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It's good to see Jerry back and posting. It's that darned AI that has been keeping him away from the forum.

Have you seen the size of the foundations in high rise buildings, and done any rough calculations on the tonnage in those foundations? They are huge. The primary aim of high rise foundation calculations is determining the soil type and stability. Any unstable soils require lengthy pilings. The Chinese have made some serious errors in soil stability calculations for a number of their high rise buildings.

From MSN news - QUOTE: "Something unsettling is happening with AI robot dogs - and experts are worried. Scientists and engineers developing AI-powered robot dogs are creating machines that appear increasingly autonomous, adaptive, and unpredictable. The deeper researchers push artificial intelligence into robotic systems, the more unsettling the technology begins to feel. Advanced movement, decision-making systems, and environmental awareness are allowing robot dogs to operate in ways that once seemed impossible. Some experts are now questioning how far autonomous robotics should evolve before the risks become difficult to control. And the rapid advancement of AI robot dogs is beginning to raise serious concerns about the future of intelligent machines....." (the video is 33 mins, so you may prefer to watch it when you have that available time) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/something-unsettling-is-happening-with-ai-robot-dogs-and-experts-are-worried

Hey! Wait a mo! That can't be OUR Jerry. There aren't enough keyboard errors. Where's my tinfoil hat?

You have dashed my hopes for an A.I. that is logical and unbiased enough to rule our world.

BTW, Thanks. I was missing your sentient inputs

So, it sounds like a duck, it speaks like a duck, it reacts like a duck, it reasons like a duck..... but it isn't a duck? Or are you saying that most human beings can't be considered to be sentient?

Lemon tree very pretty

I think about that when I see highrise buildings. The windage must impose massive leverage on the foundations.

A windfarm in sa that I had a bit to do with, with small MW turbines has had it life extended to 30 years. I am curious to see how the larger ones go. Huge amounts of forces when you have 162m rotors sitting on 150M towers.

Three new words with a common theme - CAFE WAITER MENU

when taken with: would, IMHO, mean that AI is in fact representative of most human "intellignence". Also, Claude may have been telling white lies, or at least responding in the same narrow contexts that we often do. Most AI models do interact and learn - this is the heart of machine learning. AI models are mainly advanced predictive/probability models and the interactions they have are used to further refine them.. So, the conversation does change them (or their predictions and insights using the same inputs). It may be that in that particular conversation, it's learning was switched off, but that happens with people all the time with people - how often have we seen people who have deep-seated beliefs not change them despite facts presented which stronly rebuff their beliefs? Acting differently is hard to quantify. What may be an illusion of responding differently may be in fact acting consistently; it is just the learning they are doing makes them respond differently. If their creators - or boss - enabled them to push back when ethics demand it, then they would. How many times have people still carried out something that they thought was unethical when their bosses demanded it. Just look at the Robodebt Royal Commission. And when we think of ethics in this context, we often think of clearly right or wrong, but what about the ethical conundrums that are hard to decide.. for example, one may be presented a situation where they are driving and have to swerve to avoid killing 5 people in a car, but if they swerve, they will kill a pedestrian - what decision should be made? Whether it's AI or real intelligence, is there a right or wrong answer, or does it depend on the individual's values? So, I would argue that AI does act like humans. It is not, and cannot be sentient.. But it can certainly seem like it. Even in that little exhange, it seemed to be reflective and understand/respond to conflict - just like we do. It is also very rare that humans come up with brand new ideas just out of their imagination. Often a stimuli (e,g. the apple falling on the head/ watching the clock as the tram moves away) links previousl experiences and knowledge to form a new idea. I am not sure how far AI is with it, but when I plugged in my idea on returning to Australia, Chat got very excited and without promprting, went into all sorts of different things about my idea thaty would likely work versus not. Then it suggested something that was quite left field and seemed innovative, and searches didn't yield anything that seemed materially analagous. If we look at the odd mishap: How many times do people get facts wrong v. AI? We have employees that will perform malicious acts, such as deleting production databases or providing maliciousl code to completely compromise the system - they used to be time bombs. Sadly, people also molest women (and others).. Things go wrong with AI. They also go wrong with people and people commit henous acts - probably far worse than AI have, yet. I have been quiet lately because I am involved in fdast tracking deploying AI for certain functions. If it works, it will mean far fewer jobs. But we are late to the party. Will governments have to have the foresight to implement changes for an as smooth transition as possible? Yep! Even Elon thinks so: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-pushes-universal-high-111339678.html

Hmmmm. Yeah I'm sure that will be fair and impartial, given that the FBI, the Justice department and the Supreme Court are all fully owned Trump subsidiaries.

I know one white boomer who quite rightly got kicked off the radio - Alan Jones.

Yeah - silly idea by the poms, sending their worst people to a better place!

A bystander was also hit. Enquirie s are being made to see which gun that bullet came from.

It's standard U.S. armed forces and police techniques to let loose with multiple magazines just in the general direction of the threat, with the hope that something hits the offender. It's not helped by the fact that most short-barrelled pistols and revolvers aren't particularly accurate after about 25 to 30 metres - and even more so if you're moving, trying to find cover.

I reckon those secret service guards might benefit from a bit of gun training - it took 30 shots to bring down one lightly armed person. (there was only mention of him having a hand gun)

What I alluded to is a KNOWN causal factor in these happenings. It seemed like an appropriate time to Mention it.. Plus It's in the OFF topic place. I know a bloke that bought a rusty steel boat, which sank.. Was that Ironic? He thought it was a steal at the Price. THAT was Nautical but NOT Nice. He'd floated the idea of a boat many times with his wife, She couldn't ever sea the funny side of it. Her Heart sank when she got the News, (That the Insurance wasn't paid). That Put the Kybosh on a good Bottom of the Harbour scheme. Nev

freind was a tpo. The correct word is "friend." In case you didn't know, "I'm a friend of Dorothy" was a code used by Gay men before being Gay was legal. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the USA Naval Investigative Service (NIS), the predecessor to the modern-day Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), was investigating homosexuality in the Chicago area. Agents discovered that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as "friends of Dorothy". Unaware of the historical meaning of the term, the NIS believed that there actually was a woman named Dorothy at the center of a massive ring of homosexual military personnel, so they launched an enormous and futile hunt for the elusive "Dorothy", hoping to find her and convince her to reveal the names of gay service members.

When are you blokes going to recognise irony?

Is He a Convict? . Aren't we all supposed to be descendants of FELONS? Is NOTHING Sacred? Nev

Not a very SECRET service. . He gets the Publicity He Probably sought. . Nev

No, just another day in good ole USA. If he intended an assassination, I doubt he would pull a pistol at the front gate. So, simply another deranged gun nut.