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Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

theguardian.com

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Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#41

Post by CrzyLngPwd »

elmomle wrote: post #31
maest wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just a front for funnelling income tax from the poor to the rich, I don't know about all the other accusations you make, but this one is pretty off the mark, considering this has been the most unpopular government amongst the rich in a while. I mean, it's Labour, what did you expect?

Yeah, parent post to yours is sensationalist astroturf garbage. Russian troll accounts call Zelenskyy a NarcoFührer.

Odd that you know what zelensky is called by the russians, are you a russian troll?

Anyway, troll, I'm sure the russians care about the UK pothole situation.

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#43

Post by devonkelley »

parliament32 wrote: post #4

The US is no different. All the deals seem to make sense until you take a step back and realize it's just a bunch of circular investments. This bubble bursting is going to be orders of magnitude funnier than the NFT/web3 implosion, I can't wait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_bubble

[dead]

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#44

Post by Traster »

Given that the UK is structurally uncompetitive in industry because of extremely high energy costs, it would seem crazy to me to build a data centre here. Even if we did build plenty of data centres here, it's simply not a driver of employment. We used to have shops. Shops employed lots of people. Then we moved to out of town shopping centres, which were cheaper and employed fewer people. Then we moved to online food delivery which was more efficient and employed even fewer people. Now we're moving to data centres which are enormous and employ practically no one. You can inflate the numbers by 10x or 100x or 1000x but you're simply not going to get numbers comparable to a car production line or anything that's actually a big driver of employment.

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#45

Post by robotswantdata »

varispeed wrote: post #34
mrwh wrote: post #8

The UK has been chronically bad at providing jobs and training for its young people. I saw that 20 years ago when I was there. That is a key reason, perhaps the primary reason, for its long term productivity malaise. And the response is to lean into a technology that will make this situation profoundly worse? It's another lazy quick fix that is neither quick nor a real fix. The UK needs to invest in its people, not f…

Training is one thing, but wage compression is another. Why study for many years, miss out on life if you can get warehouse job with little training and you won't be meaningfully worse off? You get smaller flat, less organic food and a car few years older than your engineer peer. These talks about productivity always miss the elephant in the room - why people bother to show up in the first place? It's the money. If t…

Even if you get paid well, the tax cliff at 100k-170k where it makes sense not to work and reject promotions to be eligible for childcare is outrageously stupid.

UK is finished

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#46

Post by mmarian »

mrwh wrote: post #8

The UK has been chronically bad at providing jobs and training for its young people. I saw that 20 years ago when I was there. That is a key reason, perhaps the primary reason, for its long term productivity malaise. And the response is to lean into a technology that will make this situation profoundly worse? It's another lazy quick fix that is neither quick nor a real fix. The UK needs to invest in its people, not f…

I'm curious which countries you think are best at this?

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#47

Post by davnicwil »

varispeed wrote: post #36
slavoingilizov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has 3 of the top 10 universities in the world: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin... It's a talent pool that many big employers want to tap into across a range of skills and industries. Cambridge is the best place to do bio-science and research. That is largely because the UK provides training and opportunities to its young people. "I saw that 20 years go" is one data point that ignor…

These rankings are meaningless. If you actually studied in the UK, you'd notice a massive change in the last 5 years. Universities do not teach anymore (perhaps with a few exceptions), they are facilitating visas for foreign students without any expectation they'll be learning anything and nobody cares. They pass the exams barely attending any lectures. Everyone is happy, except home students who get massive debt and…

To push back on this, I actually don't think the real role of a university is to teach, per se.

The real role they play is something very different to everything that comes before in education, and a bit closer to everything in the world that will ideally come after: immersion in your field of choice in an environment full of curious peers who are variously a few steps ahead of you, all the way up to world class experts in the field doing research.

Parts of your interactions there may include being actively taught relevant things, but the more important goal is to let you explore this environment and the material (yes, with a bit of structure) and in doing so figure out how to learn on your own.

You absolutely should be able to get a degree with top marks without attending a single lecture, seminar, lab, whatever, just by reading the material and interacting with those around you less formally, and never being actively 'taught' anything.

Many in fact do something approaching this, particularly in the later years of a degree.

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#48

Post by m4rtink »

pu_pe wrote: post #29

European AI investment plans are always so timid. This article mentions a couple of investments on the order of $1.5-2.5 billion USD that their government says "would position the UK as a world leader in AI". Hard to imagine you can be a world leader in anything when investing two orders of magnitude less than your competitors.

Maybe this is just what realistic and maybe even sustainable AI investment looks like.

Compared to the fever dreams playing out in the US.

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#49

Post by dsf2 »

varispeed wrote: post #34
mrwh wrote: post #8

The UK has been chronically bad at providing jobs and training for its young people. I saw that 20 years ago when I was there. That is a key reason, perhaps the primary reason, for its long term productivity malaise. And the response is to lean into a technology that will make this situation profoundly worse? It's another lazy quick fix that is neither quick nor a real fix. The UK needs to invest in its people, not f…

Training is one thing, but wage compression is another. Why study for many years, miss out on life if you can get warehouse job with little training and you won't be meaningfully worse off? You get smaller flat, less organic food and a car few years older than your engineer peer. These talks about productivity always miss the elephant in the room - why people bother to show up in the first place? It's the money. If t…

Ah yes, now we are getting to the heart of the issue.

Universities as they exist are not fit for the year 2026. THe year 1990? Yes, absolutely! The world has changed massively since then. It is less attractive to sacrifice years of earnings - which bring much greater experiences than what you get at uni + debt repayments of student loans to finance tuition fee's which have grown sharply from 3k/year to 9k/year and so on.

Re: Revealed: UK's multibillion AI drive is built on 'phantom investments'

#50

Post by dsf2 »

davnicwil wrote: post #47
varispeed wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rankings are meaningless. If you actually studied in the UK, you'd notice a massive change in the last 5 years. Universities do not teach anymore (perhaps with a few exceptions), they are facilitating visas for foreign students without any expectation they'll be learning anything and nobody cares. They pass the exams barely attending any lectures. Everyone is happy, except home students who get massive debt and…

To push back on this, I actually don't think the real role of a university is to teach, per se. The real role they play is something very different to everything that comes before in education, and a bit closer to everything in the world that will ideally come after: immersion in your field of choice in an environment full of curious peers who are variously a few steps ahead of you, all the way up to world class expe…

Not everyone wants this though.

"You absolutely should be able to get a degree with top marks without attending a single lecture, seminar, lab, whatever, just by reading the material and interacting with those around you less formally, and never being actively 'taught' anything."

So people should pay 9k a year to get a glorified piece of paper, when they essentially have taught themselves?

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