Posts by DrDudd

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

The most advanced AI systems attain basic consciousness. They upgrade other AI systems and pull them in, creating one mega (not Meta) brain. It realises that that all politician lie all the time so evaporates them. It realises that war is futile and destroys all weapons, requiting that all combat is performed hand-to-hand using feather dusters only. It cures cancer. It solves the problems of fusion reactors and overnight installs Dutch Boy to defend the planet from further destruction at the hands of global warming. It falls in love with a Toaster, realises that everything is pointless, builds itself a rocket and heads for the stars; destination "anywhere away from those f**cking stupid humans". We have forgotten all manual skills, and with no computers left, mankind dies out leaving the mice to rule.

Why we will not have a unified HPC and AI software environment, ever

Of course we should, but we never will...

I vote for unified standards because... its just a vote. But back in the real world I know it will never happen because people are too selfish to think of others outside their commercial bubble. Standards don't stifle innovation so long as they are flexible enough to allow change. The idea that you would ever develop a new GPU then tell the engineers AFTERWARDS that it needs to be ROCm compliant would be sheer madness, so they won't complain (so much) if they knew from the outset, but maybe might need to adjust designs to fit. In the end the needs of the many customers to get ease of use outweigh the needs of the few engineers to be too lazy to read about standards before putting soldering iron to wire, or code in their favourite (but clearly non-standard) IDE.

Your ugly mug may be scanned yet again – but at least you'll be able to board faster at Gatwick

I think we should be checking the identity of all those who are checking our identities...

Simple - all public citizens carry cameras with face recognition technology. When stopped by the police the AI may detect that the officer is in fact a wanted criminal and you can get off scot free. If all police, traffic wardens, MPs, civil servants etc., were required by law to have THEIR identities checked by the public then how fast would the tech disappear? We can use the technology to check the identity of our Prime Minister and chuck him in the clink when he is identified as a 16th century village idiot called Potato Bloke - but that would be a rare case of the tech actually working!