Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, made a speech last week at UCL East. The ‘typescript‘ on the Government website is astonishing. The whole thing is printed in the style of a Mr Men book. Now, perhaps this is justified by the fact that Starmer was speaking rather than writing: but it still seems to be somewhat alarming that politicians do not speak in sentences but in a sort of liturgical dirge style in which there is a continual doleful optimism.
Contemplate the Mr Men style in the opening lines of the speech:
Deb Kelly is a prison officer and a PE instructor.
Two years ago, this month…
She got up on a Saturday morning…
And collapsed on the floor.
Her whole face had completely drooped.
Her left side had gone completely weak.
She was having a stroke.
She was found by her son, rushed to hospital…
Where the doctors used Artificial Intelligence…
To help pinpoint the exact location of the blood clot.
They successfully removed it.
“Well done!” said Mr First Lord of the Treasury.
This is odd. It is paginated as if it is poetry. Perhaps Starmer had it written like this so he could offer it to the London Review of Books as a poem. Or so the Roger Hargreaves Estate could add it to the canon.
That’s the form.
The content is AI.
Starmer is keen on AI. He thinks it will “transform” things. Three things. He uses the word “transform” three times. AI will transform “the lives of working people”. It will transform “our entire understanding of biology”. It will transform “our public services”.
Biopower!
Anyhow, Starmer is keen on AI, and keen to reassure us 1. that there is no serious danger, 2. that there is a Government agency tasked with reassuring us that there is no danger. How? By regulating AI. Good.
What is AI?
Answer 1. It is a grandiose assimilator of words, also replicator, digestor: a self-teaching, massively cancerous self-teaching computer programming system. For some reason, everyone seems to accept it as an inevitability. Why?
Answer 2. Why? Well, it is the solution to All Our Problems. It will replace Theresa May’s Magic Money Tree, it will plaster over Rachel Reeves’s Black Hole, it will break strikes for the stay-at-home British Work Ethic, and it will compensate for our lack of Common Sense. It will write every application letter, compose every undergraduate essay, and write every political speech from now on.
Here is Starmer. AI will (and I quote) “help in the fight against tax avoidance… halve the time social workers spend on paperwork… make public services more human… [give doctors and nurses] more time for the personal touch… turbocharge every single element of our Plan for Change”.
This is funny and scary. AI will be so busy doing what a doctor should do that the person formerly called ‘Doctor’ will now be called a ‘Bedside Mannerer First Class’ while the person formerly called ‘Nurse’ will now be called a ‘Beside Mannerer Second Class’. And notice how much of this AI is to be used to ensure that the Kraken Government maintains its grip on the Ship of State: by fighting tax avoidance and turbocharging plans for change.
If the benefits of AI are the first part of his speech, the impetus to become a leader in AI technology is the second part. “Britain is going to shape the future.” “This is the nation of Babbage, Lovelace and Turing,” he says, listing three figures as little like Starmer as it is possible to be. He then lists a lot of companies I have never heard of, which are clustering around, attracting and extracting much cash – OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale, Mistral AI, Wayve, Synthesia, Blackstone, Kyndryl, Nscale, Vantage Data Centres – and likens what is happening now to the industrial revolution. He says that Britain was once “the cradle of engineering innovation”, and presumably hopes that it will be the nursing home of engineering innovation too.
The bit that puzzled me most was this section of the speech:
And, then of course, the engine of AI progress…
…is what’s called compute.
We’ll increase our public sector compute…
Not by a factor of two or three or even 10….
But by 20.
Eh? Is he using “compute” as a noun? My dictionary knows no such thing. I asked Google, and I found a discussion thread on Reddit from 2020 where someone notes that “compute” has become a noun, and someone else explains that it is common language in “cloud-related” or “cloud-adjacent” industries. Perhaps people don’t want to use “computation” any more. I wonder if the emphasis is on the first syllable. (ComPUTE is the verb; COMpute is the noun, perhaps?) I check the video of the speech on YouTube (at around 12 minutes in) and find that Starmer is a bit unsure: first, he says, “it’s what’s called comPUTE…”, then he adds, “We’ll increase our public sector COMpute…”)
This has to be translated into English.
The English translation is:
I, Keir Starmer, propose that the Government magnifies its power by employing AI knowledge-assimilating power-grabbing linguistic tools.
(Knowledge is power, quoth Francis Bacon, four centuries ago.) He is a bit clearer in the text of the article he published in the Financial Times on January 13th to coincide with his speech.
Britain should be excited by this. For one, it offers credible hope of a long-desired boost in public sector productivity. Nurses, social workers, teachers, police officers — for millions of frontline workers, AI can give the precious gift of time. This means they can refocus on the care and connection aspects of their job that so often get buried beneath the bureaucracy. That’s the wonderful irony of AI in the public sector. It provides an opportunity to make services feel more human.
“Public sector productivity” is as bad as “public sector compute”. (Though I suspect it may mean that frontline workers will have more time for the shirking parts of their jobs.) But this “public sector compute” seems to be a euphemism for what is elsewhere called “sovereign AI”. CNBC Africa comments:
Sovereign AI has become a hot topic for policymakers, particularly in Europe. The term refers to the idea that technologies critical to economic growth and national security should be built and developed in the countries people are adopting them in.
The UK wants a Little England (or Chinatown) version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT so that it can carry out more coups d’état against its poor subjects. And of course the private corporations want a piece of the action. One CEO (of a company called Antler), a man with the alarming name of Magnus Grimeland, identified the £7 trillion pounds of English pension funds as a “pocket” – his word – that he would like to pick. “Imagine if you take just 5% of that and allocate it to innovation — you solve the problem.”
Starmer himself in the FT adds: “AI has arrived as the ultimate force for change and national renewal.”
Good Lord. Is anyone thinking this through?
What I worry about is this. Many significant grim commentators are saying that the United Kingdom – even if we ignore Brexit, Covid, Climate, Diversity and Immigration – has gone through colossal changes, economic on the one hand (Bank of England, OBR, excessive borrowing, bailing out banks, inflation, no joined-up policy etc.) and political and constitutional on the other (undermining Parliament by Devolution, the Supreme Court, Quangos etc.) If this is so, as it is, then isn’t Starmer hoping that AI will bail out this bloated superstate? He seems to be wagering not on putting the house in order, but in hoping for a miracle to come along, a “game changer” (and add other fashionable phrases, as Starmer does). In other words, he is what the haughty ladies of the Guardian call a ‘tech bro’.
It seems to me that there is a moral case against AI. Most of the things promised seem strictly unnecessary. And every time we turn to AI to do something we only demonstrate our unwillingness to do it ourselves. In relation to manual labour, technical advance was mostly a blessing: relieving us or our animals of hours of milling, reaping, cutting etc. But since AI is a linguistic system, what we are facing is the destruction or demoralisation of our own linguistic abilities. Why learn to write when AI can write for us?
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
Editor’s note: Apart from anything else, AI keeps getting even simple things wrong. Twice this week the Google ‘AI Overview’ that now appears at the top of searches has given false information. In looking up a George Orwell quote, the AI Overview wrongly asserted that it came from 1984, when in fact it comes from a preface to Animal Farm.
The AI Overview also claimed, in a different search, that the correct phrase is “hone in on”, while “home in on” is a “common mistake”. In fact, as the top search result below the AI Overview, an article from Merriam-Webster, relays, the original phrase is “home in on”, derived from homing pigeons, and “hone in on” is a more recent corruption.
If AI can’t even get simple facts like these correct – facts confirmed in Google’s own top search results – how can it possibly be trusted with anything of any consequence?
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Hand coque must be barred from all public office for life.
He CANNOT be allowed to re-enter the Cabinet. EVER.
I seem to recall that in Gulliver’s Travels he visited a country where if you showed any interest in politics you were automatically barred from becoming a politician. It’s been a long time since I have read it, but I have always thought it’s a wonderful system.
He should be hung from the nearest lamppost along with all the other cunts in Westminster who have been voting for this crap.
yes but MOST of them havent been voting have they just a select few chums and a couple of scientists
I had a horrible thought
“Arise Lord Hancock”
Mmmm probably a future prime minister then
GP with the courage to say No to vaccine By Sally Beck
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/gp-with-the-courage-to-say-no-to-vaccines/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
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It’s high time all ‘PPE’ ‘graduates’ were barred from all public life.
No elected positions, no public sector roles. Nada.
The evidence is overwhelming: they are pure poison and greatly damage the UK.
With the remarkable exception of Toby Young of course, who somehow has managed to overcome three years of immense brain damage!
Haha I dunno, I have a PPE degree and I think it taught me all the things it claims to. There’s definitely something thoroughly rotten about politicians but they didn’t learn to be that way in the same lectures I was in!
Nwrif. Pathetic apologetic drivel.
As to expected now from GdlB and other pseudo conservative gene therapy fanatics.
Hardly a fanatic – many felt coerced into the jab as it appeared to offer a means of enabling foreign travel. It’s going to be difficult sustaining such an uncompromising attatude for the rest of your life as like it or not, much of the rest of society has not been as fixated on defying governmental diktat as have we.
Live and let live: GdlB didn’t make the rules and I have missed his essays.
“Live and let live”…..= a long leash for evil to prosper…it is a trite phrase and often used to enable the status quoted.
“Quo”…autocorrect ran amok
“ The Government…was forced by circumstances to replace it with another single idea: the war against the virus. ”
No, they chose to do that.
I am constantly baffled by the enthusiasm ATL for excusing the destructive actions of the government and their unflagging optimism that we have reached a turning point.
I see no evidence that the basic lie that COVID is an emergency that requires unusual measures has been moved on from, and plenty of evidence that the corona madness industry and the wider health fascism industry is now baked into the fabric of rich countries lives for the long term
Exactly, unfortunately there’s no media outlet, including this one , that will make that intellectual leap.
I wonder why …
because we are all stupid
Except UK Column
and it was downgraded in March 2020……by Bojo, Hancock, Whitty Vallance (you know, Fauci’s email contact) etc just as the draconian and stupid “measures” were ramped up.
This whole thing has felt like it has a timetable and Hancocks ridiculously staged video is no exception…. chances are its just a distraction for when the shit storm arrives and he wont be health minister anymore .The new one, of course, will simply say i cant comment on that situation i wasnt in office at the time and swiftly move along blameless and smug
Off topic, but is it true that Johnson went to Portugal for a couple of days on honeymoon. It was then on the green travel list but went amber when he returned?
No. I’m afraid the timings are wrong for this. Portugal lost its “Green” status on 3 June whereas it was 11 June when Madeira’s President, Miguel Albuquerque, suggested that Boris should go there for his honeymoon.
Send Boris to Madeira – shit hole.
“…despite some of its very remarkable achievements and initiatives of the last 15 months…”
That’s as far as I got.
And the picture…ffs!
I was just going to post exactly the same comment. Could not get beyond that opening sentence.
i know its a remarkable achievment to get away with with describing anything matt Hancock has done as a”remarkable achievement” .Remarkable really
i know “remarkable achievments” how devalued that concept has become over the last few years .Im surprised they didnt describe it as awesome .The only remarkable achievment is that a stupid government managed to hoodwink an even more stupid electoarte with its wonky virus theatre show
I am coming to the conclusion that the only thing that will cure what ails British Politics is the conplete removal of the party political system, and all those who currrently infest parliament. Throughout the last 15 months, hardly any of them have shown any interest in protecting the people they represent, only their own interests and arses. With very few exceptions NONE of them are fit to continue in office.
We could all do with a considerable slimming down of the number of MP’s, and fresh elections, with candidates being pooled, not from professional politicians and civil servants, but from people who have real life experience. Anyone who has previously served as an MP, anyone who has been an active employee of a political party, anyone affiliated to the WEF must not be, in any way, permitted to stand for office.
Let the people have a REAL choice of who they want to represent them, based on personal beliefs and goals, not one based on what they are told to say and do by unelected party officials.
And no ex civil servants or God forbid, teachers.
I’ve often said that ballot slips should not include party labels on candidates, thus forcing voters to do some proper research.
Good point. I’ve thought for a while that historic buildings etc (eg, Sistine Chapel) should have a fast-track lane for entry based on the ability to answer a few simple questions about the building. This would make it easy for the genuinely interested to gain entry, as opposed to the ice-cream licking gawpers.
1 million % with you – IMHO there are a few honourable exceptions, Steve Baker Desmond Swayne, Walker eg but the rest should be in prison fatigues clearing roadsides of plastic and grass cutting with scissors
We probably are if the credulous still swallow this type of ATL guff, complete with obligatory gormless picture of former Health Secretary to get them “really angry”, just like those furious but well paid Loose Women (government shills of course).
This would leave two optional scenarios:
If we choose to buy into the Gotcha narrative (option #2 btw) that’s surely game over for the UK? This would mean that voters, media and opposition have been so moronically stupid (putting it mildly) as to buy into an effective idiocracy for the entire 15 months of lockdown; accepting in the process that their livelihoods must collapse, their freedoms must vanish and their family members (old and young) must become Big Pharma Guinea Pigs with thousands dying as a result. Is that really a credible scenario?
Maybe (just maybe) if option #1 prevails, we can still regroup and call the puppet government’s bluff. This would mean aggressively countering the many examples of Controlled Opposition (including the daily LDS drip-drip ATL pro-Johnson spin) before we reach the next turning point, which otherwise will be further down an existential cul-de-sac.
Well exasperated as I am by the somewhat (IMO) credulous, apologist line taken ATL with regard to the govt, I still don’t think they are controlled opposition. Not everyone with a different opinion to yours on this is “controlled”. I simply don’t think TY is worth controlling (sorry TY, nothing personal) – he simply does not have enough clout for that.
I select option #3, the govt is composed of serial liars, who are reasonably intelligent, not overly honest, who just love being in charge of stuff, love power, hate criticism and scrutiny, and have realised either consciously or subconsciously that covid is a gift that keeps on giving. They are getting away with it, so why would they not continue.
You (deliberately?) miss the point – there is no option #3 (what you present is just a spruced up version of option #2’s idiocracy).
The term Controlled Opposition does not imply that TY is being controlled by a third party, rather he is being regulated by his own socio-political leanings and sub-cultural background. It is so difficult for anyone to be socially conservative with liberal trimmings these days. Previously they were used to hurling accusations of totalitarianism at the commies on the left and (on occasions) at the fascists on the “far” (of course) right. But it doesn’t wash any more, despite many still complaining about the lefties like they have anything at all to do with this debacle (still if it makes them feel better).
The problem for social conservatives (and TY in particular) is that a centre-right and avowedly libertarian Tory government, replete with a massive Parliamentary majority and seats in Labour heartlands, has implemented the most extreme period of state oppression (arguably) since The Protectorate of 1653-1658. How can LDS be an effective anti-lockdown website when the very State machine it should be opposing (a one that is trampling over the inalienable rights of TY’s fellow countrymen and women) is being run by TY’s old chums from university?
Imagine what LDS might have been like had Corbyn been PM. Are you really going to tell me it would have had the same weak-kneed pro-government ATL we are neither pro nor anti vaxx editorial policy? Would TY have gone on Sky TV Australia to defend the government? Of course not, and that difference is Controlled Opposition.
The ongoing crimes against humanity of this government are so great that even sceptics refuse to step back and take it all in. They want any way out of the dilemma, any excuse, any chink of light, any sacrificial lamb (like Hancock), any leftie advisor that is bending the PM’s ear to savage – and LDS provides that.
“There there, it will be all right by the next GE. Some of those in power just lost their heads for a while, probably closet LibDems anyway, but everything will be back to normal soon – and the triple lock will still be in place on the pensions.”
I understood the term “controlled opposition” to mean an actual agent. That’s the definition that was most commonly returned by an internet search. Your definition doesn’t seem to me to have a great deal of meaning – yes of course TY’s view of this is coloured by his background and political leanings. So is mine and so is yours.
I disagree that option 3 is a spruced up version of option 2. The implication of option 2 is that the govt are acting in good faith out of genuine concern for public health. Option 3 is that they are knowingly prolonging this for their own gain.
Why would I “deliberately” misunderstand someone?
No it isn’t. It means the government, like most recent governments, is stocked with woefully under qualified old pals and cronies acting out of (occasionally but definitely unintentionally enlightened) self interest.
All this would have gone unnoticed for years in the usual Parliamentary cycle, but for the fact they faced a genuine problem requiring balanced informed decision making. Johnson had to stop writing a book and actually attend work etc, economic risk assessments had to be done (not that they were), the issues facing them were not ones they recognized etc. One mistake after another was made, but there was no opposition, as they too were clueless – so any old pal with an idea received taxpayer’s money. Panic….
Scenario #2 in effect posits they acted solely out of concern for their own skins, and took what they saw as the best course of action that would leave them blameless if it all went wrong, with no external policy influence (other than paid SAGE guidance). No higher decision making body (elected or otherwise) was involved.
Of course these on-the-hoof decisions proved economically calamitous and (in the case of care homes and experimental vaccines) downright murderous – but they were nothing at all to do with Good Faith just muddling though.
Yes but I don’t have a direct line to chums in this government and the MSM, as well a political interest in reviving an advisory position that was turned down by Theresa May. Do you? Thus LDS (like TCW) provides only carefully Controlled Opposition and damage limitation in the hope that by 2024 the avoidable errors and carnage will be forgotten.
I hope TY doesn’t think this will be over by 2024. I hope no sceptic believes that. I tend to think it’s more wishful thinking than anything more sinister or self-serving.
If 2024 sees this Tory/Lab coalition government returned again despite the interim carnage it has unleashed then it goes beyond sinister. Indeed the same could be said if ANY sitting MP of ANY stripe is returned, beyond that small handful of redoubtable stalwarts.
Meanwhile for sceptics there are far bigger upcoming problems to face.
Yes it will be a long hard road
Convoluted BS that adds nothing to the debate.
My vote is for #1.
The real answer is probably somewhere between #1 and #2 but as far as going along with it is concerned, it’s not that the people are so stupid as to buy into Johnson’s idiocracy (although that is the case for many of them). It’s more that the majority of them are afraid of what will happen to them if they don’t. The ‘Good German’ defence (which I understand a lot more now).
The police in this country will crack your skull for violating the covid restrictions. They’ve been a problem in this country for a very long time and this goes far beyond corona. Before corona they’ve demonstrated that they are more concerned with cracking your skull for ‘offensive’ jokes posted on Facebook than they are with actual policing and investigation of violent crime.
Suggesting physical confrontation to regain lost freedoms is inevitable, in which case the weekend London turnout should have served as a timely reminder to the executive and the thug enforcers.
it has !! and that was just a trickle the numbers will not add up for the government…. control has to be vouluntary or its lost .i dont see the populace volunteering for more Covid restrcitions for much longer
Yes. I’d like to think that the powers that be worked out that the people shouting ‘arrest Matt Hancock’ and throwing tennis balls at number ten could just as easily have been shouting ‘hang Boris Johnson’ and throwing petrol bombs. The police were definitely given orders to go softly-softly at the weekend. Compare that with late last year when TSG were bundling grannies into black marias. I’d like to think it’s because they realise that even with troops and live ammunition they would struggle to control that size of crowd.
Correct
“Once emergency ends, so does temporary licence”… ah, that’s why they keep putting the date back. So at least 2023v before restrictions end, and longer if the “vaccines are not approved by then…
Good God – No wonder they won’t let us out of lockdown – It is all about the them losing the license to use the experimental gene therapy –
I suppose that frightening the majority of the population into taking a novel gene therapy is an achievement of sorts.
Is that his passport photo?
He looks like he would have been in the Carry On films if he was fifty years younger.
This is a stunt: Hancock will slip away into obscurity, leaving Javid to continue the exact same policies and restrictions. https://www.minds.com/steveghostwords/
Yawn, Yawn ..
Nice soothing stuff Guy, yes let’s not get all worked up, our famed British common sense will prevail, see the nasty Mr Hancock has been found wanting after all.
Bwhaa ha ha ha….
Guy you’ve miss judged the whole thing all along, even advocated getting the vax to get back to normal and travel, how did that work out ???
Get the blinkers off , you’ve been conned , get out on the streets and forget about being saved by the politicians.
I can hardly wait for your next instalment of extreme understanding of the plight of our reluctant captors .
I have to say, Guy, that that is the most sickening sycophantic sheet that I have read here.
“very remarkable achievements and initiatives of the last 15 months” – name one!
Firstly, I shall always be grateful for Toby’s work in establishing LS and keeping it going, but, why on earth keep publishing the Bedoyere pieces?
Quite frankly his understanding of our current predicament is woefully shallow at best. “the government’s remarkable achievements over the last fifteen months.” What the hell is this guy smoking?
Going on to say we are now at a “turning point.” Oh really? Within the week we will all see that nothing has changed.
Time to drop contributors such as this because they skew the debate and only in a negative, meandering way.
“…the government’s remarkable achievements over the last fifteen months…”
Where are you living?
FFS!
“What he gets up to in his private life”.
What I can’t get away from is that he ostenatatiously “socially distanced” from this Gina in public – so he misled the public; he clearly doesn’t believe the rubbish he is telling us; or he does believe it but did it anyway – something which other people have been harassed by the police and punished for doing. There can be no excuses.
Let’s face it, the whole political system is corrupt. It needs flushing out and a return to a system based upon English common law would not be a bad thing, in my opinion. Party politics is rotten to the core, so why not create a system or council with ‘independents’ only allowed? The individual would then be judged on their performence and comptency, be held directly accountable to the voters, and would not be able to hide behind the Party machine…
Well said. But Common Law is still applicable I believe.
I certainly believe that should be the case with the upper chamber – anyone from the commons or a political party should be disbarred. Aristocrats, lawyers and bishops are welcome, but have to be elected like anyone else.
“The truth of course is that the Government, despite some of its very remarkable achievements and initiatives of the last 15 months”
WHAT? Destroying the economy, killing thousands of old folk, eviscerating the NHS, introducing a trial gene therapy that kills thousands and maims hundreds of thousands, undermining society, deliberately scaring people to death, oh God I could go on. Remarkable how they’ve “got away with it” but achievements, I think not.
he did like the lady womens
Brilliant. What a creep.
GP with the courage to say No to vaccines
By
Sally Beck
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/gp-with-the-courage-to-say-no-to-vaccines/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell