“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
Not sure about Tryl being "Labour-friendly". He's a former Spad from Tory years working for Nicky Morgan.
Not that makes a difference to the point he is making.
Starmer has gone nuts if he thinks this GiftGate behaviour isn't going to screw them when they need every ounce of political capital to turn the mess around.
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
All politicians do this to some extent, but if a central platform of your offer to the public is all being about public service, restoring trust, getting rid of cronyism, you better make sure you aren't accepting gifts like you are on Supermarket Sweep and have previously made huge stink about anybody else doing this.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
"Britain | Bagehot The bungee-jumping, sandal-clad right-wingers of British politics If the Liberal Democrats want to replace the Conservatives, they must move further right on the economy "
Yes and they won't which is why I think the Tories can recover a fair amount of the lost ground from the Lib Dems in the south, especially when Labour put up taxes and they don't oppose it.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I don't think its anywhere near close total replacing humans. Its the gets you 80% of the way there is the issue. Thus, I don't think all the jobs are going, rather you don't need as many people / the amount you can charge for the work is lesser.
The social contract of 50% of people, go to uni, get a decent degree in something, get a white collar job, buy a house, have a family, is already very strained....
Yes, but it's also less that the top 20% of people in these threatened professions will survive, and more, to borrow a footballing analogy, how do you keep the pyramid going.
As a grad I knew nothing, and being somewhere in the top 20% of people for what I do was a long journey from know nothing to what I know now. I gained those skills by being able to ply my trade in much more junior roles.
If the junior roles are all taken by AI... no new grads rise to the level of seniority, and the knowledge simply dies out. Or becomes a weird, obscure craft, like being a smithy and making horseshoes.
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
Not sure about Tryl being "Labour-friendly". He's a former Spad from Tory years working for Nicky Morgan.
Not that makes a difference to the point he is making.
Starmer has gone nuts if he thinks this GiftGate behaviour isn't going to screw them when they need every ounce of political capital to turn the mess around.
It seems to me that there might be more to come with Lord Alli's pad and its regular use by Starmer. It is eerily reminiscent of Lord Archer's penthouse and its regular use by Hague.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
I don't think they are going away anything soon, because government will prop them up. It become this huge industry that government can't allow to fail and it bumps 3-4 years worth of potential unemployed people down the line. Also, even with all this tech, generally people are very unmotivated to learn for themselves and there is still a need for some sort of standardising qualification.
You have been able to learn basically what every uni teaches (except the very top ones where the real SOTA research is disseminated) for many years already. And top unis tried all those MOOPs things and they basically failed.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
I don't think they are going away anything soon, because government will prop them up. It become this huge industry that government can't allow to fail and it bumps 3-4 years worth of potential unemployed people down the line.
But you can’t force people to go to uni and take on all that debt. You can’t create customers that aren’t there
I guess the govt could go back to PAYING students to go to uni - but no way we could afford that for 50% of 18 year olds
However you shake it, higher education is about to shrink dramatically. Entire unis will close
"Britain | Bagehot The bungee-jumping, sandal-clad right-wingers of British politics If the Liberal Democrats want to replace the Conservatives, they must move further right on the economy "
Yes and they won't which is why I think the Tories can recover a fair amount of the lost ground from the Lib Dems in the south, especially when Labour put up taxes and they don't oppose it.
If I may politely disagree. The Libs triumph when they do nothing or - ideally - agree to both sides of an argument ("We must build more houses! But not in constituency X!"). They are absolutely crucified when they take a position since that just annoys people. Their current niche of embodying the principles and prejudices of the upper-middle class whilst not actually doing anything worked wonders. All they have to do is just stand there, kiss babies and say nice things about old folks homes while Conservative and Reform kick lumps out of each other. I'm sure they can find something anodyne to argue about ("Lets move Parliament to York while we refurbish Westminster") that upsets nobody.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
I don't think they are going away anything soon, because government will prop them up. It become this huge industry that government can't allow to fail and it bumps 3-4 years worth of potential unemployed people down the line.
But you can’t force people to go to uni and take on all that debt. You can’t create customers that aren’t there
I guess the govt could go back to PAYING students to go to uni - but no way we could afford that for 50% of 18 year olds
However you shake it, higher education is about to shrink dramatically. Entire unis will close
That is what I mean by the government propping them up. Forget AI, the uni sector is too large, 130+ unis, we really don't need that many, and many are very poor. And as Nick Clegg says far too focus on providing the wrong skills.
My argument for as long as I have been on PB is that the UK model is way too rigid, basically outside a small number of people, everybody who goes at 18, goes full time and away from home. Most of Europe doesn't do this, it far too expensive, unless you are top level, you go local, live with your parents, work part-time. US has community colleges and big push to stay in state / more local / work.
If all the stars align and Kamala and Kemi win, and Cameron is reinstated as FS, then at some G7 meeting or something, we could have Kem Kam Sam Cam...
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
It’s nothing to do with his ambition. It’s his sense of entitlement.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
All my university education taught me was how to cite the right papers, i.e. regurgitate the course material, into essay format, so I could quote what other people thought about things.
My degrees look good on a CV and, if I'm feeling a bit vain, make me look vaguely intellectual. But it's mostly status signalling. And they were tuppence ha'penny in my day compared to what they cost now.
In terms of real world value, there's very little. I certainly wouldn't get into 50k of debt for one.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
All my university education taught me was how to cite the right papers, i.e. regurgitate the course material, into essay format, so I could quote what other people thought about things.
My degrees look good on a CV and, if I'm feeling a bit vain, make me look vaguely intellectual. But it's mostly status signalling. And they were tuppence ha'penny in my day compared to what they cost now.
In terms of real world value, there's very little. I certainly wouldn't get into 50k of debt for one.
Yes quite
This doesn’t please me because Britain is good at Higher Education and I think universities are intrinsically a good thing - for kids and for wider society
I just don’t see how the business model works in the future. They are going to implode. A few prestigious ones will survive and maybe thrive, most of the average provincial ones will disappear
"Britain | Bagehot The bungee-jumping, sandal-clad right-wingers of British politics If the Liberal Democrats want to replace the Conservatives, they must move further right on the economy "
Yes and they won't which is why I think the Tories can recover a fair amount of the lost ground from the Lib Dems in the south, especially when Labour put up taxes and they don't oppose it.
If I may politely disagree. The Libs triumph when they do nothing or - ideally - agree to both sides of an argument ("We must build more houses! But not in constituency X!"). They are absolutely crucified when they take a position since that just annoys people. Their current niche of embodying the principles and prejudices of the upper-middle class whilst not actually doing anything worked wonders. All they have to do is just stand there, kiss babies and say nice things about old folks homes while Conservative and Reform kick lumps out of each other. I'm sure they can find something anodyne to argue about ("Lets move Parliament to York while we refurbish Westminster") that upsets nobody.
And the Lib Dems will happily oppose Labour on the difficult stuff, like raising taxes, even when it's the right thing to do.
Because why shouldn't they? The clue is on the name Opposition.
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
It’s nothing to do with his ambition. It’s his sense of entitlement.
Yes exactly. He OOZES entitlement
I’m surprised he hasn’t actually said “don’t you know who I am??” in response to these allegations. In his thin reedy voice and with a wince of priggish superiority
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
All my university education taught me was how to cite the right papers, i.e. regurgitate the course material, into essay format, so I could quote what other people thought about things.
My degrees look good on a CV and, if I'm feeling a bit vain, make me look vaguely intellectual. But it's mostly status signalling. And they were tuppence ha'penny in my day compared to what they cost now.
In terms of real world value, there's very little. I certainly wouldn't get into 50k of debt for one.
Yes quite
This doesn’t please me because Britain is good at Higher Education and I think universities are intrinsically a good thing - for kids and for wider society
I just don’t see how the business model works in the future. They are going to implode. A few prestigious ones will survive and maybe thrive, most of the average provincial ones will disappear
A bit like what happened to newspapers, in fact
We had it right when less than 10% went to University. Unfortunatly Major and Blair both saw increasing University numbers as a way of getting youth unemployment numbers down. They also failed to understand the principle of dilution. The more people who have a degree, the less intrinsicly valuable that qualification becomes.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
All my university education taught me was how to cite the right papers, i.e. regurgitate the course material, into essay format, so I could quote what other people thought about things.
My degrees look good on a CV and, if I'm feeling a bit vain, make me look vaguely intellectual. But it's mostly status signalling. And they were tuppence ha'penny in my day compared to what they cost now.
In terms of real world value, there's very little. I certainly wouldn't get into 50k of debt for one.
We are heading into a world where being a dustman or women will require a degree in ecological sciences. That is the best protection for universities. Until we accept how little they do in terms of preparation for the world of work they will be fine.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I’ve been pitching ideas about the “end of universities” to my editors at the Knappers Gazette. They refuse to consider any of them, despite taking lots of other ideas
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
All my university education taught me was how to cite the right papers, i.e. regurgitate the course material, into essay format, so I could quote what other people thought about things.
My degrees look good on a CV and, if I'm feeling a bit vain, make me look vaguely intellectual. But it's mostly status signalling. And they were tuppence ha'penny in my day compared to what they cost now.
In terms of real world value, there's very little. I certainly wouldn't get into 50k of debt for one.
Yes quite
This doesn’t please me because Britain is good at Higher Education and I think universities are intrinsically a good thing - for kids and for wider society
I just don’t see how the business model works in the future. They are going to implode. A few prestigious ones will survive and maybe thrive, most of the average provincial ones will disappear
A bit like what happened to newspapers, in fact
We had it right when less than 10% went to University. Unfortunatly Major and Blair both saw increasing University numbers as a way of getting youth unemployment numbers down. They also failed to understand the principle of dilution. The more people who have a degree, the less intrinsicly valuable that qualification becomes.
Yep. Now add to that a world where mid-level cognitive jobs are vanishing, so a degree has little to no use as a means of getting a career
The Evening Standard was one of the last things left in London that created a very slight feeling of a sense of community between people who might otherwise not have anything in common. Sometimes you used to see about half the people sitting in tube carriages reading it until relatively recently, ie. 15 years ago.
Covid killed it. I mean, it wasn't doing amazingly well before but most people picked up a Metro on the way in and Standard on the way home before and you'd hear the rustles round the carriage.
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
I think, for him, it's just a well-deserved career move.
Well if they had shares in oil then they were being bloody stupid donating to Labour. The regret will have been very rapid I suspect.
IIRC all hedge funds (to a first approximation) are headquartered in tax havens - if they weren’t their clients would be taxed twice. A hedge fund trading oil & arms company shares is also not exactly surprising.
Starmer taking money from finance is (potentially) a story. Acting shocked that the company in question is headquartered in a tax haven & trades everything on the market is journalistic pearl clutching.
Well if they had shares in oil then they were being bloody stupid donating to Labour. The regret will have been very rapid I suspect.
IIRC all hedge funds (to a first approximation) are headquartered in tax havens - if they weren’t their clients would be taxed twice. A hedge fund trading oil & arms company shares is also not exactly surprising.
Starmer taking money from finance is (potentially) a story. Acting shocked that the company in question is headquartered in a tax haven & trades everything on the market is journalistic pearl clutching.
I remember all the outrage that Cameron's father fund was in a tax haven.....
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
The whole American Dream of dad going out to work from the white picket fence suburbs every morning and mom shagging travelling salesmen depended on an endless supply of b ark jobs for dad to go out to. Think Mr Incredible.
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
Yup
What’s Blair’s wealth now? Plus Blair invented a job for himself where no even looks at his freebies, now.
On topic, it's probably fair enough that Kemi sees herself as unposh. Compared to Dave, Boris, Rishi, she is. But in the grand scheme of things, the daughter of a globetrotting academic is still pretty elite.
And I can see why some want a feisty aggressive leader of the opposition. But aggression has to be pinpoint accurate to work, and a lot of the time she isn't.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
AI is going to be used for a whole heap of things where it's not as good as people think it is, but it's good enough, or at least no-one is going to check too closely at how good/bad it is.
Who is going to sift through CVs manually now?
Ah yes. Putting fictional qualifications such as MBA or PhD in white text on a white background in a job application. A human won't see them, but a computer will.
If Kam wins (and again in four years) and Kem wins (and then, in five years, wins again) then I guess we'll all be discussing the Kam-Kem chem (or lack thereof) after their first meeting
I am now rooting so hard for Kemi for that reason alone.
Fair enough - but what if they DON’T get on? What if their chemistry is, I dunno, kind of… hazardous? How on earth would we refer to their relationship THEN?
In that situation didn’t Suzi Quattro advise you to Kem the Kam
Well if they had shares in oil then they were being bloody stupid donating to Labour. The regret will have been very rapid I suspect.
IIRC all hedge funds (to a first approximation) are headquartered in tax havens - if they weren’t their clients would be taxed twice. A hedge fund trading oil & arms company shares is also not exactly surprising.
Starmer taking money from finance is (potentially) a story. Acting shocked that the company in question is headquartered in a tax haven & trades everything on the market is journalistic pearl clutching.
I remember all the outrage that Cameron's father fund was in a tax haven.....
It was pearl clutching then too, mostly.
There is a reason to criticise tax havens & it’s the lack of transparency of ownership that these places offer. But that doesn’t really matter to a hedge fund that is there to service clients rather than shareholders - they wouldn’t have to publicly disclose who their client investors were if they were headquartered in the US or the UK either.
(Family offices are a different matter - they locate in tax havens for the privacy they offer & probably to play tax games on top.)
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
On topic, it's probably fair enough that Kemi sees herself as unposh. Compared to Dave, Boris, Rishi, she is. But in the grand scheme of things, the daughter of a globetrotting academic is still pretty elite.
And I can see why some want a feisty aggressive leader of the opposition. But aggression has to be pinpoint accurate to work, and a lot of the time she isn't.
They need someone who will make them feel better and not alienate former supporters too much at the same time.
Is she the best for that? IDK, but she's not among the worst either.
I find it strange that just two years down the road QE2 seems really quite odd. Not a good reciter of poetry at least.
I'm really quite pleased for Charles that his reign is going quite well. I've no love for the man, but after waiting so long it'd have been rotten for things to go wrong for him.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Dim politicians is meant to be solved by them being good performers (think most actors who think they are also activists) and having good civil servants and advisers supply them with the right words so we don't notice.
So if he is dim, it's a bigger issue than one man.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
It only takes a 4.3% swing for Labour to lose its majority at the next election.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
It only takes a 4.3% swing for Labour to lose its majority at the next election.
I think by midterm we could have some bonkers 4 way polling including Reform. Would say there is money to be made, except that it’s a brave man who thinks they can predict where it ends up. We can probably exclude the idea of a Reform led Gvt, but not much else.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
It only takes a 4.3% swing for Labour to lose its majority at the next election.
I’ve had problems in recent travels with Santander and Halifax and Barclay all questioning and stopping Visa and Mastercard payments. It’s because they can’t believe someone would travel this much - so they think it’s fraudulent. This despite me telling them my job involves frequent travel. Maddening
The one card that works every time? Often my last hope? Amex
If you want stupidity and credit cards.
I have a paid for Lloyds Global Travel card that gives priority security and free lounge access. I don't use it abroad because they have a 3% surcharge on foreign currency transactions. So I use a Halifax Clarity card in such circumstances.
Hah
Do you use airport lounges, Leon? I'm going with 'yes'.
I travelled with someone last year who had business class while I was economy (as always) and he managed to get me into one as his guest. Free food and drinks was nice I guess but it was rammed and we couldn't find a seat. I'd much rather had gone to Pret.
If you have BA Gold status, you have access to some brilliant lounges (The Pier, Hong Kong) regardless of what class you are travelling. (as long as its oneworld) Other Oneworld alliance lounges (Cathay, Qatar) will normally be miles better than BA
The lounges available to priority pass ("free" with some credit cards / banks) will probably be full in the UK & if they do let you in (you're bottom of the pile) will often be dire.
Sadly you need to be GGL these days to get anything from BA
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Watch Yes Minister. He needs house training.
At least Lammy has a warmth and likeability. Unlike Starmer and Reeves
I’m wondering if they are the most charmless PM and COTE combo in living memory. You’d have to go back to maybe Major and Lamont, but even Major had an ordinary man vibe and was less prickly than Starmer
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I don't think its anywhere near close total replacing humans. Its the gets you 80% of the way there is the issue. Thus, I don't think all the jobs are going, rather you don't need as many people / the amount you can charge for the work is lesser.
The social contract of 50% of people, go to uni, get a decent degree in something, get a white collar job, buy a house, have a family, is already very strained....
When AI does all the work so no employees are needed, who buys all the stuff to keep the wheels turning?
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Watch Yes Minister. He needs house training.
At least Lammy has a warmth and likeability. Unlike Starmer and Reeves
I’m wondering if they are the most charmless PM and COTE combo in living memory. You’d have to go back to maybe Major and Lamont, but even Major had an ordinary man vibe and was less prickly than Starmer
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Watch Yes Minister. He needs house training.
At least Lammy has a warmth and likeability. Unlike Starmer and Reeves
I’m wondering if they are the most charmless PM and COTE combo in living memory. You’d have to go back to maybe Major and Lamont, but even Major had an ordinary man vibe and was less prickly than Starmer
I found Truss very unlikeable and lacking in any qualities but Kwarteng quite charismatic.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Watch Yes Minister. He needs house training.
At least Lammy has a warmth and likeability. Unlike Starmer and Reeves
I’m wondering if they are the most charmless PM and COTE combo in living memory. You’d have to go back to maybe Major and Lamont, but even Major had an ordinary man vibe and was less prickly than Starmer
Obviously Truss and Zahawi.
Truss was madcap fun and Zahawi had warmth
Completely useless of course, but not as charmless as Reeves and Starmer. Which was my point
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Dim politicians is meant to be solved by them being good performers (think most actors who think they are also activists) and having good civil servants and advisers supply them with the right words so we don't notice.
So if he is dim, it's a bigger issue than one man.
But our Civil Service is the best in the world! They tell us so, constantly. Publicly spirited, willing to forgo the riches of the private sector for a mere £150k a year (plus a pension worth the thick end of £2m), how can you possibly doubt their expertise? /s
Odd thing to say a few week after winning a 170 seat majority.
He was just on our local Tyne tees news.
Unimpressive really
Yeah, he is. It’s just unfortunate that the Tories had plunged new depths of crapness in the last few years.
Yes my wife is on hand to remind me of that and she’s right.
If you compare the first 2010 or 1997 cabinets to the current bunch or the shadow front bench, it really is night and day.
Labour are simply astonishingly weak in terms of experience in their ranks. All these MPs that they have are almost all tokens rather than real MPs. The SNP started such things, but Labour are now far worse.
Consider the appointment of Louise Haigh at transport.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Dim politicians is meant to be solved by them being good performers (think most actors who think they are also activists) and having good civil servants and advisers supply them with the right words so we don't notice.
So if he is dim, it's a bigger issue than one man.
But our Civil Service is the best in the world! They tell us so, constantly. Publicly spirited, willing to forgo the riches of the private sector for a mere £150k a year (plus a pension worth the thick end of £2m), how can you possibly doubt their expertise? /s
1) It probably is the best in the world over all.
2) A lot of the more senior folk could probably earn more elsewhere.
3) It could be a lot better, has failed on many fronts, and needs some restructuring for the new century.
I'm hearing that the Student Rental Market may be softer at the edges for the 25-26 academic year, and that some marginal property has not rented well this year.
That's to do with both student demand, and property supply. Obviously it varies by city.
Ten years ago in one of my local cities, newly build private student halls full of added-value services built in a splurge were offering up to 10-12% cashback on advertised rents to get students in, over a period of several years.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I've retired except for translation and chairing my constituency CLP. I've wondered whether the translation work (mostly for the European Commission) will go, since they send a 95% correct draft translation, but although the pay per word has gone down the pay per hour remains decent (about £50/hour, with a minimum of £17.50 even if it's a single sentence) for zipping through the drafts, filling in the 5% and spotting any errors. It's a nice little retirement earner and I think they reckon the human eye is still important as you do occasinally catch the system totally misunderstanding something.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I've retired except for translation and chairing my constituency CLP. I've wondered whether the translation work (mostly for the European Commission) will go, since they send a 95% correct draft translation, but although the pay per word has gone down the pay per hour remains decent (about £50/hour, with a minimum of £17.50 even if it's a single sentence) for zipping through the drafts, filling in the 5% and spotting any errors. It's a nice little retirement earner and I think they reckon the human eye is still important as you do occasinally catch the system totally misunderstanding something.
That’s the perfect example of the opportunities in AI. Ideally we can live in a world where someone doing what you do can earn the same, focus on the most interesting bits, and be 500% more productive because the AI does the basics for you. In essence, everyone has a small team.
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
Plus some rather low grade politicians on all sides.
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Lammy seems to be genuinely dim. Not sure how you fix that
Watch Yes Minister. He needs house training.
At least Lammy has a warmth and likeability. Unlike Starmer and Reeves
I’m wondering if they are the most charmless PM and COTE combo in living memory. You’d have to go back to maybe Major and Lamont, but even Major had an ordinary man vibe and was less prickly than Starmer
Obviously Truss and Zahawi.
Truss was madcap fun and Zahawi had warmth
Completely useless of course, but not as charmless as Reeves and Starmer. Which was my point
I would happily spend an evening in a pub with Reeves and Starmer, and I'd run a mile from such an evening with Truss and Zahawi - admittedly it's only Truss who I'd want to avoid.
Anyway, charm is over-rated - look what it's done to you!
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
Yup
What’s Blair’s wealth now? Plus Blair invented a job for himself where no even looks at his freebies, now.
I linked to interview with Nick Clegg down thread, I wonder what his salary his?
“Can honestly say having heard the anger from the public about these sorts of issues in focus group after focus group this line is wishful thinking. It’s also surprising given Starmer really seemed to get it isn’t just about policy, it’s about restoring faith in politics.”
“The sense of one rule or that politicians are in it for the perks is toxic not just to one party but faith in politics itself. It’s what is driving people to the extremes and is why mainstream parties are struggling to get above 30%.”
Starmer and Labour have utterly soiled the bed in the first 3 months. Impressive
And of course Starmer has made it clear he will carry on taking the freebies. Plus we have a painful budget incoming, where all of us are going to get stiffed for more tax (plus a load of new sin taxes).
The really stupid thing about Starmer’s tawdry sponging is the paucity of ambition. If he kept his nose clean for a few years he could have awarded some big contracts and got himself a 'foundation' a la Tone. The way his premiership is going, he's chucking that all away for some silly spectacles.
It’s nothing to do with his ambition. It’s his sense of entitlement.
Yes exactly. He OOZES entitlement
I’m surprised he hasn’t actually said “don’t you know who I am??” in response to these allegations. In his thin reedy voice and with a wince of priggish superiority
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I've retired except for translation and chairing my constituency CLP. I've wondered whether the translation work (mostly for the European Commission) will go, since they send a 95% correct draft translation, but although the pay per word has gone down the pay per hour remains decent (about £50/hour, with a minimum of £17.50 even if it's a single sentence) for zipping through the drafts, filling in the 5% and spotting any errors. It's a nice little retirement earner and I think they reckon the human eye is still important as you do occasinally catch the system totally misunderstanding something.
Nice to see a post from you, Nick.
Can you translate Mr Trump's speeches into English?
Do we just have to get used to the idea that something about the mix of social media in place of news, and the complexity of the underlying issues, means mega swings at elections for a while?
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
It only takes a 4.3% swing for Labour to lose its majority at the next election.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I don't think its anywhere near close total replacing humans. Its the gets you 80% of the way there is the issue. Thus, I don't think all the jobs are going, rather you don't need as many people / the amount you can charge for the work is lesser.
The social contract of 50% of people, go to uni, get a decent degree in something, get a white collar job, buy a house, have a family, is already very strained....
Yes, but it's also less that the top 20% of people in these threatened professions will survive, and more, to borrow a footballing analogy, how do you keep the pyramid going.
As a grad I knew nothing, and being somewhere in the top 20% of people for what I do was a long journey from know nothing to what I know now. I gained those skills by being able to ply my trade in much more junior roles.
If the junior roles are all taken by AI... no new grads rise to the level of seniority, and the knowledge simply dies out. Or becomes a weird, obscure craft, like being a smithy and making horseshoes.
If that is the way things go soon we will have mass gangs of Luddites breaking into corporations and smashing up their robotics and machinery. Our politics would be dominated by a socialist big state left on one side and a nationalist, pro tariff, anti big corporation and anti immigration right on the other. Centrist and free market liberal parties would be lucky to get 10% of the vote
The Evening Standard was one of the last things left in London that created a very slight feeling of a sense of community between people who might otherwise not have anything in common. Sometimes you used to see about half the people sitting in tube carriages reading it until relatively recently, ie. 15 years ago.
Covid killed it. I mean, it wasn't doing amazingly well before but most people picked up a Metro on the way in and Standard on the way home before and you'd hear the rustles round the carriage.
I’m amazed that he thinks he has some God-given right to watch the football.
My wife and I said this. There was a version where he just said “oh well, I can’t go every week any more, but you can’t expect to be able to do everything as PM”.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
We always were allowed to talk about AI. The ban was only for one poster.
I had forgotten we've labour conference to look forward to. Klouseau's keynote is a must watch, and lady K's presence or absence, outfit and body language.
I’m amazed that he thinks he has some God-given right to watch the football.
My wife and I said this. There was a version where he just said “oh well, I can’t go every week any more, but you can’t expect to be able to do everything as PM”.
Starmer is reaction to this is keeping the story going. The lawyerly "I have been moved to other seats" so I can continue to keep going every match.
FFS. How have they got into this mess before even reaching the autumn equinox?
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 2h “Why don’t you buy your own suits?” asked BBC Yorks. “The important thing in all of this is that we follow the rules”
This is going to be his “thing” isn’t it? Take the fuel allowance from people but live in luxury yourself off freebies. I never would have guessed he’d fall into that trap.
I’m amazed that he thinks he has some God-given right to watch the football.
My wife and I said this. There was a version where he just said “oh well, I can’t go every week any more, but you can’t expect to be able to do everything as PM”.
I'm less bothered by the footy than the clothing shite.
There's at least a stab of an argument about security and god knows we seem to be in world where whackos are everywhere but the need for someone else to buy a pair of glasses and a suit? Come on - he's a highly paid lawyer/politician/party leader.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I don't think its anywhere near close total replacing humans. Its the gets you 80% of the way there is the issue. Thus, I don't think all the jobs are going, rather you don't need as many people / the amount you can charge for the work is lesser.
The social contract of 50% of people, go to uni, get a decent degree in something, get a white collar job, buy a house, have a family, is already very strained....
When AI does all the work so no employees are needed, who buys all the stuff to keep the wheels turning?
An excellent question. If the "technology revolution" turns out anywhere near the hype it's going to require enlightened activist government to prevent the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.
Claude at the moment is the best LLM IMO. For all the hype over ChatGPT o1, I just found that it sits and "thinks" for ages and the result isn't actually much better. At best its stopping you manually saying, do this, then this, at worst because it is trying to take many steps itself, it goes off down the wrong path and you wait 30s+ for it to pump out nonsense.
Yes. Apparently o1 is great at maths and coding but as I don’t care about maths or coding that whizzes past me
For words, Claude is still best by a fair stretch. Also the context window on ChatGPT remains relatively tiny
As it seems I am temporarily allowed to discuss AI - I’d note that I’ve seen people all over the world quietly using it, and many hyper aware of all developments. The revolution is happening but it’s sotto voce. A lot of people don’t want their employers to know they are using it
For these and other reasons I wouldn’t bet against AI. It is coming and it is inevitable. Betting against it is like betting against electricity in 1895
I have found the opposite, its shit at coding, its really infuriating. But I am not asking it to code flappy birds game or a web app. As for maths, I have asked it some things that aren't that complicated (I am not a mathematician, but I do lots of maths) and it has done very poorly.
I yield to your experience in these matters
Gemini is often overlooked. It has a massive context window and seems to be improving over time
Frankly, they are all amazing and if you showed them to people in 2014 or 2004 they’d say Wow so that’s AGI
It’s the boiling frog thing
Oh don't get me wrong, I think if you have 100-120 IQ and do very repetitive white collar role and quite low down in the company hierarchy, I would be very concerned for my future. I actually think those that have lower IQ are far better insulated against this tech because they are much more likely to be in vocational jobs that robotics are nowhere near doing their work.
But o1 at least I have found massively underwhelming for my use cases. Its like asking an undergraduate who if they don't know the answer doesn't say I don't know or I think the answer is, it gives you a 10 minute BS talk all about it.
Are we allowed to talk about AI here again, then?
In which case.
Those of us "golgafrincham b ark" types whose main grift in life has been to shuffle papers and produce reports are doomed.
I do a lot of strategy consultancy work for startups and I feed my meeting notes into Claude (as others have noted, the best of the current bunch) and it largely spits out what I would. Not as good, but probably 70-80% of the way there. So why pay me thousands for my time when you're on a tight budget and the chatbot gets you 70-80% of the way there?
Well, I like to think the extra 20% is the difference between the startups I work with that succeed, and the guys who use chatbot answers and don't. But this is not quite 2 years into the AI revolution, and at the current pace, I will be outclassed within the next few years. If I'm lucky. The next few months, if I'm not.
I consider myself fortunate to be financially secure. Because if I wasn't, I'm pretty sure I would be looking at the bread line in a few years, much as a coal miner in the 90s. A completely obsolescent skill set.
I don't think its anywhere near close total replacing humans. Its the gets you 80% of the way there is the issue. Thus, I don't think all the jobs are going, rather you don't need as many people / the amount you can charge for the work is lesser.
The social contract of 50% of people, go to uni, get a decent degree in something, get a white collar job, buy a house, have a family, is already very strained....
When AI does all the work so no employees are needed, who buys all the stuff to keep the wheels turning?
Those with IQs high enough to work in well paid tech jobs or creative enough not to be automated out. Everyone else via their universal basic incomes funded by inevitable robot taxes
Comments
Not that makes a difference to the point he is making.
Starmer has gone nuts if he thinks this GiftGate behaviour isn't going to screw them when they need every ounce of political capital to turn the mess around.
Intrigued, I’ve been asking them why they are so resistant. The main reason is because they think I’m wrong. Universities will be fine. On further investigation, their reason for thinking I’m wrong boils down to “we hope you’re wrong and we don’t want to think about a world where you’re right”
Trouble is, I’m right. AI is a mortal threat to the entire higher education system. No one will take on £50k of debt to be educated for jobs that no longer exist, and also when AI can deliver the same education for a fraction of the price
A small subset of rich kids will go to “uni” for the social skills they can learn, and for fun; most won’t, because they won’t want the debt
As a grad I knew nothing, and being somewhere in the top 20% of people for what I do was a long journey from know nothing to what I know now. I gained those skills by being able to ply my trade in much more junior roles.
If the junior roles are all taken by AI... no new grads rise to the level of seniority, and the knowledge simply dies out. Or becomes a weird, obscure craft, like being a smithy and making horseshoes.
You have been able to learn basically what every uni teaches (except the very top ones where the real SOTA research is disseminated) for many years already. And top unis tried all those MOOPs things and they basically failed.
I guess the govt could go back to PAYING students to go to uni - but no way we could afford that for 50% of 18 year olds
However you shake it, higher education is about to shrink dramatically. Entire unis will close
I think our economy needs a bit more help to offset the damage Reeves is doing to it. We can grow faster than this but we need fewer road blocks.
My argument for as long as I have been on PB is that the UK model is way too rigid, basically outside a small number of people, everybody who goes at 18, goes full time and away from home. Most of Europe doesn't do this, it far too expensive, unless you are top level, you go local, live with your parents, work part-time. US has community colleges and big push to stay in state / more local / work.
Then someone turns that into a comic movie and you’ve got the Kem Kam Sam Cam Haz Chem Rom Com
My degrees look good on a CV and, if I'm feeling a bit vain, make me look vaguely intellectual. But it's mostly status signalling. And they were tuppence ha'penny in my day compared to what they cost now.
In terms of real world value, there's very little. I certainly wouldn't get into 50k of debt for one.
This doesn’t please me because Britain is good at Higher Education and I think universities are intrinsically a good thing - for kids and for wider society
I just don’t see how the business model works in the future. They are going to implode. A few prestigious ones will survive and maybe thrive, most of the average provincial ones will disappear
A bit like what happened to newspapers, in fact
Because why shouldn't they? The clue is on the name Opposition.
I’m surprised he hasn’t actually said “don’t you know who I am??” in response to these allegations. In his thin reedy voice and with a wince of priggish superiority
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyvg1y170xo
Odd thing to say a few week after winning a 170 seat majority.
Boom. Universities collapse
https://x.com/1968tv/status/1836810711898427674?s=61
Unimpressive really
After 2021, that just totally died away.
Not worth watching since Thierry Henri left.
Starmer taking money from finance is (potentially) a story. Acting shocked that the company in question is headquartered in a tax haven & trades everything on the market is journalistic pearl clutching.
It really is easy to imagine Labour losing its majority in one go after this start.
What’s Blair’s wealth now? Plus Blair invented a job for himself where no even looks at his freebies, now.
And I can see why some want a feisty aggressive leader of the opposition. But aggression has to be pinpoint accurate to work, and a lot of the time she isn't.
The King shares my fondness for Gerard Manley Hopkins!
Also, he has a really good warm speaking voice, excellent for reciting poetry. Better than his mother
https://x.com/kulambq/status/1836468406259978315?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
A human won't see them, but a computer will.
There is a reason to criticise tax havens & it’s the lack of transparency of ownership that these places offer. But that doesn’t really matter to a hedge fund that is there to service clients rather than shareholders - they wouldn’t have to publicly disclose who their client investors were if they were headquartered in the US or the UK either.
(Family offices are a different matter - they locate in tax havens for the privacy they offer & probably to play tax games on top.)
For example -
1) problem - MPs turning out to be shits. Answer (for me) a sane vetting process. If they run a company selling complex derivatives on the value of nerve gas, nuclear weapons and rental flats - at least give them a second level vetting
2) problem - politicians taking dodgy looking donations. Answer (for me) - anything over £50 is reported immediately to a vetting committee. On pain of losing the whip.
3) problem - foreign sec talking out of arse. Solution - vet everything through advisors.
Is she the best for that? IDK, but she's not among the worst either.
I'm really quite pleased for Charles that his reign is going quite well. I've no love for the man, but after waiting so long it'd have been rotten for things to go wrong for him.
So if he is dim, it's a bigger issue than one man.
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/defence/labour
Too soon?
I’m wondering if they are the most charmless PM and COTE combo in living memory. You’d have to go back to maybe Major and Lamont, but even Major had an ordinary man vibe and was less prickly than Starmer
Completely useless of course, but not as charmless as Reeves and Starmer. Which was my point
Consider the appointment of Louise Haigh at transport.
2) A lot of the more senior folk could probably earn more elsewhere.
3) It could be a lot better, has failed on many fronts, and needs some restructuring for the new century.
Several things can be true at once.
I'm hearing that the Student Rental Market may be softer at the edges for the 25-26 academic year, and that some marginal property has not rented well this year.
That's to do with both student demand, and property supply. Obviously it varies by city.
Ten years ago in one of my local cities, newly build private student halls full of added-value services built in a splurge were offering up to 10-12% cashback on advertised rents to get students in, over a period of several years.
My photo quota for the day:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/19/with-a-lust-for-freebies-and-hobbled-by-infighting-labour-keir-starmer-look-like-the-tories-20?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
twice.
Lol 🙂🙂 - that's a cracker by me
She told me I was sack-religious.
Anyway, charm is over-rated - look what it's done to you!
The prime minister has insisted he is “completely in control” after the BBC revealed a row within government over staff pay.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyvg1y170xo
Can you translate Mr Trump's speeches into English?
Says man on train.
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
2h
“Why don’t you buy your own suits?” asked BBC Yorks. “The important thing in all of this is that we follow the rules”
There's at least a stab of an argument about security and god knows we seem to be in world where whackos are everywhere but the need for someone else to buy a pair of glasses and a suit? Come on - he's a highly paid lawyer/politician/party leader.
So no change there.