AI reporting is mostly fake news

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Interesting piece on artificial intelligence (AI) in The Register. It claims that -

Almost everything you read about AI is fake news. The AI coverage comes from a media willing itself into the mind of a three year old child, in order to be impressed.

For example, how many human jobs did AI replace in 2016? If you gave professional pundits a multiple choice question listing these three answers: 3 million, 300,000 and none, I suspect very few would choose the correct answer, which is of course “none”.

Similarly, if you asked tech experts which recent theoretical or technical breakthrough could account for the rise in coverage of AI, even fewer would be able to answer correctly that “there hasn’t been one”...

...Out in the real world, people want better service, not worse service; more human and less robotic exchanges with services, not more robotic "post-human" exchanges. But nobody inside the AI cult seems to worry about this. They think we’re as amazed as they are. We’re not.

Celebrity Beliefs

One of my minor hobbies is reading the social and political comments modern celebrities seem so addicted to. Sad isn’t it?

As everyone must know, the quality of celebrity opinion is extremely variable. Some are witty, a few are informed, but many celebrity opinions betray the most astounding ignorance.

Which brings us to the question of belief. If celebrity opinions are any guide then they suggest that belief can indeed be startlingly ignorant. Celebrities are not in the business of playing the intellectual clown. It may seem like that to some of us, but they know their audience better than we do.

It is almost as if ignorance rather than knowledge is the prime requisite for a wide range of human belief. In which case where does that take us? To my mind, belief is best seen as allegiance. It takes us further than the notion that people actually analyse their beliefs. Celebrities don’t have the time anyway.

One way to look at the issue is to remember that nothing in the natural world ever happens twice. Everything is at least slightly different to what went before, so it is always best to respond to ‘now’ via an improvised version of some overarching conception of what ‘now’ ought to be. Not necessarily what ‘now’ is, but what it ought to be, what a commonly held belief says it is.

So we improvise our responses to ‘now’ by adapting what worked before. That is what the natural world selects from us. Belief seems to have evolved from this need to respond to ‘now’ while keeping hold of whatever worked in the past. That is to say, whatever worked socially. Truth has its uses, but it isn’t necessarily the bottom line darling.

Celebrity Failures

How many celebrities do you admire? None? Same here. The world seems full of the pests promoting themselves.

For example, the recent story about celebrity cook Jamie Oliver closing six of his Italian restaurants ought to attract a certain amount of sympathy, at least for the job losses it represents. Yet however much I rummage through my conscience I cannot find a single atom of sympathy. Nothing.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is closing six of his 42 UK Jamie's Italian restaurants.

The Aberdeen, Cheltenham, Exeter, Tunbridge Wells and in London, the Ludgate and Richmond outlets are all scheduled to close soon.

The move will affect 120 staff, whom the company said it would try to place in other parts of the chain.

The company said that the market was "tough" and the uncertainties caused by Brexit had intensified the pressures.

If anything I’m very mildly pleased to see a celebrity failure without being entirely sure why that might be. Perhaps there is a sense that celebrity success is so often undeserved, but for all I know it might be deserved in Jamie Oliver’s case. Yet somehow I feel it isn't. 

What grates is his willingness to mix with politics, to involve himself in official attempts to dictate what children ought to eat. These things ought to be worthy but in his hands they are not. Perhaps we have reached a stage where celebrity itself is a contaminant. The idea that famous people should be listened to because they are famous - it often doesn't work. And when that person also comes across as a bit of a git...

Midsomer Theremin

The late Celia Sheen plays the theme tune from ITV's drama series "Midsomer Murders" on the Theremin.

I find it fascinating to watch. When I first saw the clip I thought what a good idea it would have been to show Celia playing the theme tune before each episode. A shadowy image of her superimposed on seemingly innocent scenes of village life perhaps.

Of course one problem with the idea is that many of us might have found Celia playing the Theremin rather more mysterious than the programmes. 

The Campaign For Real News

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As we know, mainstream news brewers such as the BBC are deeply concerned about an internet trend towards real news. As yet they are resisting calls to brew real news themselves, insisting that their fizzy, pasteurised concoctions are what the market demands. This is due to their traditional reluctance to tell the hoi polloi what is going on plus an understandable reluctance to find out first.

It’s all down to cost you see. As with almost all other products, real news is expensive to produce and mainstream news brewers find it far more cost effective to satisfy their readers with the ersatz variety. Guardian readers have even been known to make a virtue of preferring ersatz news to the real thing, a kind of inverse snobbery like the glottal stop or pretending that yoghurt pots can be recycled.

It comes as no surprise when mainstream outlets for mass-produced news fight back against the Real News Campaign, claiming it isn’t news at all and certainly cannot be classed with that virtually unobtainable product, so-called “genuine news.”

Yet more sophisticated tastes are more demanding. We see that in so many areas of life and it isn’t about to go away. The trend towards a more demanding public has deep roots. One has only to recall the demise of Watneys Red Barrel, a pasteurised beer foisted on the public in the nineteen sixties and early seventies. Eventually beer drinkers tired of drinking fizzy brown aqueous alcohol and demanded something more genuine.

Now the wheel turns again and the Watneys Red Barrel phenomenon has morphed into a similar problem with ersatz news. Currently mainstream news is cheap to brew and entirely designed around mass production for an undiscerning market. Increasingly it won’t do but mainstream news brewers have not prepared themselves for the added costs and complications of a more sophisticated product such as real news.

For the discerning news consumer, real news is an altogether more satisfying product. Crafted from traditional values and often literate it is made with care and a degree of honesty entirely unknown to the behemoths of the news market. Will the big guys go the way of Watneys Red Barrel or will they come up with a real news product of their own? If they do come up with a real news product how will they report it? 

Shallow Jem

What is Jeremy Corbyn’s great weakness as a political leader? It is easy enough to dismiss him as useless, doctrinaire or whatever, but the basic question remains. Why is he so useless? Outside the political bubble I imagine he manages his affairs and is personable enough even if he persists in wearing his virtue on his sleeve. So what goes wrong when he steps into the official party leader’s trousers every morning?

The first thing to be explained is that millions of voters would vote for him if there were to be a general election in the near future. Yet Corbyn obviously doesn’t know how to govern a country such as the UK. He doesn’t even know how it is governed now, let alone how it might be more effectively governed in the future. He doesn't know anyone who knows either, yet millions would still vote for him.

This says something vitally important about human nature – it says we are shallow in our political allegiances. It can't be restricted to Labour voters and it isn't. To my mind this is also Corbyn’s basic problem - he is shallow. What you see is what you get.

Not a shattering conclusion, but here’s the rub – we are all equally shallow. Theresa May is just as shallow as Corbyn. She has no idea how to manage Brexit and it is mainly Corbyn’s absurdly inept handling of political opposition that keeps her afloat. It may even allow her to manage what probably should be politically unmanageable.

We are all shallow but we expect the political classes to hide it and we moan like hell when they don’t. Ed Miliband is as shallow as they come. He had no idea that his meddling with the election process for Labour leader would be such a disaster because it is so easily subverted.

What Corbyn illustrates is uncomfortable for anyone who cares to cast a bleak eye over what his antics tell us about human behaviour. We cannot personally measure up to political expectations and we cannot find people who do measure up and vote for them. It is only by calling on a wide range of outside expertise and experience that politicians ever manage to maintain the facade of modest competence.

When too much reliance is placed on a political class which has never done anything else but play political games then the shallowness of human behaviour becomes more and more obvious. An old aristocracy had certain advantages in that some of its members were trained to rule, trained to use outside expertise as it should be used and trained to disguise their own shallowness more effectively than people such as Corbyn and May. More importantly they had lives outside politics and that is something we could learn from and emulate. 

The sum of the matter

A message about the corruption of language from twenty five centuries ago. Not a new problem, but unlike Confucius we have largely forgotten to resolve it before we make decisions. To my mind this is the time of year when we should remember how much damage politically correct celebrities do to our language. It isn't confined to the political classes and the media.  

Tsz-lu said to the Master, "As the prince of Wei, sir, has been waiting for you to act for him in his government, what is it your intention to take in hand first?"

"One thing of necessity," he answered—"the rectification of terms."

"That!" exclaimed Tsz-lu. "How far away you are, sir! Why such rectification?"

"What a rustic you are, Tsz-lu!" rejoined the Master. "A gentleman would be a little reserved and reticent in matters which he does not understand. If terms be incorrect, language will be incongruous; and if language be incongruous, deeds will be imperfect. So, again, when deeds are imperfect, propriety and harmony cannot prevail, and when this is the case laws relating to crime will fail in their aim; and if these last so fail, the people will not know where to set hand or foot. Hence, a man of superior mind, certain first of his terms, is fitted to speak; and being certain of what he says can proceed upon it. In the language of such a person there is nothing heedlessly irregular—and that is the sum of the matter."

The Analects of Confucius