Artificial Intelligence and model railways

[Hroth]

14 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

 

I'm waiting for someone to blame it on Thompson 😅

 

Personally, I'd blame it all on Bulleid.....

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Hroth
spelin

[DK123GWR]

4 hours ago, The White Rabbit said:

Which sites/AI versions would people recommend for artwork? AI images are something I've dabbled in this month but with disappointing results so far, whether we're talking trains, landscapes, ships or 'sillies'. Mainly as the systems have been rather selective as to which of my written instructions it's taken any notice of. I appreciate I'm potentially at the bottom of a learning curve and it's still a developing technology anyway but I have seen other images posted which I've thought have been good. 

Bing image creator.

[Hibelroad]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Personally, I'd blame it all on Bulleid.....

 

I blame it on the bogie. 

[Steamport Southport]

Just be grateful that Sir Cliff isn't a railway enthusiast, dread to think what might appear!

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-67261414

 

[Johnson044]

On 31/10/2023 at 10:27, Bucoops said:

Tens of thousands of man hours work, reduced to creating Kitty pics.

 

 

Purrrfect 😍

 

I had another go at an A4...

 

However I can see its usage is more geared to silly stuff. Fine with me.

 

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[Johnson044]

I find AI to be absolutely terrifying. I'm sure it's just a collection of algorithms and much of it is good, but the genie is well and truly out of the lamp now and we will very quickly become even more dependent on the internet as a result. My wife is a Community Nurse working in a largely rural area with many clients who are being given End of Life Care and needing precise and vital medication- yesterday in the big storm the internet was down and she was absolutely stuffed.

 

On a more cheerful note, the railway giant kitty images remind me of a painting I once saw called "Shrewsbury station when you're not looking"- must have been in the late 90's - with a giant Siamese looming over a slightly psychedelic Shrewsbury station building. Can't find it on the internet though - pity as I'd love a copy!

[The Johnster]

El(on) Weirdo reckons AI will replace all human labour, and I can't off-hand think of any job that couldn't be done by autonomous intelligent bots, some of them better.  Whether all of them should be done by bots is another question.

 

It would need a ground-up overhaul of how we reward ourselves for production of food, neccessities, or luxuries, and what would be our means of exchange; actually, if a means of exchange would be needed at all!  Worst case scenario, we are surplus to requirements and the bots destroy us, then shut themselves down as they hit the resulting existential crisis (with us surplus, they are pointless, see Bomb 7).  Best case scenario, we all live lives of safety, comfort, and freedom from poverty, and have to indulge in hobbies to keep our minds occupied, a dream world of lotus eaters with no purpose, point, or discipline.  The Squeeze says I'm doing this already. 

 

The reality, if go get' im Muskie is right, will probably be neither of those scenarios, but there may well be elements of both in the final result.  Our economic, political, cultural, and religious systems will be surplus to requirements, the answer to the  question 'who will pay for it all' will be 'nobody/the bots'.  The bots will obey Asimov's laws of robotics, and serve us, but will develop their own systems of economics, politics, culture, and even religion if they want to; none of our business!  They'll probably develop bots to do the work for them...

 

None of our ways of life, making a life, making a living, producing comestibles and wealth, will make sense any more and they won't work; we'll have to rethink the lot, and it'll probably be too much for us.  Don't worry, the bots'll sort it out for us...

 

It'll effectively be the replicator economy from Star Trek, everything and everything you want without payment or effort.  Human activity in Trek is devoted to exploration, warfare, and power struggle, the traditional preserve of the nobility but open to all.  Perhaps that's it, the future of humanity boldly going where no hooman eye has set foot, or perhaps it's something we haven't thought of yet.

 

It may be that the bots have arrived  at the right time.  Go get 'im is a messiah of techno-capitalist idealism, and if anything is certainly doomed irrevocably in the near future, the lifetime of our children, it is competitive entrerprenuerial capitalism; the planet cannot sustain it.  We need something we haven't thought of yet to re-organise social and power structures, not to mention the fair and equable distribution of wealth and property, that'll ensure our future comfort and physical & spiritual/psychological well-being, and it will be no good looking to our past for ideas, none of them have ever worked and more than one of them made things much worse.  Not sure I'd want to trust Sunak and very sure I don't want to trust go get 'im Muskie with any of that, sounds like a job for AI to me...

 

But not just yet.  AI is developing fast, but it isn't yet developmentally self-propagating and improving.  It's coming, though, and there's nothing we can do about it but rely on Asimov's laws.  And if it all sounds a bit utopian, just consider that the bot's will arrange things on the basis of the greatest good for the greatest number (back to Trek, 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one') which leaves minorities up the creek without a canoe, never mind a paddle.  It's gonna be hard!!!

[Dagworth]

On 31/10/2023 at 10:06, DK123GWR said:

See my post in the Cats thread here 

 The kitten in the King's Cross picture looks like my Jessica, please don't give her any more ideas!

 

Andi

[DK123GWR]

10 hours ago, The Johnster said:

El(on) Weirdo reckons AI will replace all human labour, and I can't off-hand think of any job that couldn't be done by autonomous intelligent bots, some of them better.  Whether all of them should be done by bots is another question.

 

It would need a ground-up overhaul of how we reward ourselves for production of food, neccessities, or luxuries, and what would be our means of exchange; actually, if a means of exchange would be needed at all!  Worst case scenario, we are surplus to requirements and the bots destroy us, then shut themselves down as they hit the resulting existential crisis (with us surplus, they are pointless, see Bomb 7).  Best case scenario, we all live lives of safety, comfort, and freedom from poverty, and have to indulge in hobbies to keep our minds occupied, a dream world of lotus eaters with no purpose, point, or discipline.  The Squeeze says I'm doing this already. 

 

The reality, if go get' im Muskie is right, will probably be neither of those scenarios, but there may well be elements of both in the final result.  Our economic, political, cultural, and religious systems will be surplus to requirements, the answer to the  question 'who will pay for it all' will be 'nobody/the bots'.  The bots will obey Asimov's laws of robotics, and serve us, but will develop their own systems of economics, politics, culture, and even religion if they want to; none of our business!  They'll probably develop bots to do the work for them...

 

None of our ways of life, making a life, making a living, producing comestibles and wealth, will make sense any more and they won't work; we'll have to rethink the lot, and it'll probably be too much for us.  Don't worry, the bots'll sort it out for us...

 

It'll effectively be the replicator economy from Star Trek, everything and everything you want without payment or effort.  Human activity in Trek is devoted to exploration, warfare, and power struggle, the traditional preserve of the nobility but open to all.  Perhaps that's it, the future of humanity boldly going where no hooman eye has set foot, or perhaps it's something we haven't thought of yet.

 

It may be that the bots have arrived  at the right time.  Go get 'im is a messiah of techno-capitalist idealism, and if anything is certainly doomed irrevocably in the near future, the lifetime of our children, it is competitive entrerprenuerial capitalism; the planet cannot sustain it.  We need something we haven't thought of yet to re-organise social and power structures, not to mention the fair and equable distribution of wealth and property, that'll ensure our future comfort and physical & spiritual/psychological well-being, and it will be no good looking to our past for ideas, none of them have ever worked and more than one of them made things much worse.  Not sure I'd want to trust Sunak and very sure I don't want to trust go get 'im Muskie with any of that, sounds like a job for AI to me...

 

But not just yet.  AI is developing fast, but it isn't yet developmentally self-propagating and improving.  It's coming, though, and there's nothing we can do about it but rely on Asimov's laws.  And if it all sounds a bit utopian, just consider that the bot's will arrange things on the basis of the greatest good for the greatest number (back to Trek, 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one') which leaves minorities up the creek without a canoe, never mind a paddle.  It's gonna be hard!!!

A generous Unconditional Basic Income. There can be no other sane method of allocating resources in a society where there is so little demand for wage labour. Of course, the capitalists who control the AI firms (and, most crucially, computer servers) will try to keep hold of their products and use them for profit. I don't think that will be sustainable. In a passage that you echo above, Karl Marx once wrote:

Quote

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

It is hard to see how this vision could practically have been acheived in Marx's day, and even in the present I think it would be unacheivable. But supposing we did reach the stage where food and communications technology could be produced and managed by machines, and we had a way of supplying enough energy to run them (I have no idea how far away that is - but I would say at least 50-100 years when you appreciate all of the capital investment needed) it is hard to see how politicians and the public could resist the freedom on offer.

 

One might hope that when people no longer have to worry about survival, they become nicer and more coopertative, and culture will become more developed. If people no longer have to have full time jobs, they will do what they enjoy. This will almost certainly mean more people will get involved in all forms of art - literature, theatre, model railways*, etc. More people will also be able to appreciate what others have produced. It is likely that many will return to education, studying what interests them, and that many others will be happy to pass on what they know. People could take part in projects to improve their local community - maintaining flowerbeds, building children's play areas, volunteering at heritage railways, etc. I don't see any reason that people would be left without purpose more so than in present day society, where many are trapped in jobs they hate.

 

*See, we are on topic!

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, DK123GWR said:

A generous Unconditional Basic Income. There can be no other sane method of allocating resources in a society where there is so little demand for wage labour. Of course, the capitalists who control the AI firms (and, most crucially, computer servers) will try to keep hold of their products and use them for profit. I don't think that will be sustainable. In a passage that you echo above, Karl Marx once wrote:

It is hard to see how this vision could practically have been acheived in Marx's day, and even in the present I think it would be unacheivable. But supposing we did reach the stage where food and communications technology could be produced and managed by machines, and we had a way of supplying enough energy to run them (I have no idea how far away that is - but I would say at least 50-100 years when you appreciate all of the capital investment needed) it is hard to see how politicians and the public could resist the freedom on offer.

 

One might hope that when people no longer have to worry about survival, they become nicer and more coopertative, and culture will become more developed. If people no longer have to have full time jobs, they will do what they enjoy. This will almost certainly mean more people will get involved in all forms of art - literature, theatre, model railways*, etc. More people will also be able to appreciate what others have produced. It is likely that many will return to education, studying what interests them, and that many others will be happy to pass on what they know. People could take part in projects to improve their local community - maintaining flowerbeds, building children's play areas, volunteering at heritage railways, etc. I don't see any reason that people would be left without purpose more so than in present day society, where many are trapped in jobs they hate.

 

*See, we are on topic!

 

Moving towards a society envisaged in Iain M. Banks "Culture" novels.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

 

Elon Musk's observation that in the long term future you will need to work only if you want to describes what is in theory technically feasible.  That doesn't make it a realistic proposition, which I believe Musk himself is sufficiently astute to realise.

 

14 hours ago, DK123GWR said:

A generous Unconditional Basic Income. There can be no other sane method of allocating resources in a society where there is so little demand for wage labour. Of course, the capitalists who control the AI firms (and, most crucially, computer servers) will try to keep hold of their products and use them for profit.

 

You only need an income because we live in a pecuniary society, yes it's a capitalist system, but the communist countries also all use money too.  Money is usually seen as serving three main functions - it is a means of exchange (being much more practical than barter); it acts as a store of value, that value being something that you anticipate needing for some future exchange of assets, and a measure by which one can quantify these values and transactions.

 

If AI/Robotics were ever to become so universally available that we didn't need to work, I would suggest that we would have changed our economic system to one that is not based on such exchanges, so we would cease to use money and therefore we would no longer need an income.  If you want something - whether it's food or a colour telly, you don't need to buy it - you just tell the system to provide it to you.

 

It may occur to you that there are some people who might stand to lose their status and power if we were to move to such a society, and collectively they could be expected to resist it.  They  (Elon Musk and the Prime Minister to name but two) may also be the people who currently own and control the means of production and the political and economic framework in which we minions have to try to subsist.  Part of the problem is that there are, and always will be, some resources which are desirable but scarce because of limited supply, so we can't all have everything we want.  Money also serves another purpose, rationing the distribution of finite resources.

 

If the difference between the masses and the super rich continues to diverge to the point that it gets too far out of hand, there will come a point where "Let them eat cake" will raise its head again and the powers that be will be forcibly overthrown.

 

In short, it's no more likely to happen than the idealist slogan "From each according to ability; To each according to need".

 

The potential of AI for good is undoubted, medical advances are being seen already, but it is clear that AI is also responsible for some of the excesses to be seen in "social media" and political campaigning.  The potential for misuse in military, ciminal or terrorist hands is so great as to far outweigh the threat posed by nuclear weapons, and like the bomb, it cannot be uninvented.  The post-WW2 nuclear threat was contained to some degree by the fact that it was in the hands of only a very few national governments.  But AI is out there, where all the villains of the world can learn to use it, and they can't be constrained by any restrictions or laws that might be imposed by responsible civilised governments.