Keep Drinking the Kool-Aid

Posted on 28/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Just as I suspected, the dream of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just that, a dream. The book I am reading, titled “Feeding the Machine,” exposes the millions of workers behind the technology that is supposedly going to change the world. Although AI will help many of us be more productive when we find an APP developed expressly for a specific application we can use it for. My personal experience with AI is limited at best, and I find it annoying. Most times, I use a Chat bot at a website like my bank, or a vendor like the phone or cable service. The first thing I find useless are bots that answer only very specific questions. Most Chat-bots are developed like that. If you are seeking answers to a complicated problem there is a 99.999% chance you will need to connect with a human to get near an answer. Our suppliers, however, make us go through the steps before they give us a number to call for help. Evidently, a large number of callers are happy with the canned answers they receive.

The workers being employed live in East Africa and work nine hours a day in almost slave-like conditions. They watch videos to highlight activities that may escape the sensors used by AI applications. An example cited involved a lady walking a bicycle across a street in the crosswalk and being struck by a self-driving car. The AI used in the car could not determine that a human walking directly in front of the car was a safety issue. The job of the reviewer is to highlight this anomaly on the video to bring it to the attention of the programmer who then modifies the the algorithm to prevent a collision. The work to do this is mindless and boring. Managers require that the worker perform a set number of observations per minute and the worker keystrokes are measured and reported. If the worker does not match the requirements of the job, he is penalized, often by firing.

While all these observations are going on, billions of dollars are spent making artificial intelligence more intelligent and faster. We endure the chatbots just so big companies can use fewer paid employees to do the job. They truly believe we, the consumers, are getting the absolute best service experience that can be provided. It doesn’t matter what we believe we are getting. If they are making more money, we lose, and they keep on convincing themselves that they are making us happy.

Someday, AI may threaten society and cause people to lose their jobs, but I will not be around to witness the debacle. In the meantime, the venture capitalists who continue to pour money into AI companies will keep feeding us the Kool-Aid to convince us of how wonderful life will be when it all begins to happen.

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PSA-240304A-Scary Experiment

Posted on 04/03/2024 by Grumpa Joe

In the attached video, an experiment is carried out with a small 1.5V lithium battery cell. Take a good look at the state of the container that contained the water! 

In an electric car, all the batteries represent 400 volts direct current and weigh a minimum of 180 kg. (396 Lbs) It’s in English but the images are enough to explain the phenomenon. Lithium mixed with water explodes and releases enormous intensity of heat. This is why firefighters can’t put out a fire on an electric car! Some public garages do not allow EV to park.

People who own electric cars, are you aware that you are sitting on a potential bomb? I’m sure you will argue that your car batteries are safely encased in a something that is water proof. However, the propensity for unexplained electric car fires implies that if the battery case is leaky and water penetrates the lithium inside, you may have a giant, uncontrollable fire under your ass.

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One Hundred Years From Today

Posted on 10/01/2024 by Grumpa Joe

One of my favorite things to consider is what the world will look like in a hundred years I would love to live long enough to see it for myself. Of course, I’m only a few years away from what a hundred-year picture will look like for me. If the next hundred years of change are like the past, the picture will be one none of us can recognize. What is more challenging to fathom is what it would look like if we went backward in time instead of forward. I won’t go there, but I will move forward.

Today, my solar panels are covered in snow, and it got me thinking about what will happen in the future when we have successfully electrified the country and a snowstorm stops us from getting electricity. I must have seen a magazine or something that prompted me to see the Indianapolis 500 car race, and I asked myself what that would look like when gasoline is no longer the energy source for cars.

Some things came to mind immediately:

1. The race starter will no longer be able to begin the race with “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

2. The race would be silent or maybe just whiny.

3. Pit stops may take eight hours to get a fresh charge.

4. There will not be any competition between automakers for the best engine.

5. Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler will be replaced by who knows what.

6. There will not be anymore fiery crashes.

7. There will not be any gears to shift to

8. No more spilled gas in the pits.

9. Battery explosions and fires will predominate.

10. Drivers may be replaced by AI Robotic driverless cars.

11. Races may be limited to: One lap, a few laps, or the most laps in the least amount of time

The entire car racing industry will evolve into something we won’t be able to envision. All forms of racing will be affected: Twenty-four hours of LeMans, Baja 500, Daytona 500, Nascar Series, Drag racing, you name it, and it will be different. Some forms of car racing will cease to exist, but man’s ingenuity will drive them to invent new ways to compete using electricity.

As I thought about one of the biggest impediments to electric cars, which is a source of charging stations for power, the name of Henry Ford came to mind. How did Ford overcome the impediment of not having gas stations and roads? He didn’t solve the problem; he only fostered it by selling more cars. Early drivers found gasoline in local drug stores. It was being sold as a spot remover. Then, it progressed to gasoline entrepreneurs who sold gasoline in bulk from tanks outside cities. Car owners filled buckets and cans to take home. From there, it progressed to the formation of gas stations and eventually evolved into the modern filling stations of today. Gasoline was already known as a fuel for internal combustion engines, and it was up to the car buyer to figure out how to get gas. They bought the car and then figured it out. This sounds like what we see today. People are buying electric cars and worrying about getting electricity as somebody else’s problem. As long as they can plug in at home, they are okay. Traveling long distances is still a problem, but slowly, it is evolving into an industry. Until charging stations become commonplace like gas stations are, we will keep using electric cars within 50 miles of home. It worked for Henry, and it will probably work for Elon too.

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Monday Morning Coming Down

Posted on 27/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Yesterday, I had an exchange of wits with an Artificial Intelligence bot. The internet connection of my computer was lost, and I didn’t have a clue as to how to fix it. I didn’t even have a phone number to call. Usually, I go to a company’s website for information or a friendly phone number. With the Internet out, I couldn’t get help. All day long, I pondered how I would live without the connection. The funny thing was, I still got TV and streaming services. In desperation, I looked through my ancient card files, hoping to find a number. I did. I called and got an AI bot. The bot was useless because it was programmed to answer only precise questions, like, “Do you wish to add services?” I began shouting into the phone with my question, using different words each time. I hoped it would recognize a word and connect me to a real, live human being. After many tries, the Bot asked if I would like to speak to an agent, “YES,” I replied. After a few moments on hold, I listened to several phone clicks and finally a voice. The agent was the same damned bot as before. I answered more stupid canned questions, and finally, the bot asked, “Do you want to speak to an agent?” This time, a real live person came on, and we made some progress.

After checking the status of my area for outages, she checked the lines in the house. Everything was in order. “Try resetting your modem, and I will call back in ten minutes.” I did as asked and she actually called me back. “Any change?” She asked.

“No,” was my answer. “Try turning off your device (computer) for thirty seconds and then turn it back on.” I did what was asked. The computer came back online, but the internet was not working. As I reached for the computer, to rip it out of the wall, the internet began responding. “Thank you Lord.”

I was so glad to have the thing working again that I forgot how angry the experience made me. Then, I began thinking about how to make this problem-solving more productive. First of all, I am an actual live human, and I started the whole fiasco by speaking to a numb-nuts non-human bot. I realized we don’t speak the same language. What I need is a bot to talk to the bot for me. I’ll spend the whole day looking for a bot that knows and understands AI and can intervene on my behalf anytime a provider insists on making me communicate that way. I will give the AI bots one thing: they speak English, but, more importantly, they speak without an accent, and they speak slowly enough to be understood.

It is time for me to go to the AI bot store to find my new assistant.

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A Late Start

Posted on 05/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

During my college days, I studied to become an engineer. The entire curriculum was steeped in math. One subject, in particular, used excessive mathematics, and that was Physics. The subject was so large that it was broken into three parts, each one semester long. My interest was in mechanics, and I was adept at the math involved in solving problems involving mechanical machines. I began to lose it when we reached nuclear physics, especially astronomy. Atomic physics was still on the cusp of discovery and development, so I wrote it off as something I could blow off because I would never use the knowledge to make a living, which was wrong. One project we worked on was developing a cable tie for nuclear power plants, specifically in the reactor exposed to heavy radiation.

Dresden Nuclear Power Plant 1960, Illinois

Somehow, I managed to eke my way through those subjects with a passing grade. In the above-mentioned radiation-resistant product, we designed and produced a successful cable tie and had it certified by the nuclear power industry. We invented and conducted a series of tests on our product to prove its efficacy in the reactor. It took two years and a lot of effort to do this. Then our competitors came along and talked the approvers into approving their products merely by showing they used the same material as we did. Thank you, Uncle Sam, for stealing our work and giving it to all of our competition.

What I find strange is that throughout my career, I used every bit of knowledge taught in my engineering courses. Whenever I counseled high school kids about engineering, I emphasized the importance of studying every course being taught in their syllabus because somewhere along the way, they will be called upon to use all—that useless stuff they were forced to learn. Even today, I am amazed that conversing with friends and peers helps to have a deep knowledge base. Except that I am deficient in atomic physics and astronomy. To offset this deficiency, I am now, at a ripe old age, finding intense interest in all things space. The Hubble and Webb telescopes have allowed astrologists to learn more about the nature of the universe in twenty years than man has known since the beginning of time. Remember when the argument was about the Earth being the center of the universe?

!960’s telescopic photo of Mars

I have read many articles about the universe and learned I am sixty years behind in the terminology. The space age and our drive to put a man on the moon have forced us to invent new terms and ways to express time and distance units. I left school at a time when the term “Light Year” was little used. Since then, physics has expanded the study to include the universe beyond our solar system, and the distances between stars and planets are so huge that even Light Year is too small to express the distances between stars and galaxies. An example is the unit AU, or Astronomical Unit, which defines the distance between the sun and the planets of our solar system. The AU of Earth is one. The AU of planets closer to the sun is smaller, and those beyond Earth are larger. It is easier to say or write the Earth is 1 AU away from the Sun than the Earth is 93,000,000(million) miles from the Sun. Another example of the system’s simplicity is that planet Neptune is 30 AU from the Sun instead of having to write Neptune is 2,795,580,000(billion) miles from the Sun.

Every day, I use a GPS in my car to locate and navigate to places I want to get to. Imagine traveling into space in a rocket ship, and you are flying above the Earth’s GPS. One needs a new and more expansive way to navigate. Modern space travel has already invented the system but relies on heady technology to make things happen. Remember when Columbus and Magellan traveled by boat to explore the vast, unknown expanse of planet Earth? You can’t follow the coastline like they did when you were exploring the universe. I wish I were young enough to start from scratch to learn all the new stuff I would need to explore and find new civilizations around space.

Although I like studying astronomy, I am still trying to understand the new language I must learn. I know I became obsolete as an engineer when I became a manager, and I never became proficient in using a computer to design products. I am from the pencil and paper age. However, I can still free-hand draw a three-D product as well as anyone using a computer. I can’t translate the geometry into machine tool instructions into a Numerical Controlled machine tool to cut a mold cavity like a computer-generated geometric model can. Imagine my degree of obsolescence in astronomy, where it is a struggle to become conversant.

Where will we be one hundred years from now?

Exploring new planets?

Living on a colony on Mars or the moon?

Trying to get the Muslims to accept the Jews?

Learning how to live off the grid after destroying the planet and mankind?

Living in underwater cocoons and eating seaweed because man forced the polar ice caps to melt.

James Webb Space Telescope
James Webb first image

James Webb-2022 Mars

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