… the KAA CASE … at MARRAKECH

… dématérialisation ou déshumanisation ?? …

? quid de l’IA et du GPT?? ... a storm in a tea cup ?

Par Henri-Pierre GUILLERME / à Guizeh

édité sur LinkedIn le 29 Juin 2024

Addendum : 16 Janvier 2025

?

Préambule?:

Ceci n’est pas un ??contenu?commercial ?, mais plut?t une sorte de nouvelle, inspirée par un développement technologique ayant un impact social indiscutable … et international. Ce mouvement important n’est pas sans conséquences pour notre jeunesse ...

Commentaire écrit par un citoyen lambda, géographiquement très éloigné de la France, et non professionnel de l’édition. Neutre.

Ce texte n’est en aucun cas un jugement. Il révèle le plus souvent un questionnement …

Le sujet impose un texte en langue anglaise. En effet, l’auteur veut éviter le ressenti inconfortable à la lecture d’un texte en fran?ais truffé d’anglicismes, hélas ??fashionable?? dans beaucoup de texte sur ce site et autres réseaux dits sociaux. Associé à l’écriture inclusive, le résultat est trop souvent un gloubi-bulga, s?rement délicieux pour certains, mais pour eux seuls. Désolé si l’anglais ci-dessous n’est pas oxfordien?!

Merci d’enclencher le second degré pour certains passages accidentellement … urticants …

?+???? +???? +

?

Sitting on a terrasse at the Grand Café de la Poste, the Old Man sips a sha? bi nahna. Protected from the sun of June by the shade of a vibrant palm, he reads a Michael Connelly’s novel (a Lincoln Lawyer’s and Harry Bosch’s investigation) and takes a look, from time to time at the random flows of the crowd around this popular and strategic crossroads of the “red city” center.

?“There is an amazing mix of garments in here” the Old Man thinks out loud, “you see an obviously local gentleman wearing an ultra-white and well starched Emirati dishdasha, followed by a black young lady dressed as if she were on the walk at Venice beach a hot Saturday afternoon at the end of June ...”

?“… and not only that, Old Man, look at this couple, a yellow toupéed sexagenarian Italian with a local mignon disguised like Pepe, a clown at the Cirque du Soleil show”

?“Andrea ! what a surprise ! Long time no see, …”

“Yeah, man, I’ve been here for a while, I seat more often on this terrasse than you do yourself my friend …”

“Well, you’re probably right, as usual, Mr. The journalist”

Andrea drags a wrought iron chair and seats next to his old friend. And the two to dig up shared memories of Bilboa, Kuala Lumpur or Cairo, and of other places where their respective path bring them on the same spot at the same time. It’s not rare true nomads’ roads cross unexpectedly.?

?“… what do you do down here Andrea, work ? …”

“Yes, right now I freelance for Krònika. I follow the program “the best of Morocco – 12 days tour package”, they want a paper with photos for the end of June. We have a two-days stay in this old-new city. I take a day off. A while ago I covered a stunning YSL/ Anthoni Vaccarello fashion show in the nearby desert.”

“Er, … very exciting ! – gentle but teasing laugh -, for sure you enjoyed exotic encountering, young man ?“

“And you Old Chap, what bring you at the Café de la Poste ? ”

“I guess I had a need to exit from my breathing bubble, you know I live in a polluted city, natural pollution and human being pollution added up … twenty two millions inhabitants, my friend! that’s a lot of sh..t you know. From time to time, I move to a sea side, hot or cool, to cleanse my bronchi. So, I have a stop in Marraksh’ for a couple of days prior to head up to the Atlantic coast … Mogador! ... Er, sorry you are a Romanian, not a Portuguese.”

“Always the same jokes Old Man! but I know you, beside a search for fresh air to purge your old lungs, I guess you concoct something, no?”

“Yes, I write a paper about the on going administrative, banking and commercial dematerialization.”

“Guess what, I am on a study about AI and ChatGPT, … or Chat with Generative Pre-trained Transformer, clear enough, no ?”

“The subjects of our respective papers are close, my approach is the ordinary user manipulation, though. – laughing-”

“Mine is who is able, who get a professional or personal benefit to use AI and ChatGPT, and for what purpose”.

?

An amiable looking and stylish waitress brings two cups of house made ice cream, and side cold water in two misted glasses.

After a dry “Your orders gentlemen, enjoy” she turns right away without expecting a response.

“A busy bee !”

“Yep, of the nice but freezing kind … …”

On that deep thought they both start eating their fresh vanilla ice creams amid the hubbub of the surrounding crowd. Said flock getting more numerous yet, with the sun setting faster and faster.

?Between two spoons of the deliciously tasty ice cream :

“Ha ! you read Michael Connelly ! this American champion of the police investigation literature, of your time Old Thing, of your time. ?I like it too, but I’ve not much time to read. Right now, I ought to write instead. Business is business.”

“Poor of you, Andrea … You can’t refrain yourself to highlight my age! one day, you’ll have this age, though … … er, perhaps.”

“I’m sure you have another book in your bag !”

“Yes, you have a good memory”. And the Old Man to show him Orient et Occident written by René Guenon.

“You’re always exploring the western / eastern cultural bridges and ramparts, aren’t you ?”

“You know my links with the MENA region, I feel good in north Africa, it may hurt some, but honestly, I don’t give a dam.”

A local old lady in a traditional rural black dressing with a dark blue tattoo on her forehead and chin, passes her hand through the potted vegetation to beg money in a long sentence, in Berber most likely.

“What she says ?”.

“She probably recites a prayer, to seek God’s mercy for ourselves, for our parents, …”. The Old Man answers in giving the woman a local green 50 note.

“It’s said that a beggar spot on a cross street like this one costs a huge amount of monies to the tenant. Likewise everywhere with a significant flow of tourists, begging is an industry in this city”.

A couple of calèches with Scandinavian holiday-makers wait at the traffic light. Scooters and mopeds queue on either side of the carriages. The sun light is now horizontal and cast amazing shadows of people, of urban posts, monuments and trees. The two guys are contemplative. They are both photographers. They are both voyeurs of sort.

?... ...

“Please Old Thing, could you tell me a little about the dematerialization?”

?“Well, I’ve lived, as a user, the birth and growth of the computer era. As soon as 1970 I was using tapes (cartridges) on a Hewlett Packard (HP) main system, then perforated IBM cards for IBM main system (International Business Machine Corporation). I remember to have used CP/M 86. This was before IBM choses MS-DOS (86). Long ago, end of the 70s beginning of the 80s.??

???Ha, what about Windows????

???Windows was not born yet. All commands were by text (through CP/M and/or DOS). It was the beginning of something great: the birth of popular desktop computers.? I remind you the “transistor?? was born few weeks after my own birth. It had the size of a big dice … the transistor radio became popular in the mid 60s., no more tube radio”. The change is comparable to the shift from huge and heavy CRT (cathode ray tube) to the TFT (Thin Film Transistor) flat screen.

?“What about the laptops ? “

?“I bought one of the first so called “portable IBM computer” (1986, 87 ?) : the size of a large portable sewing machine, ?13 kg, a small monochrome CRT screen, two drives for ‘floppy disks’ … 720 to 1,200k storage capacity, each disk. No, it was definitely not a laptop … a shoulder breaker instead.”

?“Ok, my MacBook Pro weights 1.6kg … … forty years later, though. This isn’t a dematerialization per se, it’s a reduction of the material size.”

“Yes, and simultaneously, the power of the machine is inversely proportional to its size and weight. Your MacBook or mine, are replacing without canceling, my note pad, my biro, and the associated stamped mail envelope. In that, paper, pen, envelope, stamp and post office as well are dematerialized.”

“You’re right, that’s the very beginning of dematerialization. This humble machine has replaced in the early 90s and all together: the type writer, the pocket calculator, the fax machine, with ease, in an insidious manner with the appearance of a very natural turn. The bureaucrats enjoyed their newly computerized office Swiss knifes. Fumes of satisfaction and even of proud in the cubicles !”

“Didn’t Apple develop the in house wired networks ?”

“Oh yes : I witnessed the installation of the wired intranet of the Disney Imagineering team in their open space in Marne-la-Vallée in 1990, I guess, I saw it at a larger scale in Glendale. This was my first touch with a “local network” (intranet). Whilst I was using a Minitel (at home and in France only, naturlich), two years later I was on AoL, America on Line, it was not wireless but plugged in the telephone wire network of the time. Internet, inter-network. World Wide Web was born for public. Today, my laptop is my library with external dematerialized links toward book sellers and embarked book shelves. It’s my books as well, books that I open and scroll with a touch pad and read on a screen. I can adjust, in hitting keys, the size of the pages, size of the letters, chose a typography, fix the light and colors … Mon Premier Larousse en Couleurs (1956 ?) is definitively passé. Likewise my Minitel."

“You were a pioneer, very exciting shift !”

“Young people ignore that they have at their disposal 24/24 and 7/7 on their laps a sum of equipment we were using to do not even half of what they can do today, e.i. :

- Type writer (with white sheets of paper in the A4 format and for the most ancient sheets of carbon paper) - Filing cabinets.

- Envelopes (office, postal).

- Post office.

- Photo camera with 24x36 film rolls.

- Super 8 movie camera, then video camera.

- Photo/film process laboratory.

- Movie editing. (view, cut, arrange, fit and glue, press, …)

- Super 8 movie projector and beaded screen.

- Photos storage and saving, including filing boxes and albums.

- Slide projector (I remember the Kodak’s automatic machine with a ‘barel’, at the end of it, before it disappeared.

- Music player, tuner, turn table, tape recorder, hi-fi equipment, loud speakers, ear phones, magnetic tape, audio cassettes, disks (vinyls and CDs), and very first memory cards (early 2000 ?). Shelves and racks to store 45 and 33 rpm records, tapes, cassettes, CDs, video tapes, …

- Specialized shops to buy all these pieces of equipment, to allow their maintenance, to buy consumables (rolls, super 8 reels, glue, etc., cables of all kind, fittings, etc.)

- Play station with associated cassettes and disks.

- Poker and chess games with true cards and true board and pieces.

- A TV set with its antenna, dishes, modems …

- Land line telephone, fax machine,

- Paper spreadsheets (… B4, B3, …) (… A4, 43 …)

- Desk top electric calculator, slide rule, pocket calculator (proto electronic calculator) - Etc., etc., …

“The first visible effects of the dematerializing computer was the progressive vanishing of the matrix printers, they were replaced by pool laser printers. Also, rows of drawers file cabinets and office cabinets gradually disappeared. Progressively we saw the blooming of the “IT Departments” in most of the major companies. Dematerialization of the open spaces was actually a transfer of a materiality of sort toward IT rooms, another obvious materiality of huge and expensive equipment, managed by teams of IT engineers. But at that time the term dematerialization was not yet fashionable.”

“Do you think this dematerialization applies in offices only ?”

“Of course not. Even if nowadays this is obvious in the administration or with the banks for instance, it shows in the industry also : robots are everywhere. And you give me the opportunity for a digression my dear Andrea (umpteenth laughter). Dematerialization is possible where robots can replace the human being in producing an effort, like voice writing, spell and grammar check, performing complex calculation with a robot spreadsheet, drawing with details of a sophisticated chemical plant, a turbine or a moon rover (Auto Cad, BIM, …). Wood and plastic scale models are no longer popular. When I was at school in the 60s of the 20th century, I was trained in operating turning machine, milling machine, shaper, etc. Most were French and German made machine-tools. I visited recently the workshop where I was taught and trained fifty years ago. It does not look any longer like a “workshop” of the middle of the 20th century, but mostly like a laboratory with closed encased machines, a US brand, with a side console loaded with key board and screen replacing wrenches and other peculiars tools, handwheels and hand cranks, Vernier caliper, needle tip dial indicator and so on. Imagine I replace a fx-9860 Casio calculator, in a post graduate engineer’s hands by my neperlog slide rule of 1965 ! (The first Texas Instrument “pocket” calculator was not yet on the european market.)”

“We use the term dematerialization but shouldn’t we use the term dehumanization? What was made by human beings is progressively sub-contracted by human beings to automates, to robots?”

“Yes, in the name of the reason (what reason ?) we consider the effort is inhuman … non-human … is that a return to slavery ? with nowadays automates slaves ? robots slaves ? slaves meaning in this case soulless vassals of sort. The ideal slavery or illusion of … ? the main characteristic of the machines slaves is their need in energy to function, oil and gas, electricity … one example is the driverless car, driverless train. Yes, the human driver is no longer required, but the robot requires a prerequisite environment, ground signaling and multiples landmarks. Such a car can’t circulate in a Jakarta’s suburb, or in the Great Eastern Sand Sea … so far dehumanization faces limits. The human or animal force, human or animal energy, is replaced, right now, by energies of fossil origin; they are not renewable and their combustion generates a lot of CO2.”

“You’re right, look, kitchen food processors, air fryers, and the like are progressively populating most of our homes sweet homes, wherever ! Moreover, a smartphone or an iPhone is now featured with Siri for instance: you don’t even use your fingers to hit a screen pad, you say a word or words to your robot. And the robot does a search in your files to find a telephone number, a typical case, and calls this number without any additional action of your own. For most westerners this is now as ordinary as to drink a glass of water. Though, the issue could be the crossing of two curves : the one of the always progressing sales of smartphones, all over the word, and the insidious and irreversible (?) reduction of the availability of drinkable water, world while.”

“To come back to AI is there not a confusion between two terms: Intelligence and Memory? I’ve questioned myself for years about this dilemma. The scientists have named the accumulation and storage of data under the term ‘memory’ (memory stick, cache memory, RAM and ROM, etc.). Nowadays we have data farms’, e.g. huge data barns, consisting in (hiden ?) giant warehouses, hosting hundreds (thousands ?) of terminals set on kilometers of multistorey shelves, thousands of kilometers of cables and optic fibers are connecting terminals together … … … Those warehouses are like super giant libraries with no librarian, not one single book inside, but invisible ‘data’ running at light speed through fiber glass cables and chips the size of a nail and stored in so called data banks. No book but a fragile gathering of sensitive equipment in cooled spaces of thousands of cubic meters. Such a space “contains” electronically stored digital data, a mass of knowledge, a mass of documents, official or not, personal or not, altogether. This mass of knowledge and trivial documentation must be protected. The warehouses are equipped with sophisticated firefighting system using nitrogen (no water!). They are air conditioned, because all these ions rushing through cables and chips are producing hell of calories. Beside the warehouse there is another one, smaller, with the power control system: such data storage farms require an enormous quantity of electric power for data treatment and storage, HVAC, Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) system. Next to the power house are diesel emergency power generators shelter and their associated diesel tanks … These farms or data centers are becoming the Achilles’ tendon of the system, hence they must be intrusion proof, even attack proof … and more? Backup systems are mandatory, factoring then the size of the installation together with the quantity of required energy and the safety/security disposals. Is this dematerialization? really? Is this just a continuous attempt to dehumanize a sector of human activities under the pretext to alleviate the effort of human beings? … or to reduce (suppress) human resources’ cost, in transferring the cost of a human working force toward a benefit for blind non-working force whose only effort is to invest into “much more productive” because tireless, 24/24, 365/365 robots ?"

“… Those data centers, what are they, eventually? marshalling yards and storage barns all together?” Andrea asks.

“My quest, Andrea, is also to understand where are ‘safely stored’ the data regarding my bank account? Where are stored the data regarding my salary and associated retirement information, social security, insurance information, even my incomes taxes, my medical files?… where are all my personal data ? No books, no prints, bits, digital binary system instead, totally dematerialized, totally abstractive, invisible … have confidence. This is about the gigantic robots called data centers. Now what about the one and/or those managing the setup of such data centers, from study of needs, from FEED to start-up? And more over who own, manage and control the plants? Isn’t it tantalizing to use such tremendous stocks of information for, say, commercial purpose? Political influence? Geopolitical strategic maneuvers? Or largescale scams, eventually? Yes “be confident” (Kaa).”

“Yes, a nice title for a dedicated paper ‘the Kaa Case’ ! ”

“This case of data farms, down stream the computers what ever their size and usage, just shows that the dematerialization does not exist : it’s a commonplace exchange of one set of spread materiality to another one set of highly concentrated materiality. No computer (whatever), no data farms = no cloud ! In other words, there is no immaterial angels seating on a cloud and miraculously managing and protecting your individual information, or collective data, scientific, technical, artistical, financial, medical and so on. Such wizard does not exist. It exists solid down on earth setups of concrete, steel and plastic components, with solid electronic boxes inside, linked with solid cables and fiberoptic and managed by very, very, very true human beings, like you and me … er … almost.”

“Yes, you’re right, the largest of the data center is, no surprise, in China (18% of the world population) the second largest economical power, close to the first and with a huge gap with those following (Japan and Germany four times below)”.

“Let’s come back to the dematerialization, or dehumanization if you prefer, in a concrete example. Let’s consider France which proudly pretends to be the spearhead of administrative dematerialization. In this country finance have paved the way: banks, insurance companies, state fiscal management and control, day to day administration, etc. What was mail order selling has exploded under the form of internet selling. Names as Alibaba (China) and Amazon (US) have worldwide crushed a lot of local merchants or forced them to go through their flow lines. Giant warehouses are completing giant data centers they are connected too. China is already experimenting gigantic automated warehouses. Dito the USA. (see notes bellow)

Notes - source Wikipedia :

?Amazon.com, Inc.?is an American?multinational?technology?company?which focuses on?e-commerce,?cloud computing, and?digital streaming. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world",?and is one of the?world's most valuable brands. (founded by the American ?Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994)

?Alibaba Groupe Holding Limited, or Alibaba, Chinese:?阿里巴巴 ??is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet and technology. Founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via Chinese and global marketplaces, as well as local consumer, digital media and entertainment, logistics and cloud computing services. It owns and operates a diverse portfolio of companies around the world in numerous business sectors. /…/

As of 2022, Alibaba has the ninth-highest global?brand valuation. /…/

Alibaba is one of the world's?largest retailers and e-commerce companies. In 2020, it was also rated as the fifth-largest?artificial intelligence?company. /…/https://www.geekplus.com/fr/?utm_term=autonomous%20robots%20in%20warehouses&utm_campaign=FR&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=6302929780&hsa_cam=14585325256&hsa_grp=122117436690&hsa_ad=544705313453&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-629234711208&hsa_kw=autonomous%20robots%20in%20warehouses&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAjw_aemBhBLEiwAT98FMpyRkDaR_mZ7t3f8i6V7VBx8cbLyrq_LJ_xoLFJ6i4u_n3agl1XnxxoCR-MQAvD_BwE

?

"Yes man, but don’t you think, there are valuable ends in these developments?”

“Let’s come back to my quest, Andrea : what’s the benefit for a common person in their day to day life ?”

?“I see many for my part. Look, sitting here with you I can search a flight to Glasgow for tomorrow morning, book it, ditto the taxi and hotel room at destination.”

?“Yes, but tonight your are compelled to change your plan, what will happen for your flight only ? You’ll most probably manage to do it, but it will be costly and time consuming. The benefit in controlling our voyages weeks ahead is undeniable, I reckon. But what I mean Andrea, is that the way most traders proceed is always at their advantage. The customer is a milking cow. Firstly, the customer is neither a trading expert, nor a computer user expert. ?Secondly the customer has nobody to discuss with. If your luggage is not showing up at the baggage carousel, firstly you wait until the very last parcel slowly pass you for the third time. Then you go to the company’s baggage claim desk. It’s 10:30pm. You have nobody to talk to but, yet an empty desk with a screen and a key board ‘at your disposal’. Be confident. You are lucky enough, end of the story the day after. You are unlucky: your real and material luggage is lost, so you have to claim on to a dematerialized organization. Once you have paid for something you must keep your fingers crossed, and be confident.”

?“Please, old boy, do not generalize, billions of transactions work well. Please admit it !”

“That the point Andrea : statistics tell you it’s good, and one can guess that if it works well for 80% of the purpose everybody applauds. Mr. Pareto explained us that 80% of the problems gathered in 20% of the situations. So far I have personally been flying in the worry free 80% for most of my life.”

“Yes, I get your point : nowadays better to be an ordinary person right out of the mold. In theory you and I are a bit different, aren’t we ? About dehumanization are we witnessing a dehumanization of the human being self? …”

“I’m afraid yes Andrea. It seems the medical elite tend to compete in prolonging life, by all means. And I just wonder if some aren’t, in all good faith, crossing the border of ethic. (see note bellow).”?

Note - source Wikipedia :

Here is an excerpt of the Hippocratic Oath,?Translation by W.H.S. Jones.

“Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.

Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.[5]?–

Isn’t the Hippocratic Oath self explanatory ? One can feel some elite have an extended understanding of this Oath and are very convinced they have “been created at God’s image”, cloned to a certain extend …”

“What’s the relation ?”

“To assist some skeleton related disabling, or accident victims, to assist in physiotherapy, our engineers have invented very efficient exoskeletons. Somme application goes to handling workers with exoharness. The external device is an external reinforcement of the body and provides additional power assistance. Like an actuated tool.”

“This is a remarkable paramedical invention. How does it work ?”

“The machine is featured with numerous sensors and they are calibrated to react and activate mini motors accordingly. So the arm muscular effort is assisted and amplified by an external machine which, simultaneously, by its shape and strength reinforces the whole skeleton and avoid unbalance and damageable effort in other part of the body.”

“I understand the interest of such a machine. Beside the cost which probably can’t make it popular, I do not make the link with robots.”

“Let me come to it Andrea. In the mid time neurologists are working with engineers in creating chips small enough to be placed into a human’s brain. The aim is to take over chemical cure, to replace them by electro impulses which are supposed to be more efficient with less, or no, secondary effects.”

?“Another progress isn’t it ?”

“It is indeed, if you are wealthy enough to offer yourself this very costly spare part. But, Andrea, beyond the first positive impression, beyond the admiration for a medical and technical prowess, if you add one plus one you get something which deserves a second thought. Lets put aside the economics, no way we find such equipment tomorrow in paramedic shops side to side with walking frames, in effect even if disables may be categorized, each person is different of all the others. More importantly, exoskeleton plus brain chip may be combined, should some expert want it. I’m damned sure I’m not the first one to imagine such a scheme : couldn't be a chip into my brain an interface between my will and external orders ? We know today this is no longer Sci-Fi, the same chip being also an interface with an exoskeleton for instance. What do you think of such a prospective ? Mister journalist ! of course it’s less glamour than the cat walk at the YSL/ Anthoni Vaccarello fashion show … in the desert, please, cherry on the cake !”

“Easy Old Man, do you understand you are feeding my own study on AI and GPT ?”

“Why not, plagiarist you are !” (laughter)

“No, you misunderstand, I’m just adding AI to your superb storyline ! Imagine !”

“John Lenon is probably having a syncope in hearing us, on is cloud up there. I feel all this is part of a drawn economic landscape, there is a blue print somewhere, no ? Though, without drawing a conspiracy scheme, I question myself when I read that in the French newspaper Les Echos :

?Publié (sur le net) le 10 juil. 2023 à 17:27 / Mis à jour le 11 juil. 2023 à 7:38

?…? L'Europe accuse un retard dans l'usage des technologies vis-à-vis de l'Amérique du Nord. Accenture s'est penché sur près de 2.000 des plus grandes entreprises du monde et de leurs quelque 20.000?membres de conseil d'administration. La société de conseil estime que les entreprises européennes ont un potentiel de croissance de 3.000?milliards d'euros de chiffre d'affaires d'ici à?2024, si elles comblaient leur déficit technologique.

??Depuis quelques années, il y a beaucoup d'innovations technologiques?: le cloud, l'IA… C'est une accélération. Le business a changé. Il faut être plus numérique, plus durable??, expose Jean-Marc Ollagnier, président d'Accenture Europe. Spécialisé dans le conseil stratégique, Accenture pointe la perte en compétitivité de l'Europe et le besoin de transformation des entreprises. ??En adoptant ces technologiques plus rapidement, il est possible de rattraper son retard en?termes de croissance, et surtout de rentabilité??, poursuit-il. Etc. …

"Accenture, (formerly Arthur Andersen I guess, I met them a couple of times during my professional life) is a powerful* advisor to main industrial companies, banks, and governments as well. To me they are convincing enough to shape plans for lobbies, if they aren’t lobbyists by themselves. They are supposed to diagnose failures in a system, to analyze the causes and above all to write prescriptions, technologically oriented, always. And always for a “betterment” of the existing. The technology here, namely AI and GPT, is the only gateway to a better tomorrow, according to “experts”.

“Right to the point, I feel that our laws makers are afraid of making decisions which could send them to court, one day. They could feel stressed, or even incompetent (they too often are! alas), actually a politician can’t be omniscient also. So, the “advisors” (and "counselors") are the fuses, the very convenient guilty ones, when and if need be. But not only: the advisors have sub-subcontractor bodies to DO the job. The law maker signs the check, that’s it. Now Andrea, we can’t place all the MPs in the same basket by the misuse of their power. Some “députés” are probably upstanding persons, I guess !”

* Note - source Wikipedia :

“Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology services and consulting. A Fortune Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $64.1 billion in 2023.”

PLC for Public Limited Cy (SA, Société Anonyme, en fran?ais)

Voir aussi POST SCRIPTUM ajouté le 20 juillet 2024.

?

“What you are telling me is that our politicians, our legislators, subcontract the front end part of their decision makings, subcontract their duty of thinking prior to act to “experts”, “advisors”, “consultants” … ?”

“Also, we observe the glorious development of medical robots, domestic robots and simultaneously of military robots. Are also manufactured unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned sea crafts and unmanned air crafts. A show of robot soldiers was in display on LinkedIn, (click here : New Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete (Corridor Digital). )”

?“Yes, beyond the caricatural, technology is making progress, definitely … especially when robots are “animated” via AI and GPT “motors”, said motors applying medical, domestic, industrial or military human principles, you name it.”

“There is something missing however. If we are presently taking for granted that tomorrow will be controlled by AI/GPT “brained” robots. How will the disputes be managed ? By robot lawyers ?”

?“Why not, look, our MPs subcontract their job to advisors, advisors subcontract to specialists, or experts, said professionals use the latest technologies, those for the which Europe is late behind China and USA, namely AI/GPT. Hence AI/GPT, as a “thinking” robot, participates in writing the laws. If the law maker is a robot, reasonably the judge could be a robot and likewise the lawyers.”

?“ A Judge Dredd of sort ! But do you know you can offer your grand-grand-grand-son a tiny robot which can draw a teddy bear (or any other model) on a sheet of paper … instead of him ! Push a button, robot will imagine or will parrot what it has been given to memorized, and ?will draw it ! And the family will applaud … the infant or the robot ? while the infant will suck his pacifier with satisfaction. May be, will he be a sucker all his life long ? A push button sucker.”

I found that in the LinkedIn feed, not long ago :

“But problems are made to be solved, no ?”

“Correct, inventions are frequently resented as the best and the worst of things, when they become popular. Look at the net for instance, it seems its intrinsic “freedom” is now questioned by many countries. Soon or later, Social Networks will have to comply with laws … with millions of laws. In many countries, they are already controlled/censored regarding many “subjects”, I experiment it daily almost. It seems that one day the dematerialized communication will be channeled within the same legal boundaries as the paper printed news, novels, scientific bulletins, etc. means by self or imposed norms (moral, technical, legal, what ever).

“In fine the usage of technologies is often tailored by the users and regulated by laws, all over the world”.

“Let me cite the French author of ‘Vers la Sobriété Heureuse” (Toward a Happy Sobriety), his name is Pierre Rabhi : ”… Ces instruments complexes supposés servir la communauté humaine sont en réalité entrain de l’asservir … Ivan Illich a bien mis en évidence ce qu’il appelle le ‘retournement des outils’?? (Those complexe instruments, supposedly assisting humanity, are slaving it, eventually … Ivan Illich did explain what he called ‘the tools turnaround’)

Nowadays, in France, the self-proclaimed arrow head of dematerialization, we can read the gap if not the continuously enlarging ditch between the citizens and the dematerializing administration. Better to think twice prior to develop a normative system to rule forty million taxpayers … each of them different of the remaining 39,999,999 others. Its clear that IT developers use a technical jargon and binary reasoning not understood by neither the ordinary state employee, nor the ordinary citizen. On another hand the administration is not (sufficiently ?) armed to proceed its own IT changes, the task is “subcontracted” to specialized IT companies, to experts (in IT !), to “consultants” i.e. IT generalists, when they are understood to be specialists. Yes words matters.

If I use IT as a generic term its because I feel AI and GPT are specific inputs in IT. The confusion is probably deliberately maintained by the AI/GTP promotors to let ordinary people confounding intelligence and memory management.

To me Andrea, the efforts deployed by some human beings to dehumanize themselves in offloading the human world memory inside human made reservoir robots is pathetic.

The normalization of acting, of doing things, is now precedented by an attempt to normalize the thinking by lobotomization of the memory parts of our brain. I see one goal in that : to reduce the human beings efforts (to eradicate hardship) and to standardize the human beings life. So what ? Will you ask ! … That’s the question Andrea. I’ll passed away before you find the answer, I’m afraid. I guess that for some the paradise on Earth … is reachable ... Well, looks like hell instead but the belief is a personal concern.”

“You sound very pessimistic Old Man, isn’t AI another step in the growth of IT? ? … Information Technologie, you remember ? … Aren’t we facing a vast commercial op’ for GPT by Open Global, LLC, of San Francisco ? the software GPT-4 is a natural language processing?(NLP*) model, developed by Open Global. The local car dealer will tell you this shiny scrap is the unique occasion you should not miss. Open Global is selling something few people are able to understand, then to appreciate the quality of the impact of this immaterial product on their down on earth day to day life. They tend to convince through strong and violent enough words and expressions to dazzle and overcome?lazy and not really informed nor concerned ?readers. Critical mind does not show up in many of politicians’ speech, neither in many citizens mind set.”

“Yes I remember Open Plan … ... well, finally Andrea, isn’t this a storm in a tea cup ?”

*NOTE : Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables computers to comprehend, generate, and manipulate human language. Natural language processing has the ability to interrogate the data with natural language text or voice.

Turned into French by the author: avec une interprétation toute personnelle : CP/M et DOS, les moteurs de nos ordinateurs, fonctionnaient et fonctionnent grace à des phrases préétablies dans des langages codifiés. Ces langages présentent l’avantage d’être internationaux (des Espéranto de l’informatique en quelque sorte) et l’inconvénient d’être des langages supplémentaires et très spécifiques, qu’il faut apprendre. Les remplacer par des mots de langues parlées et écrites les rend accessibles bien au-delà du cercle étroit des spécialistes. Mais en réalité son principal avantage ne serait-il pas cette capacité par recherche de mots similaires, sa rapidité à interroger les immenses banques de données déjà disponibles et sans doute appelées à s’élargir encore et encore??

Another close software to the NLP is probably the ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) ? This?technology or software that automatically converts spoken language into text, ?for disabled persons (blind).

?ASR & NLP are fall under AI?and overlap with ML (Machine Learning) & DL (Deep Learning). It's amazing how they are all intertwined. It's not as much about machine learning vs. AI but more about how these relatively new technologies can create and improve methods for solving high-level problems in real-time.

Source : GOOGLE

“What do you think about a political impact of this mercantile campaign in the western societies ?” Asks Andrea.

“In France, it’s fashionable for professional journalists and professional politicians to name AI and GPT, and to invent trends based on those two abbreviations nobody knows about. So chic, so trendy, so savant. Ask this young female journalist (so called journalist, I mean) in early morning program (France Info) to translate and explain GPT, after she used the acronym three times in one minute with the aplomb and as unintimidated as a doctor lecturing at the Collège de France.

My dear Andrea, I feel, witnessing from not that far away, that France has worked full speed and blindly to dematerializing its administration, banking, and its trading also. We recently saw that when not dehumanized enough human beings react, professional politicians, opportunists either ways, can test their luck or bad luck in the democratic voting game, the game of their democracy by the number (only).

Citizens are toys. Dehumanized citizens become robots toys. Prior to be replaced by androids. Before the end of it. “It” could be the occidental society in this prospective. Of course, this will not happen. It could be worst or better but nevertheless unlike. A panel of so called “democracies” is at stake.”

“Yes but France isn’t the world, my dear. Though I appreciate you extend your reasoning to the western societies. You also imply the political misunderstanding, ignorance, porosity and even absence. Alas you’re right I guess, money is commanding. Too often, immediate profit supersedes political visions (if any).”

?“Actually, Andrea, aren’t we facing another attempt to “create” an ideal society ? A paradise on Earth ? Mr Jean-Marc Jancovici, a brilliant and popular French engineer, explains us that we have been bright enough in using fossil and fissile energies, to the extend that to replace them, an ordinary French citizen would need an army of 600 slaves (look at the Sriptures of a monotheistic religion, about how Paradise is run). When robots will replace the human being for all and every tasks, including thinking through A.I., what will be the place of the human being ? How, the society which is supposed to be his, will be organized and will work … sorry not work, robots only will 'work', how will the society be ruled and EXIST, simply ?”

“When you ask a software sales person (who ever) ‘where are the limits’ the spontaneous answer is ‘the sky is the limit’ “

“Have confidence” Kaa said to Mowgli …

You see, Andrea, despite this forest of question marks, I am confident …”

?“Yes ? confident this is a storm in a tea-cup ?”

?“May be …”

?

“Ok, time for diner, what about Mama Mia, rue de la Liberté ?”

“Good choice Andrea : clams with spaghetti-olive oil and garlic for me.”

“Lest’s go … I’m starving, ossobuco ahead !”

?… … …

?“Je crois que je vais retourner à la Sci-Fi version Lovecraft” pense le Vieil Homme marchant sur le large trottoir de l’avenue Mohamed V ... ... "Comme mon ainé d'un mois Steven Spielberg ...?

... ... ...

Later on, an exchange of jokes over a red and and white checkered table cloth, was loud enough to be heard by a French couple, newly retired, sitting at the next table. They are traveling Morocco with their RV :

" ... listen Andrea, let me cite a saying of a French TV animator, the famous Patrick Sebastien, at a RTL* mike : ' au lieu d'investir dans le développement de l'intelligence artificielle, on ferait mieux de le faire pour réduire la con..rie humaine'.

" Faut-il pleurer, faut-il en rire ... commence à fredonner le Monsieur fran?ais à la table d'à c?té"

"Jean !" lui lance sa femme rosissante "j't'en prie !" tandis que que les deux compères hochent du chef, des larmes dans les yeux (larmes de rire, évidemment).

... ... ...

*RTL : Radio Television Luxembourg (European group of radio/TV, since 1931)

POST SRIPTUM ?

Ajouté le 20 Juillet 2024 :

Je vous invite à écouter entièrement ce document : une causerie de Monsieur Stéphane Amarsy :"IA : Le futur est déjà là".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4619HLxbV2A

La bonne foi justifie-elle une telle "neutralité ?" sur un produit, sur un simple logiciel (IAxxx ou GPTxxx), présenté comme un produit puissant certes, mais bien ordinaire, évalué ici à l'aune de sa performance ... ? ? ? (comme un word processor, une spread sheet ou un logiciel de dessin industrielle). Banalisation d'un outil dont il laisse entendre qu'on est qu'au début du début, et que c'est par l'utilisation qu'on va l'améliorer. Et j'ai entendu l'éthique de l'IA et du GPT. L'éthique de ce nouveau produit est-elle différente de l'étique humaine ? (laquelle se décline dans le temps et dans l'espace).

J'ai souvent entendu dans mon environnement professionnel : shit in, shit out ! (A méditer, dans ce cas précis.

Nous sommes ici, évidemment, à entendre les propos d'un vendeur (un commercial, au demeurant chef de son entreprise) s'adressant probablement à un parterre de clients potentiels. Reconnaissons lui un relationnel pédagogique remarquable.

End of text, by HPG June2024

ADDENDUM

LINKEDIN le 16 janvier 2025 by Laurel SilkCharm

Laurel SilkCharm PapworthLaurel SilkCharm Papworth ? 3rd+ ? 3rd+AI Course Facilitator (AIM) | ChatGPT Keynote Speaker & AI Training | Metaverse | Sydney, Kuala Lumpur & Singapore Workshops | University LecturerAI Course Facilitator (AIM) | ChatGPT Keynote Speaker & AI Training | Metaverse | Sydney, Kuala Lumpur & Singapore Workshops | University Lecturer3d ? 3 days ago

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THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: ChatGPT does not learn from your prompts or uploaded documents about your secret squirrel business stuff. It's literally in the name. The P in GPT means "pretrained". This makes a GPT model more like a published edition of The Encyclopaedia Brittanica circa 1979 on your Dad's bookshelf than a live updated website similar to ... this one. Once an "edition" of GPT is "published", it takes time and money to fine tune with new facts like election or sports results. A livestream of your prompts "name all the movies Daniel Craig has been in" is not included. Sorry to disappoint. Go ahead and use a chatbot onto a GPT, all good. Just be careful of agents, they are a different beast (custom gpts, AI agents, anything that "saves" your stuff as base or system prompts with access to stored documents. That can get complicated (still doesn't learn your documents but they can be accessed at any time). I created this cartoon with the magic of Dalle3 instructed by GPT4o. woohoo. and cute. hashtag#ChatGPT hashtag#GPT hashtag#Dalle3 hashtag#artificialintelligence hashtag#australia

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