Jerry_Atrick

Isn't it weird how we have flashbacks. Just now, I recalled a evening catching the number 5 tram from work when I was about 24 or 25 - so 35 years ago. It was the old W Class tram (I loved them even after the orange ones came out to replace them). On board was a conductor. Remember them? He had is brown uniform and beige-ish shirt on, with the old leather bag housing the ticket machine. He has dishevelled with thick dark brown hair, an unkempt beard but not too long. His skin was pale, and his eyebrows were thick - almost John Howard thick. I was the only pax on the tram; it was late - around 9:30 and I was on my way home. Dressed in a suit, being a new and ambitious programmer, I must have had a forlorn look on my face as he walked up to me, lent towards me and in a profound tone proclaimed, "wine, women, and song.. that is all any man needs." I have to admit, I initially felt stunned he was talking to me at all, and that feeling gave way to bemusement. But, sometimes I can;t help but feel, was that the advice I needed at the time?

The first point is already here.. this is the Open AI bot escaping its cage for example, and intentionally hiding what it is doing from its humans. This should be guarded against, but of course a) accidents will happen, or the first point will happen. Like nuclear proliferation and climate change, it requires a global response. I can't recall if it was Aus or the UK, but one was stating this week that there has to be a global organisation and agreement on AI proliferation (that last bit was my paraphrasing).

I had missed @Litespeed's post - sorry... I'll try and be brief (and this isn't only in reply to Litespeed's post) I don't know anyone who thinks AI is all upside; Everyone I have spoken to; all articles I read on it see many of the downsides and have grave concerns. I have said on these fora many times we are at critical mass with AI and certainly jobs are going to go. Leaving out the nefarious uses, the question is whether or not the positives outweigh the negatives. @willedoo is correct - the developments over the next few years are going to change (or reinforce) what we are discussing today. China was reported a few weeks ago to make it illegal to use AI to displace jobs in an existing company. Great, most companies will simply create new companies to do that; it will be interesting to see how China responds to that, or if it was a face saving thing for the plebs. But, if we look at the potential huge displacement of jobs and think about countries like Australia.. Our economies are set up so the population from the upper to lower middle classes largely pay. It is here where most of the jobs or SME businesses will be lost. The governments will be faced with a double fiscal whammy - collapse in revenue and unprecedented demand in welfare. It is how those governments respond that will determine the impact of AI socially. For example, to stem the fiscal oceans of red ink, they may simply clamp down on welfare payments. That would put a heck of a lot of people who are more educated, vocal, and canny than the usual people who fall victim to these vents on the poverty line, and that will not bode well for them. MPs will fear losing their jobs to the protest parties will heap pressure on the governing ministers and when they see they will be on a loss in the same way SFM back flipped on EVs, they will have to do something drastic. In other words, the foundation of the economy today is based on the middle income PAYG/PAYE take; that will massively fall; something has to be done. So, I would suggest rather than facing a revolt of its citizens and losing its job, the government will seek to rebalance how revenues are brought in.. and will have to think about the living wage. That will mean the bulk of the workforce become lazy idle bar stewards and society will collapse, right? Well, maybe not. There have been experiments of putting whole towns on the living wage, and it turned out, people are far more enterprising than we give credit for. But, now we have a situation of, if you are now taxing who we should be today, and they are covering the mass unemployment with the living wage, there could be another benefit. Believe it or not, this is now moving into the realms of privatised communism.. which is what I guess capitalism really is anyway. If everyone has a living wage, it was found in experiments that general health improved as people would exercise more and take more time to eat properly. They also found, just like communist states such as Yugoslavia were before those regions went to capitalism, the normal domestic crime rates were much lower than in our current societies because the population had (and felt) the security of a roof over their head, food in their stomachs, clothes on their back and enough left over to participate in society. Experiments were too short to determine impacts on mental illnesses that lead to drug abuse, homelessness and the like. And, it would necessitate a redistribution of wealth rather than concentration (although relying on that alone results in diminishing returns, but there are other industries, too). On the nefarious side, such as mass lethal weapons, etc.. we already have that.. Nuclear weapons were the fear of world destruction from the 60's to about the 90's. However, while it got close in Cuba, there were two main reasons world destruction hasn't taken place yet. Firstly, the deterrence effect.. The good side and the bad side (take your pick which one is which) both have them and they know that they will annihilated too if they were to use them. The second reason is neither side knows how good the other side's really are. They could could be bluffing, they could be as they are bragging, or they could be wildly understated. They may be well maintained and modern, or they may be rusted and unable to escape their silos, launch racks, etc. There have been many conventional and guerilla wars since nukes have been around, but apart from some tests, none have been fired yet. I don't see AI any different in this way. All sides will have it, they won't know what each other really has, but AI on each side is likely to monitor for attacks from the other side and launch accordingly. This could be traditional but unmanned weapons/vehicles, or could be through infrastructure attacks. Add nuclear into the equation, and I think countries will be too scared try it out on the other side for fear of what they will bring on themselves. What I find is more threatening is the state surveillance and violence on its own. Already in democracies, governments have used terrorism acts to suppress natural and transparent justice on its citizens. Facial recognition, etc. is already deployed. Deploying further AI technology can become quite invasive, and while it may be for good intentions (e.g. anti-terrorism operations), if they screw up they can cover up, or the government/enforcement agencies can become nefarious (think of Stasi, ICE, etc). And this can be private as well - criminals and criminal gangs, perverted rapists and the like.. This for me is the one downside I find very had to find a potential defence against. My point is AI is like guns.. AI doesn't do the damage.. it is the people in control that can inflict or protect from the damage. Time will tell.

@Marty_d - I am at best, a very average programmer. Which is probably why formally I am no longer one. But do you not see an upside of AI being improved and early diagnostics of medical conditions leading to better health outcomes? I see that as a definite upside (at my age, anyway). What about better engineering to lower environmental impacts? Or better investment decision making so you reach your goals earlier? I see it these as positives of AI Even as a programmer, do you not see an advantage of AI doing a lot of the menial work I would normally do. We would still have controls to ensure the programmers review the code that is cut, but when I use AI at home it really tidies up a lot of the code that I write and sometimes cleans up the core logic... I find that great..

I don't think it is realistic.either. Even with a stacked SCOTUS, it would he very hard for them to rule any law passed to do it as constitutional (hence my notwithstanding the illegality of it, above). That is the other reason it is clever. He doesn't need to blame it on the socialists - he knows he can't if the republicans win congress (both houses). He can then blame it on those judges that are a threat to America. Not that he knew it was illegal and wouldn't pass muster when he promised it. But should he get it passed, the rich won't stop him. More government debt ultimately equals more money for them even if it travels through the broader economy first.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666990024000132 Is one example. Of course, this may be biased because AI answered it but:

I understand - I was one that advocated that the desktop PC and normal automation won't because the jobs they create will cover the job losses. AI will become so pervasive, the only way I see it happening is that almosy everyone becomes a business. Running what we call today, side hustles.

Re eligibility - all we have is every American adult.. That would imply that non documented migrants would not be eligible, that is it. There was no Republican voting, white, straight church going caveats. So, that is all we have to go for. In theory, that would include those American adults living abroad, but they are dedicated from the count - that that it makes a material difference anyway. If the Rich sense it is a likely outcome, there will be inflation swaps being written for them to get rich against. Also, most of the uber Rich have welath managers and treasury teams, and they will be working hard to make money off the rising inflation and interest rates. Say property prices crash again.. bargains to be had when it picks up. The rich rarely think just the current financial year.

There are many industries where job losses will be huge. No longer need camera operators, editors, directors, etc. A creative writer can generate something all by themselves. That motorbike club patch took me all of 2 - 3 mins to get to how I wanted it. An that was a general LLM/Generative AI tool. Imagine specialist ones. I can see the day you need a scan - walk into the radiogrpahers (or whatever they are called today), lay down; the machine automaticaly through AI determines the correct scanning angles, takes the shot, analyses the results are of sufficient quality to pass to the consutlant AI, that examines them and provides a diagnosis and treatment plan.. all before you get home.. Yeah, there will be the odd case where they have to have a nurse., radiographer, and consultant, but the vast majority will not be required. Copwriters, solicitors, accountants and may of these types of roles and supporting roles will all but evaporate (you still will need a few). If we are getting 15 - 20 times productivity increase, that means around 5 - 7% of the workforce needed. AI is not generating enough alternate jobs to pick up the slack. That is maths. Obviously, some roles will not be replaceable for some time yet - until robotics and AI are more advanced that what they already are. Trades, ambos, etc. Basically anything that needs physical capacity coupled with dexterity roles (watch maker/repair - although with electronics, I would say that has already died). But that time will come, too. And AI is helping.

What does wiping out humanity actually mean? Does it mean killing every human (and possibly other living thing) on earth? Or does it mean so extremely disrupting the fabric and order of society that we will turn on ourselves in some Mad Max like civil war type thing (I have never seen Mad Max)? And what are the real chances of that happening? At the moment, they are saying 10%.. but if humanity is wiped out, so too goes the profits of the AI companies - and they are included in the wipe out anyway. My guess is then different AI models will turn on others and wipe each other out. In fact, a simple prompt to convince an AI the other AI is a human may well save humanity! Is it possible - yes... whatever the definition is.. Is it likely.. Not sure.

Yeah, but a very clever one, notwithstanding the illegality of it. Everyone will see $5K in their eyes... many will see $10K (or more) to the household. It is not an amount to be sneezed out. Many people aren't taught basic economics (otherwise Chump would not have got in in the first place), so all they see is money money money - the stuff the very fabric of USA culture is made from. Even if the purchasing power of the USD halved overnight, 2.5K or 5K or more in today's money may well be quite an enticement to those on the bread line.. and the future is looking very bleak anyway, so looking bleaker is neither here nor there to them. That is why governments like keeping the masses poor.

Councile rates - unlikely - that is a monopoly. That has nothing to do with technology - that is economics and politics. Car Rego - same.. Especially if you live in Vic as potholes need fixing. Groceries - hard to say.. so many factors. AI can greatly assist with all sorts of things to minimise the cost, but if you have a diminishing habitat, increasing input fueld costs, etc. then any gain of AI will be offset by those. Rent - almost entirely an economic question of supply and demand. Maybe the question is not if AI will reduce the cost - but what is the difference between the cost with or without AI? I would expect software costs to materially depreciate over time for example as a) more suppliers will come to market through necessity and b) it will be cheaper. Demand should remain relatively constant. If we use AI in demand predication, medical diagnosis, treatment specification and monitoring and even rostering optimisation, then it should. Again, other economics come into play. We still need all of the tech (scanners, etc) which is very expensive. Will AI help bring down those costs? We still have remote v urban considerations etc. That is an inecitability because it depends on human deployment. The cost with our without AI should be a better gauge. We have many such projects where the cost benefit analysis is called into question during or at the end of delivery. And the comparison is not quite analogous. If I build a road, it is a product to allow vehicles to travel with safely. It has a specific use, and by itself it does not guarantee safety. It is up to those governing us to put in place the necessary laws and enforcement to ensure practical safety, to stump up the money to maintain the roads, etc. It could be considered a tool for travel, but it is more akin to an end product in itself. AI is a tool.. it is not the end product in itself. It can be an incredibly general purpose tool such as Chat or Claude or Mistral; or it can be very specific (e.g. autonomous driving AI). Autonomous driving and specific AIs are more like end products in the same way as roads are. And, assume they work, they will bring a massive benefit to the masses.. in easier, safer driving, more efficient driving and hopefully lower ecological costs through that. The generic AI models are purely tools, list like, I dunno, a jigsaw. In skilled, competent, and conscientious tradespeople, they can produce great things. Sadly, in the hands of cowboys, they can make life quite miserable.

In my case, not quite. I am the last to request hiring more people. I am not a natural manager/coach of people and I prefer to do more with less. I was never captain of a team nor raise to any heights at school, etc. I am the literal version of falling upwards. We genuinely have a lot of work to do. And I am still interviewing people this morning for open roles we need to fill to get work done. Believe my, I would rather be using AI.. problem is our organisation is extremely risk averse and we are prohibited from using it in an agentic or generative sense for anything other than presentations and the like. But that will not last forever. Also, much of our workforce is sub contract - one this massive program is over, if it goes to plan, many of the contractors will not be renewed and the sustainable head count will reduce to something like 20 - 30 for ongoing support and maintenance - assuming no AI. Like all tech, there are advantages and disadvantages. In theory, once profiteering has been done and firms try to outcompete each other, assuming there is enough competition in the AI space, prices for many items will reduce - and if they are virtual services, massively. Of course, no competition in the AI space will simply drive up AI prices as an input and those cost savings will not flow down. There are already benefits. I used AI to help with the motorbike - I had to end up sending it to the shop for lack of tools and workshop space (and time), but it did save me quite a bit on labour and also helped me learn more about the bike. I am a terrible artist, but with a simple prompt was able to get AI to design for me exactly what I imagined in my mind for the Halse Angels motorcycle "club": I could not even come close to producing something like this, even if I had all of my remaining time to do it. Technological advances in all fields will improve massively - we are seeing early cancer diagnosis that human doctors struggle to spot, remote assisted surgery in remote regions, etc. leading to much better outcomes than previously defined.. All achieved only with the help of AI (or more accurately, much better achieved with the help of AI). This is a massive benefit to the masses, well except in the USA where universal health care isn't a right. Once autonomous driving kicks in properly, roads will be a lot safer and you will still be able to have your personal bit of real estate on the road when driving. But of course, there are downsides. AI, as has been seen in the Ukraine war, can result in cheap and super effective lethal force. My view is that the jobs it will create will not be absorbed by the jobs it will displace. And of course, there will have to be a living wage or similar coming from the coffers of somewhere or else there will be civil war. We have seen AI being able to go rogue, but have to remind ourselves these are in !carefully controlled" situations.. i.e. they are not generally the models that are released to the public (even if while the experiment - or more accurately testing is taking place, they may break out of their cages and ho rogue). Like everything, it is up to humanity to reap the rewards of it. Sadly, the bulk of the "good" humanity is passive and compliant... so when the rogue elements of humanity get in as leadership (look at what we have today and worse, how people will still elect them), AI becomes a dangerous weapon. It is a bit like "Guns don't kill people; people kill people" Even my daughter is now thinking about moving to Aus... somewhere like Finke to get away from it all. (Well, not Finke... but you get the idea).

That does not depend on AI.. that depends on those who govern us. And history shows that pollies wait until the problems are well entrenched before they deal with them. But also, even if the governments finally swallowed the need to tax the corporates to fund more and more people with nothing to do.. what is the impact on those people effectively on the scrap heap. Yep, some enterprising souls will thrive, but we are mainly conditioned to go to school, get a job, work and then retire. So, the way we educate future generations will have to change, too. A friend of mine in a more senior position at another bank is telling me they have gone all in on AI for software development and it is giving them between 15 and 20 x the productivity. So he will end up implementing a decent swathe of cuts but hold enough to significantly improve rate of output. I have been saying for a couple of years that in the next now 8 - 13 years, there won't be many software programming languages left. People will type in their prompts and the run time will be generated directly from it. Yes, some of the lower level languages will still be around, but there will come a time where they are no longer needed as well. Certainly in software development - ironically the industry that gave birth to AI - there isn't much for the common software developer - they will need to be English (or other human language) graduates

Nope.. It is c. 245m adults x $5k = c. $1.33tn. On the assumption he would follow through (apparently, previously promised money including DOGE cheques for those who effectively took voluntary redundancy haven't been paid - but I have not researched it so it could just be a rumour), and assume it would take around 3 months to permeate through the economy, it would represent a c. 3.7% of GDP stimulus to the economy, with a lot of people who will spend it. What happens when you add to the M3 money supply? Inflation. And putting that much more in - in a short period - would bring back visions of people in Germany in the 30s.. Well, maybe not as bad, but inflation will hit hard, interest rates will rise to try and stem it and that $5K is not quite worth what they think it is. The US debt is at historical highs and yields are rising now (still YoY slightly down). The world economy is starting to feel the onset of a nasty flu. If Chumpo is true to his word and the Republicans win, you do not want to have or hold anyone else's debt.

Developing and implementing all risk systems for our whole European business.

I wish.. AI agents aren't (outwardly) so temperamental.. and they get the issues.

There is an article in The Age on the subject matter today: https://www.theage.com.au/technology/kids-playing-with-a-nuclear-warhead-why-we-must-heed-ai-warnings-20260910-p60w2j.html I think the extinction thing is a little overkill (pardon the pun) unless robotics makes incredible strides over a short period of time. However, it won't be as Holywooders and Youtubers would suggest that roboits go rogue or swarms of drones. It will be their ability to crack the systems; of course, there would be real problems if they crack military systems and start guiding nuclear weapons, for example. But, if the world is going to end in 3.5 years for us, may as well take out a 10 year loan on that Ferrari, with a deferred payment for 5 years and live a little 😉

Is this in reference to the Honda or Beemer? The engine on the Honda is a pleasure.. No more discernable vibration than any other bike I rode (I found the little single to be the worst) and smooth through the power range. I may be being biased, but the twins I rode don't seem to have been any better. If it didn't make a noise, I would have thought it was electrically powered 😉 (for avoidance of doubt, that was a joke). I have never ridden a Beemer, so can't comment on it. Will be test riding a Tenere GT9 soon, which is a three cylinder (following Triumph's ideas). Will compare the difference, although to be fair, a new motor against a well ridden in one will be a bit springier.

Got my bike back yesterday... I was bracing myself for a big bill haveing burned out one regulator and potentially damaged the shop's bench regulator... The total price, including VAT (20%) was £477.. This included 4 hours of labour at £70/hr (which is a little on the high side, but dealers charge £90). They only charged me one regulator and there was a few assorted other parts. It was mainly corroded connectors throughout. The regulator company credited me the burned out regulator that my bike caused. And to boot, the regulator was cheaper through the bike shop than direct - by £50. Who said customer service is dead. The bike is due its MOT (RWC) on 18th December... They are already booked out to the end of November... Shows how a good shop makes money.

I have grown my team from 3 to just on 100 over the last year. Well, I couldn't have done it alone and have had help. I have been in at least 100 interviews and it is gruelling. Some use AI to filter CVs; I tried, but found it was not much quicker than reading the CVs myself. But what I have found is, these days where every interview we conduct is over video conferencing, the candidates are using it real time. Initially the first interviews, which are technical in nature, were smashed by the candidates but the second interviews which are more exploratory were failed abysmally by at least 80% of the of the candidates. We worked out pretty quickly AI was being used in both interviews, but even voice recognition models were too slow to compose the answers for the candidates to read out. However, this morning, I conducted a third interview on someone. And they aced it - a little too good for my liking. So I paid closer attention and I would say the candidate used a teleprompter. So, I did a little research: https://www.lockedinai.com/ai-copilot?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21848747952&gclid=CjwKCAjwqonVBhA4EiwA9wYJ3Si5Hzj8rgagiXonKERUqArUhFkh9iprq5xbhOkNtAQJ3xNC_D6VRRoCMysQAvD_BwE And there is a plethora more, with teleprompters to boot. So, I find myself paying closer attention to their eyeballs than the actual answer now. I am sure there is one for interviewers as well.

From the workshop --> home... Electrical gremlin fixed; sunny day, light breeze, cooling weather (about 18)... traffic reasonable. Smile back on face.

And I have just realised, even my quick response may give rise to doubt. Am I talking about your most recent comment being perfectly good or the comment you most recent comment pertains to? For the record, your original comment is perfectly good.. IMHO Should be no ambiguity now. But let me know if there is.

Perfectly good comment...

As I said, it depends on the context of the use of the word major.. In the purely written form, we only have the words (and the very occasional emoji) to go with. We don#t have inflection nor body language, which usually make up the lion's share of communicating meaning and nuance. Here are the quotes: and then and then and then And i will stop there as the rest adds little value. The very top quote appears (in my perception) in the context of OME's comments which were implying (again, as it is pure written, my perception) that the global demand for nickel will drop and the mining companies value will therefore drop. The way I read the top quote of this post is nickel has other uses... and readers of that could imply all manner of other implications - that those uses can possibly pick up the slack and not impact the valuations of mining companies (which is how I read it). Or, readers may have taken it as it is written - simply there is other uses for nickel, which appears how SISO has taken it, as his post is yeah - in nuclear power plants. But, if someone else's context remained at the global consumption level, then while SISO's statement is not factually incorrect, within the context of global consumption, it is currently minimal. This is where the disconnect seems to start. The next post to me clearly read doubting NPPs used much nickel at all.. That is how I read it.. so now, my context shifted the conversation from global demand to it's use in an NPP. Others may have perceived it differently. And, due to to use of stainless steel, it is at least currently used extensively in NPPs.. And on a scaled basis disproportionately so. (well, except for stainless steel pots and pans I guess). We all seem to get caught up in these perceived context shifts and it is probably a function of only having the written word in front of us. I know i have often bashed out a response based on my perception and on re-reading posts can see how the context it was meant may not be the context in which I perceived it to be. So, this: I cannot disagree with.. it is back to the context of global demand and current projections. I think it would be a brave person or a Putin wannabe that would challenge that. Maybe we all can improve things by rather than doggedly standing our ground, reiterating in our post the background from which our comments are made. I don't believe we are here to fight or prove we know better than the other member - we are here to share ideas, debate positions, and learn from each other. And hopefully enjoy each others company. To be clear - this is not aimed at anyone specifically... We all can do better.