You usually see this from startup techbro CEOs understand neither x nor AI. Those people are already replacable by AI today. The kind of people who think they can query ChatGPT once with "How to create a cutting edge model" and make millions. But when you go in on the deep end, there are very few people who still have enough tech knowledge to compete with your average modern LLM. And even the Math Olympiad gold medalists high-flyers at DeepSeek are about to have a run for their money with the next generation. Current AI engineers will shift more and more towards senior architecture and PM roles, because those will be the only ones that matter. But PM and architecture is already something that you could replace today.
I totally agreed that in the past years of hammering out an ontology for a particular area just results in a common understanding between those who wrote the ontology and a large gulf between them and the people they want to use it ( everyone else ).
What's perhaps different is that the machine, via LLM's, can also have an 'opinion' on meaning or correctness.
Going fully circle I wonder what would happen if you got LLM's to define the ontology....
>hammering out an ontology for a particular area just results in a common understanding between those who wrote the ontology and a large gulf between them and the people they want to use it
This is the other side of the bitter lesson, which is just the empirical observation of a phenomenon that was to be expected from first principles (algorithmic information theory): a program of minimal length must get longer if the reality it models becomes more complex.
For ontologists, the complexity of the task increases as the generality is maintained while model precision is increased (top down approach), or conversely, when precision is maintained the "glue" one must add to build up a bigger and bigger whole while keeping it coherent becomes more and more complex (bottom up approach).
Conceptually it is no different from pumped hydro storage. - for that they simply use negative numbers for pumping and positive for release.
I guess it's some technical problem with standardisation/tracking/reporting of the charging right now.
As/if Vehicle-to-Grid becomes more widespread, where you have highly distributed battery storage, it will be interesting to see if this will be publicly tracked.
Already domestic solar production is largely invisible ( as that mostly manifests in reduced demand ).
However I assume, in terms of managing the grid day to day, that such information is going to be important. ( eg if it's a largely cloudly day then that will be manifest as a rise in domestic demand ).
> Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.
> Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument.
The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
It is still subsidised and costs (as reflected in CFD bids) have stopped decreasing.
The need for backup is not an argument against wind in itself. But it is important to consider the full system costs of wind generation, which includes the backup costs as well as the additional transmission infrastructure.
The unfortunate reality is that possibly the biggest contributor to higher prices is the phasing out of coal. Without coal there is no cheap base load - unless you happen to be somewhere blessed with hydro - and the market ends up swinging between feast and famine based on the availability of renewables.
Obviously there are very good reasons to get rid of coal, but it leads to higher prices. Reducing fossil fuels in the grid will be expensive and I worry that the lack of candor from politicians on this will end up making the transition more difficult politically.
> Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.
I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are examples of better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.
I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.
> Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
> One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
I don't remember this. I am sure people will point the finger elsewhere rather than themselves.
I blame the high prices on fuel duty and taxes. Fuel Duty is 52.95 pence per litre and then you have to add VAT. The current diesel price is ~£1.40 per litre at the local Tesco filling station. So that is ~50% of the cost if I am understanding this correctly.
> I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.
> I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.
The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports. You cannot for once believe there weren’t subsidies as these endeavors are very time consuming with hundreds of regulations that need to be met.
> Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
> The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports.
Obviously not. I said as much. I've listened to good arguments for and against it and I don't know what to believe.
My comments were simply about the fact that you could make better arguments than the ones that were presented.
> What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
It isn't free electricity. There is a cost to constructing them, maintaining them and decommissioning them when they become EOL.
If the wind doesn't blow, they don't generate electricity. This means that there is more demand on other sources. So price is driven by supply and demand. All of this the energy company will factor into your tariff. So obviously it is going to affect the price of electricity.
> The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
Understanding a basic tax calculation that is listed on a government website is relatively easy and took a few seconds for me to guestimate. It is much more difficult for layman (like myself) to understand the Total Cost of Ownership of a Wind Turbine, it ROI and understanding whether that maybe a good investment.
I wasn't arguing for or against wind. I was saying there are arguments against wind that might be better than the ones are often highlighted. You are mistaking me highlighting there are potentially better arguments, with agreeing with those arguments.
So seems it's possible. Swings in generation are dealt with via inter-country interconnects, pumped storage and gas turbine generation. Nuclear adds a steady base.
The argument was about the cost, UK having highest prices on the continent (depending how you count subsidies for others) but 20% seems too low anyway. Normal plants are still fine at 60% cf
The UK has insane prices because of their refusal to do regional pricing to accommodate grid constraints. They'd rather pay wind farms to park their turbines, than to segment their grid pricing (i.e. make energy prices cheaper where there is a surplus of wind generation).
The UK's prices are a political choice due to the mapping of voters over the energy generation distribution.
We also have this rather unusual energy market where the price for energy is set by the supplier with the highest price necessary to meet demand at any particular time, and all the suppliers get paid that price. Most countries use a system where the suppliers get paid how much it costs for them to generate individually, and the users pay an average of that all.
No, most countries use the same merit order mechanism like UK.
The difference is that in those countries gas peakers are competing with cheaper hydro (nordics), coal(Germany) or nuclear (france). UK nuclear is pretty small, so gas competes only with itself for setting the price.
Curtailing renewbles due to grid constraints is usually a perfectly rational decision. New generation, new storage, new demand and new grid connections don't always happen on the same schedule.
Now, banning onshore wind in England for a decade when it was the cheapest source of energy available. That's just plain stupid (or a corrupt gift to your mates in gas companies).
But it followed economics. What you are saying is that now you want to screw it, because moving industry/trained labor to other areas isn't a plug and play option- it's a huge investment which could lead to closures
The government, by saying that there was a single zone, despite the electricity not actually working that way (because interconnectors don't have infinite capacity), were defying economics.
By breaking the country in to zones, where the electricity that's bought can actually reach the users they then apply the actual economics of the system properly, and encourage suppliers to build where the demand can be satisfied by them.
But in the past it made sense to have a single zone- prices were similar. So industry developed where possible. Now what you ask is that due to the ren generation, the pricing should change, so that industry that was formed long before current ren push needs to restructure/move to more advantageous locations because otherwise it'll use competitiveness. If you are fine with such development and it's consequences, you could ask for such reforms.
Situation is very similar in Germany - most industry is concentrated in the south while most productive wind in the north. In the past it didn't matter since prices were similar with coal. But now, since you can't magically create wind in low wind/unproductive areas, the options are either split zones and kill part of industry, which Germany doesn't want, or to keep a single zone and build expensive transmission like sudlink.
Or perhaps GCHQ don't need Apple to access the data any more - indeed the whole demanding access might have been a smoke screen to make people think it's secure....
Apple is reasonably secure and has one of the two best mobile phone hardware designs from the security perspective.
Sure exploits exist (see Pegasus), but they're too precious and fragile to deploy a dragnet. And that was about the indiscriminate surveillance, not selected "targets".
The normal practice is if somebody is a target of interest, and the proper court order has been issued by a judge, then the authorities have the expectation that they can ask for access to private data, or have the ability to put in a 'tap'.
Under Apple's ADP system, Apple are unable to give that access - only the account holder can - and obviously they may not want to - and asking them will obviously alert them they are under surveillance - if that was the original aim.
So the talk about a 'back-door' in the Apple product for the UK government is a bit misleading - in the sense they are not asking for direct access that avoids having to ask Apple - they are just asking Apple to build functionality so Apple can fulfill such requests.
ie If the government get's a 'search warrant' Apple has the ability to comply.
Ironically if GCHQ did have a backdoor without needing to ask Apple then they could do much more dragnet stuff.
That wasn't my point. The point is such a back-door doesn't necessarily enable dragnet surveillance - of the kind that,for example, Snowdon revealed the US government was doing.
There is a big difference in my view between court authorized search warrants ( in effect ), and blanket surveillance.
Can authorities abuse the former? Sure - but on the other hand it's hard to argue that authorities should have no powers at all to perform searches if they make the appropriate case to the courts.
They've already demonstrated that they're willing to use secret courts and gag orders to prevent Apple from disclosing what they're doing (referenced in the article). How would you know if they're abusing it?
If there were abusing it large scale, I still think it would come out ( cf Snowdon ) - the more people are involved, the more likely something is to leak.
ie in terms of conspiracy theories - those that involve large numbers of people being in the know, but nothing leaking, are the most unlikely.
However I totally agree that the recent trend towards secret courts, the attempts to remove access to a jury of your peers, and the creeping abuse of terrorism legalisation is both wrong and worrying.
However that's kind of my point - the existence of state powers of search isn't the issue, the issue is whether they are under proper control. The issue isn't whether the government can see the stuff I have with Apple, it's what's the process to allow that to happen.
I think the problem might be how you measure productivity.
If you measure effort and output - then surely productivity has gone up - but if they measure it in another way - say capital to return - it might not have?
LLM are animatronic rubber ducks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
( and obviously like all analogies - this one is lossy )
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