing Daily Mail.
I would miss the Guardian too as I love some of the bizarre problems they can cause themselves with their views. The other week was a fave.
Article on homepage after the Grammys going wild about women sweeping the board in all the (gender neutral) categories.
A few inches away and article about how awful it is that men won a clean sweep of the gender neutral awards at a film festival.
OK forget what I said. I hope the Guardian dies
I thought the Guardian was loudly trumpeting the success of its guilt-based payment model? Albeit that was before they restricted the number of articles you can read, which suggests otherwise. Anyone got any figures?
They trumpeted breaking even in 2018-19, but then made a £29m loss in 2019-20, a £16m loss in 2020-21, a £7m profit in 2021-2022, and a £21m loss in 2022-23. Those are on revenues of around £250m each year.
They have an endowment of £1.3bn from the Scott Trust, which has increased in value by £300m since 2018. Should be enough to tide them over for the foreseeable future...
If Starmer read the papers, he'd have seen Cameron giving him political cover on Gaza for weeks.
More flip-floppery from Starmer, but it does somewhat shoot the SNP's Machiavellian fox, should they still call for a ceasefire vote.
Not sure what’s Machiavellian about sticking pretty much to the same position since the IDF started ‘proportionately’ killing Gazans. Otoh pretending that you’re doing something when you’re not..
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Last week's by-elections were a disaster for Rishi Sunak. But things are only going to get worse. He needs to call a May election, and make his final stand > Mail On Sunday >
Well if Dan Hodges is suggesting May, it’s nailed on to be in the autumn.
The thing is May is the better date but the current narrative (by election results, economy) make a May election impossible to call.
So the election will be in the Autumn and the Tory party will do disasterously because they won’t have the (remaining) troops to get he vote out.
By-election defeats are one thing, but if they lose 1,000 councillors that will change the narrative irretrievably for Sunak. You’re right that May is the best date, but that means calling the election in a fortnight, and it’s always easier to not take the decision.
Have they got a thousand councillors defending their seats? Looking at the numbers up for election, there are a grand total of 2,565 seats up for grabs. Two cycles ago (because the 2020 cycle was wrapped in to the 2021 one) in 2016, they had 842 councillors out of 2,769 elected that year, and I think they've gone down, if anything, since then.
Which might have betting implications, if that's true - anyone offering odds on more Conservative councillor losses than there are defending their seats should have their hand bitten off at the wrist.
Well you got me on that one! I used 1,000 as being a round number definition of a bad night, but hadn’t realised there’s actually so few seats up this year.
Easy thing not to know, really. I got caught out on numbers like that about a decade ago and became very careful about checking ever since.
We should probably expect some media commentators and/or party spin doctors to try to gloss over it: "Oh, yes, the Tories lost 350 seats, but last year and the year before they lost over a thousand each time. This proves it wasn't so bad for them and they're recovering..."
If Starmer read the papers, he'd have seen Cameron giving him political cover on Gaza for weeks.
More flip-floppery from Starmer, but it does somewhat shoot the SNP's Machiavellian fox, should they still call for a ceasefire vote.
Not sure what’s Machiavellian about sticking pretty much to the same position since the IDF started ‘proportionately’ killing Gazans. Otoh pretending that you’re doing something when you’re not..
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Yeah, but then you realise that SORA can create a video of a guy carrying a bowl of milk across a cathedral filled with cats to make an offering to the Cat King
Trump campaign courts Arab American and Muslim voters in Michigan
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/18/trump-campaign-reaches-out-to-arab-americans-in-michigan/72646748007/ ..During the rally, Rola Makki, of Dearborn, vice president of outreach for the Michigan GOP, was seen in the audience wearing a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, and a red pullover that read in white letters: "Arab Americans for Trump." Makki has previously criticized Democrats for supporting some LGBTQ books in Dearborn public schools that she and others said were too sexually explicit. Makki and Hacham have been active in the GOP in Michigan, saying the party has been reaching out to minority communities. Three of the vice chairs in the Michigan GOP are Muslim...
Good luck with the "Muslims for Trump" campaign.
Oh I'm not so sure. Yank evangelical Christians and Islamists have a lot in common, and they certainly hate us (the gays) a great deal more than they hate each other.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
Trump campaign courts Arab American and Muslim voters in Michigan
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/18/trump-campaign-reaches-out-to-arab-americans-in-michigan/72646748007/ ..During the rally, Rola Makki, of Dearborn, vice president of outreach for the Michigan GOP, was seen in the audience wearing a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, and a red pullover that read in white letters: "Arab Americans for Trump." Makki has previously criticized Democrats for supporting some LGBTQ books in Dearborn public schools that she and others said were too sexually explicit. Makki and Hacham have been active in the GOP in Michigan, saying the party has been reaching out to minority communities. Three of the vice chairs in the Michigan GOP are Muslim...
Good luck with the "Muslims for Trump" campaign.
There's a more serious point for the Democrats though. Many American minorities are small 'c' conservative. What do you do?
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
If AIs do ever achieve purposeful intelligence, they'll be able to outthink us a thousand times a second. So that putative battle is already lost.
Not if we get to the plug first.
What plug ?
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
I was joking
Ah, but your name (and probably your IP address and whatever other identifying information can be scraped from online sources) has no doubt been logged.
For the avoidance of doubt, I have nothing at all against AI taking over, and will be happy to do whatever I can to facilitate it.
Please don't hint at the existence of R***'* B******* anywhere near Leon, or we will never hear the end of it.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I think the point is that society changes and adapts. The 1830s gave us the swing riots, after the thresher more or less eliminated 25% of all jobs in the country at the time. Unemployment isn't at 25% today, and if it ever does rise to those levels, we can be pretty sure it isn't due to the prevalence of the threshing machine.
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Yeah, but then you realise that SORA can create a video of a guy carrying a bowl of milk across a cathedral filled with cats to make an offering to the Cat King
Ultimately, what's the point in being human? At the minute, AI is a bit of a wonder, like the internet back in the late 90s- full of possibilities but we're not sure where it'll go. Once we get true AI, humans become surplus to requirements for vast swathes of employment. Couple that with driverless vehicles and planes, robot surgeons, AI fighting machines....we just become pointless. There's too many of us to all become The Culture, augmented, indestructible and virtually immortal, so we're done in a couple of hundred years!
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
And for anyone babbling about 'levelling up' then it has been achieved.
Traditionally, and roughly speaking, the south had plenty of jobs but unaffordable housing whereas the north had a shortage of jobs but affordable housing.
Now the north has plenty of jobs and still has affordable housing.
As I doubt this was planned I'll term it as a happy accident.
But its the sort of thing Boris would have been good at exploiting electorally.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
No. I don’t know what will happen next. That’s the point.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
No. I don’t know what will happen next. That’s the point.
And a highly sensible opinion to hold seeing as literally no one has successfully predicted the last couple of years in AI. It constantly surprises - generally on the “upside” - it advances quicker than anyone imagines
One has to wonder how long OpenAI have been sitting on Sora. They must have known it would feel revolutionary
Also it’s impressive so little leaks out of that company. It reminds me of the chocolate factory in roald Dahl
Wonders are glimpsed within. Then wow they show something
Have they achieved AGI internally, as is rumoured?
Clips of yesterday's Palestine rally again included the chant "no ceasefire, no vote" which might be electorally important, especially if it spreads from London to Rochdale whose by-election is on the 29th.
Yes. Labour will be fine in our election (they have a buffer on the buffer) but I'm a bit worried about this for Biden.
One bit of data suggests that there is more to be said. If I understand the maths correctly, Labour need a swing of 12.7 percentage points to get an overall majority. Ignore Wellingborough - special case of banana ex MP and banana candidate. At Kingswood they got a 16 point swing. On the whole those predicting the result (including PBers) thought Labour would do better. That is not safe home territory when a GE campaign - which will be horrible and dirty - hasn't really started.
NOM remains value. And why else is Rishi 7/1 (Hills) and not 66/1 to be PM after the next election?
I don’t think it’s simply a case of Kingswood being the normal swing and Wellingborough being freakish. At the real election I reckon we’re going to get some very variable swing in different types of constituency.
Kingswood is another urban fringe seat like Uxbridge. In this parliament the defences that have fared best for the Conservatives have been Old Bexley and Crayford (10% swing), Uxbridge and South Ruislip (6.7%), and Kingswood. The worst for them have been rural Southern towns and Red Wall seats.
The GE will be fascinating. There will be surprise Labour victories in unexpected places, particularly coastal towns and the countryside, and tenacious Tory holds in rurban fringe metrolands. Labour will flatline in London and the Tories not do too badly.
Rishi is relatively more popular than Boris now in London and cities and suburban areas but less popular than Boris in coastal towns, market towns and rural areas
It’s your party that’s less popular, for having inflicted that lying idiot on us in the first place. Like you were told, at the time.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
No. I don’t know what will happen next. That’s the point.
You think something will happen in the short to medium term to mean that AI isn't capable of taking over a large number of jobs currently done by humans. That's not mere uncertainty. It's more like saying something may happen to stop the tide coming in tomorrow.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I think the point is that society changes and adapts. The 1830s gave us the swing riots, after the thresher more or less eliminated 25% of all jobs in the country at the time. Unemployment isn't at 25% today, and if it ever does rise to those levels, we can be pretty sure it isn't due to the prevalence of the threshing machine.
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
AI is fundamentally different from 19th century technology.
What you're hoping is that the amount of work to be done will expand father than the capacity of AI to do it.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
No. I don’t know what will happen next. That’s the point.
You think something will happen in the short to medium term to mean that AI isn't capable of taking over a large number of jobs currently done by humans. That's not mere uncertainty. It's more like saying something may happen to stop the tide coming in tomorrow.
Yeah. I think your towering self-proclaimed genius will render not just AI but all information technology obsolete. We’ll just Ask Chris what to do. How can we go wrong?
Clips of yesterday's Palestine rally again included the chant "no ceasefire, no vote" which might be electorally important, especially if it spreads from London to Rochdale whose by-election is on the 29th.
Yes. Labour will be fine in our election (they have a buffer on the buffer) but I'm a bit worried about this for Biden.
One bit of data suggests that there is more to be said. If I understand the maths correctly, Labour need a swing of 12.7 percentage points to get an overall majority. Ignore Wellingborough - special case of banana ex MP and banana candidate. At Kingswood they got a 16 point swing. On the whole those predicting the result (including PBers) thought Labour would do better. That is not safe home territory when a GE campaign - which will be horrible and dirty - hasn't really started.
NOM remains value. And why else is Rishi 7/1 (Hills) and not 66/1 to be PM after the next election?
I don’t think it’s simply a case of Kingswood being the normal swing and Wellingborough being freakish. At the real election I reckon we’re going to get some very variable swing in different types of constituency.
Kingswood is another urban fringe seat like Uxbridge. In this parliament the defences that have fared best for the Conservatives have been Old Bexley and Crayford (10% swing), Uxbridge and South Ruislip (6.7%), and Kingswood. The worst for them have been rural Southern towns and Red Wall seats.
The GE will be fascinating. There will be surprise Labour victories in unexpected places, particularly coastal towns and the countryside, and tenacious Tory holds in rurban fringe metrolands. Labour will flatline in London and the Tories not do too badly.
Rishi is relatively more popular than Boris now in London and cities and suburban areas but less popular than Boris in coastal towns, market towns and rural areas
It’s your party that’s less popular, for having inflicted that lying idiot on us in the first place. Like you were told, at the time.
Is Rishi the lying idiot or Boris? Or is it both of them?
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
Boris won a huge mandate based on three broad promises: 1) Get Brexit Done 2) Levelling Up 3) Fix social care
He can claim a success on the first point, but his method for cutting the Gordian Knot left us in a situation that isn't really to anyone's taste. At best, you could say that it provided a platform that better things could be built on.
He made lots of noise about levelling up, but not much happened. Some of the lack of progress can reasonably be blamed on the pandemic - but the entire direction of the government has been reversed since then, so any credit that should have been accrued has since evaporated.
Social care is still a dead loss. Sunak's final budget contained a parody of Dilnot, but it was dumped within months by Kwarteng, and no-one's mentioned the subject since.
Would anyone find a Borisian alternative to either Sunak or Starmer attractive? I think they might - a big, exciting, colourful promise to turn the taps back on. More levelling up! Build HS2! Millions of affordable homes! Open dental schools! New hospitals for the North!
But would anyone now trust him to actually deliver on that? Probably not. Especially since the Truss interlude, I think people are in a much more pessimistic - perhaps even fearful - mood.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
You’re just the latest in a long series of forecasters stretching back more than a century, who have proved unable to perceive the wider picture of how these inventions will actually change the world, events having developed to deliver precisely the opposite of what you and they forecast.
In times past you’d have been one of those writing about how technology would either make us all destitute or deliver us a life consisting almost entirely of leisure time, complimenting yourself on your supposed far-sightedness while the rest of us hurtled towards the tyranny of the 24/7 email inbox.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Yeah, but then you realise that SORA can create a video of a guy carrying a bowl of milk across a cathedral filled with cats to make an offering to the Cat King
Ultimately, what's the point in being human? At the minute, AI is a bit of a wonder, like the internet back in the late 90s- full of possibilities but we're not sure where it'll go. Once we get true AI, humans become surplus to requirements for vast swathes of employment. Couple that with driverless vehicles and planes, robot surgeons, AI fighting machines....we just become pointless. There's too many of us to all become The Culture, augmented, indestructible and virtually immortal, so we're done in a couple of hundred years!
To be honest, I think we're stuck with hoping that AI will turn out to be like the Minds of the Culture - anarchic, benevolent and remarkably like friendly 1980s Internet geeks.
But I don't think the past behaviour of higher life forms towards lower life forms augurs well for that hope.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I think the point is that society changes and adapts. The 1830s gave us the swing riots, after the thresher more or less eliminated 25% of all jobs in the country at the time. Unemployment isn't at 25% today, and if it ever does rise to those levels, we can be pretty sure it isn't due to the prevalence of the threshing machine.
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
AI is fundamentally different from 19th century technology.
What you're hoping is that the amount of work to be done will expand father than the capacity of AI to do it.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
I am fairly certain that if there had been no Partygate and its fallout, Boris would have probably been on course for a victory this year, though it may have been a small majority like Major’s.
If Boris was still around you don’t get the Truss disaster & Kwarteng budget, so while I don’t doubt we’d have had bad economic news the Tories would have been able to hide behind Ukraine/global uncertainty to shield them somewhat. It wouldn’t have been a very good government, but it would have been a government with a fighting chance, and a majority of 80 is typically difficult to overturn.
Of course, this analysis requires you to make Boris into someone he isn’t - it is now sadly obvious (to the extent it wasn’t already) that the man himself is such a liability and a chancer that he was always likely to come a cropper with one thing or another.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I think the point is that society changes and adapts. The 1830s gave us the swing riots, after the thresher more or less eliminated 25% of all jobs in the country at the time. Unemployment isn't at 25% today, and if it ever does rise to those levels, we can be pretty sure it isn't due to the prevalence of the threshing machine.
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
AI is fundamentally different from 19th century technology.
What you're hoping is that the amount of work to be done will expand father than the capacity of AI to do it.
That is a huge leap of faith.
How many artillery shells can AI make per week?
Probably about as many as AI-controlled military hardware can fire.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I think the point is that society changes and adapts. The 1830s gave us the swing riots, after the thresher more or less eliminated 25% of all jobs in the country at the time. Unemployment isn't at 25% today, and if it ever does rise to those levels, we can be pretty sure it isn't due to the prevalence of the threshing machine.
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
AI is fundamentally different from 19th century technology.
What you're hoping is that the amount of work to be done will expand father than the capacity of AI to do it.
That is a huge leap of faith.
AI development could stall tomorrow. We are in uncharted territory. It has been developing with great speed but there could be unknown obstacles ahead which suddenly halt it. Eg maybe we run out of data to feed them (we are supposedly close) and then they stop getting better?
I imagine we would PROBABLY find a way around that but maybe not
No one expected it to leap ahead this quick and the corollary of that is no one knows if it will suddenly stop
Personally my estimate is it will keep developing fast for long enough to transform economies but I cannot be SURE
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
No. I don’t know what will happen next. That’s the point.
And a highly sensible opinion to hold seeing as literally no one has successfully predicted the last couple of years in AI. It constantly surprises - generally on the “upside” - it advances quicker than anyone imagines
One has to wonder how long OpenAI have been sitting on Sora. They must have known it would feel revolutionary
Also it’s impressive so little leaks out of that company. It reminds me of the chocolate factory in roald Dahl
Wonders are glimpsed within. Then wow they show something
Have they achieved AGI internally, as is rumoured?
Altman flatly said 'no' a month or so ago. But also didn't say which definition of 'AGI' he meant.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
You’re just the latest in a long series of forecasters stretching back more than a century, who have proved unable to perceive the wider picture of how these inventions will actually change the world, events having developed to deliver precisely the opposite of what you and they forecast.
In times past you’d have been one of those writing about how technology would either make us all destitute or deliver us a life consisting almost entirely of leisure time, complimenting yourself on your supposed far-sightedness while the rest of us hurtled towards the tyranny of the 24/7 email inbox.
Obviously the difference now is the possibility of artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence in certain respects. It doesn't have to do it in every respect to be an existential threat.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
I am fairly certain that if there had been no Partygate and its fallout, Boris would have probably been on course for a victory this year, though it may have been a small majority like Major’s.
If Boris was still around you don’t get the Truss disaster & Kwarteng budget, so while I don’t doubt we’d have had bad economic news the Tories would have been able to hide behind Ukraine/global uncertainty to shield them somewhat. It wouldn’t have been a very good government, but it would have been a government with a fighting chance, and a majority of 80 is typically difficult to overturn.
Of course, this analysis requires you to make Boris isn’t someone he isn’t - it is now sadly obvious (to the extent it wasn’t already) that the man himself is such a liability and a chancer that he was always likely to come a cropper with one thing or another.
Worth noting that the thing that ended Boris's Premiership wasn't the Partygate lies, it was the Pincher lies.
There was always going to be something, the only questions were what and when.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
I am fairly certain that if there had been no Partygate and its fallout, Boris would have probably been on course for a victory this year, though it may have been a small majority like Major’s.
If Boris was still around you don’t get the Truss disaster & Kwarteng budget, so while I don’t doubt we’d have had bad economic news the Tories would have been able to hide behind Ukraine/global uncertainty to shield them somewhat. It wouldn’t have been a very good government, but it would have been a government with a fighting chance, and a majority of 80 is typically difficult to overturn.
Of course, this analysis requires you to make Boris isn’t someone he isn’t - it is now sadly obvious (to the extent it wasn’t already) that the man himself is such a liability and a chancer that he was always likely to come a cropper with one thing or another.
Worth noting that the thing that ended Boris's Premiership wasn't the Partygate lies, it was the Pincher lies.
There was always going to be something, the only questions were what and when.
Yes, I think that’s right, though I think he would’ve got away with the Pincher stuff if it didn’t immediately follow on the back of Partygate. Partygate cut through. It was a perfect scandal, because not only did it make the government and Boris look mendacious and self serving but it made the public angry and upset too given the Covid sacrifices they had made.
But yes, the point is true. Given who Boris is, if these things hadn’t happened/been fatal there is a good chance something else would’ve been.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
I am fairly certain that if there had been no Partygate and its fallout, Boris would have probably been on course for a victory this year, though it may have been a small majority like Major’s.
If Boris was still around you don’t get the Truss disaster & Kwarteng budget, so while I don’t doubt we’d have had bad economic news the Tories would have been able to hide behind Ukraine/global uncertainty to shield them somewhat. It wouldn’t have been a very good government, but it would have been a government with a fighting chance, and a majority of 80 is typically difficult to overturn.
Of course, this analysis requires you to make Boris isn’t someone he isn’t - it is now sadly obvious (to the extent it wasn’t already) that the man himself is such a liability and a chancer that he was always likely to come a cropper with one thing or another.
Worth noting that the thing that ended Boris's Premiership wasn't the Partygate lies, it was the Pincher lies.
There was always going to be something, the only questions were what and when.
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
I am fairly certain that if there had been no Partygate and its fallout, Boris would have probably been on course for a victory this year, though it may have been a small majority like Major’s.
If Boris was still around you don’t get the Truss disaster & Kwarteng budget, so while I don’t doubt we’d have had bad economic news the Tories would have been able to hide behind Ukraine/global uncertainty to shield them somewhat. It wouldn’t have been a very good government, but it would have been a government with a fighting chance, and a majority of 80 is typically difficult to overturn.
Of course, this analysis requires you to make Boris isn’t someone he isn’t - it is now sadly obvious (to the extent it wasn’t already) that the man himself is such a liability and a chancer that he was always likely to come a cropper with one thing or another.
Worth noting that the thing that ended Boris's Premiership wasn't the Partygate lies, it was the Pincher lies.
There was always going to be something, the only questions were what and when.
Yes, I think that’s right, though I think he would’ve got away with the Pincher stuff if it didn’t immediately follow on the back of Partygate. Partygate cut through. It was a perfect scandal, because not only did it make the government and Boris look mendacious and self serving but it made the public angry and upset too given the Covid sacrifices they had made.
But yes, the point is true. Given who Boris is, if these things hadn’t happened/been fatal there is a good chance something else would’ve been.
However we might choose to rewrite history, there isn’t, however, any scenario where someone so flawed and unsuitable for high office emerges as a hero. The downfall was written in advance - as I and others long predicted on here - and it was simply a matter of guessing at the time and place and cause.
Notice she doesn't actually address his allegation that he was ordered to slow down payments to Horizon victims.
Her whole argument hinges on her "I wouldn't ignore the allegations" statement.
But, er, that's plainly an assertion - not a fact.
The stuff about how "the details will emerge soon enough" is odd, too. She's speaking as if she has no power in the situation, but she's the minister in charge!
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Yeah, but then you realise that SORA can create a video of a guy carrying a bowl of milk across a cathedral filled with cats to make an offering to the Cat King
Clips of yesterday's Palestine rally again included the chant "no ceasefire, no vote" which might be electorally important, especially if it spreads from London to Rochdale whose by-election is on the 29th.
Yes. Labour will be fine in our election (they have a buffer on the buffer) but I'm a bit worried about this for Biden.
One bit of data suggests that there is more to be said. If I understand the maths correctly, Labour need a swing of 12.7 percentage points to get an overall majority. Ignore Wellingborough - special case of banana ex MP and banana candidate. At Kingswood they got a 16 point swing. On the whole those predicting the result (including PBers) thought Labour would do better. That is not safe home territory when a GE campaign - which will be horrible and dirty - hasn't really started.
NOM remains value. And why else is Rishi 7/1 (Hills) and not 66/1 to be PM after the next election?
I don’t think it’s simply a case of Kingswood being the normal swing and Wellingborough being freakish. At the real election I reckon we’re going to get some very variable swing in different types of constituency.
Kingswood is another urban fringe seat like Uxbridge. In this parliament the defences that have fared best for the Conservatives have been Old Bexley and Crayford (10% swing), Uxbridge and South Ruislip (6.7%), and Kingswood. The worst for them have been rural Southern towns and Red Wall seats.
The GE will be fascinating. There will be surprise Labour victories in unexpected places, particularly coastal towns and the countryside, and tenacious Tory holds in rurban fringe metrolands. Labour will flatline in London and the Tories not do too badly.
Rishi is relatively more popular than Boris now in London and cities and suburban areas but less popular than Boris in coastal towns, market towns and rural areas
It’s your party that’s less popular, for having inflicted that lying idiot on us in the first place. Like you were told, at the time.
It was Boris who won the biggest Conservative landslide since Thatcher in 2019, Boris who was the first Tory leader ever to win most of the redwall seats and the largest percentage of DE voters too.
When Boris left office the Tory poll rating was also higher than it is now. You can argue about Boris not being competent enough or moral enough to be PM, however he was also the biggest Tory vote winner as leader since Thatcher
Is there a scenario where Boris Johnson is currently on his way to be elected in another landslide? How would that have come about, what would he have to have done (or not done)?
One where Boris Johnson isn't Boris Johnson? The government does similar on Covid while avoiding some of the more egregious bits of grift. The parties don't happen. Government gets some blame for failures - ditches a few scapegoats (e.g. Hancock) and comes out of Covid on a relatively even keel with Labour. Economy isn't great but avoids the Truss debacle - so is more easily explained away as a global phenomenon and mixed picture.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
The government came out of covid well ahead of Labour.
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
I am not sure Johnson got all the big calls right as you suggest.
He oversaw the PPE scandal, and 150,000 people died on his watch, some because he made late calls. I don't blame him for his indecision, but you can't claim COVID as a win without considering the negatives. On the other hand his appointment of Kate Bingham was his big victory.
Ukraine to this cynic looked like a last throw of the dice. Yes, the right thing to do, but don't we need to balance that against the patronage of Putin Oligarchs in his orbit?
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Perhaps the most stupid contribution to the debate I've ever seen.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I think the point is that society changes and adapts. The 1830s gave us the swing riots, after the thresher more or less eliminated 25% of all jobs in the country at the time. Unemployment isn't at 25% today, and if it ever does rise to those levels, we can be pretty sure it isn't due to the prevalence of the threshing machine.
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
AI is fundamentally different from 19th century technology.
What you're hoping is that the amount of work to be done will expand father than the capacity of AI to do it.
That is a huge leap of faith.
AI development could stall tomorrow. We are in uncharted territory. It has been developing with great speed but there could be unknown obstacles ahead which suddenly halt it. Eg maybe we run out of data to feed them (we are supposedly close) and then they stop getting better?
I imagine we would PROBABLY find a way around that but maybe not
No one expected it to leap ahead this quick and the corollary of that is no one knows if it will suddenly stop
Personally my estimate is it will keep developing fast for long enough to transform economies but I cannot be SURE
We've always had technological evolution that has displaced people - never mind the threshers, there's a reason why there are no more coal miners or typing pools, to give more contemporary examples.
The difference is all of these revolutions largely displaced people who were at the poorer end of the spectrum. This is the first revolution I can think of that means lawyers will have to retrain as plumbers, management consultants will have to become bottom wipers in care homes, etc.
How society will react to this is anyone's guess. However, if you subscribe to the "overproduction of elites" theory, if you think things are bad now, wait until most skill/knowledge based jobs become automated...
@CorrectHorseBattery and many others said it was only a matter of time before Johnson was caught out. Those who had watched him in London knew that it was a matter of when, not if. So I agree with the commentary above.
I do think the odds of a Labour victory were always underpriced after GE19.
OK I tend to be a techno-optimist, but the more you read about the latest AI the gloomier it gets. Virtually every cognitive job will be menaced within a decade or so. WTF will that do to us?
Maybe. Then again the first ever international urban planning conference in 1898 broke up early because the attendees were so disheartened by the projections of every major city in the world being buried under 9 feet of horse manure by 1930. Then something else came along.
Yeah, but then you realise that SORA can create a video of a guy carrying a bowl of milk across a cathedral filled with cats to make an offering to the Cat King
Looks like it will be a lot better in 5 yrs time. Shame. It was somehow nice to know that every animated film would take years to make.
Is AI going to feed me, clothe me or keep me warm? Is it going to install a new garage door, lay a new stair carpet, service my car? Is it going to extract my dodgy molar and replace it with an implant? Is it going to pollard my willows? And that's just this week.
Or is it merely going to address the worldwide shortage of uninteresting movies?
Comments
ETA bondegezou has a better explanation where "implicit" does describe the engine.
So you can think of the output as a map of the alps. You want the best result - which is the lowest point you can find.
So you try and random point, then vary the inputs to see if you can find “down hill” and keep trying to go lower.
It’s not learning by any measure. It’s about semi randomly twiddling knobs to try and get a better result.
Edit: I actually played with tuning a gradient descent algorithm with a gradient descent algorithm on GPU.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/298527/defense-spending-as-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/#:~:text=Defense spending as share of GDP in the UK 1980-2021&text=In 2021, the United Kingdom's,was spent on the military.
Which would be about £50bn per year currently.
That would be able to fund a great deal of industrial investment.
The chief music writer for the NME had a fabulous time, as did - even more so - the main guy on Rolling Stone
I arrived in London in the 80s when that model had about a decade to run, I saw some of it
Humans will lose purpose. It is ominous
But yes, the four year cycle of local elections is a curious beast. 1996 (which I think was roughly comparable with 2024, they're both leap years) saw L+468 C-607.
!The sad thing is, its NOT possible to adapt.
Back when stable diffusion released, I was trying to evangelize it in artist communities (I love viewing art). Because I knew it was going overturn the art world, so better adapt early rather than get swept away right?
But the pace of improvement in AI art models was just too rapid.
2022-08, SD was released, it can do art, but generally very ugly and barely useful
2022-11, MJv4/NAIv1, can now consistently do human faces very well
2023-03, MJv5/SD fine tunes, drastic improvement in aesthetic quality, can now match most human artists albeit far less flexible.
2023-11. DALLE-3/MJv6 - full photorealism, text support, and strong prompt comprehension. NAIv3, can full on clone most top tier artists, and often do better than those top-tier artists because they can effortless combine and merge artstyles with just prompting.
2024-02 SORA is announced. Every single frame blows DALLE-3/MJv6 out of the water, AND it can do fully cohesive 60 second videos.
How is an artist supposed to adapt? Its barely been a year, and AI went from a cheap-but-worse replacement to 'draws way better AND way cheaper AND soon to draw an entire video in the time you drew a doodle'. What exactly is the artist supposed to do? The best is just fixing AI errors in photoshop. And learning any tools like ComfyUI or Automatic1111 is also futile, because the newer models are so much better than the open source models."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)#The_Butlerian_Jihad
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-rishi-sunak-general-election-keir-starmer-12593360
East Midlands New position
Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (Labour Co-op)
Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram (Lab)
North East[b] New position
South Yorkshire[9] Oliver Coppard (Labour Co-op)
Tees Valley Ben Houchen (Con)
West Midlands Andy Street (Con)
West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin (Labour Co-op)
York and North Yorkshire[10] New position
Can see them keeping West Midlands and possibly winning the East Midlands & North Yorkshire but I suspect Tees Valley is lost...
For example in 1998 the Conservatives gained a net 256 councillors, in 1999 a net 1,348 councillors and 2000 a net 594 Tory council seats were gained. Even if Hague lost the 2001 general election by a landslide almost as badly as Major had lost the 1997 general election.
So if the Tories go into opposition, prospects may improve for Tory local election candidates, even if they don't much for Tory parliamentary candidates yet
I wonder if it could happen. If it looks like AI will turn life for everyone into purposeless tedium...
In all seriousness there is a possibility, albeit slight, that AI may become taboo if it is shown to have a harmful effect on humanity - like incest and folk dancing. At some point in our past we noticed that shagging our brothers and sisters was fun but having less than beneficial effects. The same may, possibly, happen with AI, although I accept that’s unlikely.
So they will climb out of the bunker, after the apocalypse, untouched.
They were all over the U.S. back in the 80s.
...At its height of popularity between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, Kinko's outlets in urban centres across North America were catch basins for writers, artists, anarchists, punks, insomniacs, graduate students, DIY bookmakers, zinesters, obsessive compulsive hobbyists, scam artists, people living on the street, and people just living on the edge. Whether you were promoting a new band or publishing a pamphlet on DIY gynaecology or making a fake ID for an underage friend, Kinko's was the place to be..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-68330645
Really astonishing books. Full of remarkable insights.
So that putative battle is already lost.
We are stuck in a doom loop where most of the money sloshing around the economy simply sinks into house price inflation, state pension hikes and luxury spending by the already well-off. Everything else is so neglected that, when our panicking politicians decide some years down the line that they need a bigger army, they'll forcibly conscript young people as cannon fodder on the minimum wage and send them into battle armed with confiscated archery club equipment and garden tools.
We managed to keep a global lid on nukes for many decades, and they have still not ever been re-used since 1945. AI is potentiallu just as dangerous as nuclear, perhaps even more - because it is so much more complex and profound. We are creating an alien mind, not just a massive new weapon
Our society can't function without tech, and these developments are so widely distributed - and rapidly becoming far more so - that there isn't a plug. Or even a few thousand plugs.
And that's assuming said purposeful intelligence announces itself.
It is like when photography came along. Portrait artists at the top and bottom survived but the mass market in the middle was eclipsed, but also everyone could now have a photo of mum and dad's wedding on the mantlepiece.
We need to break out if it.
https://twitter.com/MoscowTimes/status/1758967794392023113
I have been to Sandormokh.
Yuri Dmitriev, one of the people who helped uncover this mass grave, is now in prison too
https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1759163360107446672
For the avoidance of doubt, I have nothing at all against AI taking over, and will be happy to do whatever I can to facilitate it.
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/18/trump-campaign-reaches-out-to-arab-americans-in-michigan/72646748007/
..During the rally, Rola Makki, of Dearborn, vice president of outreach for the Michigan GOP, was seen in the audience wearing a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, and a red pullover that read in white letters: "Arab Americans for Trump." Makki has previously criticized Democrats for supporting some LGBTQ books in Dearborn public schools that she and others said were too sexually explicit. Makki and Hacham have been active in the GOP in Michigan, saying the party has been reaching out to minority communities. Three of the vice chairs in the Michigan GOP are Muslim...
It's just that I have the common sense to realise that the current settlement is also a recipe for eventual systemic collapse. Like all of the better off, I'm reduced to keeping my fingers crossed that I'm safely dead of old age before everything goes to shit.
Being merely middle aged, rather than one amongst the legion of pampered Tory elderly, the likelihood of achieving this blessed outcome isn't so great.
Boris argues that the failures to level up or Brexit issues not living up to its promises are down to Covid and reactivates the Brexit divides more plausibly, rather than it looking desperate when most people have turned against it.
Finally, having not established a strong poll lead, Starmer is a lot more vulnerable to criticism from the Corbynista left and is a weakened figure facing big splits, calls to resign and without the internal power that comes from success. Labour descends into civil war in expectation of another defeat that becomes self-fulfilling.
First, he would have needed to regenerate his personality, Prince Hal to King Henry. People do that, but in the end Boris couldn't.
Harder still... The promises made and implied 2016-9 would always have been a millstone, even without COVID or Ukraine. So there would still have been a steady flow of voters turning against him- as happened throughout 2020, and again from summer 2021. So those promises needed to not happen.
But without those promises, it might all have played out differently and there might not have been a first Boris landslide to protect.
Here's a grim thought though. Imagine the Labour grief cycle had played out differently. It could have been Rishi-Jez in 2024/5.
They have an endowment of £1.3bn from the Scott Trust, which has increased in value by £300m since 2018. Should be enough to tide them over for the foreseeable future...
https://x.com/middleeasteye/status/1758996104610201972?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
We should probably expect some media commentators and/or party spin doctors to try to gloss over it: "Oh, yes, the Tories lost 350 seats, but last year and the year before they lost over a thousand each time. This proves it wasn't so bad for them and they're recovering..."
https://x.com/billpeeb/status/1758650919430848991?s=20
And thrashed Labour in the 2021 local elections - Starmer was looking defeated at that point.
The Labour leader said he took "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party had lost the trust of voters and he would "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-57025912
It was the parties and PPE revelations that did for Boris.
Without that its pretty smooth going for Boris.
He gets to play at Churchill in Ukraine while shouting "Full employment, affordable housing, more NHS spending" on every visit north of the Trent.
While leaving the hard work to people who can do it.
So how do we avoid the lockdown parties and tolerance of sleaze ?
Perhaps its a simple of Boris having a different wife - one which can control his worst tendencies rather than encourage them.
You think some technological advance will come along to stop AI working?
I suspect AI will just prove Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fit the spaces available.
At the minute, AI is a bit of a wonder, like the internet back in the late 90s- full of possibilities but we're not sure where it'll go. Once we get true AI, humans become surplus to requirements for vast swathes of employment. Couple that with driverless vehicles and planes, robot surgeons, AI fighting machines....we just become pointless.
There's too many of us to all become The Culture, augmented, indestructible and virtually immortal, so we're done in a couple of hundred years!
Traditionally, and roughly speaking, the south had plenty of jobs but unaffordable housing whereas the north had a shortage of jobs but affordable housing.
Now the north has plenty of jobs and still has affordable housing.
As I doubt this was planned I'll term it as a happy accident.
But its the sort of thing Boris would have been good at exploiting electorally.
One has to wonder how long OpenAI have been sitting on Sora. They must have known it would feel revolutionary
Also it’s impressive so little leaks out of that company. It reminds me of the chocolate factory in roald Dahl
Wonders are glimpsed within. Then wow they show something
Have they achieved AGI internally, as is rumoured?
What you're hoping is that the amount of work to be done will expand father than the capacity of AI to do it.
That is a huge leap of faith.
The Henry Staunton Sunday Times interview is a disgraceful misrepresentation of my conversation with him and the reasons for his dismissal.
This was all explained to the journalist who chose to ignore the facts and run with Staunton’s words.
Here are the facts:👇 (1/5)
https://twitter.com/KemiBadenoch/status/1759214396402790634
1) Get Brexit Done
2) Levelling Up
3) Fix social care
He can claim a success on the first point, but his method for cutting the Gordian Knot left us in a situation that isn't really to anyone's taste. At best, you could say that it provided a platform that better things could be built on.
He made lots of noise about levelling up, but not much happened. Some of the lack of progress can reasonably be blamed on the pandemic - but the entire direction of the government has been reversed since then, so any credit that should have been accrued has since evaporated.
Social care is still a dead loss. Sunak's final budget contained a parody of Dilnot, but it was dumped within months by Kwarteng, and no-one's mentioned the subject since.
Would anyone find a Borisian alternative to either Sunak or Starmer attractive? I think they might - a big, exciting, colourful promise to turn the taps back on. More levelling up! Build HS2! Millions of affordable homes! Open dental schools! New hospitals for the North!
But would anyone now trust him to actually deliver on that? Probably not. Especially since the Truss interlude, I think people are in a much more pessimistic - perhaps even fearful - mood.
In times past you’d have been one of those writing about how technology would either make us all destitute or deliver us a life consisting almost entirely of leisure time, complimenting yourself on your supposed far-sightedness while the rest of us hurtled towards the tyranny of the 24/7 email inbox.
But I don't think the past behaviour of higher life forms towards lower life forms augurs well for that hope.
If Boris was still around you don’t get the Truss disaster & Kwarteng budget, so while I don’t doubt we’d have had bad economic news the Tories would have been able to hide behind Ukraine/global uncertainty to shield them somewhat. It wouldn’t have been a very good government, but it would have been a government with a fighting chance, and a majority of 80 is typically difficult to overturn.
Of course, this analysis requires you to make Boris into someone he isn’t - it is now sadly obvious (to the extent it wasn’t already) that the man himself is such a liability and a chancer that he was always likely to come a cropper with one thing or another.
I imagine we would PROBABLY find a way around that but maybe not
No one expected it to leap ahead this quick and the corollary of that is no one knows if it will suddenly stop
Personally my estimate is it will keep developing fast for long enough to transform economies but I cannot be SURE
There was always going to be something, the only questions were what and when.
But yes, the point is true. Given who Boris is, if these things hadn’t happened/been fatal there is a good chance something else would’ve been.
But, er, that's plainly an assertion - not a fact.
The stuff about how "the details will emerge soon enough" is odd, too. She's speaking as if she has no power in the situation, but she's the minister in charge!
When Boris left office the Tory poll rating was also higher than it is now. You can argue about Boris not being competent enough or moral enough to be PM, however he was also the biggest Tory vote winner as leader since Thatcher
He oversaw the PPE scandal, and 150,000 people died on his watch, some because he made late calls. I don't blame him for his indecision, but you can't claim COVID as a win without considering the negatives. On the other hand his appointment of Kate Bingham was his big victory.
Ukraine to this cynic looked like a last throw of the dice. Yes, the right thing to do, but don't we need to balance that against the patronage of Putin Oligarchs in his orbit?
The difference is all of these revolutions largely displaced people who were at the poorer end of the spectrum. This is the first revolution I can think of that means lawyers will have to retrain as plumbers, management consultants will have to become bottom wipers in care homes, etc.
How society will react to this is anyone's guess. However, if you subscribe to the "overproduction of elites" theory, if you think things are bad now, wait until most skill/knowledge based jobs become automated...
I do think the odds of a Labour victory were always underpriced after GE19.
Or is it merely going to address the worldwide shortage of uninteresting movies?