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Created
Tue, 25/04/2023 - 01:56

What happens when we fuse, for the first time, artificially intelligent agents into either our market or political structures?

It has been a source of some comfort that humans have been clearly more generally intelligent than even our most advanced machines. That is until very recently.

In a short period between June 2020 and November 2022, OpenAI released a series of interfaces and invited the general population to play with two new machine learning (ML) models. This pair – Dall-E and ChatGPT – allowed ordinary people to use natural human means to interact directly with the artificially intelligent engines, bypassing the need for coding ability or familiarity with computing beyond web surfing. The results were, for many, a revelation. Suddenly, they could understand just how powerful AI had quickly become.

Created
Tue, 25/04/2023 - 00:30
A shortage of skilled tradespeople My required electrical engineering course was taught by a Ph.D. so spacey it was like taking a class from The Nutty Professor. I got an ‘A’ and laughed out loud over it for spitting back on the tests information I never really understood. It’s said one can graduate with a degree in electrical engineering and not know how to wire an electrical outlet. Believe it. The problem with moving to electric vehicles and away from fossil fuels for heating and power is that the country will need a lot more electricians able to wire up all that gear. David Owen at The New Yorker reports there is a shortage of them, but also “heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) techs.” Owen explains: One reason for the skilled-labor gap is that the work is real work. The electricians who restored power to the houses on our road spent Christmas Eve in bucket trucks, buffeted by winds so strong they made the screens on our porch hum like kazoos. LeMieux told me that he’s had apprentices who quit after a few months because they had decided the job was too wet, too messy, too cold, too dirty, too hot.
Created
Mon, 24/04/2023 - 23:09

Since 2018, I have been the Director of Salford Red Devils—a Super-League Rugby League team celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. As we arrive at this milestone, it has to be said that on the pitch, the club is performing better than we have for decades. On the pitch, we’re going toe-for-toe with the best […]

Created
Mon, 24/04/2023 - 23:00
The GOP’s debt ceiling game of chicken House Republicans led(?) by Speaker Kevin McCarthy refuse to raise the debt ceiling without conditions. Given their lax attitudes toward punishing insurrection and attacks on their own legislative chambers, it hardly seems beyond the pale that asking “Would they or wouldn’t they?” regarding defaulting on the national debt seems as quaint as asking if the Bush administration would torture prisoners. It would throw markets and the economy into chaos. But then, their party is now defined by that condition. “His caucus is willing to allow the United States to default on its debt to force budget cuts,” the Washington Post Editorial Board notes: It is foolish to gamble with the full faith and credit of the U.S. government at any time. It’s madness to do so now, at a fragile moment for the financial system. Have lawmakers learned nothing from the 2011 standoff that resulted in higher borrowing costs and a lower U.S. credit rating? Back then, the two sides got close to the edge and there were hefty costs.
Created
Mon, 24/04/2023 - 22:00

I’m in the baking ingredients aisle looking for unbleached quinoa flour when I see it: a box of Funfetti cake mix. Ugh, what a sugar bomb. I’m already moving on when I swear the Pillsbury Doughboy makes eye contact with me as if it’s the Mona Lisa, saying, Leave without me: I fucking dare you.

So you know what? I’m throwing the box in the cart. Screw the sugar-free quinoa flour energy bars I was going to make, because fuck it, I’m making a Funfetti cake.

I’m also throwing in a tub of Funfetti frosting, the one with the sprinkles in the lid. And fuck it one more time, because I’m getting another frosting tub to eat with my index finger while scrolling through my high school bully’s before-and-after-Herbalife belly photos.

Is it my birthday? No.

Is it anyone’s birthday? Also no.

Is it any special occasion at all? Hell no.

Created
Mon, 24/04/2023 - 21:40
BlackRock said it attended a meeting at the request of the Government to form a relationship with Nadhim Zahawi Nadhim Zahawi spent part of his last week as Chancellor seeking advice and “continued support” from the world’s largest asset manager on the Financial Services and Markets Bill and a number of other UK issues, Byline […]
Created
Mon, 24/04/2023 - 21:25

Now that precisely the same individuals who organised the conspiracy to frame Alex Salmond are under heavy police investigation for financial fraud, many people are now prepared to listen who refused to do so before. I am going forward with a case to the UN Human Rights Committee over my substantial imprisonment for journalism. This […]

The post Defence Fund Appeal – United Nations Human Rights Committee appeared first on Craig Murray.

Created
Mon, 24/04/2023 - 21:17

When Karl Marx looked at the revolutionary self-governance of the 1871 Paris Commune, he saw an embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Decades later, James Connolly, the leading Irish Marxist, seized on that same ethos of worker democracy. Writing in Workers’ Republic in May 1899, Connolly argued, ‘[T]he Commune, if it had been successful, would have inaugurated the reign […]