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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | AI will be the way forward. It will lead to huge gains in both productivity and quality. |
How exactly does a government plan for the huge gains in both productivity and quality AI will bring, Wiley? Are you arguing that we sit tight until they arrive or should we have a little bit of jam to be getting on with while we wait?
| Why shouldnt he boldly base his vision and plan around this. |
The Blair government boldly based its vision around two plans of Gordon Brown's:
(1) The Public Private Initiative which allowed the government to pay private companies to build and operate big public infrastructure projects and
(2) The Rainy Day cycle by which the government runs a budget deficit in the good times in order to have a surplus to spend in the bad times. [I can't remember the actual name.]
Both are excellent theories but in practice, as with all democratic governments, the need to win elections meant 'jam today' was the plan adopted.
And don't forget endogenous growth....
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
How exactly does a government plan for the huge gains in both productivity and quality AI will bring, Wiley? |
We need the infrastructure its like road building. Its a government role. Govt will act as the project managers, engineers, and overseers who fund, and plan this.
If we dont we are going to end up with US or Chinese AI or European AI and frankly we dont want that as they have very different world views (intelligence to us).....
AI will transform things like literarture, films, music, sport etc so we need British AI or we will lose out, just like we benefit from foreign folks speaking and thinking in English...........
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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I understand and accept all this (as a possibility) but exactly how does the British government play a role?
| ...like road building. Govt will act as the project managers, engineers, and overseers who fund, and plan this. |
AI isn't at all like road-building. It's not something governments have been doing since the year dot. In fact, it's difficult to think of an area of expertise less suited to governments.
They can fund people who might be good at AI--the British government is already throwing cash their way, up there in the flatlands of Cambridge--but British governments of all colours have a long and sorry record when it comes to 'backing winners' in the e-world.
| AI will transform things like literarture, films, music, sport etc so we need British AI or we will lose out, just like we benefit from foreign folks speaking and thinking in English........... |
A good point. Especially as American English is in such low dudgeon at the moment. But I still don't see how the British government waves a wand--and a cheque book--to get it done.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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All true, which is why we wont do it, will eventually get in foreigners to do it, import their intelligence, it will be their AI informing all our planning, eg military, health service, governance, education.
We will be in the slow lane, dependent on their AI.
I commend Blair for at least trying to get Britain (surely still a top 10 nation) to be a world leader in AI.
Still happy to concede. We wont catch up, as oh cripes the Koreans are already ahead of us, whilst we set target government target times for GP appointments...... they are happilly looking to give everyone a right to safe AI, so they can help themselves with common ailments......
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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| I commend Blair for at least trying to get Britain (surely still a top 10 nation) to be a world leader in AI. |
You haven't grasped what I'm saying. Blair is just going in for wish-fulfillment and modish-aping. It's no more than me saying to you in the pub, "That AI. We should be getting into that and no mistake. Whatever it is."
There isn't much evidence that the government putting money into AI is even minorly helpful. When you pick winners, you create losers. Which is where the AI sparks-of-the-future are--in their bedrooms not Cambridge sculpted thinkfest campuses.
I'm not saying the government can't do anything. They might, for instance, encourage overstayers from the sub-Continent. Give comprehensive kids grants to go to public school hothouses. Send the unemployed on software courses rather than ten-weeks of how to fill in CV's. They might even send their own civil servants on AI secondments. Did Tony mention anything like that?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
There isn't much evidence that the government putting money into AI is even minorly helpful. When you pick winners, you create losers. Which is where the AI sparks-of-the-future are--in their bedrooms not Cambridge sculpted thinkfest campuses.
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Disagree, with this.
Maybe its because my personal inventions are so incredibly bad, I now have more faith in allying your anarcho hippie college drop outs to well funded small teams of geeks, at universities, with strong links to the military idustrial complex to develop them.
What a sell out......apologies.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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Accepted.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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Director, Walter Reed Hospital: Welcome, Mr President.
President Trump: Let's make it snappy. I don't know why I bother with this Geriatric Test but my PR people say it's necessary.
Director: Coming right up, Mr President.
President: You're new, aren't you? What happened to the last bloke?
Director: You only passed twenty-nine out of the thirty tests last year.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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The Fall of Trump's America
The President is riding high in his ability to run his preferred candidates in the November elections but low in the polls that will decide those elections. These sorts of thing won't bother him. But now he's got himself entangled with football. Not the upcoming World Cup, real football, the NFL kind.
The New York Giants quarterback, Jaxson Dart, introduced Trump at a recent Trump rally in New York. Despite his black Christian name, Mr Dart is a youthful, white, well-connected rookie. It seemed to him the most natural thing in the world. 'Gee wizz, you don't turn down the President of the United States etc.'
Unless your day job is leading a team of preponderantly grizzled, black, not well-connected veterans into the trench warfare that is American football. No matter how well the Giants PR department have scrambled to repair the damage, there is no way back.
The Americans don't know it but this is their Harper's Ferry moment.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Jaxson dont look like a Christian name to Wiley.
Americans seem to have this habit of confusing surnames with first names, eg Hunter, or Mason.
This is boring old Jackson.
Presumably they wanted to honour a Jackson. Might have been Andrew, might have been Michael.
I would like to think he was named after Thunderbolt Jaxon....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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I was referring to the spelling. African-Americans have taken to adopting either made-up exotic Christian names or exotically-spelled non-made up ones.
This is the first time any descendant of a Secretary of the Treasury has done either. What African-Americans will do if non-African-Americans start adopting these practices remains to be seen.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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When a vast tranche of 'the Mandelson files' are released and every news outlet quotes the same, not very incendiary, exchange between Mandelson and a dim Labour minister, we can be sure there's 'nothing to see here'.
The fact they were selected by 'a team of civil servants' doubtless has something to do with it. This is not America.
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