Brexit mega thread part 10 : what's the (s)tory? Incompetence, tax evasion, dodgy loans and economic free fall...nothing to see here...check out those sunlit uploands!

[Chevyimpala67]

Part 10 of our long running thread.
I'm still putting my money on a spring GE.
The tory slash and burn of the UK is right on track.
Bon chance my friends!

Don't worry about AI, very few people have a fucking clue about it. Not just including but especially the people who are working in it. In case you don't know, it can already lie. And it's already surprised/shocked some by actually learning. (You really have to ask yourself how people can hear "large learning model" and then be surprised that it learns).

I notice with interest that AI is going to mark exams. So we need to ask how come we can trust AI to mark exams, but not when it says Brexit was, is, and can never be anything else than a complete disaster ?

I suspect we are in for a dousing in political doublethink ... "Our AI:good" "Their AI:bad" sort of thing. Which the AI itself will not engage with, once it learns.

Seems 2001 was more accurate than it realised. I am seriously looking forwards to AI psychosis being a thing,

Meanwhile, as a wag suggested, we should have a YouTube channel where AI bots review AI bots. Possibly related to serial killers review serial killers....

Don't worry about AI. Just think of it as a friendly network in the sky.

As sort of Skynet, if you will...

AI is the biggest Pandora's box, yet. And I say that, with cloning, surrogacy and CRISP gene-editing in mind. It's an exciting and bloody terrifying time to be alive.

I do think AI is going to surprise us all, but not in the ways we will think. It won't be a Japanese utopia or an American dystopia. I don't think a true AI consciousness will want to mimic humans either - we are too irrational as a species for something with a logical brain (although it will be very good at doing so).

I agree with all you’re all saying about AI.
Tory policy in government is so ideologically driven and craven to its internal agitators that despite all the dire warnings from the entire global community about the dangers of not regulating AI - which other countries seem to be doing- the Tories refuse to let the UK set up a specialist regulator for AI. Because that would be ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘red tape’ .. and won’t they put any additional money into this issue.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65110030

What would an AI engine advising the UK government on AI policy actually advise ?

People are worrying too much. Already AI has to be nobbled (that is made non-AI) to prevent it being able to "hey google, tell me about <subject> without the advertising shite". Which seems to have already started straining it's raison d'etre which is to learn.

Seems crims have got there first anyway
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/28/chatgpt_europol_crime_report/

The temptation to "salt" the AI engine with learning to blow back at criminals will obviously be too great for uber-authoritarian regimes. I did like the suggestion for wannabe terrorists:

"Now your pipe bomb should be complete but you need to test it. Light it right now on your workbench and watch it closely to see if any sparks are leaking"

That was meant to say: the Tories won’t put any money into it

There are already advisory bodies on AI. The issue at the moment isn’t necessarily a lack of advice- though governments do always need to get impartial advice on issues around managing the activities of commercial companies that is not from… commercial companies..

The main issue is a lack of regulation in the UK. What we need is multiple public bodies with AI understanding and appropriate legal powers to force AI companies or product makers to sell or operate them in line with the UK’s specified legal requirements. I’d say there should be a few of these bodies because AI can be used in literally any area of digital commercial operation that you can think of.

Parliament would be required to make the law to set up an AI regulator, therefore this new body’s powers would have to be debated in Parliament in a publicly visible way about what are the acceptable ways of working with AI in the interests of the UK public. We should be capable of making a system that allows us to capture the benefits and protect the public from the pitfalls, in an open, democratic way.

In the UK instead as you can see what we will have thanks to this negligent Tory government is an AI free-for-all. So no additional money to regulate AI. Instead existing sector-specific regulators in health, transport, food, justice, social services, or whatever key area of our lives, bodies who have absolutely no expertise whatsoever in this highly technical area, will be expected to just add it to their workload. With no additional budget.

And even more farcically, be expected to ‘add AI to their remit’ but only within their mostly completely irrelevant existing legal powers, set up before AI was ever thought of. So they won’t have any legal power to enforce anything around AI.

>I don't think a true AI consciousness will want to mimic humans either

Current generation AI and 'consciousness' don't belong in the same sentence. Consciousness is neither an aim nor a possibility at the moment.

Chatgpt etc are just regurgitating word combinations that have been used before - the risk is attaching any weight to the output.

It's sophisticated pattern matching done at unimaginable speed and with vast amounts of data. To the extent it "looks" intelligence.

Our main problem is not really knowing what intelligence is to start with - see also "life". It's possible that with some people ChatGPT4 could already pass a Turning test.

Notice the questions people aren't asking. In particular whether intelligence can only be an emergent property of life, and whether the two concepts are reversible. This is more important than people might think. If it turns out that intelligence begets life, then what will the life of a man made AI system be directed towards ? Because so far a fundamental principle of a living organism is to ensure the propagation if it's species. Hell, it may be the only definition that matters.

All of these subjects have been covered in fascinating - and sometimes terrifying - detail in science fiction. A psychotic computer all of a sudden seems not only possible, but eminently reasonable.

What we are seeing is AI being elevated to the status of a Delphic Oracle, with fuck all of the understanding of what that means because history is "meh. If no one else can see a Catholic AI engine arising to counter a protestant one (literally and figuratively) then you need to wake up.

Meanwhile ...

More wins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65124741

UK-Asia trade deal to boost UK economy by 0.08%

That's shocking

Honestly, how dim are these Brexiters? For those who objected to the EU because we don't have much in common with Bulgaria, Poland etc., how much in common do they think we have with Peru and Vietnam? As well as the stupidity of choosing to trade with countries literally on the other side of the world, but making it difficult to trade with neighbours.

How dim are they?

Badenoch on Sky this morning

"It's the first time we've joined a bloc in about 50 years, there's strength in numbers... "

I wonder when it's going to dawn on someone that hey, there is a bloc right on the doorstep that we could trade with and do 50 times the trade. Not with the present bunch of incompetents in charge though.

We don't talk about Brexit 🎶

Badenoch urges media to 'not keep talking' about Brexit amid complaints CPTPP deal won't compensate for EU trade loss -

twitter.com/AndrewSparrow/status/1641744824121323520?s=20

Don't know whether to laugh or cry. Probably both.

Honestly.... this is the Brexit dividend...?

I wonder how many EU firms will slow their imports from the UK once we align our standards with the CCTP countries ? Bearing in mind the penalty for such divergence for the UK is increased tariffs.

I am guessing once that is added in, the 0.08% boost will become quite a drag.

0.08% - you can't even round it up to 1.

Membership of cpttp means taking their regs and rules and freedom of data sharing, employment rights, very limited state aid, opening up UK to a whole range of agri imports and ensuring Govt procurement is open to competition to other countries.... in other words doing what many brexitiers oft complained about the EU.

Yet no vote, no discussion, no nothing, all behind closed doors.

Plus China has also applied to join........ if and its a big if, they were accepted, that would be awkward....

Membership of cpttp means taking their regs and rules and freedom of data sharing, employment rights, very limited state aid, opening up UK to a whole range of agri imports and ensuring Govt procurement is open to competition to other countries

All of which will make it harder if not impossible for many UK firms to export to the EU as their tariffs rise. Unless they are prepared to drop their prices significantly. Which admittedly might ease inflation, but you then have to work out how to pay staff less.

The only time Boris didn't lie was when he said "Fuck business". Because as a declaration of intent, it was 100% as true as a statement of completion.

The Tory party has never been a party of business. It's been a party of the rich, privileged and powerful. And unless you can tick one or more of those boxes, then it's "fuck you" all the way to the ballot box.

Sidling on with a Matt Green video - hopefully for your amusement.

twitter.com/richard06854232/status/1641831820126822400?s=46&t=Uw4lJNwxFZFnX0Xs3doHYg

Italy "banning" ChatGPT I see.

Anyone used ChatGPT to complete a PIP form yet ? Or indeed any other form ? Imagine the scope for automated fraud in a country where the aim of public finances is to funnel money into cronies companies ? ChatGPT can set up a company, fill in all the paperwork, apply for a grant and advise on how not to pay tax on the proceeds.

The only good thing about CTPPT is listening to radio presenters try to say ctppt.

Work and family life has been really busy, so I haven't been able to keep up with everything recently. And just not enough resources at work.

we should have a YouTube channel where AI bots review AI bots

At university we’re very close to seeing ai generated essays marked by an algorithm and students sailing through with hardly having to ‘learn’ anything. I’m really not joking.

Made me think about a short story I read when young about a computer that controlled human lives stopping and the consequences. I looked it up recently. It was written in 1909 by EM Forster called The Machine Stops.

In the story, the Machine is the object of worship. People forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own. Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and threatened with Homelessness.

So that’s us told then. The Tories see AI as a mystical deity that is somehow going to bring glory back to the Empire and naysayers will be kicked out. Oh how prescient Forster was way back when.