AI

[rowley]

Coming like a train mind.

I'm more or less retired now, but I do occasional jobs for people from my past, some that can be done remotely. One of these people asked me to prepare a report for some work they will be doing. It was a "reference" report as they call them, so not some sort of final, legal obligation. But they need them, I had done this before, and so they asked me to do it again.

It involved quite a lot of technical knowledge, some understanding of government guidelines and such like, including current government policy. It needed correlation of a lot of stats and some grasp of how they were relevant. Graphs and so on were also part of it, and examples of previous experience, and their consequences and a fair bit of other stuff, without going into too much detail. A canny bit or work actually.

They won't be asking me again!

Nothing wrong with the report I'm happy to say. But when I met with the recipient in his office, he invited me to put in the frames of reference and other details into a new AI Claude engine. thirty seconds later it delivered a report, (about ten pages altogether) better than anything I could have done. And I'm supposed to be reasonable at this stuff!

He demonstrated other, frankly astonishing things that could be done now, for less than £20 a month sub to the latest model.

Every "knowledge" based job is under threat. Every administrative job, every legal job, every consultancy job, and many others. They obviously can't all go, but the majority will. And it is coming quicker than most of us realise.

Get ready if you can.

 

[Smug in Boots]

Coming like a train mind.

I'm more or less retired now, but I do occasional jobs for people from my past, some that can be done remotely. One of these people asked me to prepare a report for some work they will be doing. It was a "reference" report as they call them, so not some sort of final, legal obligation. But they need them, I had done this before, and so they asked me to do it again.

It involved quite a lot of technical knowledge, some understanding of government guidelines and such like, including current government policy. It needed correlation of a lot of stats and some grasp of how they were relevant. Graphs and so on were also part of it, and examples of previous experience, and their consequences and a fair bit of other stuff, without going into too much detail. A canny bit or work actually.

They won't be asking me again!

Nothing wrong with the report I'm happy to say. But when I met with the recipient in his office, he invited me to put in the frames of reference and other details into a new AI Claude engine. thirty seconds later it delivered a report, (about ten pages altogether) better than anything I could have done. And I'm supposed to be reasonable at this stuff!

He demonstrated other, frankly astonishing things that could be done now, for less than £20 a month sub to the latest model.

Every "knowledge" based job is under threat. Every administrative job, every legal job, every consultancy job, and many others. They obviously can't all go, but the majority will. And it is coming quicker than most of us realise.

Get ready if you can.

There's a lot of frightened people out there all of a sudden.

Huge swathes of middle management will be wiped out and high flying jet setters will be cancelling flights.

What's the point of flying teams around the world when deals can all be done, in minutes, on a laptop and screens.

Children starting at junior school will soon have no way of catching up because the technology will outrun them ...

... and teachers won't have a clue how to control things.

 

[Mad Maxim]

Might eventually become easier to get a plumber or electrician as the trades will become the only safe jobs around so everyone moves to those jobs. Just a shame everyone else won't be able to afford them as they'll be unemployed due to A.I.

 

[rowley]

There's a lot of frightened people out there all of a sudden.

Huge swathes of middle management will be wiped out and high flying jet setters will be cancelling flights.

What's the point of flying teams around the world when deals can all be done, in minutes, on a laptop and screens.

Children starting at junior school will soon have no way of catching up because the technology will outrun them ...

... and teachers won't have a clue how to control things.

Very much true.

My work was always hands on, technical and being required to be at different places.

The work I did for this bloke was legacy stuff really. He just knew me. But what he also told me was that he was using the work I did for him to " check" his AI set up.

He, and others will soon do a lot less checking.

The carnage visited on the blue collar worker over the last thirty years, is coming for the hitherto untouched white collar man. And at a pace impossible to grasp.

 

[rowley]

Might eventually become easier to get a plumber or electrician as the trades will become the only safe jobs around so everyone moves to those jobs. Just a shame everyone else won't be able to afford them as they'll be unemployed due to A.I.

Yes. But it takes a long time to make one of those guys. A four year apprenticeship and maybe the same again ideally . And it doesn't suit everyone at all.

 

[Becs]

The bairn failed a uni assignment a few weeks back as it came back saying her lab report was AI generated.

She was upset and went and spoke to the tutor. The tutors put it through some checker first and he'd failed it based on that. He then read it himself and asked another tutor to have a read and they both agreed she'd written it herself and it wasn't AI. She was given the correct grade and passed it.

It made me wonder how many students who don't have the courage to speak up and ask for a re-mark are failing at uni because their work is a high standard and looks AI generated.

 

[Chunksafc]

Finid it more and more useful in work for researching products and giving a starting point for process and procedure documents.

Its also been a god send for helping put together some better quality Excel workbooks that provide better data analysis

 

[Sunders53]

Of course the judge in the Sandi Peggie trans case didn't use AI to produce his loads of bollocks judgement did he?

A criminal lawyer i know reckons lots of legal firms will not be taken on as many new law graduates. Because their initial job is usually to prepare the background of a case, legal precedents etc...specialist AI apps will now do this.
Similarly with the large auditing firms who have in the past taken on lots of newly qualified graduates for basic box ticking audit procedures... nope.

So it is likely for lots of other jobs/professions the need for grad students in large numbers will decrease.

English graduates have always found the job market difficult, other than becoming a teacher... journalism has been in decline (like pubs and shopping in the high street) for years.

STEM, science technology engineering and maths, we're the subjects generally advised to young folk to study? Is that still true?

So the building trades, hairdressing, truck/taxi, what else should be future proof? Unless robots and driverless take over?

 

[dilb3rt]

The bairn failed a uni assignment a few weeks back as it came back saying her lab report was AI generated.

She was upset and went and spoke to the tutor. The tutors put it through some checker first and he'd failed it based on that. He then read it himself and asked another tutor to have a read and they both agreed she'd written it herself and it wasn't AI. She was given the correct grade and passed it.

It made me wonder how many students who don't have the courage to speak up and ask for a re-mark are failing at uni because their work is a high standard and looks AI generated.

The detection software provides a lot of false positives like this which is why a lot of University's don't use the AI detection services, to avoid issues like your daughter had. It's a very tricky situation in Universities at the min

 

[Ozzymac]

In my role as an insurance assessor it's speeding up the work i can do. I have to read countless reports and determine policy outcomes etc. I can drag the document into the AI chat and ask it for a high level summary and it will do exactly that. I still need to read the whole report as insurance claims can have a lot of grey in them but with the high level summary it allows me to focus on the nuts and bolts rather than the waffle

 

[Ozzymac]

As an example i've just put the 8 page supporters minutes in and askedfor a high level summary and it gave me this...

This document is a high-level summary of the Sunderland AFC Supporter Collective Meeting held on January 26th, 2026, which covered the club's positive financial health, future regulatory changes, and fan engagement initiatives (pp. 1-2).
Key discussion points included:

• Finance & Regulation: The club is in a strong financial position, with significant investment in stadium infrastructure and the squad (p. 1). It has supported the Premier League's move to a new Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) financial control mechanism, which focuses on driving revenue and encouraging infrastructure investment (p. 2). Sunderland is well-positioned for the last year of current Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and the introduction of SCR (p. 2). The new Independent Football Regulator (IFR) will require the club to obtain a license to compete in the Premier League, a process the club is actively working on (p. 2).
• Board Appointments: Tom Burwell (CEO of Bia Sports Group) and Alexandra Louis-Dreyfus were appointed as non-executive directors to the board, following the passing of Patrick Treuer (p. 1).
• Ticketing: Season ticket prices for 2026-27 will increase to reflect Premier League status but aim to remain competitive (p. 2). The club is migrating to a new system (Seat Geek), so auto-renewal will not be available this year, and fans must manually renew their tickets (p. 2). The club also introduced mandatory ID checks at away games to combat ticket touting and ensure eligible fans attend (p. 3).
• Stadium & Atmosphere: The club continues to invest in the Stadium of Light, including new screens and catering options, and is exploring options to extend safe standing areas (pp. 4, 6). The club is working with supporter groups to enhance the matchday atmosphere and is looking into the demographic of away support (p. 5). Plans for the nearby Sheepfolds development have been altered to protect future stadium expansion options (p. 7).

Would you like to know more about the financial regulations or the ticketing policy?

 

[rowley]

As an example i've just put the 8 page supporters minutes in and askedfor a high level summary and it gave me this...

This document is a high-level summary of the Sunderland AFC Supporter Collective Meeting held on January 26th, 2026, which covered the club's positive financial health, future regulatory changes, and fan engagement initiatives (pp. 1-2).
Key discussion points included:

• Finance & Regulation: The club is in a strong financial position, with significant investment in stadium infrastructure and the squad (p. 1). It has supported the Premier League's move to a new Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) financial control mechanism, which focuses on driving revenue and encouraging infrastructure investment (p. 2). Sunderland is well-positioned for the last year of current Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and the introduction of SCR (p. 2). The new Independent Football Regulator (IFR) will require the club to obtain a license to compete in the Premier League, a process the club is actively working on (p. 2).
• Board Appointments: Tom Burwell (CEO of Bia Sports Group) and Alexandra Louis-Dreyfus were appointed as non-executive directors to the board, following the passing of Patrick Treuer (p. 1).
• Ticketing: Season ticket prices for 2026-27 will increase to reflect Premier League status but aim to remain competitive (p. 2). The club is migrating to a new system (Seat Geek), so auto-renewal will not be available this year, and fans must manually renew their tickets (p. 2). The club also introduced mandatory ID checks at away games to combat ticket touting and ensure eligible fans attend (p. 3).
• Stadium & Atmosphere: The club continues to invest in the Stadium of Light, including new screens and catering options, and is exploring options to extend safe standing areas (pp. 4, 6). The club is working with supporter groups to enhance the matchday atmosphere and is looking into the demographic of away support (p. 5). Plans for the nearby Sheepfolds development have been altered to protect future stadium expansion options (p. 7).

Would you like to know more about the financial regulations or the ticketing policy?

Yep. And it is getting more powerful all the time. About every six months it seems there is another huge jump.

The bloke I'd done the work for paid for something to eat when we were done and another came with us. He was the software engineer who had encouraged the use of AI, though as he told me, "It's going to do for me very soon".

This other bloke is in his mid fifties and made the interesting point that his job now didn't even exist when he had left school. Nor did many others. So it won't all be a loss of jobs, others none of us can see coming will emerge.

 

[alcoauth]

The bairn failed a uni assignment a few weeks back as it came back saying her lab report was AI generated.

She was upset and went and spoke to the tutor. The tutors put it through some checker first and he'd failed it based on that. He then read it himself and asked another tutor to have a read and they both agreed she'd written it herself and it wasn't AI. She was given the correct grade and passed it.

It made me wonder how many students who don't have the courage to speak up and ask for a re-mark are failing at uni because their work is a high standard and looks AI generated.

Interesting anecdote, these AIs are ran off massive amounts of language data and sort of homogenise writing trends and common verbiage beyond normal analytical methods, they notice things we never could, a big part of the problem is in the last decade or so as the internet has gotten smaller and smaller in terms of where people go for information and this hasn't been good for expansive use of language so everybody ends up sounding/writing alike and this makes us seem like AI.

 

[Daz]

If used carefully and correctly, AI could mean groundbreaking advances in medicine or technology, which is what it should be mainly used for imo.

A lot of businesses want to use AI...but almost none of them know what they will use it for. They just don't want to miss out.

 

[samwise_new]

i liken AI to VAR...

both are very handy if used for the best intention, otherwise (as we keep seeing with VAR) they are pretty much useless.

 

[marcusblackcat]

I program python and Java script for a living. But it takes me 100 times longer than AI to create an app on python than it does AI! Which is why I am now looking forward to my voluntary redundancy payoff!!

 

[rowley]

i liken AI to VAR...

both are very handy if used for the best intention, otherwise (as we keep seeing with VAR) they are pretty much useless.

The free ones can be very limited. But the paid for new models are anything but, and serious people are now using them. Consultancy firms are shedding jobs and using AI for a lot of the donkey work,. This will only increase and it will happen in multiple fields.

Believe me, it is not going away and will become more powerful very quickly.

 

[rowley]

I program python and Java script for a living. But it takes me 100 times longer than AI to create an app on python than it does AI! Which is why I am now looking forward to my voluntary redundancy payoff!!

Hope it works out mate.

 

[Robertson]

Can we liken AI to the industrial revolution, which did away with a lot of manual work as machines could do it more efficiently?

AI is doing the same to office jobs and professions.

 

[samwise_new]

The free ones can be very limited. But the paid for new models are anything but, and serious people are now using them. Consultancy firms are shedding jobs and using AI for a lot of the donkey work,. This will only increase and it will happen in multiple fields.

Believe me, it is not going away and will become more powerful very quickly.

aye i remember when it was first mentioned, never liked the idea of it then and still do not...business' will obviously use it as much as they can, less wages they need to pull out, we have seen a lot of this already with the self serve checkouts and such.

we lost best part of our big business' through the 80's and really the only thing that kept the jobs going was bloody call centres...here's hoping they find a new alternative, quickly.