Intelligent life in outer space - NOT amateur radio

One of the points which I picked up from my recent University of the Third Age course in Cambridge was about the advances in AI. 

Within a few years AI is likely to exceed the intelligence of human beings. When we scan the skies for intelligent life elsewhere we may come across civilisations (e.g. via SETI) that may not be sentient. 

What is consciousness? I think it is beings that are self-aware.  Although vast computers may have vast amounts of knowledge, this is not the same as self-awareness and consciousness. 

I can imagine some planets even slightly more advanced than ours which have AI far more advanced than ours.

AI lectures - NOT amateur radio

On Friday, I finished a 10 week course at the Cambridge University of the Third Age about AI. It was an excellent course and got me thinking.  It is generally known that AI will well exceed humans in the next few years. 

This morning I watched an AI generated video imagining life in late Victorian times. If I had not known it was AI generated, I would never have known. It was amazingly good. This is just one of the negatives of AI. It is already hard to tell what is fake and what is real. Imagine how this will be in just 10 years' time!

In many ways AI will benefit mankind. It is also very dangerous in the wrong hands. I imagine that the military in the USA, China and Russia are already working hard to counter each other. I imagine they are all working on the idea of mutually assured destruction (MAD) remembering what ever you can do to me I can do to you. It is like nuclear weapons.

Am I in favour of AI?  It is here and we have to live with it whether malign or benign.

The dangers of AI - NOT amateur radio

There is no doubt that AI can be very good at analysing lots of data very fast and can be much better than a human. Large language models are trained and GPT4 is vastly bigger and better than the last version. Mistakes still occur, yet many people believe it is true!

Recently I have seen several things on Facebook that may have been done with AI. The trouble now is telling what is real and what is not. As time goes by, AI will only get better. All I can advice is you take great care and assume anything a person is supposed to have said is AI unless you know for certain it is real.

DeepSeek AI - NOT amateur radio

There is a new AI program from China that is "upsetting the apple cart".  It is called DeepSeek and is supposed to be better than ChatGPT. When I went to try it yesterday, it was unavailable due to a malicious attack.

There is little doubt that AI will get even better over time and will have a great impact on our lives. In many ways it will be a force for good, but it will cost us jobs and could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

See https://chat.deepseek.com/ .

AI - NOT amateur radio

This morning I had an email inviting me to try Google’s new AI tool called Gemini. 

It makes some mistakes, but in the main it produces amazing text and images based on the information available in seconds.

In coming years it is likely to get even better. Used for good, it a powerful tool. In the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.

Soldersmoke AI experiment

As an experiment, Soldersmoke did an experimental AI generated podcast. It is frightening. 

If this is possible now, what will be possible in 2050? To me, it sounded incredible. You would never have known it was AI generated.

It is frightening how realistic this podcast sounds, making you wonder how AI could be used to distort truth in future e.g. in elections.

See http://www.soldersmoke.com/About SolderSmoke 2.mp3

AI key - NOT amateur radio

According to The Knowledge today, Microsoft is introducing an AI key on its keyboards . This links to their AI tool in Windows (Copilot) which is linked to ChatGPT.

AI - I HATE it!!! - NOT amateur radio

At one time you could speak with a human. 

I have just wasted 90 minutes of my life trying to ask my SIM only service provider how to transfer numbers when I upgrade my mobile phones. After 3 humans and several AI robots, I have given up. 

All I wanted to know was how? A human could have told me in 60 seconds.

Maybe I shall go somewhere else?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) - NOT amateur radio

Until this year, most had not heard of AI. Now it is widespread.  

There is no doubt that with big computers that learn we can all benefit from the huge processing power. What a human brain can do in days could be done by an AI computer in seconds. This could really help in such things as fast cancer diagnosis.

At the same time it could be a great cause of harm in the wrong hands. 

Some time ago, I did an experiment with AI. I put my name and callsign in and within seconds it produced line after line about me, most which was accurate. I then put my son's name in (he is an internationally famous jazz musician) and it came back with rubbish. The danger is that people may accept what AI tells them as absolute truth. Imagine a hostile power using AI. We can be sure the military services both east and west are "on the case".

I can see both good and bad. We have interacted with AI for years e.g. with chat bots and phone chats that, for example, ask you to "press 2 if you need to discuss future cruises".  In the future they will be far better.

At the moment, I am reserving judgement.

The dangers of AI

There is little doubt that the power of artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a powerful force for good allowing huge quantities of data to be analyzed quickly and accurately. An example is analyzing x-rays for tumours.

At the same time AI could also be our downfall. As the knowledge warned today it could also be our downfall.

"The truth is that it’s “already too late” for any meaningful pause in AI development, says Iain Martin  The Times.  As with the creation of the nuclear bomb in the 1940s, the pressing question is whether democracies or dictatorships get there first. If the West and its allies fail, we will be at the mercy of autocrats who can swarm us with thousands of lethal drones, or deploy sophisticated programmes which “relentlessly search for weaknesses through which to launch cyber attacks and shut down our financial systems”. This is a race “we have to win”. " 

This is quote from The Knowledge today.

Frustration - NOT amateur radio

Several times in the last few days I have had to ring about house insurance. After about a minute of time wasting drivel I was asked to say in a few words what my call was about. 

Clearly they were using voice recognition or AI. Without fail my few words were not understood! When asked was I asking about car insurance "is that right?" I replied "no!!".

In the end I was put through to a human being.   I hate AI.  With a poor voice, I am on to a loser every time!!!

More AI crappery - NOT amateur radio

As an experiment just now I asked Chat GPT4 about my son, who is a professional jazz pianist. I tried about 7 times. The answers were all correct in parts, but every one was totally wrong on when and where he was born and many other details. 

My worry is people will believe that AI always is factually correct, when it isn't. 

Yes, I am sure a great deal of good can come from AI, but also it could result in a lot of incorrect data being assumed as correct.

At the moment, Chat GPT4 gets about 3/10 from me and "must try harder".

Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming, but it still has some way to go. I wonder what AI will be capable of in 10 or 20 years' time.

Brave New World?

 As an experiment just now, I asked Chat GPT4 to generate me an essay about amateur radio. GPT4 is a form of artificial intelligence.

The essay looked remarkably accurate and was just as if a human being had written it. I stopped after about 30 lines. I also asked it to create a couple of poems about places I knew. These were amazing.

You can see both the good and bad here: the good is getting AI to do what humans find boring and hard. The bad is where does this stop?

Although I do not want to sound like a Luddite, I can see dangers ahead.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) - NOT amateur radio

This worries me. 

Just now I tried Google's version called Bard again. It tries to make sense of the data it knows about and writes about this. Some answers were remarkably good, whereas some were useless and factually incorrect.

Now, used properly I can see lot of uses. However, many will (wrongly) take everything it says as factually correct when it is not. I can see a future when many people accept everything produced by AI as factually correct. "Brave New World", as Aldous Huxley Huxley said?

AI search engines - NOT amateur radio

There has been a lot recently about artificial intelligence and search engines. First there was ChatGPT followed by GPT-4 and now BARD which is Google's experimental version.

I can see great danger with these as people believe what these bots create as truth, when it may be full of errors. I tried BARD out and most was correct, but some things were totally wrong!! 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Our University of the 3rd Age lecture yesterday (by Zoom - 148 participants) was about AI. Few of us realise just what an impact this could make on our lives in years to come. 

We have the potential to make artificial intelligence that could be smarter than us and perform tasks that we could not do with our small brains.  

AI has positive and negative impacts. We cannot be Luddites, but we need to look to the future with our eyes wide open. There could be profound changes in the years ahead.