Free article in the Economist
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I was just thinking of posting that. Haven’t read it yet.
A very fair price for a Dell 
As long as you get two for the 7 quid.
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I’ve used Dell & HP high end computers for years now, they’ve all worked fine, currently using a HP Zbook G10 best computer I’ve used for professional purposes. Ar’nt most computers just name brands with +/- the same gubbins in them depending on spec’s?
Yes, they are really just Intel or AMD chips with a badge on
I have just had my first advert using AI. I asked Copilot about the construction of a car tyre. At the end of the answer a Microsoft labelled advert popped up advertising Industrial tyre cutters. The strange thing is, that advert has now dissappeared although the answer is still there.
My wife had to call a garage a few days ago, and got stuck talking to an AI bot on the phone… It was useless, and she got fed up, so demanded to speak to a human being after about 4 minutes on the phone getting nowhere. A human eventually called her back. Welcome to our decadent/dystopian future.
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It’s not the future it’s now. Just try getting through on tbe official La Poste numbers. Even my old specific words that used to get me a human when needed are being blocked by useless feckin robot.
Lidl unfortunately is blocking more calls with useless robots too.
Due to this cr*p it can take literally hours trying to get simple tasks done.
Although to some extent the French style and orientation often found in “customer service” roles has kind of set the customer service staff up to be easily replaced by robots sadly.
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It is now, but what I mean, it’s only going to become more prevalent. I suspect at some point, they’ll be such a backlash that certain companies might get boycotted, and hopefully they’ll be some sort of u-turn or scaling back. There’s not exactly many people championing the building of AI data centres, and once enough people have lost their jobs the backlash is only going to intensify.
It’s ironic that in the name of ‘progress’ we seem to be taking steps backwards.
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Progress for Co profits and CEO bonus’s. But the “surplus” staff have got to receive some form of income or benefits or just like the Sci fi films humans will turn on the robots despite the ultra rich making new laws outlawing doing so.
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I remember back in the seventies the Dunlop trucks cutting the grooves in rally tyres at service areas. Tailoring a tyre to the conditions of the special stages ahead 
We have been here before…18-19th century and machine wreckers. Difference this time is the speed of change.
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The point I was making John is that the AI offerings we see at the moment are just puppy dog selling techniques before deluging us with adverts. A marketing model used by Facebook which is is now virtually unusable because of advertising.
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Adverts appeared again today when asking about EV chargers. I think this is the thin end of the wedge.
Well as I always say Mik, these so called tech companies are in fact advertising companies. They just use tech to deliver the ads.
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If it’s free you’re the product… Radio and TV are advertising businesses - nothing changed
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It feels like something from the series Westworld. I remember when the revelation first came out that Facebook were collecting some of our private data, and using it for financial gain and marketing, and there was a huge outcry… Now it’s just become normalised, and with the advent of AI, I suspect even with privacy laws, eventually every little minutia will be recorded for total societal control. Like Westworld, I think the human race will eventually have to fight back, although hopefully not quite in such a literal sense.
If AI robots eventually take over the factories and manufacturing processes too, I wonder who they will be making things for, when masses end up unemployed.
You will own nothing and be happy (WEF) everything on contract?
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If you don’t really own the digital media that you’ve paid for, is pirating said content really stealing?