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Could AI Prove to be Humanity’s Salvation ?

There has been much angst voiced in the media recently about the risks of AI being harmful to our species, notably by the very people involved in developing it. This is perhaps a reasonable 'gut' reaction to a technology which is developing faster than many of us expected and has turned out to be a powerful tool. It could certainly create havoc in the wrong hands. Personally,   I’m not an ‘AI denier’ any more than I am ‘climate change denier’…both of these phenomena are appearing in front of our eyes, and only the cognitively blind could fail to see and accept them. What’s important is how we interpret them….and act to mitigate their worst effects. There are risks, certainly, in allowing AI to continue to develop virtually unfettered as we appear to be doing now. We should regulate…and on a worldwide basis, with the regulators actually ‘having teeth’. And therein lies the challenge. China appears to be receptive to a slowdown, given that it doesn't want to be left ...
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Why Did Louise Haigh really resign as Transport Minister ?

 Editor's note: Given the chnage in fortunes of the two principal players in this political saga, I though I'd wheel the blog out again with an update..... ---------------------- The rather unexpected announcement on 29 th November 2024 that Louise Haigh had resigned as Transport minister inevitably precipitated much speculation about ‘goings on in high places’. The party line explanation she offered for her 'resignation' was the bog-standard   ‘I don’t want to be a distraction’ recipe, accompanied by the usual weasel words of support from the PM for the decision and good wishes for the future….which, if course, tells us precisely nothing about what really happened. To establish what really went on, we need to look at the background. Several pertinent facts emerge: 1)        *  Starmer knew about Haigh’s 2013 conviction for ‘making a false report to the police’ about her mugging when he appointed her to the ministerial posts she has occupied. This...
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Are We Alone in the Universe ?

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  I first published this blog in February 2022, just before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Given the mess we seem to be making of our home planet at present, a look at the possibilities of life elsewhere might be appropriate....  A    report   last year of  the possibility of life existing on another planet in another solar system also presented a good opportunity for a fresh look at the question. This seems even more relevant now, given the increasingly fragile state of our planet's ecosystem and our own continuing descent into resource-driven conflict. Present indications suggest that our society may not have long left, and all in all,  perhaps it's a fitting time to consider whether there might be a possibility of alternative accommodation for humans elsewhere in the universe.... The combination of dimethyl sulphide (DMS), CO2 and methane in the atmosphere of  exoplanet K2-18b in significant quantities is seen as a possible 'biomarker' for life t...
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Advanced Search Query Builder: The Easy Way to do Selective Internet Searches

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  Ever wanted to get rid of those pesky AI summaries that seem to appear every time you do a Google search ? Want to bypass AI and 'do your own thing' with a more focussed advance internet search ? Or switch search engine at the touch of a button ?  Now you can - and without needing to remember the exact query syntax to use....or even switching windows. To find out how, just read on….. Background Internet searching has changed a lot over the last few years, due largely to the automatic insinuation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents into everything but the most basic searches by the all the major search engine providers. There is no doubt that those AI summaries which appear uninvited in response to most queries can be very useful, particularly for those who know little about a particular subject to start with and aren’t quite sure where to start looking. But they aren't always needed, and they can clutter up the results presentation and slow things down a lot...
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