There's been a claim made over at least the past couple of years by all manner of sources that vast swathes of the working-age UK population have exited the workforce because long-term illness has apparently rendered them incapable of work. Whilst there have been exceptions, the version of the explanation for this that seems to … Continue reading Are vast numbers of Britons really exiting the workforce due to long term sickness?
Category: In the news
Most Britons favour legalising assisted dying, irrespective of political affiliation
Today sees the big vote by our British Parliamentarians on introducing a law to allow for assisted dying taking place. There have been strong views espoused in both directions from the politicians, oftentimes transcedning party lines. Curious coalitions have formed, not least the the one between Diane Abbot and Edward Leigh who penned a joint … Continue reading Most Britons favour legalising assisted dying, irrespective of political affiliation
Today’s young Britons really seem to dislike the Conservative party
Following the surprise, albeit much needed, announcement of a UK general election, I've not been able to resist hoovering up any and all available data on the political dynamics of the situation. In terms of voting intentions, it's a vastly different situation to any seen within the last quarter of a century or so. Labour … Continue reading Today’s young Britons really seem to dislike the Conservative party
Using ChatGPT’s Data Analysis bot to analyse your data
One less widely known feature of OpenAI's large language model chatbot, ChatGPT, is that if you become a paying subscriber then you can create your own bots that are attuned to be good at doing specific types of task. OpenAI also provides you with a few examples that they created, which include the one I'm … Continue reading Using ChatGPT’s Data Analysis bot to analyse your data
The ongoing battle between human creators and AI trainers
In order for the current generation of generative AI tools - large language model chatbots, art generators et al - to work they must first undergo an extensive training process whereby they are fed a huge number of examples of the sort of content they will be later expected to produce. Per Wikipedia, the basic … Continue reading The ongoing battle between human creators and AI trainers
Does protesting work?
There's been a lot of news about political protests recently in the UK, and some rather unsavoury efforts by the government to stop particular instances of them happening. Outside of the UK recent years have seen some very high profile such protests. 2020 saw the Black Lives Matter related protests after the killing of George … Continue reading Does protesting work?
The differences between what Twitter users say they do and what they actually do
I always enjoy studies comparing what people say they do to what they actually do. Most of us are often pretty uninsightful, oftentimes systematically so, in terms of knowing what we did, or at least what we're prepared to tell someone else we did. Probably both. Of course since the time we decided everything should … Continue reading The differences between what Twitter users say they do and what they actually do
Is British gas and oil really 4x as good for the environment as imported fuel?
The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, recently declared that he's going to enable a huge expansion of North Sea gas and oil extraction. There is a lot to criticise about this plan to say the least. But here I will endeavor to restrict myself to digging into one of his more surprising claims about this … Continue reading Is British gas and oil really 4x as good for the environment as imported fuel?
The risks of using generative AI when writing code
I've been nearly as fixated as much of the rest of the online world is with artificial intelligence over the last few months. Particularly the large language models (LLMs) out there, ChatGPT being the most famous example. Whilst the hype seems to be dying down a little - it's been a while since I've seen … Continue reading The risks of using generative AI when writing code
Are AIs developing unpredictable new abilities, or are we just measuring them badly?
One of the things that make people nervous, awestruck, or both about the development and release of recent AI models is the prospect of them developing "emergent abilities". The terminology here can be complicated. Different people mean different things by "emergent abilities". Here in the context of large language models (LLMs), we're talking about the … Continue reading Are AIs developing unpredictable new abilities, or are we just measuring them badly?
Dabbling with Data 