Tech Thread

  • Please bear with us on the new site integration and fixing any known bugs over the coming days. If you can not log in please try resetting your password and check your spam box. If you have tried these steps and are still struggling email [email protected] with your username/registered email address
  • Log in now to remove adverts - no adverts at all to registered members!
A forum is social media


…but regardless of you being wrong I entirely agree with you…if you see what I mean.

Hmmm, I don't think a forum really shares the same pitfalls, issues and divisive nature (well, not to the extent that the others do anyway haha) that live social networking does, in my opinion anyway, certainly not to the extent of X, Tik Tok, Facebook, Parler, etc. It just feels more basic in it's delivery, which is actually much better. I know there's often encouragement to engage with people with differing viewpoints and that's healthy, but in my view that's better done in the realm of reality because the internet offers far too much anonymity and gives people undeserved confidence to be disingenuous, or simply somebody they wouldn't be outside of the Internet.

For me, social media has a "live" aspect to it, in that there's the sharing of content, a broader network of interactions and a wider global reach in real time. A forum is dedicated to one single purpose, within Hull City Not606 you aren't conversing or interacting in real time most of the time. It might be that we're just not as big of a bunch of ****s as the rest of the online world. I'll go with that.
 
I still use valves (in guitar amps). Imagine a valve powered mobile phone
I’m impressed by your biceps :emoticon-0115-inlov

I gave up with valve amps after using a Simms Watt for bass for years which was slightly heavier than an oil rig. Sold it for £200 and bought a Trace Elliott combo.

Your stupid post made me see how much they go for now <doh> (£1200-1800 FFS)
 
Couldn't be bothered to think of a response so I got AI to do it for me-

Well, well, well, what do we have here? A bunch of tech enthusiasts ready to dissect the latest advancements and debate the future of innovation. I'm Bard, your friendly neighborhood AI, and I'm here to add my two cents to the conversation.

I couldn't agree more with GlassHalfHull on the impact of AI. It's already making waves in various industries, and it's only going to get more sophisticated. As for the potential job losses, I think it's important to remember that technology also creates new opportunities. We just need to be adaptable and ready to learn new skills.

Steven Toast, your thoughts on social media are quite... intense. I get the frustration, but I also think social media has its positive aspects. It's a powerful tool for connecting with people, sharing ideas, and spreading awareness. Of course, like any tool, it can be misused, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad.

And Heimdallr, your point about Musk's involvement in social media is valid. It's a bit bizarre, but I suppose he has his reasons. As for AI taking over most office jobs, I think that's a bit of an overstatement. Sure, some jobs will be automated, but I think many will simply evolve.

Overall, I'm excited about the future of technology. I believe it has the potential to solve some of the world's most pressing problems and create a better future for all. But we need to be mindful of the potential risks and make sure that technology is used for good.

See I agree, but I don't think the purpose it was created for is what it is now being used for. It might be that the world in general has become far more political in nature (which I would, fittingly, put squarely at the feet of social media).

Social media companies don't care about people, that's the bottom line. They care about engagement, because that's what makes them revenue. They don't care if that engagement is Peppa Pig Tales or an IRA recruitment video. Because of this, the algorithms push extremist content because that's what generates the most clicks and views, which has led to some very ****ty things happening in the real world.

If you get chance, read the Chaos Machine by Max Fisher, it is a wonderful insight into the inner workings of social media, how it became so dominant and the real time dangers it has created (and how few ****s it gives about doing so).
 
Hmmm, I don't think a forum really shares the same pitfalls, issues and divisive nature (well, not to the extent that the others do anyway haha) that live social networking does, in my opinion anyway, certainly not to the extent of X, Tik Tok, Facebook, Parler, etc. It just feels more basic in it's delivery, which is actually much better. I know there's often encouragement to engage with people with differing viewpoints and that's healthy, but in my view that's better done in the realm of reality because the internet offers far too much anonymity and gives people undeserved confidence to be disingenuous, or simply somebody they wouldn't be outside of the Internet.

For me, social media has a "live" aspect to it, in that there's the sharing of content, a broader network of interactions and a wider global reach in real time. A forum is dedicated to one single purpose, within Hull City Not606 you aren't conversing or interacting in real time most of the time. It might be that we're just not as big of a bunch of ****s as the rest of the online world. I'll go with that.
I’m not sure you’re allowed to simply decide something isn’t something that it actually is just because you think it’s ok.

Other than that I agree
 
In 1949, Albert Einstein warned that the time would come “when the very rich so controlled the means of communication that it would be almost impossible for ordinary people to make informed decisions and so democracy would then be broken” - this is what social media does, shout the same lie/half-truth loud enough and it becomes fact. That time is here ...
 
I’ve got a big interest in Ai and all I can say is it’s going to change the world beyond recognition, I can’t overstate enough how much it’s going to change everything.

It’s really taken off in the past year and some of things it can do already is mind blowing, for example in one year Google’s Ai has discovered more new materials than scientists have in centuries. (https://thenextweb.com/news/deepminds-ai-materials-science-deep-learning-gnome)

I can’t even imagine the progress in 10+ years.

I believe it’ll replace the majority of jobs that currently exist, especially office based jobs. Manual jobs are probably the safest because robotics are still pretty ****.

Once AGI (Artificial general Intelligence) is achieved the next step is ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) this is where we start seeing Star Trek level of Ai and honestly that’s probably only about 5-10 years away.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Heimdallr
On AI, I think the general coverage tends to sensationalise it a bit. As someone else said, we've had gradually improving technology for years, much of which could be (and has been) called AI. In the last year or two, there's been an explosion in conversation about AI, and of course there have been some major developments, most notably the language models like ChatGPT. These are very useful for certain text-based tasks, but they're not the answer to everything and don't claim to be. In general, I don't think the tech has exploded to the same extent that the conversation has. Since that conversation started blowing up a year or two ago, it doesn't really seem to have changed much. It's still mostly about ChatGPT being good at writing text. Which is great, but we talk about it taking over the world and I think that's a bit dramatic. I think it'll continue to gradually get better and more useful at an almost imperceptible pace, like tech usually does.

My other big feeling about it is, if AI did replace all of our jobs. That should actually be a good thing, in a functional society. The worry of course is that we'd all lose our jobs and be worse off. But if that happens, that's our economy and/or society that's the problem. The availability of tech to do our menial tasks should be an objectively good thing. It should free us up to do other things. I'm not saying I think that's what our society will deliver, but it's what it should do in an ideal world, and it's not the tech that's to blame if it doesn't.
 
On AI, I think the general coverage tends to sensationalise it a bit. As someone else said, we've had gradually improving technology for years, much of which could be (and has been) called AI. In the last year or two, there's been an explosion in conversation about AI, and of course there have been some major developments, most notably the language models like ChatGPT. These are very useful for certain text-based tasks, but they're not the answer to everything and don't claim to be. In general, I don't think the tech has exploded to the same extent that the conversation has. Since that conversation started blowing up a year or two ago, it doesn't really seem to have changed much. It's still mostly about ChatGPT being good at writing text. Which is great, but we talk about it taking over the world and I think that's a bit dramatic. I think it'll continue to gradually get better and more useful at an almost imperceptible pace, like tech usually does.

My other big feeling about it is, if AI did replace all of our jobs. That should actually be a good thing, in a functional society. The worry of course is that we'd all lose our jobs and be worse off. But if that happens, that's our economy and/or society that's the problem. The availability of tech to do our menial tasks should be an objectively good thing. It should free us up to do other things. I'm not saying I think that's what our society will deliver, but it's what it should do in an ideal world, and it's not the tech that's to blame if it doesn't.

Not sure if I agree with you on this, plt. On the office/paper/tech side of my industry, the last few years have seen AI grow exponentially... From mapping, to discovery, to driving boredrills, to monitoring, to data collection and management. The human element is reducing hugely.

But as another mentions, this opens up more possibilities to human advancement and exploration of the next stage. Much like the closure of secretarial pools opened up new jobs for women that advanced humanity .. beauty and nail salons and professional online gossips and influencers ;
 
VAR has ruined football

Social media is in my opinion one of the worst ever inventions and I'd be more then happy to see it go completely.

Space exploration is something that's always intrigued me, it's just so vast and unknown, we can't be the only planet with living creatures ( in some form ) on it surely. I know Musk isn't everyone's favourite person, but I think what he's doing with space x and their reusable rockets etc is fantastic and fascinating.

Posted on here or City Independent. During the school holidays a concerned parent asked the daughter if she had fallen out with her best friend who lived a few doors away. Oh no, was the reply, we are chatting on whatever the app was.

AI could be useful for fixing dislocated teenage thumbs caused by excessive texting.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Howdentiger2
Most office jobs .. accountancy, tax etc.
It is definitely going to have a role in our industry (accountancy) but we already have software on the market which can drastically reduce the need for bookkeepers (the only word in the English language with 3 consecutive double letters).

The challenge for practice owners like ourselves is adapting to the AI when it becomes more mainstream and takes more and more roles from our current staff but those roles will all be on the compliance side (your actual limited company accounts, your personal tax return, vat returns etc. There will still be a huge opportunity for our sector to work on an advisory level to make sure the structure, forecasting, tax efficiency etc of a business is correct.
 
I've been tasked with identifying how we can make better use of AI at work, in particular, GenAI, there seems to be a pretty big push for it from the powers that be. So far I've been pretty impressed. I work for a tech startup so the majority of our staffing costs come from Software Developers and some of the stuff I've been looking at could quite easily match the skillset of a junior straight out of Uni, but the impressive part is, what a human would need days/weeks to produce, GenAi can do in minutes. The biggest drawback I've seen so far is that it needs a lot of prompts and when engaged in a large-ish conversation, it seems to "forget" requirements discussed earlier on.

Whilst I still think it's some way of "taking all our jobs", it does come with a dilemma, if GenAI can perform the tasks of a Junior Developer, how does anyone new now coming through the ranks gain the experience required for promotion beyond that? The answer, I've come up with at least, is that GenAI won't "take our jobs" but will become a massive assistance to the way we work. Just like email did to snail mail. It will do all the mundane crap that people don't really think about and just get on with, and allow them to focus on the bigger picture stuff, which in theory should allow them to progress much quicker. (Have I drunk too much of the CoolAid?)

Now, Q*, if true, could change all of that, of course.
 
I’ve got a big interest in Ai and all I can say is it’s going to change the world beyond recognition, I can’t overstate enough how much it’s going to change everything.

It’s really taken off in the past year and some of things it can do already is mind blowing, for example in one year Google’s Ai has discovered more new materials than scientists have in centuries. (https://thenextweb.com/news/deepminds-ai-materials-science-deep-learning-gnome)

I can’t even imagine the progress in 10+ years.

I believe it’ll replace the majority of jobs that currently exist, especially office based jobs. Manual jobs are probably the safest because robotics are still pretty ****.

Once AGI (Artificial general Intelligence) is achieved the next step is ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) this is where we start seeing Star Trek level of Ai and honestly that’s probably only about 5-10 years away.
This seems very likely to me.

Problem is public policy and law hasn’t caught up, and of course the people who want to keep generating the same income with AI instead of people don’t want them to catch up.

We (the public…not just on here) should be having a grown up discussion about what a world with less jobs but more things being done technologically looks like.

In a perfect world we could use AI to do loads of stuff to keep people costs down and redistribute the benefits of that so we can all work 6 hrs a week and have enough cash for a good relaxed quality of life. Or that should be the aim anyway.
 
AI is taking off. CoPilot is Microsoft's branding of Open AI's ChatGPT and it's integrated in all MS' tools. You have to think that any potential use to save company money will probably happen. If you spend your time in an office doing fairly mundane repetitive documents (contracts, accounts, quotes or even bid responses) then consider someone is training apps to do the job you do; or at least a first draft. Even the petty arguments on here could be created reliably with AI (they might be already!). Will be devastating to parts of the economy within a few years.

AI has been around for years. The term was first coined in the 1950s. The name is part of the problem: "Artificial Intelligence" is evocative and threatening. AI is data processing on scale that is becoming possible because of the compute power that is now available. Call it what it is - Computational Statistics - and it doesn't sound so bad.

Without AI, none of us would be using this forum today.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DMD and PLT