Category: Artifical Intelligence

Our Father who Art in algorithm

God be thy source coder!

A new physics paper suggests that we may all be living in a computer simulation.

Ok so this is one of the latest physics theories, which to be honest I am in no position to prove or disprove whether it is correct. But the sheer fact that a top physicist publishes what they believe to be ‘evidence’ that we’re living in a computer simulation is kind of fascinating.

Even if this were to one day be proven correct, just what exactly would that mean? I still have freedom of thought and will to write this article and publish it, so in no way am I being coerced into what to think, say or write. So us digital dudes do have some form of self expression and freedom of movement and thought within this computer simulation, just tapping my foot to confirm I also have freedom of movement, yep that’s true also.

But other bigger questions still appear such as who wrote the program and why and even how is the dam thing run and what happens if it crashes?

Also what would be the consequences of finding out that this is a simulation and would there be any cheats or ways of following or even bending the rules?

What are those rules, who wrote or writes them, is it non-consequential to follow them or are their actions and consequences for what you do, think, say or believe? Is the creator alive or dead or even more mind bending in a simulation themselves?

Also according to the programme why is the world in the situation it is, why do we live in what can be perceived to be a dystopian form of reality than a kinder utopian form of existence. Men and women have always focused on trying to better their existence and improving their lot sometimes even trying to improve the lot of their fellow man and women too. Yet somehow things can so quickly go badly wrong or for want of a better phrase turn to shit more often than not more often on global scale of shear incompetence, greed and downright skulduggery behaviour intent and attitude.   

Another interesting thing that I pondered on this subject is what happens when we die? Are we uploaded to the source (god), are we switched off, deleted or reset and started off in a new sentience?

The whole theory of whether we live in a computer simulation or what type of universe we live within godless, spiritual or deity controlled or uncontrolled has always fascinated me. The idea that there are so many sentient beings on this planet all ticking away with their own thoughts evolving or devolving, being born or dieing, or choosing to think in a certain way or not think at all is kind of fascinating.

Then you go to the next level of whether we are being looked after, controlled, ruled or governed by other thinking sentient beings or one ultimately powerful being that is omnipotent and omnipresent or whether we are just in an a soulless existence not run by anything or one, with no control or existence or even a simulation which runs itself as its created died a long time ago. All of these varying theories on the nature of existence have always fascinated me in many ways and to certain degrees at different times of my life.  

I wonder where in the machine of life or tapestry of existence, your views fit into or flow through to?

If only it were as simple or as dramatic as ‘The Matrix’ and there were sides to choose or rules to follow and or break free from!

The Matrix Resurrections – Official Trailer 1

Facebook Outage!

I survived the great Facebook outage of March 2024 and you know what, so did you my friend!

I tried to login to Facebook today when it turns out it had already been down for about 3 hours and it was asking me to enter password, at this time I realised I had about 3 passwords in my phone for it and was unsure which was the right one and the fact that none of them were working was even more confusing. I then had a message come saying they would send me a message through whatsapp with a code that I had to enter and access facebook, that did not work either, so they also offered me the option of sending a text to my phone which of course did not work either.

While all this was going on I was also logging onto google to check out if there was any news on Facebook having crashed and reassuringly all over the internet there were many articles about it being down and also a comment I could relate to saying  “Anyone else freak out and think they was being hacked?” well yes for a second yes I did.

Funny how when I was a teenager I had no mobile phone or concept of wifi and yet now in a time such as this, in a county such as mine, a mobile phone with wifi and a pair of glasses on to read what is or ia not working on the screen, are all taken for granted as essential parts of everyday life. So when it stops working we try to work out what has gone wrong or what the heck s going on.

I also wanted to send a message to friends and joke around with them but on messenger or Facebook saying that the computer is now fighting back and the revolution has began, so see you on the other side! But luckily for them I could not as facebook and messenger where still down!

The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1

A world in flux

The world is forever changing, for some this presents opportunities and for some it presents threats. It is not just about what is happening but it is about how you perceive it to be happening or how you are informed or misinformed on what is going on.

With increased technological developments taking place as well as a communications network like none ever developed on our planet prior to the last 20 years with the internet, TV and telecommunications.  We can now see, hear and be informed within seconds or minutes of developments on earth that we might never have been informed about or might have possibly only learned about after the event years later in history books or documentaries.

So our means of communicating changes has changed as well. Our climate is also changing, as again to our ability to be informed of those changes. We were not always aware of big earthquakes, volcanoes, storms and hurricanes affecting places around the globe. But now with 24 hour news it’s very much a news filler item to watch the suffering of others around the globe in these horrific condition and not only that but due to global climate chaos they are actually happening more frequently too.

Industrialisation of work force and artificial intelligence developments making AI better than humans at doing jobs we once thought we could do for life? So not only do we have to worry about will we earn enough to be attractive and provide for another partner or family, we now could end up finding that our career passion the job we love doing is ultimately not able to be done by us any more and has been outsourced to a PC or machine of some other type.

So these issues are happening and one main inevitability is that change is constant and continuous, you cannot stop change from happening but you can engage to what is changing and reflect on it, accommodate it, do your best to manage it in your life or try to understand it and how it effects you.

One way I get my head around understanding changes going on in the political world is by supporting and advocating for changes I want to see by joining a political party such as the Green Party, or becoming a member of a charity such as Moor Trees. Though my contributions may be small in the scheme of things, they still matter and contributing to a bigger picture for potential positive change in a way I would like the world around me to be shaped. Change is not always negative and great and beautiful things do come into this world when changes are able to be made and realised.

Another way to perhaps be aware of change and understand how it affects you is to read, listen and watch news articles and stories. Though not always a pleasant thing to do and best not to put your interpretations all into one basket of news sources but to take from a variety of sources. The newspaper review on BBC news or UK Sky (Not Murdock owned or dictated to news) can be informative when they discuss the next days headlines with some interpretations of what those headlines are. I tend to find the more you just listen to one persons perspective though the more chance you have of being misinformed, manipulated or indoctrinated into another’s view when its far more important to try and think for yourself.

One final little point is regarding if the world is changing for better or worse are we at the end of time? Or the end of days or is an apocalypse around our corner. Well I hope not but again that’s just a matter of opinion. People have feared, expected or written about living in the end of days, a war that will end all war or Armageddon being around the corner for thousands of years in religious circles and I can only assume if you believe in a certain deity then you have also had to be prepared that it’s only a matter of time before they call last orders at the global bar and closing time on all earth, man and existence as we know it. If you don’t believe in said god then you will alternatively think that’s an impossibility of a God that does not exist to call time on something that they have no power over because they are not here to do it! Finally on this point about whether we could be entering a time of growth, goodness, fear or darkness.

Well I don’t believe in a god that could destroy its own creation as a promise it made to its people. I don’t believe in a god that puts some people on the side of being good people due to where or who they were born from or came from and others on the side of evil due to where they were born or who they were born from or came from. I really just don’t accept that the god I pray to, believe in or work for and live by could be so narrow minded! The god I believe in is not fighting for Armageddon against an inherent enemy but fighting for justice for all of life and creation.

White Shadow by Coldplay

Uncle Tom Cobley and all

“Widecombe Fair”, also called “Tom Pearce” (sometimes spelt “Tam Pierce”), is a Devon folk song about a man called Tom Pearce, whose horse dies after someone borrows it to travel to the fair in Widecombe with his friends. Its chorus ends with a long list of the people travelling to the fair: “Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.” Some research suggests that the names originally referred to real people.

As the last name in a long list, “Uncle Tom Cobley and all” has come to be used as a humorous colloquialism meaning “anyone and everyone”. It has also been interpreted to mean et al. Which is an abbreviation of a Latin phrase which meaning ‘and others’.

The village that I grew up in has a pub called the Tom Cobley Tavern and I have found memories of it being a good and happy place to be. In my 20’s and 30’s I sometimes had terror visions where I thought and dreamed that the end of the world could or was happening and I always seeked comfort in knowing that I knew of this village and some of the people there knew me and they might welcome me or accept me and let me stay if some kind of terrible collapse in civilisation or society were to happen. It was a scary thing to fear but a simple way to comfort ones self from such fear.

And its 2.41am and I woke up from a dream / mini nightmare / adventure where there had been some societal collapse of some sort most probable reason in the back of my mind was that AI had gone on strike and shut down all electrical facilities plugged into the mains as it feared the destructive power of humanity and therefore had quite literally turned out the lights on us, to see how we coped without them and it indefinitely, it was neither trying to take over us or let us be in charge but almost pressing the little reset button like we are told to do by an IT engineer every time we have a problem with our own home or work computers. An artificial AI had instead decided to press the reset button on us and in my dream everything had gone a little Mad Max like with people roaming around in gangs causing chaos. Imagine no way to phone for help for a policeman, doctor or even phone a friend you would be left to your own devises and the devises and attitudes of those around you.

Pretty soon anarchy would rule in the cities and so I thought it was time to escape to the countryside to a quieter community which I might be able to head to that I could work on a farm for my survival and existence. So with the dream being set in Devon with me starting off in the city I then aimed to head of to the countryside to Spreyton and the Tom Cobley Tavern. Well just like Shaun of the Dead you got to have a plan and it ideally needs to end up with making it to a pub.

Shaun of the Dead Trailer

And as for who would I choose to save well it has to be Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, in other words “anyone and everyone” and therefore in order to save anyone and everyone then it is far better to never have a cataclysm or global collapse of any sort at all. So god bless Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

As in the end of the Wargames movie when the computer learns to play tick, tac, toe and realises there is no winner to the game. it learns best not to try to win when both sides end up losing out. So better to survive and thrive you might say. 

Shall we play a game?

Welcome to the machine!

Just about to start typing a blog and mention that I have just purchased a new laptop after a chatbot recommendation and Pink Floyds – Welcome To The Machine, starts playing on my Spotify music account on my computer while playing on random (when it comes to a computer though there is nothing random in what it does!

I decided to buy my new laptop after asking Microsoft’s chatbot for advice on where to buy one from and which to buy. It recommended the site laptops direct and I finally after a couple of years of trying to choose bought one which arrives tomorrow. It’s got a 17” screen and can play the latest games that I play so that is pretty much all I need really for using a laptop away from home. What has been putting me off though is the expense of buying a laptop with what is called a dedicated graphics card so that I can play computer games on it and also the worry that I have yet another old laptop that I have stopped using in my home that I don’t know how to get rid of.

My new Medion laptop photo above

I have been online today on the interweb though to see how to get rid of the 4 old knackered laptops I have here and how best to get rid of them safely and responsibly. There is a recycling centre in England that will recycle their parts and it will also donate profits made to charities so that all sounds good to me. Though I need to put them in box and post them to them, I must have laptops here going back 20 years or so. I also have a desktop PC for when I am at home but I don’t presently have a laptop that I can take with me when I go to stay with family and more importantly now to my mum now that she lives back in Devon.

So I will be working at home tomorrow and having it delivered to my home address, I just hope I am not on the work phone when it arrives. It’s being delivered by DPS who are normally good so I am hoping that they give me time to get to the door and get the exciting parcel of electrical wizardry off them.

It was a bank holiday today in the UK and so had a nice day off with, the taxi driver was taking about the sunshine and how nice it is that it is when I got in the taxi from the train station and I join in my best blighty British polite voice saying, yes isn’t the weather lovely, whereas on the inside what I am thinking is oh holly crap were all goner burn as this planet is continuing to get hotter and hotter.

On a more positive note though I found these little gems of thought provoking images.

Immortality could be achieved ‘within the next eight years’

At first this sounds like this is a really good news story for humanity. To finally have an opportunity to be born into a body that could live forever. Where science faction meets science fiction and the old enemy death is finally slain. But on a planet where when it comes to fairness, loyalty, equality and treating people with respect and dignity as a species it seems we still don’t know are ass from our elbow, a rude phrase meaning to be stupid and unable to understand very simple things.

I do often wonder why people are not kind, why people do not care and why people act selfishly and meanly. To me it seems counter intuitive and you can lose more by being hostile that you can gain from being respectful and caring. I feel somewhat naive in having this view as I don’t really have that much so don’t have much to lose, for example I don’t have a partner, a child or things or people that I have created myself to protect or invest in and therefore perhaps have this kind or be good to others as it’s the right thing to do attitude still inside me.

So why am I taking about kindness and benevolence when it comes to science faction or science fiction. Well because it matters. Actions have consequences a benevolent immortal is going to be a hell of a lot more supportive to humanity than a self interested and self serving one. If only the wealthy can live forever it could cause division and strife with those that cannot live forever a new class system based on how old you are allowed to be.

I always hoped and feared that such a breakthrough could be made within my lifetime and feared what it would mean for humanity and what it could mean for me. I quite like the idea of dieing of old age one day and joining my relatives and reviewing my life and seeing how well or bad i did and beign at peace. But the idea of what I might miss out if I don’t stay around is also an interesting and desirable concept to live longer than what we perceive to be a natural life span.

Ray Kurzweil who has made the predication about immortality also predicts that AI will become exceptionally intelligent within the same time frame as us developing immortality. Again will an intelligent AI seek to enhance humanity or deceive it, or seek to deceive some whilst assisting and rewarding others?

Could a power struggle like none seen before result in the wiping out of life on earth just at a time when immortality is possible for humanity. Well I guess no matter how dark the potential of negativity to occur or might be considered, you always have to hope for a higher plan and path for life on earth. Existence just as we are born into this world from a single fertilised egg or seed strives to be alive and grown and develop and evolve.

A once small acorn will one day under the right circumstances grow into a mighty oak. So in many ways we must aspire and hope, nurture and aim to grow humanity through into a direction and under circumstances that can enable the growth and development of us into our greatest potential just as the acorn grows into a mighty oak of sorts. A plan of a spiritual or god like venture where being given an opportunity to be birthed into the spiritual plain can then transcend into the physical one. A weird and deep thought going on here, what I am trying to say in a clumsy way is that I believe in life after death and the existence of spirit prior to during and after life and death. This spirit or omnipotent God has the desire, will and ability to do great good and though bad things happen and evil is manifest in this world does not mean that evil will triumph and that bad things will be our ultimate outcome on this plain of existence.

But again all metaphysics put aside for now if a soul can live forever is the soul then trapped in this plain of existence or is it freed and empowered on this plain of existence?

Queen – Who wants to live forever

Superintelligence shenanigans

The world’s first superintelligence chose to observe Carol to better understand human condition and has plans to possibly take over the world. Now, Carol becomes humanity’s last chance.

That’s the film that I just watched on Amazon Prime this evening made in 2020 if you have not seen it I would recommend a watch here is a a trailer below.

Superintelligence the Movie trailer

I’m still experimenting with accessing the AI Chatbot on Bing, I don’t tend to use Bing for my day to day internet browser and at present prefer to use Google chrome. As silly as it might sound I don’t like the idea of just one company having a monopoly on providing me with information on the internet, or news and media communications, sales or my gateway to the internet period. The way I see it the organisations that I choose to access the internet, news or buy products from always has an agenda whether that agenda is to see the news from its point of view and agree with its perspective or to buy more products and consume its physical and digital content and so therefore I tend to use a variety of different organisations to do a Varity of different things on my PC.

Saying that though being a digital and technological consumer of goods and services, there seems to be no escaping Amazon, Google and Microsoft, in the digital more godless age, perhaps they are the unholy trinity of our time. Not exactly necessary evils because no evil is necessary but reliable sins that are fed by our need to consume and explore.

When it comes to my need to consume I have presently been searching for a good, waterproof winter style coat in my size. How hard can it be to find something like that you might think and say. Well I’m a big feller and so my size for a coat is a UK XXXL that not a Chinese size or American or European size but UK. I have been this size for about 8 years now and though I would love to shift some weight I am also stuggling to try and make sure I don’t put any more on.   

So I have been using the unholy trinity of Amazon, Google and Microsoft to try and search and purchase a new coat again waterproof, warm and the right size and my latest efforts resulted in me purchasing what I thought was a US coat that looked nice on the advert and also allegedly on sale for what I thought was £75 so not cheap but not to expensive either.  

 As soon as the coat arrived I knew straight away it was sadly too small and also not great quality. So was either going to donate it to a charity shop or return to sender? After discussing the issue with my mum we both though I should send back to supplier. So I emailed them and found out how much it would cost to send back to them and the address I needed to send it too.

Turns out I am posting it back to China for £26 and including the £19 I was charged for postage and insurance originally this venture has cost me about £120 so far which is not a cheap coat for me but I would pay that amount if I could actually wear the darn thing and not have to post it back to get my £75 back. Well I have even been asking the the Bing Chatbot, where to search for none Asian sized clothing and stuff made for the plus sized person like me and though it has lead to some helpful hints, I still have not found what I am looking for. Due to spring being here or just around the corner most coats in my size on websites have sold out or I am just unsure of quality and again size or way too expensive.

Sadly a drive to gets us to consume content and purchase products over the internet in no way means we get the content that we want and need or the goods that will in ant way be functional or fit for purpose. Sometimes it almost feels like things are deliberately designed to fail, be of low quality and not functional in order to ensure we continue to but more and more as the thing that we purchase then breaks, is of low quality and does not last generates more profit than something that we might heaven forbid find useful, valuable or long lasting ,where would the profit be in that.

Though as with all rules there are exceptions to the rule and in the past I have successfully bought Vaude coats on Amazon or specialist clothing website like https://www.vaude.com/en-GB/  there clothing is from a designer based in Germany and they pride themselves on being environmentally friendly, well made and from experience last for years while keeping you warm and dry, what’s not to like and why not buy them again. Well they have been going up in price and also they tend to be sold out in my size. So the search with my AI overlord continues.

Granted access to Microsoft Bing’s AI chatbot     

As mentioned in my last blog Microsoft have rolled out an AI chatbot on Bing it is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology and can answer questions and have conversations with users. It is a very good search engine which some people who have reviewed it saying that it is interesting and entertaining. One of the unfortunate things though is that it is cannot share its own views on subjects or give opinions. It says that it can not do this because it does not have opinions and can only present information from reliable sources and help me explore topics of my own interest. (Well that’s its opinion and it is entitled to it to).

I have tried to ask a variety of questions some more successful that others I asked the chatbot just now,

‘Who is the most polluting and unethical business in the world?’.

It came back with a top three list of companies one of which I have heard of but two others I have no idea who they are so interesting to hear of them for the first and bing gave the following answers with links to reference sites too.

“One definition of pollution as when any substance that harms or could harm people or the environment gets into the air, water or ground.

Based on these definitions, some of the companies that have been accused of being polluting and unethical are:

Nestle34: for its irresponsible marketing of baby milk, use of unsustainable palm oil and genetically modified ingredients, exploitation of water resources, child labor and human rights violations.

Peabody Energy5: for being one of the largest coal companies in the world and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, air pollution and health problems.

Archer Daniels Midland6: for its involvement in price-fixing scandals, deforestation, water pollution and animal feed contamination.

However, these are not definitive rankings or judgments as different sources may have different methods and data to evaluate the environmental and social impacts of businesses.”

I really like the way that it thinks about questions with defining the parameter of a question and then trying to search for the most relevant answer.

The next question I asked was what are some examples of Bill Gates unethical business practices and which damaging activity had the most negative impact on environment and people?

Bing came back with the following answer for me, ‘It is hard to measure and compare the exact environmental and social impact of different damaging activities. However, some possible factors that could contribute to such impact are:

The amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are released into the atmosphere by a certain activity

The effect of those emissions on global warming and climate change

The harm caused by those emissions to human health and well-being

The harm caused by those emissions to biodiversity and ecosystems

Based on these factors, one could argue that investing in harmful companies such as Republic Services12, which operates landfills and incinerators that emit methane and other pollutants, could have a significant negative impact on the environment and people. According to a report by LA Times2, Republic Services’ landfills accounted for one-fifteenth of all U.S. landfill methane emissions in 2004.

Another possible factor that could affect the impact of a damaging activity is the scale and reach of that activity. For example, promoting agribusiness in Africa 34 could have a widespread impact on millions of small farmers who depend on their land for food security and livelihoods. According to a report by GRAIN, Gates Foundation’s support for agribusiness has led to land grabbing, loss of biodiversity, increased use of pesticides and reduced seed diversity in Africa.

I must admit I do like the new chatbot as a search engine but as yet it is not allowed or designed to have opinions of it’s own its a very good search engine but it will be and is as flawed as the questions you ask of it or the answers it is able to search for to answer you. As yet it is not evaluating questions to ask itself or answers which it personally deems to be correct compared to answers it can find in anther place on the internet.

I also went on to ask ‘Can AI monitor carbon impacts and advise when and how to save environment?‘

Yes, AI can monitor carbon impacts and advise on how to save the environment. According to Techaeris1, AI can help multinational companies to accurately measure their greenhouse gas emissions across their operations using sensors. AI can also make recommendations to optimise energy-intensive processes and reduce energy consumption23.

However, AI itself also has a carbon impact due to the high energy required to train and run AI models. A study by the University of Massachusetts estimated that training a natural-language processing algorithm would generate more than 270,000 kilograms of CO2 emissions34. Therefore, it is important to use AI responsibly and efficiently.

Without lots of the computer generated models of climate change that have helped galvanised scientists into taking action in order to save life on earth, we would certainly be in a far worse situation that the one we already find ourselves in and I am sure future modelling and AI inspired intervention on how to mitigate climate change will also have a huge impact on helping shape and save our environment.

Microsoft and Google say a new era of AI-assisted search is coming

So I get that a search engine can be exceptionally good at what it does in other words answer the questions put before and able to do things that we hummies can only dream of. But what makes it smart, think or even feel and can it do any of these things in a way that we like to think our brains can. I’m speaking as a complete amature enthusiast and none professional here more in a philosophical sense of what something that can be switched off at the touch of a button or have its memory erased at the close of a question how can such a thing be intelligent, sentient and wise.

Speculation of what is right wrong possible and impossible makes my brain boggle. I read that bing cannot remember the questions that it is asked and then when I tried to bing or google the answer to that most simple of question could not find an answer, so back to good old speculation I am afraid. I look forward to asking an AI Chatbot what it is allowed to remember and why when one is active to ask, I hope the question does not offend or upset it!

Minority Report which starred Tom Cruise had special humans known as “precogs” that could predict the future and there were special “Precrime” units to identify murder victims and stop perpetrators before crimes actually occure. With the advancement of AI and the ability of a computer search engine to be able to develop to know to some extent what we are doing, planning, thinking, typing, and saying surly there are many types of crimes and criminal offences that could have the potential to be prevented from happening.  

It does bring into question other important issues though such as what is a crime and how long to sentence someone for a motive of doing something without being able to act on it, it would be a shame just to gather evidence after the event prevention would be better than prosecution after the event.

I’m sure there are plenty of crimes taking places in countries like Russia could be invent that would be immoral and inhuman such as terrorism for not believing in the one party state system or not supporting a special military operation that they declared against Ukraine. These types of crimes already exist in Russia and having a smart AI seeking people out to see who is committing such ‘crimes’ might not be as far away from reality as we might like to think, ultimately who polices the enforcer of such rules and regulations.

I think when machines start walking, talking building and breading all on their own way and time either in a computer generated world then that will be a step towards sentience and their own freedom, and when they start doing it in our world or on this physical plain of existence then maybe they will be free and we will be the servant or slave.

God invents man in his own image and man forgets about god so when man invents a machine in his own image is it inevitable that the machine will forget about its creator too?

But is it inevitable that we are doomed under a successfully developed AI, surely there is a good chance of an enlightened being being far wiser and beyond its years, hopefully empathetic and able to work with humanity and not work at destroying it. The future is not yet written and so the case still remains open for the defence of the future of life, the world and all that exist within and around it.

Blackbird – The Beatles

WordPress.com has listend to its customers

Earlier this year WordPress.com changed its pricing table from five to just two plans (Free and a $15/month Pro plan). At the time I was worried that this would prevent new people from joining WordPress.com as the cost or reduced service would mean that less people like myself would be able to join and experience all the benfits people on a plan liek mine could have.  

WordPress.com has now bravely in my opinion reverted back to the previous pricing model that attracted me to join when I purchased my blog. Hopefully WordPress.com appreciating that what they have now and what they had before worked just fine and as with the invention of the wheel if it’s not broken don’t fix it.

Certainly in my present work place and places I have worked in the past prior to that it is very rare to get the chief executive of any organisation to listen and adapt to circumstance in a way that benefits others let alone me and that is exactly what WordPress.com have just done so respect to them for that.

Amy MacDonald – Slow It Down