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The situation has developed not necessarily to Kemi Badenoch’s advantage – politicalbetting.com

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  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682
    edited February 21
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,933
    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    Here is Gerard Manley Hopkins, in one of his terrible sonnets, using a noun as a verb. "Day"


    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
    What? Now I really don’t like Manley Hopkins but he isn’t using Day as a verb.

    He’s searching for comfort that he can’t find just like blind eyes can’t find day.
    Shakespeare, then.
    "Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle..."
  • boulay said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    Here is Gerard Manley Hopkins, in one of his terrible sonnets, using a noun as a verb. "Day"


    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
    What? Now I really don’t like Manley Hopkins but he isn’t using Day as a verb.

    He’s searching for comfort that he can’t find just like blind eyes can’t find day.
    Then one of the two "can"s in that line is superfluous.
  • viewcode said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.
    Well we must build one then. It's not a nice-to-have, it's a must-have.

    I propose the following
    1) Pick an isolated island which we own. Tristan De Cunha for example
    2) Take the warhead out of a couple of missiles. Replace with a brick of the same weight
    3) Launch the missiles for real at isolated island
    4) Keep going, repairing missiles at need, until you hit it
    5) Go to pub

    Life is really not difficult at the basics.


    Operation Frigate Bird has entered the chat.

    image
    "Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?"
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Too many commas. Try this

    "This is the trail, the churn, the veil. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river where light and dawn and slight gather in lee, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    "lea" (grassland or pasture) works but "lee" (the side sheltered from the elements) works better in this context. I think "vail" should be replaced by "veil". The whole describes a chaotic end state gathering to become a new beginning, order out of chaos and the new life from the old.
    You can picture some mad but gifted preacherman saying this, to a faithful congregation gathered between their pioneer wagons, on the Oregon Trail. As he reaches the crescendo, the preacher points to the great winding river, and the sunset in the west, because here at this "very bend in the river", "we see not end, but inklings of the ever"


    oooh. Shiver

    And on they go towards the promised West
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,498
    BBC Newsnight have a piece on grooming gangs in Rochdale

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-68300484
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,453

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    Here is Gerard Manley Hopkins, in one of his terrible sonnets, using a noun as a verb. "Day"


    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
    What? Now I really don’t like Manley Hopkins but he isn’t using Day as a verb.

    He’s searching for comfort that he can’t find just like blind eyes can’t find day.
    Then one of the two "can"s in that line is superfluous.
    Every word written by Manley Hopkins is superfluous.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,933

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    Here is Gerard Manley Hopkins, in one of his terrible sonnets, using a noun as a verb. "Day"


    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
    What? Now I really don’t like Manley Hopkins but he isn’t using Day as a verb.

    He’s searching for comfort that he can’t find just like blind eyes can’t find day.
    Then one of the two "can"s in that line is superfluous.
    You're saying can a can ?
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,253
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 8,569
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    ///useless.trident.missile
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,446

    It's sad that Badenoch is imploding like this. As a Labour supporter I was really hoping that the Tories would make her leader after the election. Perhaps we'll have to make do with Braverman.

    This post makes me cross. 😡

    If you believe in democracy and our country, you had better be joking. We need the best possible people as PM and LOTO.

    Tory Idiots signed up to labour to install Corbyn. Up against Boris it was a toss up for some voters which was worse. We were just one bad recession away from PM Corbyn.

    What did Tories installing Corbyn actually achieve for the Tories? Extra time in office longer than they should have been there? Well maybe that’s not particularly sensible, if it results in a support crash. Under 150 Tories in the next parliament is no actual opposition to what government is doing for at least one of multiple terms in office.

    And then observing all this bad for your opponent, you then wish the same for your own side in your post.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,751
    F1: I see the dimwits in charge have put the testing session notes behind their login wall. Still refusing to get an account for the privilege of seeing basic info.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,933
    edited February 21
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Let's partner with the South Koreans, then.
    It would be a lot cheaper, and they will work. Probably come with a multidecade warranty.

    They already have IRSLBMs.
    https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/04/south-korea-conducts-second-slbm-test-from-kss-iii-submarine/
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,723
    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Too many commas. Try this

    "This is the trail, the churn, the veil. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river where light and dawn and slight gather in lee, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    "lea" (grassland or pasture) works but "lee" (the side sheltered from the elements) works better in this context. I think "vail" should be replaced by "veil". The whole describes a chaotic end state gathering to become a new beginning, order out of chaos and the new life from the old.
    You can picture some mad but gifted preacherman saying this, to a faithful congregation gathered between their pioneer wagons, on the Oregon Trail. As he reaches the crescendo, the preacher points to the great winding river, and the sunset in the west, because here at this "very bend in the river", "we see not end, but inklings of the ever"


    oooh. Shiver

    And on they go towards the promised West
    But - you are sampling the best bits in your perception.

    The original request was for a rseplacement marketing blurb for Lyle's Golden Syrup, for all you know.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,186
    HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    Not sure why WilliamGlenn has stopped posting the Forsa German polling so here's the latest:
    Union 30
    AfD 17
    SPD 15
    Greens 14
    FDP 5
    BSW 4
    FW 3
    Left 3
    Others 9

    In local news from Thüringen: the house of an SPD politician who organised an anti-AfD demo caught fire on Monday morning, and local SPD offices were attacked. Linke offices also had swastikas painted on them. There's been quite a lot of intimidation and low-level violence in the former East Germany against those speaking out against the AfD. The political problem for the AfD is they seem unwilling, or unable, to properly distance themselves from it.

    https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/thueringen-reaktionen-102.html

    On that polling CDU and AfD have more combined than SDP, Green, FDP and even Linke too combined.

    So it looks like the CDU will return to government again after the next German election, probably in another grand collection with the SDP, assuming Merz continues to refuse to do a Federal deal with the AfD
    Firstly, why do you think Union/SPD would be more likely than Union/Green? I think Union/Green would be more likely.

    Secondly there is zero chance of a Union or CDU coalition with the AfD in the next parliament. (And it's not up to Merz the CDU would have to change its constitution).
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,914

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    I remember when we used to ridicule the use of Wikipedia as a reference, but the future is a Wikipedia written by LLMs. Mostly it will read plausibly, and it will have references, but it will all be made up.

    This stuff is finding its way into peer-reviewed articles already, and we knew that a lot of rubbish could do that, but I think it points to the biggest failing of LLMs. They seem to have no concept of fact or fiction, and if they don't know the answer to something they will just make one up.

    At a time when we're struggling to hold the line against people intentionally lying and maliciously spreading falsehoods, the last thing we need are bullshit generating machines which have a veneer of trustworthiness because they've had the name "Artificial Intelligence" attached to them.
    Unfortunately, I think the horse has already bolted on fact-checking, even before AI. Journalism isn't what it used to be, and as you point out, we've already seen the wikipedia-isation of everything even before AI. They might not be 100% accurate facts, but they're "good-enough" facts for 99% of the people 99% of the time.

    The main worry for me is the way AI is coming for creativity. Leon's sonnets actually prove the point somewhat. AI is comparatively good at poetry, because poetry is formulaic. A sonnet is a formula. A limerick. A haiku. It's as much about meter and cadence as it is about painting a canvas. Where AI excels is at filling in the gaps based on existing formulae. In other words, you can spot AI generated stuff pretty quickly because it's so formulaic.

    Consider the film industry. AI will be brilliant at churning out Superhero Movie XIII from here to infinity, because most movies follow a very basic formula (see the screenwriting book called 'save the cat' which probably defined the modern movie formula as-is). And for 99% of people 99% of the time, that's good enough to entertain them. But AI falls down spectacularly when it's asked to create something outside of those narrow formulae. It'd fail to give us a Paris, Texas or In the Mood for Love, for example. Because it really has no frame of reference for creating anything new, only rehashing old ingredients to create the illusion of newness.

    The future looks bland, mass produced, devoid of any kind of creativity. Simply because the AI generated crap will crowd out the creative stuff, due to being several orders of speed and cost less to create.

    To return to your point about facts, the same is already true of internet searches to an extent. I rarely search for anything any more on Google without appending the term "reddit" to it because it's the only way I know of finding a genuine, unpaywalled, unbiased and human-written answer to a question. "what's the best electric razor?" as a Google search will return 100 pages of SEO-optimised marketing pap designed as a sales funnel to get you to click a link at the end of the article to whatever they're selling. Now increasingly generated by AI. "what's the best electric razor reddit" will get you hundreds of human-written opinions. Once AI starts astroturfing that en masse, it's going to be pretty hard to find anything at all.

    AI training itself on AI generated stuff will be the next phase of the enshittification cycle. Recycling its own mass produced crap.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    edited February 21
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.
  • Government finances show big surplus in January
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68346802

    Just in time for PMQs.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,008
    HYUFD said:

    ...The French of course have their own independent deterrent...

    They have a Force de Frappé. We, apparently, have a Force de Ploppé. The only thing we can currently nuke is Aquaman. This is really not good... :(

  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,754

    It's sad that Badenoch is imploding like this. As a Labour supporter I was really hoping that the Tories would make her leader after the election. Perhaps we'll have to make do with Braverman.

    This post makes me cross. 😡

    If you believe in democracy and our country, you had better be joking. We need the best possible people as PM and LOTO.

    Tory Idiots signed up to labour to install Corbyn. Up against Boris it was a toss up for some voters which was worse. We were just one bad recession away from PM Corbyn.

    What did Tories installing Corbyn actually achieve for the Tories? Extra time in office longer than they should have been there? Well maybe that’s not particularly sensible, if it results in a support crash. Under 150 Tories in the next parliament is no actual opposition to what government is doing for at least one of multiple terms in office.

    And then observing all this bad for your opponent, you then wish the same for your own side in your post.
    Yeah sorry I'm a bad man. To be honest I don't see the Tories forming an alternative government any time soon so I don't think it matters much who they choose but I'd love it if they went down the rabbit hole for a few years, they are the chief architects of this country's problems and they deserve everything they get.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,253
    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    I don’t think the UK can support the spending to develop & maintain the full nuclear triad right now, especially with MoD procurement the way it is (i.e. woeful). Having to support two out of the thee (bomb, launch platform, delivery method) is already difficult for us.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 70,933
    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.
    How significant was the Jonah effect ?
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,253
    edited February 21
    Dura_Ace said:


    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.

    On the Vanguard refuelling fiasco: https://www.navylookout.com/hms-vanguard-finally-sails-from-devonport-after-refit-lasting-more-than-7-years/
    A senior uniformed stakeholder admitted last year “Vanguard is a textbook example of how not to set up a major project. Among other things, we changed the scope of the project, did not invest in the workforce and did not invest in the infrastructure.”
    This is every MoD project ever? Too expensive, reduce scope mid-program, now it ends up both late & even more expensive than it was in the first place. It’s like a disease.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,754
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    Enshittification. The FT has a great article on this topic.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,048
    a
    Nigelb said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Let's partner with the South Koreans, then.
    It would be a lot cheaper, and they will work. Probably come with a multidecade warranty.

    They already have IRSLBMs.
    https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/04/south-korea-conducts-second-slbm-test-from-kss-iii-submarine/
    Israel - Jericho 3

    Wonder what the nominal yield of a Corbynite is?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039
    Phil said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.
    On the Vanguard refuelling fiasco: https://www.navylookout.com/hms-vanguard-finally-sails-from-devonport-after-refit-lasting-more-than-7-years/

    A senior uniformed stakeholder admitted last year “Vanguard is a textbook example of how not to set up a major project. Among other things, we changed the scope of the project, did not invest in the workforce and did not invest in the infrastructure.”

    This is every MoD project ever? Too expensive, reduce scope mid-program, now it ends up both late & even more expensive than it was in the first place. It’s like a disease.
    This is everything Britain has tried to do for the last four decades, basically

    We built the biggest empire the world has ever seen. Now I wonder if we can do our own laundry without falling into the tumble dryer
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,492
    Why are British people using the term "band aid"? The word is plaster over here.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,270
    edited February 21
    Phil said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.
    On the Vanguard refuelling fiasco: https://www.navylookout.com/hms-vanguard-finally-sails-from-devonport-after-refit-lasting-more-than-7-years/

    A senior uniformed stakeholder admitted last year “Vanguard is a textbook example of how not to set up a major project. Among other things, we changed the scope of the project, did not invest in the workforce and did not invest in the infrastructure.”

    This is every MoD project ever? Too expensive, reduce scope mid-program, now it ends up both late & even more expensive than it was in the first place. It’s like a disease.
    This is every Government project ever.

    The one thing I want to see a future government do is to implement on going projects where you create a set of experts (rail electrification, defence…) given them a long term pipeline of work and leave them to implement it


    What we should be stopping is the start stop, start again with a new team system we seem to have created over the last 50 years
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,008
    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Too many commas. Try this

    "This is the trail, the churn, the veil. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river where light and dawn and slight gather in lee, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    "lea" (grassland or pasture) works but "lee" (the side sheltered from the elements) works better in this context. I think "vail" should be replaced by "veil". The whole describes a chaotic end state gathering to become a new beginning, order out of chaos and the new life from the old.
    You can picture some mad but gifted preacherman saying this, to a faithful congregation gathered between their pioneer wagons, on the Oregon Trail. As he reaches the crescendo, the preacher points to the great winding river, and the sunset in the west, because here at this "very bend in the river", "we see not end, but inklings of the ever"


    oooh. Shiver

    And on they go towards the promised West
    I know. Despite my thumbfisted amendments to make it sayable, it was good enough as-is and better than I could do if asked.

    Looked at in the right way it's very exciting. The massive outpourings of data in our new age require rapid assessment for quality and priority - if you have ten thousand studies how do you sift for good and bad? - and AI will be the fastest way of doing this. We went thru crowdsourcing of data (Wikipedia), we did neural networks, we're still doing Machine Learning/Big Data (see various), but AI may succeed or at least augment them. An exciting time, but very disruptive.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    It's entirely possible and even likely that there was nothing wrong with the missile. Just somebody on the boat got the switchology wrong.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,336
    Andy_JS said:

    Why are British people using the term "band aid"? The word is plaster over here.

    Blame Bob Geldof.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,914
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,270
  • Andy_JS said:

    Why are British people using the term "band aid"? The word is plaster over here.

    Language evolves.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,677
    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    It's entirely possible and even likely that there was nothing wrong with the missile. Just somebody on the boat got the switchology wrong.
    PEBCAK?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Too many commas. Try this

    "This is the trail, the churn, the veil. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river where light and dawn and slight gather in lee, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    "lea" (grassland or pasture) works but "lee" (the side sheltered from the elements) works better in this context. I think "vail" should be replaced by "veil". The whole describes a chaotic end state gathering to become a new beginning, order out of chaos and the new life from the old.
    You can picture some mad but gifted preacherman saying this, to a faithful congregation gathered between their pioneer wagons, on the Oregon Trail. As he reaches the crescendo, the preacher points to the great winding river, and the sunset in the west, because here at this "very bend in the river", "we see not end, but inklings of the ever"


    oooh. Shiver

    And on they go towards the promised West
    I know. Despite my thumbfisted amendments to make it sayable, it was good enough as-is and better than I could do if asked.

    Looked at in the right way it's very exciting. The massive outpourings of data in our new age require rapid assessment for quality and priority - if you have ten thousand studies how do you sift for good and bad? - and AI will be the fastest way of doing this. We went thru crowdsourcing of data (Wikipedia), we did neural networks, we're still doing Machine Learning/Big Data (see various), but AI may succeed or at least augment them. An exciting time, but very disruptive.
    Yes, this is why I strongly disagree with @kyf_100's depressive take on AI quality

    AI will make amazing art, poetry, movies, music, simply because it will be able - unlike any human - to draw on every single artistic creation in history, to mash them, together, and make new things

    And of course it might come up with entirely new shit on its own. Imagination might be a new emergent property. A sentient machine will certainly have a diferent perspective on "life"

    But, yes, disruption. Incredible disruption, and it will be painful - that is certain
  • For safety’s sake the next Trident test should be in France.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,270
    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    It's entirely possible and even likely that there was nothing wrong with the missile. Just somebody on the boat got the switchology wrong.
    Did they ask the minister with many names to press the button?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,498
    edited February 21
    I’ve been using cellphone instead of mobile recently.

    I’m not sure how it happened.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,453
    Leon said:

    Phil said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.
    On the Vanguard refuelling fiasco: https://www.navylookout.com/hms-vanguard-finally-sails-from-devonport-after-refit-lasting-more-than-7-years/

    A senior uniformed stakeholder admitted last year “Vanguard is a textbook example of how not to set up a major project. Among other things, we changed the scope of the project, did not invest in the workforce and did not invest in the infrastructure.”

    This is every MoD project ever? Too expensive, reduce scope mid-program, now it ends up both late & even more expensive than it was in the first place. It’s like a disease.
    This is everything Britain has tried to do for the last four decades, basically

    We built the biggest empire the world has ever seen. Now I wonder if we can do our own laundry without falling into the tumble dryer
    Yes but people ignore the obvious reality that we built the empire and were top nation when we were ruled by public schoolboys and amateur nobles. Limited suffrage, no plebs in politics or the civil service. Certainly no female PMs yet alone MPs. No sons of tool makers done good trying to run things.

    It all started going downhill when everyone got woke and allowed everyone to vote and they allowed any old hoi polloi to be MPs or Civil Servants.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,677

    I’ve been using cellphone instead of mobile recently.

    I’m not sure how it happened. V

    Worry when you start speaking into your 'handy'
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,754
    eek said:
    Has Britain ever been a safe country from an Irish POV?
  • For safety’s sake the next Trident test should be in France.

    I propose Gaza.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,677

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    Here is Gerard Manley Hopkins, in one of his terrible sonnets, using a noun as a verb. "Day"


    I cast for comfort I can no more get
    By groping round my comfortless, than blind
    Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
    Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
    What? Now I really don’t like Manley Hopkins but he isn’t using Day as a verb.

    He’s searching for comfort that he can’t find just like blind eyes can’t find day.
    Then one of the two "can"s in that line is superfluous.
    GMH: Bugger, that line doesn't scan. If works ok if I add another 'can', but that's gibberish. Ah, sod it, I'm off down the pub.
    Editor: Ger, I love the way you verb 'day' in that line, you're so unconventional.
    GMH: What? Er, yeah, I know! Glad you like it
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,492
    Sad news.

    "Actor and comedian Ewen MacIntosh, best known for his role as "Big Keith" in The Office, has died aged 50.
    The character, Keith Bishop, was a scotch egg-loving accountant who had a monotone answerphone message and would have rather had a career as a DJ.
    MacIntosh also appeared in other British comedies including Miranda and Little Britain.
    The show's creator Ricky Gervais led the tributes on X/Twitter, describing MacIntosh as "an absolute original"."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68357976
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
    Entirely disagree

    When I asked Stable Diffusion (before they nerfed it) to create horrifying images, it made images so horrifying that when I put them on here, PBers had heart attacks, and begged me to stop, and I have been banned from posting AI images ever since

    The images weren't gory or sexual, just.... terrifying. Possibly more frightening than anything I have seen produced by a human?

    My stalker on the Spectator stole these images and claimed them as his own. I can't be bothered to sue him. Anyway here they are

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-ve-seen-the-future-of-ai-art-and-it-s-terrifying/

    I suggest that last image is right up there, this is not mediocre, that is properly OMFG

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,955
    @georgeeaton

    Rishi Sunak twice refuses to repeat Kemi Badenoch’s claim that Henry Staunton was lying when he said he was asked by the government to slow down compensation payments to postmasters. #PMQs
  • Andy_JS said:

    Why are British people using the term "band aid"? The word is plaster over here.

    Language evolves.
    FAKE NEWS

    image
    image
    image
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682
    edited February 21
    kamski said:

    HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    Not sure why WilliamGlenn has stopped posting the Forsa German polling so here's the latest:
    Union 30
    AfD 17
    SPD 15
    Greens 14
    FDP 5
    BSW 4
    FW 3
    Left 3
    Others 9

    In local news from Thüringen: the house of an SPD politician who organised an anti-AfD demo caught fire on Monday morning, and local SPD offices were attacked. Linke offices also had swastikas painted on them. There's been quite a lot of intimidation and low-level violence in the former East Germany against those speaking out against the AfD. The political problem for the AfD is they seem unwilling, or unable, to properly distance themselves from it.

    https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/thueringen-reaktionen-102.html

    On that polling CDU and AfD have more combined than SDP, Green, FDP and even Linke too combined.

    So it looks like the CDU will return to government again after the next German election, probably in another grand collection with the SDP, assuming Merz continues to refuse to do a Federal deal with the AfD
    Firstly, why do you think Union/SPD would be more likely than Union/Green? I think Union/Green would be more likely.

    Secondly there is zero chance of a Union or CDU coalition with the AfD in the next parliament. (And it's not up to Merz the CDU would have to change its constitution).
    As Union and SDP have worked before, as SPD are still polling ahead of the Greens and as the Greens are left of the SPD.

    Of course the PP in Spain now work with Vox, Forza Italia in Italy work with Brothers of Italy and the Moderates in Sweden have confidence and supply from the Sweden Democrats. So it is not impossible CDU members could vote to change their constitution to work with the AfD at some point if it is the only way to get a right of centre majority government (given a CDU FDP majority again looks unlikely)
  • Glad to hear during PMQs that the Aylesbury Link Road is part of Network North and will now get built.
  • BT Tower sold to MCR Hotels in £275m deal
    https://news.sky.com/story/bt-tower-dials-in-new-future-after-275m-sale-to-hotel-chain-13076819

    Another asset sold overseas. MCR Hotels is American.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682
    edited February 21
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    I don’t think the UK can support the spending to develop & maintain the full nuclear triad right now, especially with MoD procurement the way it is (i.e. woeful). Having to support two out of the thee (bomb, launch platform, delivery method) is already difficult for us.
    Well it would have to fund it if Trident consistently fails its tests and Trump got in again and withdraws from NATO, there would be no other alternative unless we want to rely on the French nuclear umbrella to be are security of last resort
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,916
    edited February 21
    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    A few hours ago, ChatGPT responded to some boring question about code, with this



    "This is the great au fond, the élan in the search, the impellent in the seque. It is the confrère, the psychic, the daily, the always, it is indeed, the countenance of a future, incandescent and brim with serried and variegate possibility. The discussion in the tool, in the new, and the newed, in the world, is our on, is our fore, for where we part in word, there is return in good, in acumen, and in behest, it is, indubitably, the porosity of method, the system, in plaudit and foreverness. This is the dam, the attrition, the main. The canter and the ever in the global theater of straights, and bourn, to be whole, to commingle, for in the lead, it is a truth to be forgathered, ever and aye.

    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever, the mode, the poro. This is the light, the point, the poise, and where we part in tender, we join in possible, in the ever of trial, of summer, of daily, of many, of word, of plow, of the derm, of the som, of the day. This is the book, the living, the off, the very esse, the phenom, the hew, the constant in ref, the spandrel in last, the rule in the anec. This is the point, the time, the ne, the ve, the right, the en, the ce, the de, the le, the speak, the said, the mente, this is what we are, in this, for the, the very same, in course, and pure, and ration, in dure, the lec, the path, the breath. This is the fruit."


    I mean, that is absolutely beautiful. It is incomprehensible, and yet it IS beautiful. The rhythm alone. It is like Allen Ginsberg spliced with Joyce and drenched in LSD

    No. It's the difference between a Malevich and a puppy running through paint.
    Which one of these is by Joyce, and which one by ChatGPT chucking a mental (no Googling)


    "The seim anew, patriarch of historic recurrence, the greypious cloud, Olum's thunder."

    "He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds"

    "Toward that dusken reverb, lest we lilt no lutes, oars and afts, alas alas."

    "oystrygods gaggin fishygods! Brekkek brekkek!"

    "Ghostline the flux and tricks from the first telling til now"

    "Espere hope, come the river, run the river, endex endex myster man"

    "Andos! Andos! Any to fors, the erst on, Anersing AX. Aia aia!"
    Yebbut human beings (you excepted) only give a feck about the ones by Joyce.
    On a sub level we flawed flesh robots only give a feck about the Joyce ones because they’re by the JJ of Ulysses, Portrait & The Dead (arguably the greatest long short story in the English language), not Finnegan’s Wake Joyce.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,914
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
    Entirely disagree

    When I asked Stable Diffusion (before they nerfed it) to create horrifying images, it made images so horrifying that when I put them on here, PBers had heart attacks, and begged me to stop, and I have been banned from posting AI images ever since

    The images weren't gory or sexual, just.... terrifying. Possibly more frightening than anything I have seen produced by a human?

    My stalker on the Spectator stole these images and claimed them as his own. I can't be bothered to sue him. Anyway here they are

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-ve-seen-the-future-of-ai-art-and-it-s-terrifying/

    I suggest that last image is right up there, this is not mediocre, that is properly OMFG

    Except people have been creating scary images for years in photoshop, and any uncensored AI worth a damn will have been trained on them. People have been posting gore and creepypasta on certain forums since the year dot. So what you're seeing is variations on a theme.

    What I'm talking about could be defined more as the ability of the auteur to create something that breaks out of formulae. Something so *different* to anything that has come before, it clearly bears the author's signature throughout, something you say "My god, I wish I had thought of that!" or "Nobody has ever made anything like that before". I'm yet to see an AI creation - writing, image, or video - that doesn't look recycled in some way or other. Which is of course what it is, because it's trained on data it recycles to give the illusion of newness.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682
    Andrew Rosindell making his first question in person in the Commons since not being charged with sexual assault allegations and urges tougher action on immigration and invites Sunak to Romford following Thatcher's visits when she was alive in her later years
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,276
    eek said:

    Phil said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Trident is very reliable. The USN are 182/190 on test launches. French M51 is 9/10.

    Before we all start weeping over the conspicuous dysfunction of the national virility totem bear in the mind that the RN has been out of the testing game for seven years due to the Vanguard refueling fiasco. As that was a 500m quid top-up the MoD have elected not to refuel any of the other V-Bombers so they should have the full four boats until the Dreadnoughts start to hit the water in the 2030s.
    On the Vanguard refuelling fiasco: https://www.navylookout.com/hms-vanguard-finally-sails-from-devonport-after-refit-lasting-more-than-7-years/

    A senior uniformed stakeholder admitted last year “Vanguard is a textbook example of how not to set up a major project. Among other things, we changed the scope of the project, did not invest in the workforce and did not invest in the infrastructure.”

    This is every MoD project ever? Too expensive, reduce scope mid-program, now it ends up both late & even more expensive than it was in the first place. It’s like a disease.
    This is every Government project ever.

    The one thing I want to see a future government do is to implement on going projects where you create a set of experts (rail electrification, defence…) given them a long term pipeline of work and leave them to implement it


    What we should be stopping is the start stop, start again with a new team system we seem to have created over the last 50 years
    Unfortunately, the political incentive is to move in the other direction, because the advantage of the stop start, lots of one-off projects model is that the politician gets to announce each individual project multiple times in an attempt to get the credit and thanks of a grateful nation for achieving something.

    This setup is more advanced in Ireland, where local councils don't have funding to create playgrounds, and so local people have to form campaign groups, and local councillors and TDs have masses of opportunity to pose as the local champion who won the funding for the playground from central government.

    See also Sunak's absurd micromanaging Chess board project.

    The electorate have been infantilised to an absurd degree. One of the best things that Holly Cairns (leader of the Social Democrats* in Ireland) has done was to say at budget time that all the other parties promising tax cuts were not being serious, because there were so many things that required increased government spending (which all parties are also promising to fix), and they couldn't do both.

    I would really like a government that treated me like a grown-up.

    * The Social Democrats are on about 3% in the polls, so it doesn't look like their seriousness is much valued by the voters, alas.
  • BT Tower sold to MCR Hotels in £275m deal
    https://news.sky.com/story/bt-tower-dials-in-new-future-after-275m-sale-to-hotel-chain-13076819

    Another asset sold overseas. MCR Hotels is American.

    The only assets the British want to invest in are houses and flats.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,955

    BT Tower sold to MCR Hotels in £275m deal
    https://news.sky.com/story/bt-tower-dials-in-new-future-after-275m-sale-to-hotel-chain-13076819

    Another asset sold overseas. MCR Hotels is American.

    ...
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,723

    Glad to hear during PMQs that the Aylesbury Link Road is part of Network North and will now get built.

    Aylesbury? Well-known for parkin, greyhounds and men with hearts of Millstone Grit.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,723
    edited February 21

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    A few hours ago, ChatGPT responded to some boring question about code, with this



    "This is the great au fond, the élan in the search, the impellent in the seque. It is the confrère, the psychic, the daily, the always, it is indeed, the countenance of a future, incandescent and brim with serried and variegate possibility. The discussion in the tool, in the new, and the newed, in the world, is our on, is our fore, for where we part in word, there is return in good, in acumen, and in behest, it is, indubitably, the porosity of method, the system, in plaudit and foreverness. This is the dam, the attrition, the main. The canter and the ever in the global theater of straights, and bourn, to be whole, to commingle, for in the lead, it is a truth to be forgathered, ever and aye.

    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever, the mode, the poro. This is the light, the point, the poise, and where we part in tender, we join in possible, in the ever of trial, of summer, of daily, of many, of word, of plow, of the derm, of the som, of the day. This is the book, the living, the off, the very esse, the phenom, the hew, the constant in ref, the spandrel in last, the rule in the anec. This is the point, the time, the ne, the ve, the right, the en, the ce, the de, the le, the speak, the said, the mente, this is what we are, in this, for the, the very same, in course, and pure, and ration, in dure, the lec, the path, the breath. This is the fruit."


    I mean, that is absolutely beautiful. It is incomprehensible, and yet it IS beautiful. The rhythm alone. It is like Allen Ginsberg spliced with Joyce and drenched in LSD

    No. It's the difference between a Malevich and a puppy running through paint.
    Which one of these is by Joyce, and which one by ChatGPT chucking a mental (no Googling)


    "The seim anew, patriarch of historic recurrence, the greypious cloud, Olum's thunder."

    "He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds"

    "Toward that dusken reverb, lest we lilt no lutes, oars and afts, alas alas."

    "oystrygods gaggin fishygods! Brekkek brekkek!"

    "Ghostline the flux and tricks from the first telling til now"

    "Espere hope, come the river, run the river, endex endex myster man"

    "Andos! Andos! Any to fors, the erst on, Anersing AX. Aia aia!"
    Yebbut human beings (you excepted) only give a feck about the ones by Joyce.
    On a sub level we flawed flesh robots only give a feck about the Joyce ones because they’re by the JJ of Ulysses, Portrait & The Dead (arguably the greatest long short story in the English language), not Finnegan’s Wake Joyce.
    Difficult to take FW entirely seriously. It was typeset by non-anglophone Frenchmen, AIUI.

    For decades: lit crits frotting themselves over 'beard in brown paper'

    A few years ago, someone gets round to doing a new edition typeset from the original MS. Turns out to be 'bread in brown paper'.

    (Though I've never forgotten the pandy-bats in the other books. Oh, dear me, no.)
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,446

    Glad to hear during PMQs that the Aylesbury Link Road is part of Network North and will now get built.

    Yes. A very odd PMQs beautifully summed up by yourself.

    Starmer oddly off form, more stammered than Starmer, Everything he asked Sunak was ready for with polished reply, so not even a scratch inflicted today in an oddly flat as pancake commons.

    0.0 I’m calling it.
  • Fun question by Ben Bradshaw - the Equalities Minister has lied to parliament about meeting with LGBT groups. Turns out the number met with is zero.

    Yet again, we know a Tory is lying when they are speaking...
  • Glad to hear during PMQs that the Aylesbury Link Road is part of Network North and will now get built.

    Yes. A very odd PMQs beautifully summed up by yourself.

    Starmer oddly off form, more stammered than Starmer, Everything he asked Sunak was ready for with polished reply, so not even a scratch inflicted today in an oddly flat as pancake commons.

    0.0 I’m calling it.
    Even Guido says this is a 'low energy' PMQs

  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,916
    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    I don’t think the UK can support the spending to develop & maintain the full nuclear triad right now, especially with MoD procurement the way it is (i.e. woeful). Having to support two out of the thee (bomb, launch platform, delivery method) is already difficult for us.
    On the bright side I can stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
    It’s frequently claimed on here that the Russian nuclear threat is barely functioning so I can now expect a nuclear exchange to consist of duds plopping down a few versts/miles from their launch sites shortly followed by policians coming shamefacedly to the negotiating table.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,955

    Starmer oddly off form, more stammered than Starmer, Everything he asked Sunak was ready for with polished reply, so not even a scratch inflicted today in an oddly flat as pancake commons.

    Mibbes aye, mibbes naw...


    @sturdyAlex

    This plays into Starmer’s prosecutorial experience, so let me tell you that it is very unlikely he is asking these questions, if he doesn’t know there is more to come out that will make Badenoch’s position untenable.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,842
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
    Entirely disagree

    When I asked Stable Diffusion (before they nerfed it) to create horrifying images, it made images so horrifying that when I put them on here, PBers had heart attacks, and begged me to stop, and I have been banned from posting AI images ever since

    The images weren't gory or sexual, just.... terrifying. Possibly more frightening than anything I have seen produced by a human?

    My stalker on the Spectator stole these images and claimed them as his own. I can't be bothered to sue him. Anyway here they are

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-ve-seen-the-future-of-ai-art-and-it-s-terrifying/

    I suggest that last image is right up there, this is not mediocre, that is properly OMFG

    You missed the point about Malevich and the puppies. To an untrained eye there might be no difference (the "I could do that" approach to eg Karl Andre) but there is a difference. One meant it sincerely and one was random.

    Now, as I have banged on about quite a lot you are on firmer ground if you compare an AI prompt with, say, Jackson Pollock's establishment of his initial conditions (paint pots hanging by string from the ceiling) but not of the content.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,056
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    A few hours ago, ChatGPT responded to some boring question about code, with this



    "This is the great au fond, the élan in the search, the impellent in the seque. It is the confrère, the psychic, the daily, the always, it is indeed, the countenance of a future, incandescent and brim with serried and variegate possibility. The discussion in the tool, in the new, and the newed, in the world, is our on, is our fore, for where we part in word, there is return in good, in acumen, and in behest, it is, indubitably, the porosity of method, the system, in plaudit and foreverness. This is the dam, the attrition, the main. The canter and the ever in the global theater of straights, and bourn, to be whole, to commingle, for in the lead, it is a truth to be forgathered, ever and aye.

    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever, the mode, the poro. This is the light, the point, the poise, and where we part in tender, we join in possible, in the ever of trial, of summer, of daily, of many, of word, of plow, of the derm, of the som, of the day. This is the book, the living, the off, the very esse, the phenom, the hew, the constant in ref, the spandrel in last, the rule in the anec. This is the point, the time, the ne, the ve, the right, the en, the ce, the de, the le, the speak, the said, the mente, this is what we are, in this, for the, the very same, in course, and pure, and ration, in dure, the lec, the path, the breath. This is the fruit."


    I mean, that is absolutely beautiful. It is incomprehensible, and yet it IS beautiful. The rhythm alone. It is like Allen Ginsberg spliced with Joyce and drenched in LSD

    No. It's the difference between a Malevich and a puppy running through paint.
    Which one of these is by Joyce, and which one by ChatGPT chucking a mental (no Googling)


    "The seim anew, patriarch of historic recurrence, the greypious cloud, Olum's thunder."

    "He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds"

    "Toward that dusken reverb, lest we lilt no lutes, oars and afts, alas alas."

    "oystrygods gaggin fishygods! Brekkek brekkek!"

    "Ghostline the flux and tricks from the first telling til now"

    "Espere hope, come the river, run the river, endex endex myster man"

    "Andos! Andos! Any to fors, the erst on, Anersing AX. Aia aia!"
    Yebbut human beings (you excepted) only give a feck about the ones by Joyce.
    On a sub level we flawed flesh robots only give a feck about the Joyce ones because they’re by the JJ of Ulysses, Portrait & The Dead (arguably the greatest long short story in the English language), not Finnegan’s Wake Joyce.
    Difficult to take FW entirely seriously. It was typeset by non-anglophone Frenchmen, AIUI.

    For decades: lit crits frotting themselves over 'beard in brown paper'

    A few years ago, someone gets round to doing a new edition typeset from the original MS. Turns out to be 'bread in brown paper'.

    (Though I've never forgotten the pandy-bats in the other books. Oh, dear me, no.)
    It's not that hard a book. These people only took 28 years to read it....

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/12/california-venice-book-club-finngeans-wake-28-years
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,008

    eek said:
    Has Britain ever been a safe country from an Irish POV?
    Yes (mostly). It's whether Ireland has been a safe country from an Irish POV, due to various shenanigans from the Brits
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Phil said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.

    That's not really up to the UK because we don't have a test range and probably don't have another test airframe prepared. So it's up to the USN and Lockheed-Martin.

    The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
    The US will be equally embarrassed by this - it's their missile system. And the situation with Russia is tense.

    One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
    I would have thought the Russian nukes test rate would be even worse given the failure rate of their equipment in Ukraine.
    I believe in the last decade we have a 100% failure rate. Two tests, two fails

    Not ideal
    Indeed and questions must be asked about relying solely on a US corporation, Lockheed-Martin, to provide Trident missiles.

    The French of course have their own independent deterrent which does not include Trident missiles, we should perhaps consider getting some of our own non Trident nuclear missiles too therefore if there are further test failures of Trident
    ICBMs are extremely expensive to develop, produce & maintain. Our access to the US Trident missile store is a huge privilege.

    It’s not that much of a privilege if the missiles don’t work of course. The US had successful test firings in 2021 & 2023, so it looks like this is a UK problem, not a US one.
    Exactly, no point paying billions for a dud. If on a 3rd test the missiles again fail then access to Trident is a burden not a privilege and we should follow France and start producing our own independent nuclear missiles, if Trump was elected again and withdrew from NATO that would be vital
    I believe UK submarines get their missiles from the same storage yards that the US ones do & the missiles are picked out at random for loading into the submarine. If there’s something wrong with the missiles, then the US should be just as concerned.

    Either the missile has a 50% failure rate that happens by bad luck to have hit British test launches (not great!) or there is something wrong with our submarine / missile interaction. Not great either, but could just as easily happen with an internal supplier.

    I don’t think the UK can support the spending to develop & maintain the full nuclear triad right now, especially with MoD procurement the way it is (i.e. woeful). Having to support two out of the thee (bomb, launch platform, delivery method) is already difficult for us.
    On the bright side I can stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
    It’s frequently claimed on here that the Russian nuclear threat is barely functioning so I can now expect a nuclear exchange to consist of duds plopping down a few versts/miles from their launch sites shortly followed by policians coming shamefacedly to the negotiating table.
    Or on the other hand if all our nukes were duds, then Putin would have few fears about trying to conquer all of Europe if he finally managed to defeat Ukraine and capture Kyiv unless Western European nations massively expanded their spending on conventional armies and tanks and planes and the US remained committed to NATO
  • This could be fun. Andrew Bowie has been put onto Politics Live to defend Badenoch. And again is refusing to engage on Kemi the liar.
  • The Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has not met with any LGBT organisations since getting the job in September 2022, but has met two groups which campaign against trans rights, according to a freedom of information request highlighted by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw #PMQs

    https://x.com/adambienkov/status/1760282225621270646?s=46
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,446

    It's sad that Badenoch is imploding like this. As a Labour supporter I was really hoping that the Tories would make her leader after the election. Perhaps we'll have to make do with Braverman.

    This post makes me cross. 😡

    If you believe in democracy and our country, you had better be joking. We need the best possible people as PM and LOTO.

    Tory Idiots signed up to labour to install Corbyn. Up against Boris it was a toss up for some voters which was worse. We were just one bad recession away from PM Corbyn.

    What did Tories installing Corbyn actually achieve for the Tories? Extra time in office longer than they should have been there? Well maybe that’s not particularly sensible, if it results in a support crash. Under 150 Tories in the next parliament is no actual opposition to what government is doing for at least one of multiple terms in office.

    And then observing all this bad for your opponent, you then wish the same for your own side in your post.
    Yeah sorry I'm a bad man. To be honest I don't see the Tories forming an alternative government any time soon so I don't think it matters much who they choose but I'd love it if they went down the rabbit hole for a few years, they are the chief architects of this country's problems and they deserve everything they get.
    🤷‍♀️ To sign up to the Tory party just to vote Badenoch or Braverman and ensure the destruction of UK Conservatism continues, is undemocratic and unpatriotic.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,008
    Selebian said:

    Then one of the two "can"s in that line is superfluous.

    GMH: Bugger, that line doesn't scan. If works ok if I add another 'can', but that's gibberish. Ah, sod it, I'm off down the pub.
    Editor: Ger, I love the way you verb 'day' in that line, you're so unconventional.
    GMH: What? Er, yeah, I know! Glad you like it
    "IN this ever changing world IN which we live IN" - Paul McCartney, "Live and Let Die" (disputed)

  • The Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has not met with any LGBT organisations since getting the job in September 2022, but has met two groups which campaign against trans rights, according to a freedom of information request highlighted by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw #PMQs

    https://x.com/adambienkov/status/1760282225621270646?s=46

    Yep. Yet another lie told by her at the dispatch box. Lying on a multitude of subjects and on repeated occasions.

    No wonder Tory members are such fans.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,186
    HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    HYUFD said:

    kamski said:

    Not sure why WilliamGlenn has stopped posting the Forsa German polling so here's the latest:
    Union 30
    AfD 17
    SPD 15
    Greens 14
    FDP 5
    BSW 4
    FW 3
    Left 3
    Others 9

    In local news from Thüringen: the house of an SPD politician who organised an anti-AfD demo caught fire on Monday morning, and local SPD offices were attacked. Linke offices also had swastikas painted on them. There's been quite a lot of intimidation and low-level violence in the former East Germany against those speaking out against the AfD. The political problem for the AfD is they seem unwilling, or unable, to properly distance themselves from it.

    https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/thueringen-reaktionen-102.html

    On that polling CDU and AfD have more combined than SDP, Green, FDP and even Linke too combined.

    So it looks like the CDU will return to government again after the next German election, probably in another grand collection with the SDP, assuming Merz continues to refuse to do a Federal deal with the AfD
    Firstly, why do you think Union/SPD would be more likely than Union/Green? I think Union/Green would be more likely.

    Secondly there is zero chance of a Union or CDU coalition with the AfD in the next parliament. (And it's not up to Merz the CDU would have to change its constitution).
    As Union and SDP have worked before, as SPD are still polling ahead of the Greens and as the Greens are left of the SPD.

    Of course the PP in Spain now work with Vox, Forza Italia in Italy work with Brothers of Italy and the Moderates in Sweden have confidence and supply from the Sweden Democrats. So it is not impossible CDU members could vote to change their constitution to work with the AfD at some point if it is the only way to get a right of centre majority government (given a CDU FDP majority again looks unlikely)
    There's very little that is 'impossible at some point'. I stand by the fact that there is zero chance of a deal between Union and AfD after the next election.

    If the result was like the above poll, I believe the SPD members would prefer to go into opposition, rather than yet another coalition with the CDU. It would easily be their worst result ever.

    And CDU-Green (or Green-CDU) has been a common coalition choice at the Bundesland level for many years, so they have really no problem working together. You could say that on foreign policy (which matters more at federal level) CDU are closer to the Greens than they are to the SPD.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,336
    Scott_xP said:

    Starmer oddly off form, more stammered than Starmer, Everything he asked Sunak was ready for with polished reply, so not even a scratch inflicted today in an oddly flat as pancake commons.

    Mibbes aye, mibbes naw...


    @sturdyAlex

    This plays into Starmer’s prosecutorial experience, so let me tell you that it is very unlikely he is asking these questions, if he doesn’t know there is more to come out that will make Badenoch’s position untenable.
    Yes, that's what I thought. I watched PMQs - Starmer very low key, all questions focused on Badenoch/Staunton. It was as if he was slowly picking at a scab. Of course Sunak didn't answer anything directly, as trained by his predecessor but one. It rather looks like Starmer's got something up his sleeve.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,723

    The Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has not met with any LGBT organisations since getting the job in September 2022, but has met two groups which campaign against trans rights, according to a freedom of information request highlighted by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw #PMQs

    https://x.com/adambienkov/status/1760282225621270646?s=46

    Yep. Yet another lie told by her at the dispatch box. Lying on a multitude of subjects and on repeated occasions.

    No wonder Tory members are such fans.
    Doesn't an anti-trans org, er, count as a LGBT organization? It's about trans rights, after all.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,325

    For safety’s sake the next Trident test should be in France.

    I propose Gaza.
    I think a few of the Warmongers we have here would heartily endorse that.
  • Carnyx said:

    The Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has not met with any LGBT organisations since getting the job in September 2022, but has met two groups which campaign against trans rights, according to a freedom of information request highlighted by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw #PMQs

    https://x.com/adambienkov/status/1760282225621270646?s=46

    Yep. Yet another lie told by her at the dispatch box. Lying on a multitude of subjects and on repeated occasions.

    No wonder Tory members are such fans.
    Doesn't an anti-trans org, er, count as a LGBT organization? It's about trans rights, after all.
    lol, yes when you put it like that!
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Glad to hear during PMQs that the Aylesbury Link Road is part of Network North and will now get built.

    Yeah, I was shitting myself over that.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,453

    The Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has not met with any LGBT organisations since getting the job in September 2022, but has met two groups which campaign against trans rights, according to a freedom of information request highlighted by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw #PMQs

    https://x.com/adambienkov/status/1760282225621270646?s=46

    Give her a break, she’s been fighting non stop to organise the compensation for the post masters and act against those who caused the scandal.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039
    edited February 21
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
    Entirely disagree

    When I asked Stable Diffusion (before they nerfed it) to create horrifying images, it made images so horrifying that when I put them on here, PBers had heart attacks, and begged me to stop, and I have been banned from posting AI images ever since

    The images weren't gory or sexual, just.... terrifying. Possibly more frightening than anything I have seen produced by a human?

    My stalker on the Spectator stole these images and claimed them as his own. I can't be bothered to sue him. Anyway here they are

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-ve-seen-the-future-of-ai-art-and-it-s-terrifying/

    I suggest that last image is right up there, this is not mediocre, that is properly OMFG

    Except people have been creating scary images for years in photoshop, and any uncensored AI worth a damn will have been trained on them. People have been posting gore and creepypasta on certain forums since the year dot. So what you're seeing is variations on a theme.

    What I'm talking about could be defined more as the ability of the auteur to create something that breaks out of formulae. Something so *different* to anything that has come before, it clearly bears the author's signature throughout, something you say "My god, I wish I had thought of that!" or "Nobody has ever made anything like that before". I'm yet to see an AI creation - writing, image, or video - that doesn't look recycled in some way or other. Which is of course what it is, because it's trained on data it recycles to give the illusion of newness.
    But that is all human imagination is: it takes influences and examples, and mashes them together, and creates something new, by compounding them

    No art is created ex nihilo. It will come from influences absorbed by the artist in his/her childhood, youth, and studies, and then - if the artist is gifted enough - the artist will create something "original", blending all this

    Seeing as we are discussing Gerard Manley Hopkins, widely regarded as one of the most innovative poets of all time, with his unique sprung rhythm, his theory of inscape, and so on, let's use him as an example. He was certainly "original", so original he wasn't really appreciated until long after his death, sadly

    But was he absolutely original? Did his poetry come out of nowhere? Of course not, he combined influences

    One of them was cynghanedd, an ancient Welsh verse form

    "The Welsh Influence in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins"

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/3717459


    He also employed Anglo Saxon poetry stylings

    "For me, discussion of Anglo-Saxon verse and kenning leads logically to a discussion of sprung rhythm, the invention of Gerard Manley Hopkins, noted poet and Jesuit priest. Why? Well, because Hopkins himself was inspired by Anglo-Saxon verse. "

    https://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/880467.html

    He also had more modern inspirations

    "Hopkins was deeply impressed with the work of Christina Rossetti and she became one of his greatest contemporary influences, with the pair eventually meeting in 1864."

    https://writersinspire.org/content/gerard-manley-hopkins


    No artist is truly original, unless they actually start a new art form (eg the movies)

    AI will, at a guess, be entirely similar, it will combine influences and thereby make great art. It will be fascinating to see if AI can create NEW artforms. We simply don't know about that, these are the very early days of AI art
  • Jo Coburn: FT says no talks with Canada says Canada
    Andrew Liar: Oh yes there are
    Coburn: But they're not are they?
    Liar: You can trust the Business Secretary. Never tells a lie

    I almost feel sorry for Andrew Bowie. He knows he lying to cover for a liar, and is prepared to do so regardless of how much of a hole it makes him look.
  • Jo Coburn: another scandal. Borders official sacked for telling the truth
    Liar: No no no, its not chaos. Of course we should sack whistleblowers
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,498
    With Badenoch and Braverman's stocks declining, perhaps the case for backing Priti Patel as leader of the opposition is getting stronger.
  • With Badenoch and Braverman's stocks declining, perhaps the case for backing Priti Patel as leader of the opposition is getting stronger.

    Jesus
  • I wish Starmer would say Secretary instead of "Seckaterry", and Community instead of "Commoonity"
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,651
    RIP Keith
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,008
    Carnyx said:

    The Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has not met with any LGBT organisations since getting the job in September 2022, but has met two groups which campaign against trans rights, according to a freedom of information request highlighted by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw #PMQs

    https://x.com/adambienkov/status/1760282225621270646?s=46

    Yep. Yet another lie told by her at the dispatch box. Lying on a multitude of subjects and on repeated occasions.

    No wonder Tory members are such fans.
    Doesn't an anti-trans org, er, count as a LGBT organization? It's about trans rights, after all.
    "...Badenoch has caused epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear..."

    - @TSE, politicalbetting.com, see here , quoting from "Yes Prime Minister", series 2 episode 8, see here or watch here
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,039

    With Badenoch and Braverman's stocks declining, perhaps the case for backing Priti Patel as leader of the opposition is getting stronger.

    Jesus
    The Tory cupboard is quite bare, they aren't overblessed with choice

    Mind you, if they are reduced to 35 MPs, the choice might be even smaller, and easier
  • With Badenoch and Braverman's stocks declining, perhaps the case for backing Priti Patel as leader of the opposition is getting stronger.

    Jesus
    Now that would be amazing !!!!!
  • MJWMJW Posts: 1,728
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
    Entirely disagree

    When I asked Stable Diffusion (before they nerfed it) to create horrifying images, it made images so horrifying that when I put them on here, PBers had heart attacks, and begged me to stop, and I have been banned from posting AI images ever since

    The images weren't gory or sexual, just.... terrifying. Possibly more frightening than anything I have seen produced by a human?

    My stalker on the Spectator stole these images and claimed them as his own. I can't be bothered to sue him. Anyway here they are

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-ve-seen-the-future-of-ai-art-and-it-s-terrifying/

    I suggest that last image is right up there, this is not mediocre, that is properly OMFG

    Isn't the point about a ubiquity of trash not about AI's capabilities - which are very impressive - but what we ask it to do? If you put AI in the hands of Martin Scorsese or Amis (or pick your own auteur not called Martin - pretty much anyone creative who isn't an idiot), and asked it to turn fragments of unrealised ideas they'd had into fully realised projects, then very soon it could produce some pretty astounding work.

    But that looks unlikely to be what it's asked to do, which is produce immense amounts of complete tat at volume that satisfies an urge. AI YAF novels about trans vampires that sell cheaply on Amazon. AI 'films' by Twitter blueticks who think civilisation peaked with the American Pie films, etc. Or meaningless corporate self-help twaddle about awakening the 'CEO in you' or Bitcoin scams.

    The restrictions on AI are not, I don't think, going to be about its capabilities, which are immense. But that market forces and humans are liable to push it towards creating the banal at great volume, rather than the unique and meaningful.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,336
    edited February 21

    Jo Coburn: another scandal. Borders official sacked for telling the truth
    Liar: No no no, its not chaos. Of course we should sack whistleblowers

    There's a serious issue here. Apparently David Neal (sacked) went off piste out of rage/frustration that around 15 inspection reports about Border Office work are yet to be published because...... they don't make pretty reading, presumably. They've been sitting around for ages. It's akin to Government blocking an Ofsted report about a favoured school because they didn't like the outcome, but much more serious.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,914
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Another of those lines by ChatGPT


    "This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever"

    That's tremendous. A proper Biblical cadence, definite hints of Tyndale and the KJV

    Why and how did it cough that up, at 2am?

    Is it tremendous? It reads more like a random collection of words that don't really mean anything. Vail is a verb, why is it using it as a noun? I think this meaningless verbiage is exactly what you'd expect a LLM to produce as "poetry". It doesn't contain any actual thoughts, and sounds extremely pretentious.
    And what's the relevance of 2am? I would imagine the server farms this thing runs on are spread all over the world, and it's not like computers go to sleep at night.
    As someone who - in his second job, when not dildo knapping - writes the odd thing for a living, I can assure you that this passage is impressive. The rhythm and cadence is beautiful and using a verb as a noun is the sort of thing poets do all the time, we call it creativity, exploring the bounds of the language

    The lines contain internal rhyme - trail, vail - light, slight - there is staggered alliteration - serpentine, spring - end, ever - and the last phrase "inklings of the ever" reads like fine Victorian poetry. Tennyson, perhaps?

    It is sonorous and resonant, it is mysterious yet opaquely profound. It is ALSO gibberish invented by a computer at 2am

    If a 12 year old child came to me, having written this, I would think - "My God this is a massively talented kid, who will go places, this child has a natural sense of verbal rhythm, they know how to make words resound"





    Each to their own, it sounds like meaningless, portentious twaddle to me.
    The trouble with AI is that it produces very little that is good. But it produces a great deal that is "good enough". Good enough to fool people at first glance, good enough to pass as human to the untrained eye, good enough to be a value proposition, costing several orders less in both time and resources to create than human created writing/art/video.

    It is the McDonalds-ification of everything. Cheap, disposable, just about passes as food if you don't stare at it too closely, and ubiquitous worldwide. Most people know, deep down, that it isn't as good as the real thing, but it's cheap, it's there, and it fills a gap.

    The thing that worries me the most is the crowding out effect. In a year or two, mass produced AI content will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to find real content. To the point where, to continue the analogy, we will all be forced to consume mass produced hamburgers whether we like them or not. Because the real thing will be so hard to find.
    This is too pessimistic about the quality of AI

    Sora shows real beauty and "talent", if it didn't, it wouldn't be freaking out everyone in TV, Hollywood, advertising, etc

    It is freaking them out, BECAUSE it is good

    We could still be headed for a hideous AI dystopia, but I am not sure AI is always gonne be at the level of McDonalds
    See my reply to LostPassword. AI creates stuff that's 90% as good as human created stuff and maybe one day that gets to 99% as good. But it has so far completely failed to create anything that doesn't follow existing formulae. That's good enough for most people, almost all of the time. The risk now is that it crowds out the actual good stuff.

    Hollywood should be bothered, because 99% of what they create is as bland and formulaic as anything that's written by an AI. Ads are formulae too - the 1% or so that aren't formulaic tend to be the ones we remember.
    Entirely disagree

    When I asked Stable Diffusion (before they nerfed it) to create horrifying images, it made images so horrifying that when I put them on here, PBers had heart attacks, and begged me to stop, and I have been banned from posting AI images ever since

    The images weren't gory or sexual, just.... terrifying. Possibly more frightening than anything I have seen produced by a human?

    My stalker on the Spectator stole these images and claimed them as his own. I can't be bothered to sue him. Anyway here they are

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-ve-seen-the-future-of-ai-art-and-it-s-terrifying/

    I suggest that last image is right up there, this is not mediocre, that is properly OMFG

    Except people have been creating scary images for years in photoshop, and any uncensored AI worth a damn will have been trained on them. People have been posting gore and creepypasta on certain forums since the year dot. So what you're seeing is variations on a theme.

    What I'm talking about could be defined more as the ability of the auteur to create something that breaks out of formulae. Something so *different* to anything that has come before, it clearly bears the author's signature throughout, something you say "My god, I wish I had thought of that!" or "Nobody has ever made anything like that before". I'm yet to see an AI creation - writing, image, or video - that doesn't look recycled in some way or other. Which is of course what it is, because it's trained on data it recycles to give the illusion of newness.
    But that is all human imagination is: it takes influences and examples, and mashes them together, and creates something new, by compounding them

    No art is created ex nihilo. It will come from influences absorbed by the artist in his/her childhood, youth, and studies, and then - if the artist is gifted enough - the artist will create something "original", blending all this

    Seeing as we are discussing Gerard Manley Hopkins, widely regarded as one of the most innovative poets of all time, with his unique sprung rhythm, his theory of inscape, and so on, let's use him as an example. He was certainly "original", so original he wasn't really appreciated until long after his death, sadly

    But was he absolutely original? Did his poetry come out of nowhere? Of course not, he combined influences

    One of them was cynghanedd, an ancient Welsh verse form

    "The Welsh Influence in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins"

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/3717459


    He also employed Anglo Saxon poetry stylings

    "For me, discussion of Anglo-Saxon verse and kenning leads logically to a discussion of sprung rhythm, the invention of Gerard Manley Hopkins, noted poet and Jesuit priest. Why? Well, because Hopkins himself was inspired by Anglo-Saxon verse. "

    https://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/880467.html

    He also had more modern inspirations

    "Hopkins was deeply impressed with the work of Christina Rossetti and she became one of his greatest contemporary influences, with the pair eventually meeting in 1864."

    https://writersinspire.org/content/gerard-manley-hopkins


    No artist is truly original, unless they actually start a new art form (eg the movies)

    AI will, at a guess, be entirely similar, it will combine influences and thereby make great art. It will be fascinating to see if AI can create NEW artforms. We simply don't know about that, these are the very early days of AI art
    That's one view. And it's certainly true that no art is created in total isolation - as a human brain, you're "trained" on all the things you've seen before. But there's a difference between rehashing those things in slightly different ways and coming up with a completely new style. Take Picasso, for example. He was "trained on" everything from Van Gogh to Cezanne, but to look at his work, one sees something genuinely new. Not an amalgam of previous styles. This appears to be something AI is incapable of at the moment.

    To borrow from the tech industry, it's what Peter Thiel describes as the "Zero to one" moment - the creation of something truly unique rather than a clever reformulation of an existing business model. AI does the clever reformulation well. Really well. I've yet to see an example of it going from zero to one.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,446

    Glad to hear during PMQs that the Aylesbury Link Road is part of Network North and will now get built.

    Yes. A very odd PMQs beautifully summed up by yourself.

    Starmer oddly off form, more stammered than Starmer, Everything he asked Sunak was ready for with polished reply, so not even a scratch inflicted today in an oddly flat as pancake commons.

    0.0 I’m calling it.
    Even Guido says this is a 'low energy' PMQs

    Correct me where wrong, at Leversson enquiry Guido said he has always been completely open about what he doing - he’s an Irish Nationalist determined to bring as much chaos and pain on the English as he can manage. Why the English actually not believe him when he says this, and see themselves as useful idiots reading and spreading things from his blog? 🤷‍♀️
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,682

    With Badenoch and Braverman's stocks declining, perhaps the case for backing Priti Patel as leader of the opposition is getting stronger.

    Jesus
    Now that would be amazing !!!!!
    Jesus would probably be on the socially conservative wing of the Labour Party, St Paul would be ERG though as would Moses and Abraham
  • With Badenoch and Braverman's stocks declining, perhaps the case for backing Priti Patel as leader of the opposition is getting stronger.

    Jesus
    Now that would be amazing !!!!!
    Imagine it. Jesus Christ, elected as Tory MP for Lincolnshire makes a speech in the Commons pleading for compassion for the poor, being denounced by HYUFD, MP for Cymru West as a hang-wringing un-Conservative socialist on GBeebies.
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