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How would you verify that? Nev

The same people who wanted to put masks on cows now want us to build AI centres. By the same people, I mean loonies.

Methane is shorter term effect than CO2, but they FLAME it off at Refineries.?? It's not cow farts but they belch. CO2 causes sea acidification that affects little sea critters. Nev

Jerry. you obviously have no clue what Airline Pilot checks involve and How frequent and thorough they are. Nev

An American strikes up a conversation with a Russian tourist.... . A: "What brings you here?" R: "I come to America to study propaganda!" A: "What propaganda?" R: "Exactly!"

Random thought of the day.... Our State Fire Brigade just broadcast a Hot Day preparedness warning. It's already 12 degrees! Talk about global warming. We'll all be rooned!

I sympathise with your SIL's difficulties. However, I am pleased to hear that there is serious verification of standards. After all, look what happened when we didn't really check the competency of doctors. Jayant Patel is an Indian-American former surgeon and convicted fraudster. Patel was accused of gross negligence whilst working at Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland, Australia IIRC his qualifications and history were not verified when he was hired.

Well the Pacific Ocean has had a historic quiet winter - regarding hurricanes. However there is now a very big patch of warm water making it's way across toward us. We'll see what that does to our weather. Meanwhile, at last there has been some improvement in tracking methane plumes coming from the 'natural' gas industry. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and has been ignored for too long. Burning gas might produce less CO2 but there is lots of methane escaping into the atmosphere before the gas gets burned. No wonder the place is warming up. Blaming cow farts looks like a convenient diversion from the gas industry. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/14/us-companies-methane-pollution-rankings

Doctors. They are tested as much.. if not more. Ask my sister in law what she had to and continually has to go through. Some "lesser" professions they do not accept and you have to start all over again

Robotics technology coupled with AI will eventually come after blue collar workers, but outside specific functions, e.g. car manufacturing, drainage cleaning and the like, where robotics is already in place, the dexterity and processing capabilities of robots has a way to improve before you will see one up on your roof or re stumping a house.

I could be wrong, but the way I see it, most of the job losses will be office workers. I'd think they'd be more concerned about AI putting them out of a job than blue collar workers would.

In a perfect world, SME's would fund staff pay increases with an increase in productivity. That is, productivity increases earning the business more profit to be able to fund higher wages. A lot of the times unions and some governments expect the business owners to wear the cost of higher wages without an increase in productivity. When that happens it's a total loss for the business. The use of AI tools to increase productivity could earn businesses more money so that any future wage increases are fully funded intsead of a drain on the bottom line. It could be a win/win.

Maybe wobbly is a bit harsh. Optimistic may be a better description.

I don't know if it is a pretty wobbly financial model.. I think it is a bit like the .com (or .bomb) boom and bust. As a nascent industry where there is a lot of promise, there are a lot of players coming to market, despite the costs. Investors can see the gravy trains, but need to bet on which ones will survive. It's almost certain there will be a bust and from the ashes, a few phoenix's will rise. The bets are anthropic, despite Chump's disdain for them are going to be one of them; Open AI - not so. The success or otherwise though, in this case, won't be the consumer, but businesses. They are the ones who will fork out the big bucks to automate as long as the payback is there. And it is already for a lot of them. I can't speak about our company specifically, but if you think from SMEs to large corporates the automation capability is there now, especially in sectors that rely on information processing or content generation. Anthropic has already moved to a token based billing system where tokens pay for units of work. I think there are different token costs for say art generation versus software development. Eventually this model will probably prevail because you can work out your costs per unit of processing and apply a profit accordingly. The typical investment banking middle level contract programmer will cost around £200K/year; a permanent will cost not much different when you factor in pension, health care, holidays, training, sick, etc. If AI if 15 more efficient then I would happily pay half of my salary/contract payment bill, which runs with well into the 7 figures per year to whichever AI company we would happen to use.. It also benefits the business by being quicker to market and keeping up or beating our competitors. One of my report's sons has a job in a hedge fund or something similar as an intern. We caught up with him a couple of weeks ago and the stuff he as an intern and a developer with I think it is Claude crank out makes me wince.

Pete, that makes you half Queenslander; you might even qualify for a passport. Let me know if you need a reference.

There's a lot of money riding on a pretty wobbly financial model, so you may well be right.

AI is a bubble that will burst within a year or so. Every person using it for free, or paying $200 a month or whatever, is being subsidised by the billions (trillions) of dollars being speculated on the investment market. All the AI companies are running huge operating losses and are not disclosing their profit and balance sheets. At some stage the true cost of infrastructure, power, water etc has to be passed on to consumers. When we have to pay $2000 or $5000 a year each for our AI subscription guess what? We will realise that we don't need it so badly. The whole thing will crash.

Some states require engineers to be registered, so they need their qualifications to be recognised. Although I have worked on design/construct projects in Queensland in the past I could not do so now as I am not a Registered Professional Engineer Queensland. (not that I want to!). I the UK you can do your own house wiring.

Name One Profession then. Nev

Are you sure?

How many are checked like Professional Pilot's are? None. Nev

Allah be Praised. Nev

Anthropic is planning to build Australia's biggest data centre near Dalby in Queensland. It will lease land at the proposed Western Downs digital park that a Singaporean company is planning to build. The park will be a four stage project, with Anthropic's section around 725 hectares of land, currently used as a feedlot. It's yet to go through the local council approval process.

From my time working in Abu Dhabi, which was admittedly very short you could probably find most of what is in the above prose and being frequented by locals. Men are men at the end of the day..

It's the qualification that is of interest; not the job title.