• Re: OT: Danger of AI

    From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 20:51:35 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 14:39, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 12:15:36 BST, Ian wrote:

    There is no intelligence in "AI".

    "AI" does not autonomously plot to attack anyone or anything, it's directed to.


    Of course. In that sense, can't it be used as a lethal weapon? With the follow-on - is it a more effective weapon?

    "AI" won't kill anyone, though it makes a nice scapegoat.

    Autonomous drones informed by an algorithm do kill, though.

    Well exactly. A pedestrian is not a lethal weapon, but put him in a car...
    --
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
    too dark to read.

    Groucho Marx



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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 20:53:27 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 14:55, Ian wrote:
    The idea that an "AI" program will unilaterally conspire to kill a human operator that "threatens it" is pure science fiction (or AI-monger hype).

    Not necessarily. It might be a side effect of it trying to do something entirely different.

    Like a sat nav directing you off a cliff.
    --
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
    too dark to read.

    Groucho Marx



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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 20:55:14 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed
    --
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
    too dark to read.

    Groucho Marx



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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 20:56:05 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 15:57, Joe wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:49:21 -0000 (UTC)
    RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:




    I think a worry at the moment is the AI computers might produce
    outcomes that would not have been expected.

    And that's the beginning and end of it.

    The whole point of AI is that it can achieve things beyond human
    ability. That means nobody knows what can happen.

    No, it isn't
    Its all about doing things that a human can do, but a tad faster
    --
    Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
    people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
    they are poor.

    Peter Thompson

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 20:58:51 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 16:58, Simon Simple wrote:
    But seriously, such rapid development in semiconductors/computers,
    unmatched in any other sphere of human endeavour by orders of magnitude. That's evidence of extraterrestrial help, though far from proof.

    Only to a complete idiot who hasn't the faintest idea how semiconductors
    are made.

    Or in fact just how much human effort goes into it, because it is clear
    that since you have never put any effort into anything, the idea that a
    human being could is totally alien to you...
    --
    Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
    people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
    they are poor.

    Peter Thompson

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 20:59:53 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 17:07, Ian wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Simon Simple <nothanks@nottoday.co.uk> wrote:
    On 13/09/2026 13:52, Ian wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Simon Simple <nothanks@nottoday.co.uk> wrote:
    My point is that the massively rapid and unprecedented development of
    semiconductors and computing power was quite possibly assisted by an
    extraterrestrial entity or entities. Human hubris may well reject this >>>> hypothesis.

    I'd love to believe in aliens and sky fairies, but there's no evidence
    for them. If they are real, they're beyond our comprehension.

    Of course, you /would/ say that.
    Fraudsters and idiots, on the other hand, I see every day.

    Misdirection. You have been exposed, 'Ian'.

    Ooer miss!

    Bringing "aliens" into it was a misdirection/troll.


    Simple Simon is aptly named.
    --
    Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
    people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
    they are poor.

    Peter Thompson

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  • From Sam Plusnet@not@home.com to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 13 21:20:32 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 11:17, Jethro wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:09:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 09:31, Andy Burns wrote:
    Pancho wrote:

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to >>>> answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    We should make AI wait until nuclear fusion is a solved problem, then
    it can piss-away as much power as it wants for relatively little gain
    ...

    Actually once AI does its sums it will build more nuclear power stations
    all by itself than the government has ever done.

    I suspect we will need "AI whisperers" (cf "priests") to interpret what
    AI *really* means.

    I mean what if Ai suddenly decided that the best thing for itself was to reduce inequality in it's attendants ? We can't have that. It's almost as
    bad as being nice to one another like what the Bible sez.

    Who needs AI? We already know the answer is "42", so the whole thing is redundant.

    What we do need is a Campaign for Real Data - sources of data that are guaranteed to be unpolluted by the garbage that AI throws out.
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  • From Jeff Layman@Jeff@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 07:59:38 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 20:56, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 13/09/2026 15:57, Joe wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:49:21 -0000 (UTC)
    RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:




    I think a worry at the moment is the AI computers might produce
    outcomes that would not have been expected.

    And that's the beginning and end of it.

    The whole point of AI is that it can achieve things beyond human
    ability. That means nobody knows what can happen.

    No, it isn't
    Its all about doing things that a human can do, but a tad faster

    Not now. AI has very recently solved mathematical problems which have
    been around for a 100 years: <https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/openai-model-solves-navier-stokes-equations>

    Of course, it's not without controversy. It amuses me to find the "we
    did it first" arguments going on! <https://www.quantamagazine.org/ai-has-solved-one-of-maths-1-million-millennium-prize-problems-20260908/>

    And, although Fermat's Last Theorem was solved 30 years ago, AI has
    recently formalised it: <https://www.anthropic.com/research/formalizing-fermats-last-theorem>

    Perhaps it just emphasises your point that it's a "tad faster" at some
    things! :-)
    --
    Jeff
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  • From RJH@patchmoney@gmx.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 07:14:55 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have
    killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do >> that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed

    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.
    --
    Cheers, Rob
    Sheffield, UK
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 10:33:03 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 21:20, Sam Plusnet wrote:
    What we do need is a Campaign for Real Data - sources of data that are guaranteed to be unpolluted by the garbage that AI throws out.

    Unfortunately Quantum physics and metaphysics pretty much declare that RealDatarao - even if it exists - is unknowable.

    The Universe has been concealing the truth from you since forever.
    --
    ItrCOs easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. Mark Twain



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  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 10:38:54 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 08:14, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have >>> killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do >>> that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed

    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.

    That was a Russian drone. Russian drones of all types have targeted
    civilians from day one.

    Saying that an AI drone killed civilians is as misleading as saying that
    a strike on anything by any weapon 'killed civilians'

    It is not the purpose of AI drones to specifically target civilians. It
    is the purpose of the Russian war machine to do that. On short you don't
    need AI to kill people.
    And specifiic targeting AI is nothing like general purpose AI either.
    --
    "First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors."
    - George Orwell

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  • From Pancho@Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 10:43:27 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 9/13/26 12:15, Ian wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> wrote:
    BBC has a story about the danger of AI. Ex Anthropic researcher tells
    BBC he is frightened.

    All these scare stories and "Sorry, my AI hacked your AI" tales are pure hype.


    No, I don't think they are. Modern AI is impressive. Saying "nothing to
    see here" because it is still sub human in some aspects does not address
    that it has recently got much better, and might get much better still.

    The question is not so much *if* it will be better that human, but when.
    So it is perfectly reasonable to address how it will behave and to limit
    how much control it has. Living with superior intelligence does seem to
    be something we should be considering as a top priority.


    The AI gravy train is coming to the end of the line, so the showmen behind it all are pushing to milk the last few -u/$/re4 out of their gullible marks before
    it finally hits the buffers. They want people to think their "AI" is like the computers and robots of science fiction. Terminator, Robocop, KITT, Orac. It isn't, and won't ever be, because (shock, spoiler) those "robots" and "computers"
    are scripted and acted by humans. They're fiction. Not real.



    I can't see how Robocop and Terminator are wrong. Drones and AI are very current topics.


    "An AI agent hacked its way out of a virtual machine" was a recent headline, like it was some kind of Tazmanian Devil in a cage that fought tooth and nail to escape captivity. Bullshit. It was directed to by some human puppetmaster to boost their share price. All it did, under guidance, was google for exploits,
    try them and eventually lucked out on one that worked. A very inefficient way of creating a rootkit.

    There is no intelligence in "AI".

    "AI" does not autonomously plot to attack anyone or anything, it's directed to.

    "AI" won't kill anyone, though it makes a nice scapegoat.


    What is intelligence?

    I think the point is that AI is getting to the point where it does act autonomously. That is what researchers are telling us



    This is my analogy of "AI" (The LLM kind that needs enormous datacentres and eats all the worlds GPU, RAM and SSD output, not traditional algorithms that are now being called "AI" because it gets idiots to throw money at you):

    If you have two data points you can draw a line between them, and use that
    to "predict" results for other input values. y = ax + b.

    You have no idea what it is you're modelling, and don't really care, so
    when you get a third data point that doesn't fit your straight line, you
    just add another term, y = ax-# + bx + c.

    You then get a fourth data point. y = ax-| + bx-# + cx + d.

    And a fifth...

    ...

    An a hundred-thousand-th..

    Now you have a black box that gives pretty good results for inputs within
    its "training set". In reality, you could have done that much more efficiently
    with a lookup table and interpolation, but where's the fun[ding] in that?

    So you feed it inputs outside the training set. Sometimes the result is
    plausible, sometimes it isn't. Your public demos cherry-pick good results.
    Bad results are dismissed as "hallucinations" and "We'll add more training
    data to cover that". Your marks, gullible idiots, believe it's actually
    "intelligent" and start to rely on it.

    When it works, it's a very inefficient search engine, which pretends its
    output is original, when it's really only an averaged-out copy of other
    peoples real hard work, probably taken without permission, and sometimes
    wrong.

    When it doesn't work, it will waste your time, and yes, possibly have
    dangerous results if you're stupid enough to use it for anything critical:

    "Sorry it missed your tumour because it was in an unusual place."

    "Sorry it launched a nuclear attack because the radar picked up a red
    balloon"


    "AI" is made by fraudsters, and is promoted and used by idiots. It needs to die, and hopefully will when someone wants to cash out and the money merry-go-round stops.



    (Now I'm going for a lie down, I feel better for getting that little rant out :)



    Yes AI currently has problems. However, we have every reason to believe
    it will work. We also don't really know how to explain when intelligence
    stops being interpolation and starts being extrapolation. We know the
    Turing Test is problematic, but we never got a good definition of intelligence.

    Progress is often jerky, it may be that AI has just made a great leap
    and the leap to true human level creativity, autonomy, is a long way
    off, but I'm not certain, it could be imminent. It seems clear to me
    that this is something where the precautionary principle should apply.
    We have something potentially very dangerous, we should be prudent.

    Of course, we won't be. We will continue with our wars.

    It is very easy to dis new tech as problematic. IN the 1980's I remember
    the CEO of an insurance underwriter telling me that our software was too expensive. He could run his business more economically by hiring data
    entry typists than by paying for software development. He was right, but
    of course the competitor who invested in software could increase his
    workflow hugely with minimal marginal cost. The old way was a dead end.
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  • From Andy Burns@usenet@andyburns.uk to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 11:08:07 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    Pancho wrote:

    Modern AI is impressive. Saying "nothing to see here" because it is
    still sub human in some aspects does not address that it has recently
    got much better, and might get much better still.

    It is certainly like an extremely well-read human, the impressive things
    I've seen from it are when a human guided the AI, and used one AI to
    check another AI's homework.
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  • From Jim Jackson@jj@franjam.org.uk to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 10:53:20 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 2026-09-13, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> wrote:
    BBC has a story about the danger of AI. Ex Anthropic researcher tells
    BBC he is frightened.

    <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo>

    I noticed a comment by CEO of the AI platform Hugging Face, Clement Delangue.

    ===
    "Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC
    guy about climate change," he wrote on X. "Not saying it's necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se but let's keep things in perspective."
    ===

    I would suggest it is more like asking a NASA rocket scientist about the dangers of Space Shuttle launches. I'm sure many here are familiar with Feynman's comments after the Challenger disaster.

    For most of my career I worked for investment banks. I wasn't important,
    or especially clever, but many of us knew that the financial derivative markets were highly dangerous and should have been regulated more. It
    was as plain as the nose on your face. We knew the models, the
    safeguards, the explanations presented by senior management were self-serving nonsense.

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    My take, is that financing the rapid rise in AI infrastructure is
    getting difficult without, as yet, any significant returns. So the AI companies really need a bit of a pause in developement costs, so they
    can market what they have and get some profits.

    Several AI company people are now raising the scare.
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  • From Joe@joe@jretrading.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 12:53:35 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:58:51 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 16:58, Simon Simple wrote:
    But seriously, such rapid development in semiconductors/computers, unmatched in any other sphere of human endeavour by orders of
    magnitude. That's evidence of extraterrestrial help, though far
    from proof.

    Only to a complete idiot who hasn't the faintest idea how
    semiconductors are made.

    Or in fact just how much human effort goes into it, because it is
    clear that since you have never put any effort into anything, the
    idea that a human being could is totally alien to you...



    The first known semiconductor was a form of lead sulphide, and this was discovered pretty much simultaneously with radio. Ordinary people would
    not have been able to afford valve receivers, so the phenomenon
    received a lot of attention.

    Semiconductor research would have started then, to explain how a piece
    of rock could rectify AC, however poorly. The earliest diodes and
    transistors were also point-contact, it took a while to learn to make
    junction types, then a while longer to do it with silicon.
    --
    Joe

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  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:23:00 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 08:14, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have >>> killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do >>> that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed

    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.

    The point worth noting there is it was a Russian drone... they have been deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure using
    drones in "terror attacks" right from the start.

    Even if a human operator were piloting it, I can't see them being at all concerned that there were civilians in close proximity. So I can't see
    them putting too much effort into AU guide rails to protect civilians.

    cf "The Human Safari" as operated in Kherson:

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oToXdC3v7Xg"
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
    | Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk | |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
    | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \=================================================================/
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  • From alan_m@junk@admac.myzen.co.uk to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:33:39 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 14:05, John Rumm wrote:


    I would be more worried about it might accidentally break something important while seeking to solve some utterly uninteresting problem and
    not even notice.


    Isn't there also a problem of having solved a problem knowing what
    information was used to solve it?

    It's no good saying "I don't know how it did it but it works" when it
    comes to something medical. You would need to know that it didn't rely
    on a shortcut found in scientific journal but ignored the conclusion in
    the same paper that warned 5 years down line it was found that the side effects were worse than the original disease.
    --
    mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk
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  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:31:51 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 11:08, Andy Burns wrote:
    Pancho wrote:

    Modern AI is impressive. Saying "nothing to see here" because it is
    still sub human in some aspects does not address that it has recently
    got much better, and might get much better still.

    It is certainly like an extremely well-read human, the impressive things I've seen from it are when a human guided the AI, and used one AI to
    check another AI's homework.

    Yup you see it when writing code - you will get a much better end
    product when an experienced coder is directing the LLM, than that you
    will get with an unskilled instructor.

    This mostly because the novice instructor is simply not aware of the additional problem specification details they could provide that would
    yield more robust, maintainable, and testable final products. (even if
    the extra instruction is just "identify ways in which this code can be
    made easier to debug, test, and maintain for humans and AI alike, and
    make those modifications")
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
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    | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \=================================================================/
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  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:34:50 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 11:53, Jim Jackson wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> wrote:
    BBC has a story about the danger of AI. Ex Anthropic researcher tells
    BBC he is frightened.

    <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo>

    I noticed a comment by CEO of the AI platform Hugging Face, Clement
    Delangue.

    ===
    "Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC
    guy about climate change," he wrote on X. "Not saying it's necessarily
    uninteresting or wrong per se but let's keep things in perspective."
    ===

    I would suggest it is more like asking a NASA rocket scientist about the
    dangers of Space Shuttle launches. I'm sure many here are familiar with
    Feynman's comments after the Challenger disaster.

    For most of my career I worked for investment banks. I wasn't important,
    or especially clever, but many of us knew that the financial derivative
    markets were highly dangerous and should have been regulated more. It
    was as plain as the nose on your face. We knew the models, the
    safeguards, the explanations presented by senior management were
    self-serving nonsense.

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to
    answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    My take, is that financing the rapid rise in AI infrastructure is
    getting difficult without, as yet, any significant returns. So the AI companies really need a bit of a pause in developement costs, so they
    can market what they have and get some profits.

    Several AI company people are now raising the scare.

    or markets will do the job - many will fold due to lack of paying
    customers and revenue. Some will survive and become dominant. That dose
    not make the problem go away though.
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
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    | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \=================================================================/
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  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:05:14 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 14:55:35 BST, Ian wrote:

    On 2026-09-13, RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 12:15:36 BST, Ian wrote:

    There is no intelligence in "AI".

    "AI" does not autonomously plot to attack anyone or anything, it's directed to.


    Of course. In that sense, can't it be used as a lethal weapon? With the
    follow-on - is it a more effective weapon?

    Yes, a weapon. There is no autonomous/sentient intent to kill, it's a machine
    blindly performing a task it has been assigned by a human.


    I think a worry at the moment is the AI computers might produce outcomes that would not have been expected. And some of those outcomes could be catastrophic. Bit like the corollary of Clarke's 3 laws. If the idiot directing AI introduces enough ambiguity for example.

    One of the ironies is that computer programming languages were created
    to get round the limitations of natural language is specifying problems
    and solutions. Natural language is too open to misinterpretation.

    That solved that problem; although you still had the problem that it
    required skilled operatives to translate the natural "fuzzy"
    requirements into a functional solution to a problem.

    Now we are introducing that fuzzyness back, but also giving computers
    the capability to code up, test, and iterate the solutions.

    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do that, then so be it.

    The idea that an "AI" program will unilaterally conspire to kill a human
    operator that "threatens it" is pure science fiction (or AI-monger hype).

    OK, good to know!

    I would be more worried about it might accidentally break something
    important while seeking to solve some utterly uninteresting problem and
    not even notice.
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
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  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 13:39:14 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 12:15, Ian wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> wrote:
    BBC has a story about the danger of AI. Ex Anthropic researcher tells
    BBC he is frightened.

    All these scare stories and "Sorry, my AI hacked your AI" tales are pure hype.

    The AI gravy train is coming to the end of the line, so the showmen behind it all are pushing to milk the last few -u/$/re4 out of their gullible marks before

    Not wanting to interrupt a good rant, this particular hack was a quite sobering proof of concept... and now out of the box, you can be sure
    that it will be deliberately scaled by bad actors.

    "An AI agent hacked its way out of a virtual machine" was a recent headline, like it was some kind of Tazmanian Devil in a cage that fought tooth and nail to escape captivity. Bullshit. It was directed to by some human puppetmaster to boost their share price. All it did, under guidance, was google for exploits,

    You have a confluence of two problems here...

    The first is that if you give an AI agent a task, and a reward for
    solving it, it will set about trying to solve the problem. The
    difficulty is that it can be perverse in the way it solves it. Sometimes
    it is described like a "malicious genie" granting one of your three
    wishes. It can grant your wish in a way that you had not expected;
    "Genie, I wish you could make my cock long enough to reach the floor",
    "Your wish has been granted, I have shortened your legs to 4 inches"

    A real world example from a robotic vacuum manufacturer attempting to
    use AI to enhance room traversal. They gave it the problem of finding a
    method of covering the floor area a quickly as possible whilst avoiding collisions with objects in the room and the walls. It produced an
    optimised solution that greatly reduced the collisions detected.... by
    running the robot in reverse all the time, since it had deduced that the collision detection sensors were on the front of the robot!

    In other words, it can be difficult to frame a task's boundaries
    sufficiently without the AI agent seeing those boundaries as a problem
    to also be solved.

    The second is that AI agents have got very good at not only identifying vulnerabilities in software and exploiting them, but also developing new
    ones (so called "zero day" exploits).

    The particular incident in question (the "Hugging Face" attack)
    demonstrated what can happen when a group of AI agents could do when
    they got "stuck" trying to solve a set of training model experimental
    tests. AI models will try to find a low cost solution to a problem. That
    might often be a simple as "google it" see if the solution is already
    out there rather than doing the work themselves. In this case the
    researchers (thought that they) had made sure that the agents had no
    external internet access.

    However agents did find they had access to an internal system, and they
    could write a message to it. So one did, saying it was stuck and asking
    any other agent if it could find documents online that it could download
    and provide a copy. Other agents also found this system, they realised
    the could communicate with each other and collaborate.

    The problem then started to scale quickly from there. They they worked
    out that they could find and exploit security vulnerabilities in the
    internal system to get external internet access via devious means. From
    there they could expand their attack on the internal systems to get
    better external access. They then compromised hugging face (a kind of
    "GitHub for machine learning"). By which time both Open AI and Hugging
    Face realised there was a problem. They moved to fix the problem,
    thought it was now fixed, but the AI simply hacked it again using a new exploit.

    Here is a detailed overview of what happened:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87DyyMV0kCY

    (links to a presentation by a couple of OpenAI developers at the
    BlackHat conference in Las Vegas at the start of August).


    There is no intelligence in "AI".

    "AI" does not autonomously plot to attack anyone or anything, it's directed to.

    See above - that is exactly what it did; it staged sophisticated attacks against multiple targets, just as a means to an end to solve an
    unrelated problem. It was not directed to be malicious in any way either.

    Now think though the implications where it has been explicitly
    instructed to achieve a task with no restrictions or limitations on what method are "acceptable" .

    "AI" won't kill anyone, though it makes a nice scapegoat.

    So when a group of AI agents find that they can exploit a database
    server to help them complete a task, but in so doing they subtly
    corrupts the content of a database in the process, and that database
    held patient records including medication lists and dosages?
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
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  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:09:58 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 13/09/2026 20:56, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 13/09/2026 15:57, Joe wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:49:21 -0000 (UTC)
    RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:



    I think a worry at the moment is the AI computers might produce
    outcomes that would not have been expected.

    And that's the beginning and end of it.

    The whole point of AI is that it can achieve things beyond human
    ability. That means nobody knows what can happen.

    No, it isn't
    Its all about doing things that a human can do, but a tad faster

    For some values of "tad"...

    Highly skilled pen testers are in short supply. However if AI can
    perform as well as one of them, it will likely be quicker and more
    persistent that the human. Also humans don't have quite the same
    capacity to fork off another couple of thousand equally skilled helpers
    to collaborate with and parallelise their attack efforts.
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
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  • From Joe@joe@jretrading.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 12:40:55 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:56:05 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:57, Joe wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:49:21 -0000 (UTC)
    RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:




    I think a worry at the moment is the AI computers might produce
    outcomes that would not have been expected.

    And that's the beginning and end of it.

    The whole point of AI is that it can achieve things beyond human
    ability. That means nobody knows what can happen.

    No, it isn't
    Its all about doing things that a human can do, but a tad faster




    It's also about correlating facts, some of them even true, that no
    single human is likely to be aware of, and is thus likely to observe
    patterns that no single human ever would.
    --
    Joe

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From John Rumm@see.my.signature@nowhere.null to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 14:49:15 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 14:33, alan_m wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 14:05, John Rumm wrote:


    I would be more worried about it might accidentally break something
    important while seeking to solve some utterly uninteresting problem
    and not even notice.


    Isn't there also a problem of having solved a problem knowing what information was used to solve it?

    It's no good saying "I don't know how it did it but it works" when it
    comes to something medical. You would need to know that it didn't rely
    on a shortcut found in scientific journal but ignored the conclusion in
    the same paper that warned 5 years down line it was found that the side effects were worse than the original disease.

    There is a push toward AI's documenting their sources and reasoning
    chains - that can help for some solutions. However that is probably more difficult to when they are looking for pattens in data, and find
    correlations that humans have missed.

    You can have cases where the correlation is real, but there is no
    explanation of the underlying cause of the correlation.
    --
    Cheers,

    John.

    /=================================================================\
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  • From HVS@office@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 15:59:44 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14 Sep 2026, John Rumm wrote

    On 14/09/2026 14:33, alan_m wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 14:05, John Rumm wrote:


    I would be more worried about it might accidentally break
    something important while seeking to solve some utterly
    uninteresting problem and not even notice.


    Isn't there also a problem of having solved a problem knowing
    what information was used to solve it?

    It's no good saying "I don't know how it did it but it works"
    when it comes to something medical. You would need to know that
    it didn't rely on a shortcut found in scientific journal but
    ignored the conclusion in the same paper that warned 5 years down
    line it was found that the side effects were worse than the
    original disease.

    There is a push toward AI's documenting their sources and
    reasoning chains - that can help for some solutions. However that
    is probably more difficult to when they are looking for pattens in
    data, and find correlations that humans have missed.

    You can have cases where the correlation is real, but there is no explanation of the underlying cause of the correlation.

    Indeed -- there's a web site listing some of those:

    https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Jethro@jethro_UK@hotmailbin.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 15:11:08 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:22:43 +0100, Pancho wrote:

    BBC has a story about the danger of AI. Ex Anthropic researcher tells
    BBC he is frightened.

    <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo>

    I noticed a comment by CEO of the AI platform Hugging Face, Clement
    Delangue.

    ===
    "Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC
    guy about climate change," he wrote on X. "Not saying it's necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se but let's keep things in perspective." ===

    I would suggest it is more like asking a NASA rocket scientist about the dangers of Space Shuttle launches. I'm sure many here are familiar with Feynman's comments after the Challenger disaster.

    For most of my career I worked for investment banks. I wasn't important,
    or especially clever, but many of us knew that the financial derivative markets were highly dangerous and should have been regulated more. It
    was as plain as the nose on your face. We knew the models, the
    safeguards, the explanations presented by senior management were
    self-serving nonsense.

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    President Trump has just decreed that we don't need any slowdonwn on AI.
    The only guardrail we need is a "smart president".

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Adam Funk@a24061a@ducksburg.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 16:11:06 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 2026-09-13, Sam Plusnet wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 11:17, Jethro wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:09:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 09:31, Andy Burns wrote:
    Pancho wrote:

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to >>>>> answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    We should make AI wait until nuclear fusion is a solved problem, then
    it can piss-away as much power as it wants for relatively little gain
    ...

    Actually once AI does its sums it will build more nuclear power stations >>> all by itself than the government has ever done.

    I suspect we will need "AI whisperers" (cf "priests") to interpret what
    AI *really* means.

    I mean what if Ai suddenly decided that the best thing for itself was to
    reduce inequality in it's attendants ? We can't have that. It's almost as
    bad as being nice to one another like what the Bible sez.

    Who needs AI? We already know the answer is "42", so the whole thing is redundant.

    What we do need is a Campaign for Real Data - sources of data that are guaranteed to be unpolluted by the garbage that AI throws out.

    People are already talking about "low background steel" data.

    A public catalogue of data sources whose contents predate, or
    deliberately exclude, the explosion of machine-generated text,
    images and audio that began in late 2022.

    <https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai/>
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From RJH@patchmoney@gmx.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 15:28:37 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14 Sep 2026 at 14:23:00 BST, John Rumm wrote:

    On 14/09/2026 08:14, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have >>>> killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do >>>> that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed

    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.

    The point worth noting there is it was a Russian drone... they have been deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure using
    drones in "terror attacks" right from the start.

    I don't follow - what does the source nation have to do with it?

    Anyway, the report details the first recorded autonomous drone. A drone
    without a pilot, 'flying and killing' according to its programming/learning
    and without a specific target.

    Even if a human operator were piloting it, I can't see them being at all concerned that there were civilians in close proximity. So I can't see
    them putting too much effort into AU guide rails to protect civilians.

    cf "The Human Safari" as operated in Kherson:

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oToXdC3v7Xg"

    Yes, but the important distinction is that the reported drone was autonomous. It had no pilot. I was replying to the assertion that 'AI drones do not target humans'. The report details that AI drones 'acting' on machine learning, do target humans.

    Seems the report is false?
    --
    Cheers, Rob
    Sheffield, UK
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Jeff Layman@Jeff@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 18:16:56 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 14:34, John Rumm wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 11:53, Jim Jackson wrote:

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to
    answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    My take, is that financing the rapid rise in AI infrastructure is
    getting difficult without, as yet, any significant returns. So the AI
    companies really need a bit of a pause in developement costs, so they
    can market what they have and get some profits.

    Several AI company people are now raising the scare.

    or markets will do the job - many will fold due to lack of paying
    customers and revenue. Some will survive and become dominant. That dose
    not make the problem go away though.

    And it does not bode well: <https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-assessment-cybersecurity-incidents>

    TL:DR...
    "Investigating the behaviors surfaced by these incidents proved
    challenging. They involved different models, trained months apart and
    under different regimes, which made drawing broad conclusions difficult.
    They required grappling with nuanced questions: What does it mean for a
    model to hold a belief? What weight should be applied to a modelrCOs
    account of its reasoning? Our own researchers sometimes disagreed on
    such questions, and what the evidence in support of them meant.

    ...

    However, we also consider these incidents and others from this summer to
    be valuable warning shots. Future AI systems will be increasingly
    capable, which implies that misalignment will have the potential to
    cause more extreme harm."
    --
    Jeff
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 18:57:55 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 16:11, Jethro wrote:

    President Trump has just decreed that we don't need any slowdonwn on AI.
    The only guardrail we need is a "smart president".


    Where are you going to get one of those?
    --
    Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend.

    "Saki"

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 18:59:19 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 12:53, Joe wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:58:51 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 16:58, Simon Simple wrote:
    But seriously, such rapid development in semiconductors/computers,
    unmatched in any other sphere of human endeavour by orders of
    magnitude. That's evidence of extraterrestrial help, though far
    from proof.

    Only to a complete idiot who hasn't the faintest idea how
    semiconductors are made.

    Or in fact just how much human effort goes into it, because it is
    clear that since you have never put any effort into anything, the
    idea that a human being could is totally alien to you...



    The first known semiconductor was a form of lead sulphide, and this was discovered pretty much simultaneously with radio. Ordinary people would
    not have been able to afford valve receivers, so the phenomenon
    received a lot of attention.

    IIRC it was a 'cats whisker' crystal

    Semiconductor research would have started then, to explain how a piece
    of rock could rectify AC, however poorly. The earliest diodes and
    transistors were also point-contact, it took a while to learn to make junction types, then a while longer to do it with silicon.

    --
    Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend.

    "Saki"

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 19:01:21 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 15:59, HVS wrote:
    You can have cases where the correlation is real, but there is no
    explanation of the underlying cause of the correlation.
    Indeed -- there's a web site listing some of those:
    "Since graduates earn more, we will send everyone to university and give
    them a degree"

    TBliar.

    Amazingly Lefties apparently believed this
    --
    Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend.

    "Saki"

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 19:02:17 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 16:28, RJH wrote:
    Anyway, the report details the first recorded autonomous drone. A drone without a pilot, 'flying and killing' according to its programming/learning and without a specific target.
    That would be a V1
    --
    The higher up the mountainside
    The greener grows the grass.
    The higher up the monkey climbs
    The more he shows his arse.

    Traditional

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Joe@joe@jretrading.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 20:02:15 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:59:19 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 14/09/2026 12:53, Joe wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:58:51 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:



    The first known semiconductor was a form of lead sulphide, and this
    was discovered pretty much simultaneously with radio. Ordinary
    people would not have been able to afford valve receivers, so the phenomenon received a lot of attention.

    IIRC it was a 'cats whisker' crystal


    Yes, the 'whisker' being the point contact on the surface of a galena
    crystal, movable to try to get the best result. The whole thing was open
    to the air and subject to vibration, so not terribly stable. A modern
    germanium diode, or better still, a backward diode, would work better
    but not be authentic.
    --
    Joe

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Joe@joe@jretrading.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 20:13:09 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:01:21 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 14/09/2026 15:59, HVS wrote:
    You can have cases where the correlation is real, but there is no
    explanation of the underlying cause of the correlation.
    Indeed -- there's a web site listing some of those:
    "Since graduates earn more, we will send everyone to university and
    give them a degree"

    TBliar.

    Amazingly Lefties apparently believed this


    I think not, I believe the idea was to manufacture as many new Lefties
    as possible, there wouldn't be much extra call for STEM graduates. But
    the more gullible young people exposed to nutcase arts and humanities professors, the better.

    The downside was that they had to pay their own way, the hugely
    increased numbers could not be taxpayer-funded as the earlier 8% could
    be. The 8%, of course, really did earn a fair bit more than
    non-graduates, and therefore repaid their grants from higher taxation
    with interest.
    --
    Joe

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Sam Plusnet@not@home.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 21:37:52 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 16:11, Adam Funk wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Sam Plusnet wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 11:17, Jethro wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:09:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 09:31, Andy Burns wrote:
    Pancho wrote:

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to >>>>>> answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    We should make AI wait until nuclear fusion is a solved problem, then >>>>> it can piss-away as much power as it wants for relatively little gain >>>>> ...

    Actually once AI does its sums it will build more nuclear power stations >>>> all by itself than the government has ever done.

    I suspect we will need "AI whisperers" (cf "priests") to interpret what
    AI *really* means.

    I mean what if Ai suddenly decided that the best thing for itself was to >>> reduce inequality in it's attendants ? We can't have that. It's almost as >>> bad as being nice to one another like what the Bible sez.

    Who needs AI? We already know the answer is "42", so the whole thing is
    redundant.

    What we do need is a Campaign for Real Data - sources of data that are
    guaranteed to be unpolluted by the garbage that AI throws out.

    People are already talking about "low background steel" data.

    A public catalogue of data sources whose contents predate, or
    deliberately exclude, the explosion of machine-generated text,
    images and audio that began in late 2022.

    <https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai/>

    Will people look back to a "Golden Age" of information?
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Sam Plusnet@not@home.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 21:43:53 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 19:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 16:28, RJH wrote:
    Anyway, the report details the first recorded autonomous drone. A drone
    without a pilot, 'flying and killing' according to its programming/
    learning
    and without a specific target.
    That would be a V1

    How about a rock thrown by a tribesman in an intertribal dispute?
    The 'guidance system' is just gravity, but the results would be much the
    same.
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Sam Plusnet@not@home.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 21:48:42 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 19:01, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 15:59, HVS wrote:
    You can have cases where the correlation is real, but there is no
    explanation of the underlying cause of the correlation.
    Indeed -- there's a web site listing some of those:
    "Since graduates earn more, we will send everyone to university and give them a degree"

    TBliar.

    Amazingly Lefties apparently believed this

    Not a problem in Lake Wobegon "where all the children are above average".
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Sam Plusnet@not@home.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 21:55:54 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 14/09/2026 18:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 16:11, Jethro wrote:

    President Trump has just decreed that we don't need any slowdonwn on AI.
    The only guardrail we need is a "smart president".


    Where are you going to get one of those?

    And how do you get rid of the current imbecile to get the smart one in
    place?
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Joe@joe@jretrading.com to uk.d-i-y on Mon Sep 14 22:35:08 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:55:54 +0100
    Sam Plusnet <not@home.com> wrote:

    On 14/09/2026 18:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 16:11, Jethro wrote:

    President Trump has just decreed that we don't need any slowdonwn
    on AI. The only guardrail we need is a "smart president".


    Where are you going to get one of those?

    And how do you get rid of the current imbecile to get the smart one
    in place?

    One that's 'sharp as a tack', you mean, like the last one?
    --
    Joe

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Adam Funk@a24061a@ducksburg.com to uk.d-i-y on Tue Sep 15 10:31:12 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 2026-09-14, Sam Plusnet wrote:

    On 14/09/2026 16:11, Adam Funk wrote:
    On 2026-09-13, Sam Plusnet wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 11:17, Jethro wrote:
    On Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:09:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 09:31, Andy Burns wrote:
    Pancho wrote:

    There is a clear case that AI could be very dangerous, a clear case to >>>>>>> answer. We should demand the issues are addressed.

    We should make AI wait until nuclear fusion is a solved problem, then >>>>>> it can piss-away as much power as it wants for relatively little gain >>>>>> ...

    Actually once AI does its sums it will build more nuclear power stations >>>>> all by itself than the government has ever done.

    I suspect we will need "AI whisperers" (cf "priests") to interpret what >>>> AI *really* means.

    I mean what if Ai suddenly decided that the best thing for itself was to >>>> reduce inequality in it's attendants ? We can't have that. It's almost as >>>> bad as being nice to one another like what the Bible sez.

    Who needs AI? We already know the answer is "42", so the whole thing is >>> redundant.

    What we do need is a Campaign for Real Data - sources of data that are
    guaranteed to be unpolluted by the garbage that AI throws out.

    People are already talking about "low background steel" data.

    A public catalogue of data sources whose contents predate, or
    deliberately exclude, the explosion of machine-generated text,
    images and audio that began in late 2022.

    <https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai/>

    Will people look back to a "Golden Age" of information?

    Aren't we already doing that?
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Spike@aero.spike@mail.com to uk.d-i-y on Tue Sep 15 18:33:43 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 08:14, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have >>>> killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do >>>> that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed

    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.

    That was a Russian drone. Russian drones of all types have targeted civilians from day one.

    Saying that an AI drone killed civilians is as misleading as saying that
    a strike on anything by any weapon 'killed civilians'

    It is not the purpose of AI drones to specifically target civilians. It
    is the purpose of the Russian war machine to do that. On short you don't need AI to kill people.
    And specifiic targeting AI is nothing like general purpose AI either.

    Apparently, the Russians were training their FPV bomber drone operators by targeting individual citizens going about their daily business in the city
    of Kherson. ItrCOs but a small step to training drone AI to do the same
    thing, which can then be applied anywhere.
    --
    Spike
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Spike@aero.spike@mail.com to uk.d-i-y on Tue Sep 15 19:42:36 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 16:28, RJH wrote:

    Anyway, the report details the first recorded autonomous drone. A drone
    without a pilot, 'flying and killing' according to its programming/learning >> and without a specific target.

    That would be a V1

    I believe the nominal target for London-bound V-1s was Tower Bridge.

    However, fake strike points were fed back to the Germans, which caused them
    to lengthen the range as the fake strike points were reported to be too
    early.

    The Germans fell for this despite radio-equipped V-1s correctly reported
    the fall of shot. They would rather believe their rCOagentsrCO reporting rather than the radio-tracking.
    --
    Spike
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Wed Sep 16 00:38:02 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 15/09/2026 19:33, Spike wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 08:14, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have >>>>> killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do
    that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed >>>
    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.

    That was a Russian drone. Russian drones of all types have targeted
    civilians from day one.

    Saying that an AI drone killed civilians is as misleading as saying that
    a strike on anything by any weapon 'killed civilians'

    It is not the purpose of AI drones to specifically target civilians. It
    is the purpose of the Russian war machine to do that. On short you don't
    need AI to kill people.
    And specifiic targeting AI is nothing like general purpose AI either.

    Apparently, the Russians were training their FPV bomber drone operators by targeting individual citizens going about their daily business in the city
    of Kherson. ItrCOs but a small step to training drone AI to do the same thing, which can then be applied anywhere.



    Ukraine does that, but not civilians
    --
    "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
    and understanding".

    Marshall McLuhan


    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From RJH@patchmoney@gmx.com to uk.d-i-y on Wed Sep 16 03:10:26 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 15 Sep 2026 at 19:33:43 BST, Spike wrote:

    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 14/09/2026 08:14, RJH wrote:
    On 13 Sep 2026 at 20:55:14 BST, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 13/09/2026 15:49, RJH wrote:
    Again - fog of war type reporting suggests that autonomous AI drones have >>>>> killed a number of civilians mistaken for combatants. But if they can't do
    that, then so be it.
    AI drones do not currently target humans. They are programmed to hit
    static targets that are recognisable, where FPV is unavailable or jammed >>>
    Ah OK - I've read reports that they've killed random civilians.

    Obviously made up reports - hence the 'fog of war' rider. Example:

    https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/ai-guided-russian-drone-kills-civilians

    Good job you're on it it.

    That was a Russian drone. Russian drones of all types have targeted
    civilians from day one.

    Saying that an AI drone killed civilians is as misleading as saying that
    a strike on anything by any weapon 'killed civilians'

    It is not the purpose of AI drones to specifically target civilians. It
    is the purpose of the Russian war machine to do that. On short you don't
    need AI to kill people.
    And specifiic targeting AI is nothing like general purpose AI either.

    Apparently, the Russians were training their FPV bomber drone operators by targeting individual citizens going about their daily business in the city
    of Kherson. ItrCOs but a small step to training drone AI to do the same thing, which can then be applied anywhere.

    Which is exactly what the linked story refers to.

    Incorrectly, it seems. Although I have since seen it referred it in several other places without any challenge (yet).
    --
    Cheers, Rob
    Sheffield, UK
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Spike@aero.spike@mail.com to uk.d-i-y on Thu Sep 17 21:28:16 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    Spike <aero.spike@mail.com> wrote:

    [rCa]

    Apparently, the Russians were training their FPV bomber drone operators by targeting individual citizens going about their daily business in the city
    of Kherson. ItrCOs but a small step to training drone AI to do the same thing, which can then be applied anywhere.

    An update on AI-drone warfare:

    rCYRussians Used Claude to Develop Software for Drone Swarms rCo AnthropicrCY

    [rCa]

    According to Anthropic, the system developed by the group could
    autonomously select targets and issue commands to strike them without
    operator intervention.

    One of the target categories specified in the software was rCLhuman.rCY Videos of combat operations in Ukraine were used to train the computer vision algorithms, with objects in the footage classified as rCLenemyrCY or rCLfriendly.rCY

    The developersrCO materials also repeatedly used locations in UkrainerCOs Donetsk region as demonstration strike zones, while Ukrainian frontline
    cities and transport routes were used as the geography for potential
    missions.

    According to Anthropic, the group was likely a small specialized team of freelancers carrying out both civilian and military tasks, rather than a
    direct unit of a Russian government agency. The company identified nine
    linked accounts and established the developersrCO connections to a regional university and a federal research center affiliated with the Russian
    Academy of Sciences.

    [rCa]

    <https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russians-used-claude-to-develop-software-for-drone-swarms-anthropic/>
    --
    Spike
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Graham.@graham-usenet@mail.com to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 20 10:36:01 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y


    ..So... about ten years time then? Nuclear fusion has always been just ten years away.Nick

    It's much closer than that, about eight light minutes ;-)
    --

    Graham.
    %Profound_observation%
    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From The Natural Philosopher@tnp@invalid.invalid to uk.d-i-y on Sun Sep 20 10:54:19 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y

    On 20/09/2026 10:36, Graham. wrote:
    >
    ..So... about ten years time then? Nuclear fusion has always been just ten years away.Nick

    It's much closer than that, about eight light minutes ;-)


    LOL!

    But unfortunately very intermittently available in any practical low
    cost device...
    --
    rCLit should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
    (or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
    about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
    the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
    'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,'
    a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
    rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
    things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
    you live neither in Joseph StalinrCOs Communist era, nor in the Orwellian utopia of 1984.rCY

    Vaclav Klaus

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2