Posts

AI: for good or ill?

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    This is a very good book.  It's a collection of short stories and essays set in a possible (probable?) future just 17 years away where AI and related technologies are reaching maturity and playing an increasingly important role in the world - and hence in all our lives.   The stories are all written by Chen Quifan, a Chinese science-fiction writer who, after university, worked for Baidu and Google in various senior positions related to AI development before turning successfully to writing.  Each story delas with one specific aspect (or prediction) of how the techincnology can - and no doubt will -be used in the near future, whether in education, in healthcare, in warfare or employment (amongst others).  There is a lot of thought provoking stuff in there.   The essays, meanwhile, one for each story, are written by Kai-Fu Lee, another Chinese authority on this developing technology, and elaborate in detail the specific aspects covered, their histories, easy-to-understand technica
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How to be an Influencer....

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This  seems to be one of The BIG questions in today's business environment. Influencers are everywhere - they all seem to be young and beautiful and full of fetching pouts and winning smiles, long blond hair or designer stubble. Oh, and wealthy. I've only ever seen one under the age of about 30 (although decent make-up can hide a multitude of imperfections and knock years off your apparent age) and he was an old Polish geezer on breakfast tv over the weekend: white hair, neatly trimmed white goatee, blathering on about something or other. My Beloved turned to me and said witheringly, "He's over 70 like you, and an influencer, making lots of money. Why can't you do that?" I couldn't answer. Because I have absolutely no idea how to become an Influencer. Or even what they are supposed to do, Apart from looking presentable, what exactly are the qualifications? How do you get them? How do you decide what you want to influence people in? And how do you actually
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Finally - a chance to vote.....

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 .....at least for most of us Brits.  Those, like me, living outside the UK, for whatever reason, may still face difficulties - but then our non-residence shields us somewhat from the worst of British life in the '20s.   But the General elecation in Britain, called by a rain-sodden Sunak for July 4 (I assume his spads missed the irony there of the electorate voting for independence from the fragmented and failing Conservative Party on US Independence Day - which goes a long way in showing the mess the party is in: it would never have happened under Churchill or Thatcher or even Major), is not the only election this year.  The Indian election has just returned Modi with a reduced majority in the world's most populous democracy - the voting process took a month to complete.  This weekend sees the EU's Parliamentary election, and of course in November we have a re-run of Trump v Biden in the US.   Taken indivudually each country involved (all 29 of them) face important decisio
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The Absence of Truth

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  For years, I've been a bit of news junkie.  Specifically, during my years travelling around the world on business, usually to places where I had little or no understanding of the native tongue and where either CNN or the BBC World News were the only English language channels on the hotel tv service, the experience turned me into a news junkie as there was bugger all else to watch (except for porn in some of the better hotels and, of course, on the internet - this was pre-Netflix, Amazon Prime and the other streamers).  With CNN and the Beeb you could be reasonably sure the reporting was factual since the reporters took pains (and often accepted tremendous personal risks) to go to where the news was - to battlefields, to angry street demonstrations where there was of the chance of a riot developing, to authoritarian countries like Russia and China, North Korea and Iran and Syria - and both film and report exactly what they saw happening.  Difficult questions were asked of politici
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Whatever happened to LinkedIn?

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Out of interest, what is the purpose of LinkedIn nowadays? I used it regularly for several years, had a solid Network of people, most of whom I knew personally and had worked with. It was a good way for us to keep in touch, alert each other to work opportunities, shoot the breeze in a non-aggressive (i.e. Twitter free) way, and now and again to practice my blogging skills. I even found a work contract one time. It was fine. Then I retired, and (as I thought...) closed and deleted the account as no longer relevant to my life. That was in 2018. A couple of months ago, My Beloved asked me to track down an old work colleague who we had lost contact with, so I revisited the platform and found him straight away. But without having a LI account of my own, I couldn't reach out to him, so I started to set one up (with the intention of it being purely a temporary means to an end) - and lo and behold the old account I thought was no longer in existance popped up, with all the same personal de
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Is the US complicit in the Gaza conflict?

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  I do wish the media would stop using the term "Israel - Gaza War" - it is NOT a war, it's a slaughter.  With a war, generally, both sides are more or less equal in terms of armaments, forces and objectives.  The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a war (of aggression, prompted by one sovereign state invading a neighouring sovereign state).  No-one could suggest that is the case in the Israel - Gaza conflict because Gaza has no sovereignty. Hamas committed an awful terrorist attack, and has rightly been condemned for doing so.  Israel's response is anything but proportionate, no matter what that state's government might say. There have been around 1,200 Israeli deaths, and 253 citizens captured (some of whom have now been released by Hamas) according to press reports. In Gaza, there have been almost 30,000 deaths and over 70,000 injured by Israeli forces. And that ignores the tens of thousands, on both sides, who have been killed or injured over the past 75 y
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I worry about America...

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  Seriously, I do. For my entire life, the United States of America has been a beacon of hope and peace and democracy, whether under a Republican or a Democrat Administration. Amidst all the gung-ho posturing and often angry rhetoric - and sometimes it could be very angry indeed (and often about what in my view were the wrong things) - and despite a pathological Superiority Complex the size of the Andromeda Galaxy, I always felt the country could be relied upon to Do The Right Thing.   And mostly it did. The Government and its spokespersons always trumpeted its successes, its "American values" and the sanctity of its Constitution; how there was no alternative - indeed, could never be an alternative - to Freedom, Democracy and The American Way, while at the same time leaving millions of its citizens in unemployed misery in ghettoes in every city, every large town, because of the colour of their skin or the place of their birth. I turned a blind eye and a deaf ear as they tri
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