@rob.pickering.org
Hills and lakes for fun. Also dangerous with SIP, WebRTC, BGP, Javascript, ML & chainsaws. Know too much about how the Interwebs work. @robinjpickering on less advanced platforms www.pickering.org for semi-professional opinions
Feel free to submit one liners. Implemented it as a Google form because I was concerned about being inundated and easier to triage but response hasn't been that great. We are in the process of distilling them down to the half dozen or so most impactful so great timing.
Forget age, why don't we gate voting on passing a critical reasoning test.
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Map of Europe with capital cities generated by an AI
100% AI generated. This really isn't hard.
View from a 555 bus at Low Wood Bay Bus Stop
The view from the top deck at "the most scenic bus stop in the UK", but are there any better? #LakeDistrict
Getting out for a walk is an incredible way to leave all the doom behind for a few hours and today was incredibly beautiful.
Slide deck being presented in the Real Time Communications room at FOSDEM by Rob Pickering.
A cautionary tale about trying to get an AI agent to present a slide deck at FOSDEM this year:
www.pickering.org/ai-presentat...
Lessons learnt, but was it a good idea badly executed, or just a straight bad idea?
Let's do this...
Map showing the 66 miles of application paperwork for a 14 mile road to scale.
From lookingforgrowth.uk
This looks super interesting.
I suppose we could choose the current trajectory of unmanaged decline instead though.
youtu.be/RdLEjTowMIs
I don't underestimate it at all, it is broken. We need to start fixing broken things if we are to get the country out of the mess we are in.
There are no silver bullets but focussing on system change, rather than the conditioned helplessness of symptom fixing is what gets us to somewhere better.
Even if I'm off by 90% and it is only £100, the numbers still stack up.
Plucked it out of thin air, how many van sized loads of fly tipping can one team (bet its two people minimum) load up, take to the disposal facility in a day, clean the site. What is the cost of that disposal, line managers to manage them all, call centre to take reports etc etc.
I believe there is a concept of prosecution costs in orders that courts can make, so maybe it could be done without legislation change.
Even if it does need it, the one off cost of making it so has got to be less than employing ever more people in vans (and people to manage them) to keep clearing up
I do not.
Not blanket. The same places get hit again and again with fly tipping. If the CCTV is cheap and easy enough then just install one for a couple of months everywhere that there has been an incident.
Return in investment. Invest £50,000 on an extra man in a van for a year, vs invest £50,000 on an enforcement person with fit for purpose tools. Which one reduces fly tipping more by the end of the year (return on that investment).
being dumped, and a couple of months worth of battery is about £300. Would pay for itself with one detection and prosecution.
This is just an example. You said AI couldn't help with fly tipping, investment in people and vans is the only solution. That is an example of where it could.
Yea, CCTV everywhere that there has been a flytipping incident. Costs what, £1000 to clear up with basically zero chance the offender is caught and pays.
Conventional CCTV costs a five figure sum, needs a mains supply etc, but the actual cost of a camera, with AI that can detect rubbish...
And yes, putting lots of resource into clearing up, and not enough into rectifying root causes does affect something they care about. It reinforces "victimless crime, someone else is paid to remove it, so may as well leave it there" narrative.
It isn't cost free, there is a (vanishingly small) probability of a (not large enough) fine. Fly tippers are economically rational just like everyone else. Change either of those variables and they make different decisions.
Fixing systems gives a much better ROI than chasing round clearing up.
Obviously it would, right?
If you employ more blokes and more vans to simply clear up after fly tippers, then you get more fly-tipping, and need to employ more blokes and more vans. Rinse and repeat, until you run out of men, vans, or kitchen units to be fly tipped.
How about IT solutions that reduced fly tipping by identifying offenders and tracking loads. Surely the fact that workers have to be sent to collect way more stuff than the council has capacity to deal with is a systems failure in controlling fly tipping?
Coming to the end of another wonderful day.
Another stunning day again today, could get used to the yellow thing in the sky.
Let's make something clear for 2025 There is NO ethical way to use AI gen. You are using it? Ok, but don't try to gaslight people, explaining that the way you do it isn't problematic, hurtful and wasteful. Cause that is NOT a thing! Happy new year!
This was the skeet as it seems I'm now blocked.
I've obfuscated the handle as the person saying it doesn't matter and I don't want to cause them problems. Just highlighting my disagreement with their, to me, entirely illogical position.
AI is just another advance in computing.
Whether we use it to predominantly cure or curse humanity it is a choice we get to make. Uninventing it isn't a choice we have.
Harnessing motive power built our current society of relative comfort. As a result hunger and disease are now political choices rather than the inevitable order of things for humankind. Few would now say that Ned Ludd was on the right side of history.
Same will be true of these opinions.
This bothers me.
It is completely wrong to say that using a neural network is always unethical, any more than using a steam engine, a car or electricity were somehow inherently immoral when they were invented.
Just makes no sense.
