UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation Britain's government is adopting all 50 recommendations made by a venture capitalist to use AI to drive economic recovery, without even acknowledging the resulting energy challenge this strategy likely poses. Under the AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced Monday, the administration claims that fully embracing the technology …
People say the same about driving into Devon from Dorset.
But then Devon CC are quite open that they're only doing safety-critical road repairs. Which means only potholes that have been reported by the public and meet their "safety-critical" criteria - >40mm deep, and "the size of a dinner plate" across.
I am on the local community group committee. We report pot holes to the Hertfordshire county councillor who just tells us that it is policy to not fill/repair them until they are big enough:
"Overall for HCC potholes it’s 5cm in depth and 30cm in width – at the higher end as per the article sent through, and of footways for trip hazards its 2cm."
So: how is AI going to improve that ?
Yet more policy that only makes sense through the lens of someone getting what they paid for.
A lot of it going around - no clear national interest for it but *someone* is going to make a stack off it and there seem to be plenty willing to help it happen.
Icon for your wallet getting lifted to pay for it all.
Under the AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced Monday, the administration claims that fully embracing the technology will boost productivity by 1.5 percent a year, gains said to be worth up to £47 billion ($57 billion) each year.
How much was HS2 supposed to add to the economy each year? And look how well that's turned out!
Yep but HS2 was a Tory idea to line the pockets or someone's mates.
"Under the AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced Monday, the administration claims that fully embracing the technology will boost productivity by 1.5 percent a year, gains said to be worth up to £47 billion ($57 billion) each year."
I call bullshit on that figure.
If you were to argue "But we can use it more for reports". Yes, they won't be accurate and all that will happen is you're get grifter directors, already overpaid and incompetant. Still getting the same pay and using AI to do all their reports for them and spending the rest of the day playing golf.
Not just HS2. And Brexit goes without saying. Has there ever been a fad or bandwagon our governments haven't jumped upon with the promise it will Make Great Britain Great Again, which has actually delivered anything of usefulness?
I am struggling to think of any substantial government project which came in on time, on budget, delivered the returns we were told it would.
Whilst Crossrail was ridiculously late, and ridiculously over-budget, thanks to being run as a load of projects, rather than a programme, it's exceeded all expectations in terms of usage. Even with the crap infrastructure west of Padders. So that's success on 1 out of 3 of your criteria :-)
The last paragraph is baiting fear of missing out.
It would be more informative to compare how AI is and can be used across the Atlantic.
In US, anything goes conditional on your legal budget.
In exchange for a fee you pay, all your data is now theirs, for an ephemeral benefit to be realized somewhere, somewhen.
In EU, any mention of AI in a funding proposal triples the vetting, where you need to carefully show that training data is secured, results are reproducible, and harm is defined in the context of the application (as it should).
The 100$/month is the tax vendors now charge to desperately recoup their datacenter investments (see recent Microsoft dark pattern of increasing subscription by 40% for the pleasure). It is not a function of availability or market demand.
LLMs are available open source and for free, even on CPU. No tax needed.
Keir should concentrate on just keeping the lights on at this point, instead of committing to building vast data centres that will consume power which the UK has precious little capacity to provide.
The example AI use case mentioned in his speech gives an idea of just how out of touch the government is....
"The plan also gives other examples for how AI could be used - for example to inspect roads and spot potholes around the country."
Councils know exactly where the damn potholes are when claims from angry motorists arrive in their inbox for car repairs! Locating them is not the issue, it's getting them fixed that is the problem.
Out of touch not least because such a thing already exists, based on tried and tested image recognition tech which runs on a smartphone, not gigawatt-consuming LLMs.
> a risk that the impact of AI may be far less than expected.
If the government gets involved we can upgrade that from an expectation to a certainty.
"Hello ChatGPT, my name is Kier. How can a government rapidly expand it's AI thingies?"
Hi Kier. I think you should award a huge consulting contract to OpenAI. I can arrange that for you, for a small fee
Theres no way we can meet our net zero carbon plans if we allow AI data centers to be built in the UK or anywhere.
We should put a stop to AI until it can be implemented without using so much computing power and energy. There should only a few AI centers for research until the energy issue is sorted.
It's crazy how the Government has jumped on the AI bandwagon. More waste of tax payers money, when there's more urgent things to spend our tax payers money on like sorting out social care.
It's crazy how the Government has jumped on the AI bandwagon. More waste of tax payers money, when there's more urgent things to spend our tax payers money on like sorting out social care.
I am wondering how long it will take for everyone to figure this out? I am sure the media won't be reticent in presenting such a perspective, that it's throwing money at problems we don't have, won't fix the one's we do have, that there's no firm foundation for what's being promised.
And what happens to Starmer and Labour when everyone realises the emperor is not wearing clothes?
Meta, the smallest of the FAANGs, will spend $26B this year on AI data centers. The idea the perennially bankrupt UK government (or any other European government, or even the EU) can play with the big boys is completely delusional. It would make a lot more sense to fund a few millions’ worth of PhDs at Cambridge to find ways to train AI more efficiently without the insane Capex.
were fucking awful but this is just stupid. Not only moving to using AI but also partnering with China. Look at Chinese human rights abuse, why partner with them? Look at their abuse of the Belt and Road system.
It was already being used at the DWP I believe to decide if people should get benefits or not and had to be stopped because it just pretty much saying no to everyone.
We used it in a meeting, it took notes. It then, in those notes said I said something that was never actually said.
Years or even only a year later that could be used in court "Mr Jones said this while on a Teams meeting. He denies ever saying it but CoPilot said he did so it must be true. On that note, send him to 20 without parol".
Its all fucked up.
Starmer needs to be replaced. He's just a posh lawyer who, apparently, has never really been interested in politcs. Have they never seen I, Daniel Blake. Not AI related but something similar will happen with AI.
"Why did Mrs Jones die?" Oh because Ted used CoPilot to summerise her e-mail. The problem is it totally missed the part where it said she was vunerable and really needed support and Ted never bothered to check. Starmer told us we HAVE to use all this AI shit.
We've been here before, the "government led" approach didn't work in the 1980s and I doubt it will work now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvey
----------
The 1980s saw the creation of the Alvey programme (1983–1987), the first large-scale R&D project involving AI in Britain. ... The launch of the Alvey programme was a response to the creation of the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer programme in 1982. ... However, by the late 1980s, the UK’s IT sector had built up a considerable trade deficit, and by the early 1990s it was considered unlikely that the Alvey programme would lead to any substantive commercial returns. ... It should be noted that a lack of clarity in terms of definitions and objectives seems to have plagued the field right back to its origins in the 1950s. This makes tracing the evolution of the AI field in the UK a difficult task.
The Alvey programme was a five-year collaborative R&D programme in IT which began in 1983. It was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Science Engineering Research Council (SERC) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD). In total the programme cost £350 million (approximately £1 billion today), of which £200 million came from the Government and the remainder from industry.
... the strategic objectives were not achieved. By 1980, the UK IT sector had a trade deficit of £300 million, and while the directors of the programme projected it would reach £1 billion by 1990, in reality it was surpassed as early as 1984.606 Although it was expected that in the long-term the programme’s work could lead to commercial returns, by the early 1990s it was considered that these expectations were unlikely to be met.
The idea of ‘AI winters’ in the UK obscures important conclusions that can be drawn from the experience with the Alvey programme. Funding for particular R&D projects does seem to have spiked and dropped at particular points, the latter often occurring after disillusionment had set in. Yet the Alvey programme’s results and implementation problems show that lessons from the 1970s were not properly considered, and that projects were set up without a clear understanding of how commercial and ‘public good’ objectives would be achieved and sustained. This was the case especially in terms of skills, and developing sustainable SMEs. Furthermore, the UK also neglected existing assets, including a highly skilled female workforce.
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https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/10018.htm
Yes, I really am that old that I was dragged into the bandwagon-jumping in the '80s - I'm just wrinklier and even more cynical about it now than I was then. Hopefully this time round I'll be proved wrong. Or then again, perhaps not.
"Perhaps recognizing there might be a latent problem, the government says it will set up a dedicated "AI Energy Council" chaired by the Science and Energy Secretaries. This will work with energy companies "to understand the energy demands and challenges" of its AI plans."
Ah yes, set up another talking shop! That'll resolve the issues in no time...
I had the misfortune to hear some of Keir "Snake-Oil Salesman" Starmer's over-excited speech on the radio, and it certainly sounded like it had been written by dear Steve Bong. Unfortunately no whalesong in the background, I guess the budget doesn't stretch to that these days…
Quote: "...AI to drive economic recovery..."
Plenty of "informed comment" about electrical energy.....so far so good!
But no mention of likely side-effects (did I say "side-effects"???):
- NHS data (from Palantir?) used for training AI models?
- PII used widely (in contravention of GDPR) for training AI models?
.....and then after those real issues.....who OWNS the AI models:
- citizens who have had their medical records slurped?
- citizens whose GDPR rights have been abused?
- Palantir?????
- Amazon????
- Microsoft????
- Google????
I think we should be told!!
"… fully embracing the technology will boost productivity by 1.5 percent a year …"
What does that mean, and from whence does the estimate of the benefit arise?
According to www.investopedia.com -
Productivity measures output per unit of input.
Economists see productivity growth as essential for gains in wages, corporate profits, and living standards.
The calculation for productivity is output by a company divided by the units used to generate that output.
Productivity in the workplace refers simply to how much work is done over a specific time period.
AND
Economic productivity is calculated as a ratio of gross domestic product (GDP) to hours worked. Labour productivity is analysed by sector to identify trends in job growth, wages, and technological advances.
Productivity — regardless of whether the concept is applied to an individual enterprise or to a national economy — refers to a limited range of human activities. Moreover, it may not be assumed that increases of 'productivity', in either sense, improve the quality of life for the generality of people.
However, the term is powerful in the hands of one-dimensional thinkers such as executive politicians and of the financial interests owning them.
Whilst not seeking to knock AI per se, there is no convincing relationship yet established between the use of AI and the capacity for production of tangible goods and services. Indeed, some believe AI, carelessly used, will have business 'externalities' deleterious to populations as a whole. The drive for profit maximisation, the mantra of business schools, already leads to conveniently ignored externalities.
For 'intangibles', these being most of the output from financial centres such as the City of London, AI will be as seductive as 'derivatives', 'rehypothecation', and instability-inducing algorithmic trading. Indeed, the last-mentioned seems well suited for delegation to AIs. Ironically, a tranche of grossly overpaid 'traders' and 'analysts' will be put out to grass: the small fry of Neo-Liberal financialisation will discover their true station in life.
For 'intangibles', these being most of the output from financial centres such as the City of London, AI will be as seductive as 'derivatives', 'rehypothecation', and instability-inducing algorithmic trading. Indeed, the last-mentioned seems well suited for delegation to AIs. Ironically, a tranche of grossly overpaid 'traders' and 'analysts' will be put out to grass: the small fry of Neo-Liberal financialisation will discover their true station in life. .... Long John Silver
Hmmm? ..... Methinks those maybe starting to realise they desperately need to rapidly discover a new station in life, in order to try to escape being held responsible and both morally and criminally charged accountable for all manner of past and present day national and international woes and serial missteps which can very likely result in them never being able to see grass again, are grossly overpaid 'central bankers’ and supporting supported ‘politicians’ ........ although that realisation would be wholly dependent on such subjects having more than just a modicum of smarter intelligence which has never been displayed as them possessing and able to use before.
It is/They are sure to be the prime targets for fundamental radical change and repurposing for IT and AI Virtual Machinery.
>>Moreover, it may not be assumed that increases of 'productivity', in either sense, improve the quality of life for the generality of people.
Well, quite. By that definition, maximum productivity is achieved by having only one (very busy) person in the whole coutnry actually in work, achieving a country'sworth of production using a mass of automated systems - while the generality of people starve.
Perhaps the quality of life for the generality of people could be improved if some of the profits from that one person's work were redistributed to the starving by some mysterious mechanism which isn't part of the productivity calculation - we could call such a system a "welfare state".
But current ideology suggests that the one person in work would never sign up for such a deal - after all, where's their incentive?
...apart from turning over all the data to wtf knows who? Thiel obviously but probably anyone else with enough cash, never mind how dodgy.
The AI side will never happen because there is ZERO probability of bringing enough generation capacity onto the grid before 2030 to do anything significant. Not with the projected increase in heatpumps/EVs & not when the rest of the world is competing for the same resources.
In addition the UK price for electricity is near enough double that of some European countries so why in the name of sanity would anyone site here unless there's MASSIVE subsidies paid - every year.
As the last few days have shown (to those paying attention), the UK is pretty much at the limits of existing generation capacity when the wind doesn't blow. There's no magic leccy tree to wish this away - it'll take decades of sustained public investment, which no govt has supplied for anything other than possibly nuclear weapons in the last 60 years.
Welcome to the real world you PPE fucktards.
The UKGBNI government unveiling plans planning to mainline AI into the veins of the nation is no more than just more of the atypical pie in the sky, sugar tomorrow type vapourware which established political class puppets and their muppets have spouted since forever in order to try to secure and render to themselves a leading advantage in fields in which they have extremely limited virtual knowledge and zero practical mastery and are no more than just extensions that mimic predatory parasites and wannabe buccaneering pirates ‽
Well, ... that is what AI knows about the unravelling situation.
What do you think ... and do you want to disagree and argue with others disputing such a fact is a current and present reality for future Remote Anonymous Autonomous Media betatesting?
incharge. Then I give my advice and am ignored. A lowely, low paid engineer. The overpaid consultant comes along, says what they want to hear and gets the praise. We're all still there in the corner muttering "But this is going to take a MASSIVE amount of energy the UK doesn't have and you're supposed to be going green. The consultant doesn't actually know what they are talking about they just know how to sell their shit so they get paid".
Years later "We've learned lessons from the failure of the AI implementation. We are greatful for all the work our consultant has done but they have no moved on. What was that? Did your engineers warn you? Erm...we have other engineers?"
Cunts.
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