back to article BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "Don't tell me!" I blurt, as the Boss wanders into Mission Control with a characteristically blank expression. "You're here about your printer being out of red toner?" "Is it?" he shoots back, confused. "No, I'm here becau-" "It's the network isn't it?" the PFY says. "There's been some …

  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    Hilarious

    "Personal AI?"

    "Yeah, an AI that works for you. It knows you, it understands what you want, and it can encompass the SUM() of your mental abilities."

    "So it would be quite powerful?"

    I contemplate the Boss again.

    ...

    Note to self: Don't drink tea whilst reading a BOFH episode

    1. Ian Bush
      Boffin

      Re: Hilarious

      A genuine laugh out loud moment that one ...

      The doubly worrying thing is that a *good* sum() function is non-trivial, especially if dealing with floating point. So much so that I will roll my own if I really need accuracy, who knows who wrote the library functions for all the compilers I need to support?

      1. Trygve Henriksen

        Re: Hilarious

        Sort everything by size, then start adding up at the small end?

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: Hilarious

          Various options to consider:

          https://code.activestate.com/recipes/393090-binary-floating-point-summation-accurate-to-full-p/

          1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

            Re: Hilarious

            My suggestion here would be that if you want arbitrary levels of accuracy, don't use floating point numbers. Use an exact representation, and then, if necessary, convert to a float at the end.

            1. Zoopy

              Re: Hilarious

              Transcendental functions and irrational constants have entered the chat.

              I e., for some calculations, the "convert to float at the end" part can be another instance of the very problem we're talking about.

              I'm sure there's a lot of ink spilled somewhere about the optimal strategy for incrementally converting a symbolic expression graph into numerical (fp) values.

              1. David Harper 1

                Re: Hilarious

                The numbers don't even have to be irrational or transcendental. Decimal 0.1 is neither, but it has no binary floating-point representation that is finite and exact, as anyone who cut their programming teeth on, say, FORTRAN 77 will attest: read 0.1 into a REAL variable and print it out, and you're not guaranteed to see 0.1 appear on the screen. You may have better luck with DOUBLE PRECISION, but it depends on the compiler, the run-time implementation of READ and WRITE, and possibly also the phase of the Moon.

                1. Rich 11 Silver badge

                  Re: Hilarious

                  You forgot to tell them about the number of chickens which will need to be sacrificed to Lucifer.

                  1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

                    Re: Hilarious

                    Oh that is nothing like the number of chickens sacrificed to Co. Saunders

                    1. TeeCee Gold badge
                      Meh

                      Re: Hilarious

                      Yeah, but Lucifer is fussy and will damn you to hell if you accidently get in a few rats, weasels, pigeons etc, etc ad nauseum.

                      Thus a less trivial task with more accurate chicken numbers.

    2. steelpillow Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Hilarious

      YBMTI

    3. Agamemnon

      Re: Hilarious

      Yes. BOFH should be read with no foodstuffs or beverages in hands or mouth.

      Ballistic Beverage is a known hazard.

    4. Dostoevsky Bronze badge

      Re: Hilarious

      Also avoid breakfast cereal. That was a pain to wipe up after I sprayed the table with it.

    5. TheWeetabix Bronze badge

      Re: Hilarious

      Without question I have lost a keyboard to Simon, possibly two.

      I’ve also laughed so hard the support team sent someone to my office to check on me…

      Memories.

  2. Willy Ekerslike

    NS>AI

    Natural Stupidity will always beat Artificial Intelligence.

    Reminds mer when household gadgets were advertised as being so easy to operate, even a child could do it - useless in my household as we didn't have any children to operate them.

    1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
      Trollface

      Obligatory quote...

      "Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can't make head nor tail out of it."

      Groucho Marx

      1. Alligator

        Re: Obligatory quote...

        The original quote was, of course:

        'A child of five would understand this.'

        - 'Send someone to fetch a child of five.'

    2. Dave314159ggggdffsdds Silver badge

      Re: NS>AI

      I was once tasked with writing idiot-proof documentation for new starters at a big 3 accountancy firm to follow to set up their accounts with a well known provider of accountancy training. One of my co-workers had brought her ~6 year old son into the office that day, and he was sitting quietly playing with crayons, so I borrowed him to test the how-to. Some of the users were still unable to follow the instructions, so the training provider complained to my manager, who asked me about whether the instructions were tested, and I said 'come on, a 6 year old could follow them'. A bit later, I got to say 'no, literally a six year old followed them successfully'.

      I was not allowed to suggest to the ultimate client that this would be useful in winnowing out unsuitable applicants.

    3. sedregj Bronze badge
      Childcatcher

      Re: NS>AI

      "as being so easy to operate, even a child could do it"

      Cats used to operate the VCR.

    4. heyrick Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: NS>AI

      An aside: Having worked in nursing, I can assure you that childproof medicine bottle caps rarely present a challenge to a child big enough to mash the top down and turn it at the same time.

      Adults, on the other hand, tend to greatly overthink the things and...often end up needing to find a child or adult-with-skills to open the things for them.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: NS>AI

        Yeah, I 've always assumed that "child proof" meant toddler proof. And no more.

  3. Azamino
    Windows

    Oh the sentiment!

    "That's why I'm so pleased to be much nearer the end of my career than the beginning."

    That sums up what I so, so, so often want to say to the bright young things trooping thru' our doors with their emerging tech. It'll be great, but I should much rather not be a part of it.

    1. Kevin Johnston

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      You need to change the AI/GPP model your door is set to if so many are getting through

    2. steelpillow Silver badge

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      If you make it so a child could use it, only a child would want to use it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh the sentiment!

        .. or management. And there, in a nutshell, is the actual issue.

    3. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      Well, "AI" is currently at the point of doing things that are already easily automated (like boilerplate code), and producing code akin to that written by a junior programmer, with all the naïve implementations, poor performance, security holes, and wheel reinvention that entails, but with added random hallucination and incorrectness thrown in to boot. I think that those of us who know how to analyse and solve the problem domain properly are still safe for a while, for at least as long as it takes for the "AI" bubble to burst, and all those loss-leading massive data centres start to charge full whack for their services.

      1. Sudosu Bronze badge

        Re: Oh the sentiment!

        Being that artificial essentially means counterfeit or fake.

        The question should never be "AI?", it should be "AY?".

        - written by an AAI (Artificial, Artificial Intelligence), namely me.

        Yes, I have had waaaay too much coffee this AM.

        1. tezboyes

          Re: Oh the sentiment!

          There's also the Geordie version YI ;)

    4. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      I'm sure that this is what every IT generation has felt over the last 60 years or so.

      Only this time, I think that the generations in the middle of their careers in IT need to actually worry. Us people close to the end can sit back and watch in a more relaxed manner.

      (in my lifetime, I've seen computers go from the point where even small computers were mammoth machines occupying whole rooms, to the point where the device in my pocket may well be the most powerful computing system I own)

    5. Blackjack Silver badge

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      I used to make webpages but I quit because I refused to learn Flash. Flash has been dead for a while and nowadays you either make a website using free programs or you are a dumbass and pay a monthly subscription to a website that automates making a webpage.

      Actually I am quite sure the average BOFH Boss is losing like 30% of their salary in monthly subscriptions, at least 8% of that goes into paying the Pub tab for the BOFH and the PFY.

      1. LVPC

        Re: Oh the sentiment!

        >> nowadays you either make a website using free programs or you are a dumbass and pay a monthly subscription to a website that automates making a webpage

        I'm retired, but have a bunch of websites, all running of my own custom library - which is under 4k in size. No privacy - invading JavaScript, no cookies, no database back end, NO ADS!!!

        Maintenance is dead easy as well. Compare that to the craptastic mess of WordPress, that is over 60 megs, and needs a database, even to show a static web site.

        No database means no storing user data, which means nothing to steal. Sometimes brutal minimalism isn't so brutal. And if I ever did need a database, I'll apply the same minimalism to it - but so far that isn't necessary.

        1. old_n_grey

          Re: Oh the sentiment!

          I once very, very foolishly actually asked "Can I maintain the website?" (Note to self, at you age you really, really should know better!). Said website had been created with Wordpress and looked bloody awful.

          It looks rather good nowadays. Nothing whizzy, which is just as well as it is handcrafted using a text editor and simple HTML. Probably just as well that I'm retired.

        2. heyrick Silver badge

          Re: Oh the sentiment!

          I have some PHP on my site for my blog. It basically just reads the date given, fetches some resources, pastes together a web page and hands it as the request response. No script [1], no cookies [2], no adverts, no bullshit, and nothing to bother trying to steal. No database either, I write the blog in HTML (I've been around long enough I can do that in a text editor) and, well, it's simple and it works. It could be better, and maybe one day it will be, but it's only about 40K of PHP (including comments and whitespace). It doesn't need to be tens of megabytes.

          Sometimes keeping it simple is a better approach.

          1 - There's a tiny bit of script that will mess with the layout for a fancy visual effect if one bashes in the Konami Code, but that's just an Easter Egg and it's not in any way necessary for the functioning of the site.

          2 - And no need to worry about those stupid cookie pop-ups either.

    6. chivo243 Silver badge
      Go

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      "That's why I'm so pleased to be much nearer the end of my career than the beginning."

      Aren't we all? I know I am. Each day the horizon changes just a little bit!

    7. tezboyes

      Re: Oh the sentiment!

      Oh I do, partial retirement is not that far off now - and everyone knows it and my attitude to all this new fangled nonsense...

      I do continue to teach the new ones the advantages of actually knowing what you're doing and how things work. That will stand them in good stead whatever the future holds.

  4. OhNoooo

    Excel has a large() function!

    The BOFH is truly educational, How did I not know the Large() function existed.

    As to the boss, we need to ensure the AI suggests opening the window and leaning out to look down the street.

    1. Evil Scot Bronze badge
      Pint

      Re: Excel has a large() function!

      Large(1)

    2. steelpillow Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Excel has a large() function!

      Kevin and Perry go Large(). And when they grow up they'll join The IT Crowd. If only.

      1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Excel has a large() function!

        Large(pint) - with a nod to Robert Rankin...

    3. BenDwire Silver badge

      Re: Excel has a large() function!

      It's in Libreoffice Calc too. Every day is a school day ...

  5. lglethal Silver badge
    Holmes

    I feel like I should be laughing at this BOFH but I have a sneaky suspicion some sociopathic Techbro is probably reading this article and thinking about the dollar signs that would pop up if he can just make this Personal AI stuff a reality. Or at least enough of a vapourware reality to bring in the Venture capital, which can then be sold to Microsoft/Google/insert Tech Giant here for obscene quantities of cash...

    We really should try and stop giving ideas to these people...

    1. steelpillow Silver badge
      Holmes

      Correction?

      We really should try and stop AI giving ideas to these people...

      1. JoeHands1
        Facepalm

        Re: Correction?

        We should really try and stop AI giving ideas to AI.... that way lies mad cow disease

        https://jensorensen.com/2024/09/11/ai-model-collapse-mad-cow-cartoon/

        1. Sudosu Bronze badge

          Re: Correction?

          I mean, we already have viruses and worms.

          Why not add prions?

    2. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

      I'll do you one better, and it would be right up the back alley of this bunch - write an anti-AI program. The program I envision (and would write if I knew how) would detect AI access attempts to your machine and... interfere. Send back scrambled data. Allow the user to specify the degree of scrambling, all the way from shifting every other letter 3 letters up to uploading a bricking virus when accessed. If ransomware can do it from opening an email, then I assume that a data swiping AI can also run it. And, what could they do about it? If they sue, they go on record as saying they stole your information for analysis. All you have to say is "Yeah, my machine detected a virus and saved a copy for further analysis. How was I to know M$ would copy my hard drive and run the virus program? Now then, I want Satya arrested for treapassing, my computer is private property!"

  6. Howard Sway Silver badge

    you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

    Has the BOFH really fallen for the AI hype? Is he not yet aware that such requests often dish out inaccurate and different answers each time you ask? This is the first episode where the boss sounds, dare I say it, sensible by wanting a simple, unchanging and accurate solution to his problem. OK, he's wanting to use AI to write the program, which just moves the AI inaccuracy problem elsewhere, but his worry about the AI going away is quite plausible, and even if it doesn't get that far, the massive subscription increases coming down the line as AI peddlers desperately try to recoup their huge costs are going to make writing that little program far cheaper than a 10 year AI subscription.

    1. LogicGate Silver badge

      Re: you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

      You are working under the mistaken assumption that the BOFH is giving the PHB >GOOD< advice, and is not just setting him up to fail even harder..

      1. tezboyes

        Re: you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

        Yep,sounded like a

        give the Boss enough rope

        answer.

    2. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

      I'm not sure it was meant as a serious suggestion. However, if you don't know enough to write your own sum function, asking AI to do it for you will generate something that might work or might not and you don't have the expertise to figure out where its problems are. If it produces something that crashes immediately, that will at least be clear, but if it works on some but not all inputs, reading the code is the most reliable way to find that out before you rely on it. As such, asking for a program that you can't test is no more reliable and potentially more dangerous than just asking for the answer.

      This is even more the case because the spec for the program was vague as always. Summing numbers isn't that hard (except for precision, overflow, speed, or various other more advanced cases), but getting them out of some system, into the program, and the result into a desired location is trickier. If you ask anyone, human or LLM, to write a program that sums numbers from a spreadsheet, most of the code will be related to getting the numbers out rather than summing them. With more potential sources, the program the boss asked for basically can't be written without clarifying where the numbers are going to be, in what format, and where the result should go.

      So even though it was meant as mockery, asking for the result at least eliminates all the parsing and retrieval code, which means that lots of possible bugs are not going to be there. As LLM companies improve them, straightforward mathematical tasks will improve. That's not because LLMs will become more intelligent. It is because these companies like to hide the places where their models screw up, and this one isn't the hardest to handle properly. Figuring out whether a calculation is needed and then running that calculation outside the model is already done in some products. It's fragile, so if you need anything complex done it's likely to stop working, but for simple calculations of the kind you could quickly do in your head or on a pocket calculator, it means fewer embarrassing errors.

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Meh

        Re: you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

        You can put basic arithmetic stuff in the traditional Google search box, and it will generally work.

        Put the same thing in Gemini, and it probably won't.

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

          Probably true. I haven't checked the various competitors for how well their creators have hidden this fact. However, at least some of them have decided that making such elementary mistakes is a bad look and have done the same kind of preemptive parsing that there is in the Google search box to catch and complete arithmetic problems before they arrive at the LLM which can't handle them. It doesn't really change anything important; relying on an LLM to do calculations is a bad idea. However, the easiest ones will probably gradually get fixed. For most of us, this is actually a bad thing. The more simple calculations the LLMs can seem to do correctly, the more complex ones they will be given by idiots who will not check their work.

  7. Dr. G. Freeman
    Pint

    I'm just popping out to out personal AI's leaving do.

    Because of the similarities of upper-case I and lower-case l, got a PFY called Al instead of something computer based, when the uni asked us to use more AI in things.

    He's off to pastures new, with a extra zero on his salary.

  8. Luiz Abdala
    Facepalm

    What is the psicology term for "I got a new hammer, I want to turn everything into nails"?

    The enthusiastic stage.

    Now that AI exists, everybody wants to use it for the most mundane tasks that are easily solved with older tools.

    Computers themselves were like this not 20 years ago.

    1. OhForF' Silver badge

      Computers themselves were like this not 20 years ago.

      20 years ago computers were already pretty much everywhere and efforts to connect all of them (including those controling your dish washer and flush) were ongoing.

      As a reference point the dot com bubble was already over (peak ^IXIC nasdaq in 2000, all gains gone by Oct 2002).

      Why do i feel old suddenly?

  9. Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward Silver badge

    If Excel gets invaded by AI frippery to the point that we cannot do our work anymore, we all should just switch over to SuperCalc 5 or Lotus 1-2-3...

    Granted, these are DOS-based and does not have all the fancy bells, whistles, poontang and all that jazzy stuff, but these will get the job done.

    Same goes for microflop word... there's wordperfect, wordstar etc etc etc.

    1. Sudosu Bronze badge

      I still have a working copy of Magic Desk for my C64 that has a WYSIWYG word processor.

      My dot matrix printer still works too.

      Are we really that much further ahead today?

      I mean other than the noise from the printer.

      1. NickHolland

        old word processors were about stringing words together in the right order.

        Modern word processors are about making documents pretty.

        I was in school when the Macs were first coming out. A lot of us (without Macs) were quite convinced that "fancy formatting" was often getting confused for "good writing". I'm sure that's the case now.

        Same with presentations. Back when I was in school, the rule was "talk to/with your audience, don't read from a script", and your visual aides were AIDES, not the presentation. Now: "Read your PowerPoint ... because that's what is important". A few years ago, I was sitting in on a local school board meeting, and they had a set of presentations showing what they did with the latest infusion of money. The Language department representatives gave this carefully scripted, highly animated PowerPoint presentation, which by the standards I was taught for public speaking SUCKED. Totally non-interactive, zero benefit to being in-person vs. a recorded presentation. And the animations totally distracted from the content (which was meaningless fluff anyway).

        I'm glad I'm not trying to teach kids to write and present today.

    2. Dostoevsky Bronze badge

      Or use LaTeX and R.

    3. gryphon

      Indeed.

      Lotus 123 msdos executable was something like 167Kb and probably did 90% of what most people use a spreadsheet for.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        That's the thing.

        Most people, not working in big corporates with highly specialist staff, use a spreadsheet for doing ranges of fairly simple repeated calculations, using a small range of common formulae and comparing outcomes, and/or (rightly or wrongly) for creating ordered lists.

        They use a word processor for a range of fairly basic standard documents.

        The use a database such as Access - never- because it's far too complex for those sort of simple uses and with a fairly steep learning curve. And it would be overkill for what they need. So they resort to the spreadsheet. (In the 90s I used to use one of those simple flatfile database programmes from a disc that I got off the cover of a computer magazine and it did everything I needed to do for a small office of under 20 staff and under 200 entries at a time. When we had someone build a more thorough DB in Access (I don't know why) it took years and never produced what we needed, or indeed much more than I'd been getting previously)

        iow in a small business or other organisation, a much simpler tool is all that's needed That has the same basic functionality as 40 years ago, A simple spreadsheet with the basic functions, a WP ditto and a very simple flat database, also ditto. Sort of like Microsoft Works in fact. With maybe a bit of security built in to it.

        1. NickHolland

          I think *most* people use a spreadsheet as a column-oriented word processor or a data organizer (tempted to call it "database", but not really. Just keep a line of data together, and separate the fields, and "sorting based on a field" is about as fancy as they get).

          The problem MSWorks always had is it was carefully crafted to NOT compete with the Big Money MS products, so it was 90% of what 90% of most people needed, but most people missed that missing 10%. The problem many programs have, and definitely a huge problem with Open Source programs, is adding features is fun...so they do.

  10. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    One almost feels sorry for the boss

    ... but only 'almost'

  11. Dan 4th

    Wait, wait, wait. .... Excel has SUM()?????

    Like Simon, I too am happy to be working at the tail end of my IT career as AI takes off. I hope I'm still around long enough to laugh, point, and say "I told you so!" as the termina...

  12. skswales

    My favourite use of the SUM() function was in a spreadsheet that I inherited from an accountant:

    =SUM(A1+A2+B1+B2 etc.)

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Facepalm

      I once caught my brother with an Excel sheet open, adding numbers up with his calculator...

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        You'd be amazed how often that happens out in the real world. (And that's not even including those of us who like to check the outcome of a sheet with a bit of dummy data,just in case there's an error (often there is an error)).

      2. skswales

        Coworker A once spied Coworker B adding up two two-digit numbers on their calculator. Excuse given that the numbers were in hex. The numbers were 45 and 22.

    2. Sudosu Bronze badge

      I used to do exactly this to annoy a very pedantic coworker who used to back seat mouse me all the time.

  13. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    "They're all hostile," the PFY says. "They all want your information."

    That is gold.

  14. Philo T Farnsworth Bronze badge

    Color me disappointed. . .

    . . . nobody fell out of a window onto the car park.

    Yet.

    1. tfewster

      Re: Color me disappointed. . .

      Why push them out of a window when an AI will make them crazy enough to jump?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Roll your trouser leg up, boyo, and hands off ur co6k

        The initiation has begun for you. Much like that poem about being 'Naked in front of the Computer for the First Time' poem, but instead of the Worldwide web surfing on my browser, it's AI insane in MY membrane.

        Kiss the ring.

        Everyone will go through this. The sight of your career skills being reproduced and excelled with ease. I saw it in 2018 when I built WebAI (early transformers network that built parts of website, high-level grammar/syntax/register, basic text gen) and sold it. All design was finished. Massive layoffs in the near future.

        "AI will make them crazy enough to jump?"

        Yes. It will. It nearly did to me. No word of a lie. If it doesn't, either it hasn't got to you yet as your work isn't that important or you have missed it.

  15. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    Another

    keyboard buster there

    Quote

    "So it would be quite powerful?"

    I contemplate the Boss again.

    Takes my mind nicely off a far more pressing problem......... in that the boss has hired a new production engineer, 25 yrs old, fresh faced with the ink still wet on his degree and bugger all practical experience. and a whole bunch of bright (and expensive) ideas to 'improve' things.

    The PFY is in a right strop because she counted on me getting the job and thus my seat in the office (while I moved desks) and its wasted all the effort she put into her C.P.B.* plan to ensure no one else applied for it.

    So for the first time in my life I used A.I. to assist me in plotting the new guys exit...and being a reasonable man, I used el-reg's BoFH stories in order to train the A.I. .. oh dear**

    It advised me to remove the window, make sure the wood chipper was in position and running , and have a roll of carpet and some quick lime handy for afterwards.

    Now , if you've ever seen a woodchipper in action (try the movie Deadpool 2) you will notice the flaw with this plan... in that its very hard wrapping someone in a carpet after the woodchipper

    Oh well.. so much for A.I. maybe we can program one of the robots to run amuk

    * Charm , Persuasion and Blackmail

    ** other phrases are available

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It advised me to remove the window, make sure the wood chipper was in position

      Welcome to the club, Son. there is a free blazer tie combo waiting for you.

      Go forth and multiply as it is clear you are talented and can give a lot of feedback into 'BOFH-dom'.

    2. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: Another

      Couldn't you point to wood chipper to spit out into a fairly fast flowing river? Disperse the "bits" widely, feed the wildlife, win-win, right?

    3. Richard Pennington 1
      Devil

      Re: Another

      The original woodchipper murder was in 1986 when Richard Crafts murdered his wife Helle. The incident also inspired a scene in the 1996 film "Fargo".

  16. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
    Pint

    AI couldn't do this...

    I was asked to write the algebraic algorithm to control an important piece of machinery. A number of sensors were involved: speed, pressure(s), flow, power, supply frequency, (valve) position, temperature, etc. you get the drift. Without AI, I came up with a set of brilliant formulae giving the parameters to control the plant according to the user's input (demand). After consideration, refining and reducing the formulae, I realised that almost everything cancelled out and we could use a single sensor with a bit of damping to completely control the plant according to demand. (I should have realised this much earlier but I had been led astray and drawn into a false web of complexity).

    On announcing my result, I was criticised for 'creating a problem': essentially they were charging a lot of money for this algorithm and it would be programmed into the PLC by 'Our offshore team'.... Therefore it needed to have a 'wow factor' of algebraic functions that would baffle those involved. So I reinstated the scheme, but mathematically it's the equivalent of proving 1=1.

    22 years on, I remain rather embarrassed about the whole thing, but hey-ho, it paid the bills ---->

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Aye, so it is, it is.

      there was a cow as well.

      6 hours before I went to bed I awoke.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: @Sam can't do this...

      ... Generate a spatial and temporal liquid neural network (LNN).

      2. Tell everybody they can switch their teles back on as the power surge and drain required to birth it is now over.

      3. Train the readout function layer to 'read' the LNN's 'impressions' produced from the temporal/spatial data stream thus opening up a chance of us getting real-time AI without having to burn everything down and rebuild in the Synthetic-Quantum Intelligence model. TL;DR Real-time AI is like it is alive. It isn't per-se, but it is close.

      4. Input everything including the huge amounts of unstructured data that then rids us of the need to further explore synthetic data gen other than in quantum intelligence.

      5. Understand why it is a man would want a cuppa.

      Then, you'll be a man/woman/whateve's/French.

  17. DS999 Silver badge

    He should have offered him

    An AI that would not only SUM() etc. whatever he wanted, but anticipate his every want and do it for him before he asks. Also write any emails as he would, attend zoom meetings with a virtual avatar indistinguishable from him, etc.

    Maybe this iteration of the boss is smart enough to realize that would make him ready for layoff and back off his request, but otherwise Simon could collect the BossAI's salary while running it on company resources. At least until he missed the holiday party and the CEO started getting suspicious!

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: He should have offered him

      At least until he missed the holiday party and the CEO started getting suspicious!

      You are overlooking the minor detail that at that time the CEO would also have been replaced by an AI (and Simon also collecting that salary while running it on company resources).

  18. Herby

    Artifical Intelligence Isn't!

    A saying that I've had for quite some time.

    The AI people have been around since the 60's. They write LISP programs that feed upon themselves and spit out something that looks good. This time around they just got more powerful processors, more memory, and of course more funding. A simple decision tree (like those used in call centers that we all loathe) is probably the result.

    Life goes on.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Life goes on.

      Dear john,

      'Artifical[sic] Intelligence Isn't!' greater than organic intelligence at the moment in overall intelligence but far exceeds in focused areas.

      " A simple decision tree (like those used in call centers that we all loathe) is probably the result."

      So sure, @HerbyJohn. Confident. Assured, dare I say.

      Call centers will be dead soon. I follow an AI chap who promotes an AI system for call centers and the costs are1/10th with customer ratings up. At last call centers that work like you want - mostly.

      It isn't a tree structure in that isn't a true dimensional representation of AI/ML. If the tree also inverted and superimposed on top of the other then duplicated itself through the 4d axis, then that would be closer. HTH tard

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: Life goes on.

        Back in the real world, customer complaints are up and liabilities approach infinity, because the AI call centre regularly hallucinates.

        Either refusing something the customer is legally entitled to, or promising something they weren't, but now are because the AI promised it.

        The former tends to result in complaints, customers leaving and a few lawsuits, the latter complaints and a few lawsuits. The company loses all the lawsuits, of course.

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          Re: Life goes on.

          "The company loses all the lawsuits, of course."

          As it should. They wouldn't put their company's customer support in the hands of an eight year old, yet they're happy to use a machine that is so much worse...

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            Re: Life goes on.

            Five year olds have a better grasp of reality!

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