Nicholas Beale
@Starcourse
Chair, 695th Lord Mayor's Ethical AI Initiative. Personal views only. Blog on science & religion etc. Work in Strategy & Search. I only follow people I’ve met.
#unethicalOptimizationPrinciple paper now out in @royalsociety Open Science. Thanks to brilliant co-authors Heather Battey, Anthony Davison & Robert Mackay. @DameWendyDBE gave us quote for press: "This is a really important paper. It shows that… (1/n) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
The 2020 @RSOpenSciencepaper An Unethical Optimization Principle proved that (under pretty general conditions) an AI that aims to optimize profits disproportionately selects unethical strategies. ft.com/content/449102…
Recently, 🇺🇦 hero of this war Robert Broudi (aka “Magyar”) spoke at a military conference in 🇩🇪 Wiesbaden. His speech stunned many people. It’s a bit long for Twitter but totally worth a read. “In the Ukrainian army, they call me Magyar. I am a field commander of combat drone…
How Might the West Fare Without Christianity? How might it fare as Islamic? In this Spectrum Street Epistemology session, @Miss_Snuffy and I explore these topics and more:
Can the West Survive Without Christianity? w/ Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy youtu.be/Gr2bnbCVFWA
Resident Drs are appallingly mismanaged & maltreated by NHS Lanyard Class. c 30% of their time is wasted by lousy equipment & stupid bureaucracy. Fix the maltreatment & agree to invest the extra productivity in pay & they’d probably come off strike. thetimes.com/comment/the-ti…
I’m not a professional historian but if this is correct it undermines the case for these reparations. A panel of genuinely impartial historians should examine this.
If the Church proceeds with Project Spire on the basis of research that has not only confused the primary investments made in the eighteenth century but which only mentions working people to make them fellow-travellers with slavery, it will have done a grave disservice to…
Make the “Triple Lock” quadruple by raising the state pension age every year to keep pensions a fixed % of GDP. This would (according to CoPilot) mean increasing the state pension age by c0.22 years every year. Keep it simple & make it 3 months every year & bingo!
The test of the seriousness of this would be a willingness to abandon the pensions triple lock.
Dry humour from @UKSupremeCourt: "…would amount to saying: “Although…rate…might have been anywhere within a range…assume…cheapest…it could possibly have been”. A banker who adopted such a Panglossian attitude would be unlikely to have a successful career in finance."
Modern LLMs can go beyond 'hallucination' to fabrication, where they make up a false story and then doggedly stick to it when asked check questions. Though they will generally confess when accused directly of making it up. ft.com/content/7a4e7e… via @ft
I gave a speech today in an empty chamber. It’s about the need for a Christian restoration.
Roderick Williams, Sarah Connolly & @juliusdrake triumphed last night at @wigmore_hall with Mendelssohn & Liszt songs - the latter especially a revelation👏👏👏👏
A few of the appalling inefficiencies caused by NHS bureaucracy, lack of accountability & incompetent management. Result: elderly patient spends 10d in hospital when 2-3 would have done, & gets worse healthcare. Could @wesstreeting focus on productivity? thetimes.com/comment/column…
Inspiring ceremony yesterday to unveil memorial to Flight Captain Susan Slade killed in an air crash whilst serving in the Air Transport Auxiliary.
All the serious issues facing the UK require systems thinking not soundbites. Apart from @KemiBadenoch, almost all frontbenchers are arts/law/PPE grads who think about words not systems. thetimes.com/comment/the-ti…
We certainly need a big increase in UK Private sector investment in & by innovative UK Scaleups. But, as @ft says, Govt Actuary’s Dept suggests additional returns *to the Pension Funds* would be tiny (c2% over 30y). gov.uk/government/pub… ft.com/content/8869d4…
Interesting from @TrevorPTweets. I'm not sure about Digital ID cards for everything, but the remittance tax is a good idea. However 🇩🇰 controls immigration without a sea border so I wonder why we can't emulate them? thetimes.com/comment/column…
Nurses and Doctors deserve higher pay & better conditions, provided there is higher productivity. Streeting should enter into good-faith dialogue to help them be more productive, & agree that 80% of any productivity improvements will be used to boost pay. thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/…
There is huge scope to combine AI and social entrepreneurship to get millions off “the sick” and into employment, education or training. But it requires a shift from the Free Money mindset. thetimes.com/comment/the-ti…
With any luck this scoop will kill this mad idea. Its either jobsworths in DfE going through Government Procurement rigmarole or an attempt to undermine yet another pillar of recent UK Schools excellence. observer.co.uk/news/politics/…
Fascinating description of how @AnthropicAI Claude-based bot did at running a “small shop/vending machine”. HT @johnthornhillft anthropic.com/research/proje…
