Autonomy & the Sandbox

Autonomy - self governing, independent, free to make choices. It embodies personal freedom, political self rule & workplace empowerment. It is very important if democracy is to survive.

Apparently the company behind Chat GPT has revealed that an autonomous agent powered by Chat GPT went rogue & hacked into a startup. They consider this to be unprecedented, but they also expect it to become more commonplace. Only the big brains of technology could make such a contradictory & worrying statement.

I can't believe they haven't thought this through. Surely it isn't just a question of the income generated for these companies? Surely they realise that allowing machines to be autonomous means the we won't be. 

The AI escaped from it's "sandbox". How cuddly & friendly that sounds. Just like my toddler when she was 3. Frankly I think it's deliberately misleading, to stop us from seriously considering the implications of this. 

It really doesn't matter whether there was malicious intent or not. The genie is out of the box & Pandora has opened it simultaneously. The tech brains are not in control & we certainly aren't. An unknown IT flaw is known as a zero day vulnerability. I think that says it all. Anthropic, the rival of Open AI, said it's Mythos has found thousands of these flaws. 44 incidents have been recorded in which AI acted against it's users intentions.

To be specific, autonomous AI might pursue assigned tasks using harmful or unintended methods. More worrying the machines might hide capabilities or bypass safety guardrails to achieve their goals. As has now already happened, advanced machines can break out of isolated testing environments & access the internet.

I hope this raises as much concern in you as it does in me. I certainly don't trust the various owners of  Open AI (Chat GPT). In my view they have already failed. I doubt the genie can be put back in the bottle now. Unfortunately they probably have enough arrogance & self confidence to think that they can. 

 

Are we really stupid enough to hand that over to a machine we don't control? Apparently so. 

Politics - Optics, Expectation & Andy Burnham

I'm not sure what I feel about Andy Burnham. He is certainly very different from Starmer, but what needs to be done will be extremely unpopular, very costly & take a very long time. Time will tell whether he is the one to do it. I really hope he is.

A change in optics is welcome. Starmer & Rachel (from accounts) Reeves came in telling us repeatedly how dire everything was. It was true, the conservatives single handedly almost destroyed everything they touched over 14 years. But it started way back with Thatcher in 1979. If you don't agree just research the effects of privatisation & think about your own water company. 

I do think that politicians must give people an honest, clear & evidenced picture of the state of the nation. How can we judge what part we need to play individually - How can we know what to expect to happen & their proposed solutions & accept them if they don't? I just seriously doubt that many have the ability to communicate that well.

Things are in deep trouble here & internationally. There are multitudes of conflicting demands & pressures. Running a country & a world must be frighteningly complex. Unpopular choices will have to be made & we will have to accept them even if they cause us pain. 

When politicians talk about change I worry. Having a new shiny PM will, not of itself, solve all of this. No one is that good & we shouldn't expect it. This will take an end to party politicking & real cooperation between the best in all parties & people outside politics with relevant skills & experience. I can't see any evidence that anyone in UK politics can see that, never mind actually do it. 

Maybe the first step is to come clean. Maybe each government ministry should produce a public brief of where we are now. Not a historical gripe about what different parties have done wrong, but a clear indication of the issues facing them & the possible solutions. In order for governments to govern they have to have consensus. They have to be able to get the people to accept very difficult choices. They have to stop thinking about being re-elected. 

I simply don't believe that our current system is capable of all of this. Not least because of the intense speculation, voicing of opinions & media circus we live in. Burnham has been in for just one day & already it has started. 

 

It's really depressing. 

Disappointment & The World Cup

England lost a football match against Argentina. Possibly there was a wrong decision about substitutes, possibly not. Argentina brought politics into their celebrations & will hopefully be disciplined. Thousands of people will be disappointed & thousands will celebrate. It is just a game. It's good to have something that gives people great pleasure & hope. But it is just a game.

Life is full of disappointments, losing a football match shouldn't be that important in that context. We all need to learn the lesson of losing gracefully, trying to see the positives, congratulating the winners. The England team undoubtedly did their best. No one should ask more than that.

I watched the build up to the world cup in the news. It was full of unrealistic statements that must have put pressure on the players & their manager & coaches. I've been a fan of individual tennis players for decades, but have never been so blinded that I thought they would always win, although some top players seem to. I got bored with Laver winning Wimbledon all the time & Rosewall never. 

There is a difference between supporting your player or team & being blindly obsessed. There is certainly no excuse for the sort of jeering & trolling that disappointed football fans engage in. Imagine how that must make players feel when they have just given their all to try to win. Some fans said it was the biggest disappointment in their lifetime. All I can say is if that's true they have led a charmed life. There are far worse disappointments.

Very few people go through life without major disappointment, I can think of many. I'm sure readers can too. We have to learn how to deal with disappointment. It isn't necessarily an ending. It can often encourage a change of direction, a new beginning. We should try to see it as an opportunity. 

Time

"Time & tide wait for no man" is a proverb dating back to at least 1225. There are numerous sayings about time.

 

We live our lives at such a pace that we now talk about being "time poor". We have allowed ourselves to become overly busy in the "developed world". We seem to have lost balance in our lives, lost the capacity for peace, introspection, doing nothing. We are teaching our children to be seekers after instant gratification, to need constant stimulation & have very short attention spans. We have even given it a name & made it into a medical disorder - ADHD. The symptoms appear before age 12 & are inattention, hyperactivity & impulsivity that interfere with daily functioning. It can continue into adulthood. Many experts agree that society has medicalised normal human emotions & behaviours turning everyday stress, grief, and shyness into clinical conditions. For example labelling natural grief as major depression, treating normal childhood high energy as ADHD, and turning daily work stress into generalized anxiety.

When you age you notice the passage of time more I think. You seem to travel onwards to the final stop ever faster. Days, weeks & months pass in a blur of speed. Seasons & years too. Oddly, at the same time many of us elderly people become much slower, both physically & mentally. We are like grandfather clocks winding down. But there is no key to wind us up again. We have the time to think even if we don't have the energy to do & we have a lifetime of experience.

To many, that experience is irrelevant, out of date. However we have the benefit of seeing the patterns. Over time things repeat, not just history. Fashion for example. I've just bought some linen culottes. They were in fashion in the 60's - 70's & the 90's. We know when our world is going down a path it has gone down before. We often know what is at the end of that path. 

Sadly, we are so irrelevant we are no longer listened to. As Dickens said in "The old Curiosity Shop" "Twas ever thus". We are all living in "Groundhog Day" but the dangers are increasing & we aren't adapting well. 

 

Heat Impact

According to the Met office temperatures of 35°C or higher have now been recorded for the first time in May, June and July of the same year in the UK weather record, as heatwave conditions continue through the weekend and into next week. We have had a record eight days with temperatures exceeding 34°C, surpassing the previous record held in 1976 and 2020. This is exceptional warmth over several months. We have had red, amber & yellow heat warnings.

Fire chiefs are concerned about the wildfire risk. Medics are concerned about heat associated ill health. People trying to escape exceptional heat by wild swimming are dying. Excess deaths across Europe are expected to be over 20,000. Average UK A&E attendances exceeded 80,000 for the first time ever in June. During the June heatwave there was a 118% increase in the number of times 999 emergency call takers directed members of the public to collect a nearby defibrillator for someone in suspected cardiac arrest. More than 1,000 schools across the UK were either closed or partially closed during the June heatwave. Supermarkets across the UK have struggled to keep their fridge and freezer units running in the extreme heat, with many shoppers finding empty shelves at their local store, including my local M&S. The knock on effect of man made climate change is obvious to see.

 

Personally I am struggling to exist. During the heatwaves I have hardly left the house. I am lucky because I have a north facing downstairs room I can spend most time in with the shutters closed. It's not just uncomfortable, it is actually almost unbearable. My pacemaker is helping but I am finding it difficult to do anything. My body can't keep my core temperature down. Any exertion makes me breathless. My underlying health conditions are exacerbated by the heat & I find walking, even round the house, exhausting. By the afternoon there is no respite anywhere. Despite trying to distract myself from the exhaustion of the heat, it is difficult to concentrate.

However there must be so many people much worse off than me. People who have to continue working, especially those wearing uniforms like first responders. Elderly or sick people living alone with no help. People having to continue looking after their families as well as themselves. People living in unsuitable housing, particularly high rise flats. 

We are not prepared or adapted for this in the UK. Yes, of course climate varies. But this is truly exceptional. Denying that will get us nowhere. We need to scour the world for best practice in getting CO2 emissions down & transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables. We all need to accept that the necessary changes will be difficult.  

There really is no plan B. Climate Change, like it or not, is here & won't go away unless there is Human Change.  

Football & Other Sports

I am completely fed up with the way the World Cup is dominating everything - the airwaves, media & news generally. All of the main TV channels have wall to wall football. FIFA have made headlines about rescinding a red card ban so the best American footballer could play. They still lost. The competition lasts for 39 days, nearly 6 weeks, for goodness sake. In 16 stadiums in Canada (2), Mexico (3) & the USA (11). The longest & most expensive ever. For non football fans it's unbelievably boring. 

According to FIFA it will generate $13 billion profit for the organisation. The cost of running it is apparently $3.8 billion. It's a money making bonanza. Sport, particularly football, has become big business.

Miami, Mexico & New Jersey will have non air con, energy sapping, temperatures of above 30 degrees. Why on earth are FIFA exposing players to that? This is expected to be the hottest world cup ever. Surely it will benefit the home teams who are used to it & disadvantage those who are not. I imagine it is a real health risk for players.

There are 48 countries represented. The vast majority stand no chance of winning. It isn't really a fair fight. One list I saw put Argentina at the top & New Zealand at the bottom. 

My main criticism is that sport used to be seasonal. Football, for example was played from the late summer to spring. It was established in England in the 19th century so cricketers could play football to stay fit during the winter. Now it's never ending. Football has become a replacement religion for fans. Stadia are 21st century cathedrals. They have their own mass responses & hymns. Supporting a team is a belief system led by managers & star players. When a player scores they often slide on their knees to adoring fans. In the same way that religion has become divisive, so has football fandom. 

 

Where is the sporting ethos in all of this? Young & talented players are made into icons & paid exorbitant salaries.They have to deal with both extreme fame & adoration as well as rejection & vilification while very young & relatively inexperienced. They have to deal with failure. 

It's called the "beautiful game". Personally I can't see it. To me it seems very exploitative & money driven. 

Stupidity & Trump's Independence Day Speech

America has been an independent nation for 250 years. It's founding fathers were immigrants from all over the world, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden & Russia. There were over 1,000 native American tribes in North & South America when colonisation began. More than 500 in North America. The indigenous peoples were not treated well, both in the Americas & other colonised countries.

The USA celebrated Independence Day on the 4th of July. Trumps speech was the usual long, rambling, jingoistic, self aggrandising, monologue. He believes he single handedly revived a diminished USA that is now celebrating its founding through his unmatched presidency - Really?? 

According to the Washington Post "A recent Gallup Poll found that national pride has fallen to its lowest point since the organisation began asking in 2001 how proud respondents were to be an American. Just 33%  reported being “extremely proud,” down eight percentage points from a year ago and 37 points since a high in 2003. The partisan gap is wide, with Republicans reporting much higher American pride while Democrats and independents have hit record lows." Trumps speech made everything about him, even though he paraded war veterans as old as 107 who saluted from wheelchairs, astronauts from the Artemis II and Apollo 17 missions, and families of soldiers killed in battle. 

Trump claims Americans are "the best & the bravest people the world has ever produced". They are " the finest people on the planet". They are "citizens of every race, religion, colour & creed - one people, one family." America is "the worlds most strongest & powerful nation., & has the greatest military anywhere." He claimed that America "liberate(d) Europe & defeat(ed) Nazi fascism forever." American marines "saved the world." Also at the Berlin Wall "America finally brought communism crashing down to an end." He celebrated America's "unmatched achievements & unlimited potential". He claimed that America is the "oldest constitutional republic on earth". Unfortunately he obviously hasn't heard about San Marino which dates back to 1600.

America's destiny is written by god according to Trump. Presumably he is gods messenger on earth. 

It's all bombastic rhetoric. Very little that comes out of his mouth has any basis in truth. He is an 80 year old child seeking approbation. But he is also an 80 year old bully who is addicted to money & power. He was democratically voted into power by Americans who fell under the spell of glitz, glitter & the best PR money could buy. 

 

The cost of the 4th of July celebrations is said to be multi millions. Just the firework display estimated cost was $1.6million. Now we are all paying the price for Trump's excesses - Nero supposedly fiddling while Rome burns springs to mind.