Re: [Sheflug] ShefLUG - March Meeting

[John Southern <linuxtarragon@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Richard,
I did take time to set up a ChatGPT account and try a few things. The
answers were remarkable good, given a few caveats.
I asked it to write some code in old 1980s computer BASIC dialects. What it
produced was incomplete (but it had told me), but did run. I was then able
to specify the missing subroutines which it produced. I had the impression
that it was utilising from a couple of examples and was able to modify them
successfully.
Asking a few science questions it was able to rewrite what would have been
the top answer in a search. For me this was OK as it meant I could in
theory avoid a pay wall.
The Google equivalent - Bard was slated because its science answer picked
up an incorrect fact.
I think in both cases, calling these things AI is a huge problem. They have
language pattern matching done very well, so appear as though they
understand, but they are no better than anyone not understanding the
subject.
Both will spread falsehoods, both will only pick the summary information
and fail to pull out and caveats other than an overall warning that they
are fallible. As expert systems go, they are a step up in that their
language abilities are good enough that they can work out the real question
you are after. The downside is they are a dumb set of rules that cannot
judge from experience.

I think they are a good start, but it needs billions of hours to improve
them.

Even Microsoft's Azure has its place. I am obviously saying that as someone
who will never fully trust Microsoft for the past, and also someone who
considers all cloud services as just someone else's data centre.

Azure seems a simpler product with an easier fronted. The downside is you
cannot customise and tailor as much. It is obviously much cheaper than AWS,
but to a certain extent you get what you pay for.

I was impressed with their heavy databox, which is a half rack sized set of
disks that you can use to copy data onto rather than uploading over your
network. When you have up to 1PB of data, this is the quick way. AWS tend
to park a trailer full of disks outside your office and drink all your
data. Both are relatively cheap as they know they will make the profit on
your storage fees.

Azure does its job for the cases where you want to avoid having your own
data centre. Personally, I think it is cheaper to have your own staff, but
I can see lots of startups needing to use cloud services when they are
unsure of their costs.

Azure's Software Defined Network offering is all Linux based. I think the
majority of their enterprise offering is Linux underneath.

I suppose I dislike cloud computing as we moved away from bureau computing
services in the early 80s because companies wanted to be able to do their
own thing with their own systems and make a business difference rather than
everyone just choosing from a small menu of options.

Having said all that in support of Microsoft, I do feel unclean.

What I would like is a cheap Linux tablet so I can drop Android, which in
turn would mean I could drop DOS to run some emulators.

I can buy Android tablets from about £100-£200 but cannot seem to find
cheap Linux ones. Any suggestions?

Regards
John

On Sun, 12 Feb 2023, 10:47 Richard Ibbotson, <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi
>
> https://www.sheflug.org.uk/indexpage/sheflug-meetings-page-2/
>
>
> In spite of the fact that we had to cancel last weeks meeting we had a
> good meeting yesterday.  Some interesting discussions. By 3.30 p.m. in
> the afternoon it was a bit quiet so I thought I might stir it up a bit
> by mentioning Microsoft ChatGPT.  Just as I thought there was some loud
> laughter and no one was prepared to take either ChatGPT or Microsoft
> seriously at all. <shrug> Alright.. so back to GNU/Linux then which is
> definitely not an M$ product and not the pile of pants that Azure is.
> Loud laughter about Azure as well from the people who attended the meeting.
>
> The next meeting is on the 4th of March at the Morrisons supermarket at
> Ecclesfield.  Walk in through the front door and ask the lady on the
> front desk for the community room.  From about 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. There is
> a cafe where you you can find some tea and coffee and some sandwiches
> and snacks. Hope we see you there.
>
> https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/startWebshop.do
>
> --
> Richard
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation
>
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