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philipsw.bsky.social

@philipsw.bsky.social
86 followers 199 following 82 posts
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I agree but: AI agents are designed to sound like people and the process is sufficiently complex as to be hard to predict, moreover Robert Sapolsky would say people don’t have free will (= real agency ?). At first sight, “wind up toy” misses some necessary nuance.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
That’s why it works so well as a coding assistant: the requirements to make code that appears to execute and that passes the test examples weed out much of the rubbish.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Not only is he the voice of reason, the pi itself is very well designed. I used it as a basis for introducing my son to programming (which he now does professionally, assisted by AI).
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I think I get what you mean. In Oxford I currently see the moon and a bit over half the face towards me is illuminated. That bit is towards the sun, but if the sun were a similar distance from earth as the moon is, the part illuminated would be different.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Amusing that the transcript renders the title as Shia Folk.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Pedantry alert: I’m sorry but I think (correct me if I’m wrong) referendum is a gerundive (meaning thing to be referred) not a gerund (thing being referred).
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The Economist’s brief summary, above, misses the potential for optimism in the mathematicians’ penultimate paragraph: it depends how A.I. is used. Getting to understand the results found by A.I. requires the sort of thought that stimulates new questions.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Of course it’s disobeying us. It’s trained text where instructions aren’t always obeyed and we send it instructions to be interpreted by a system trained by that approach.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Same here - then they start sending a code to enable you to prove you’re you.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
See mitchellpalmer.nz/mitchell-palmer-c… he graduated from Oxford with a degree in History and Economics, in 2025.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I’m definitely not special or magical, neither have I ever (over the past 40+ years working) been any one of those.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
It was not an internet free environment. It was an environment with a link to the internet that should not have been usable from within the environment, but was due to a bug. See Guardian article from 22 July, where it’s described as a leaky sandbox.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
LLMs have looked for patterns in their training data and that determines what they regurgitate. I’m not that surprised
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I’m tempted to say you have it easy: in the finance world, handing corporate actions is just expected in managing time series
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Same principle applies to Chinese food
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I like the cartouche in the hieroglyphics section
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I’d love to read a joint considered joint view from you and @trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social on this.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Surely one of the main points about China’s route to growth over the last 4 decades is that Japan had shown the route earlier last century, subsequently followed by Taiwan and South Korea. I understand China is far larger, but they are all societies with recognisable cultural similarities.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
I’m probably being over literal: Chinese for seagull (海鸥, pronounced Hǎi ōu) is simply “sea” and “gull”
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
… I agree you have a rotten day getting back to normal. In addition, I don’t see why a proposed kill switch, which erases your data, needs necessarily to make the phone no longer traceable.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Sincerely & with great respect: you are old-fashioned. The worry is that data on a stolen phone are used to access bank accounts or otherwise cause further damage. If the phone is rendered inoperable (and kept automatically backed-up). You can continue with only the cost of the last hardware …
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Agreed. My mental image is of disputes being brought to the assembly at Thingvellir in Norse sagas. It’s a process to address disputes that reduces disorganised violence, even if the behaviour at the meeting isn’t pretty - at least people have to put their weapons set aside during the process.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
See this program: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysintern…
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Please forgive the pedantry: a gigawatt is a unit of rate of creating or rate of using energy. A gigawatt hour would be an amount of energy.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Good, balanced article
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
… or expects to offend the appropriate people
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
I will probably regret this: you have got my interest
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
I too recommend: For All Mankind, Silo & Pluribus.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Fair point. The context was not obvious (at least to me) - I took “students” to mean students in general.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
That’s a very Humanities view of student education. There’s lots of hard work and thought needed from students in Maths, the Sciences and Engineering - library skills are not part of it from my experience.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
I’m disappointed Bret Stephens refers to heartbreaking US casualties, but shows no similar concern for casualties of other countries - (even) Iranians are people too.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I haven’t used a banknote for years. I’m told a few shops in Germany only accept cash; that’s not my experience in the UK “Team don’t care” gets my affiliation
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
LLMs definitely are useful for coding, but relying on their output without careful checking can lead to security holes and bugs.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
AI has no “real understanding” but can sound as though it does, because its training contained material from others with real understanding. However, it’s very useful at automating “drudge” work (e.g. first draft of a translation) so long as the result is corrected by an expert.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
It may be wonkish, but the prose and charts are clear and well explained.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Disappointing. Doesn’t cover the case where clear instructions from AI don’t work and result in an error message - it happens now and then. Also doesn’t cover the case of AI producing apparently working code but with security holes.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Disappointing article. It doesn’t cover the case where the instructions form AI are clear, but wrong, and the running the code results in error message - happens every little while. Also doesn’t cover dangers of apparently working code with security holes or deliberate malicious side effects.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
I find that quite often Newsnight is worth watching, perhaps once every two programmes. Typically (but not always), there are insightful guests with useful analysis and insufficient time to express it.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Excellent article indeed.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Can you add further practical examples, for example on how you decide which scientific papers you take seriously? I presume that you can check a paper of mathematical deductions a your area. For a data based paper, what are your heuristics for judging whether the authors are reliable?
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
It’s great for translating into a language which you know well enough to check the output, but where using AI is a great time saver.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Brits always treasure an eccentric; you could build on that aspect. Anyway, please keep writing.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
It’s a tool to be used in full knowledge of its limitations. With that approach, it can do some useful things better than any other tool. The output always needs to be checked.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Favourite is a high bar, but much of Red Dwarf was very good.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
I’ve just seen a partially eclipsed moon, from the edge of Oxford. A couple of minutes later completely covered by cloud.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
With respect, I completely disagree. Physics is all about finding the simplest explanation (mathematical theory) that fits the observed facts. There’s no point in having extra parameters in your theory, that aren’t well determined by observation.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Not many people are described as hoist, except by their own petard. Few things other than points are moot.
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philipsw.bsky.social @philipsw.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
If you want your own T-shirt, design it and get vista print to print one for you - it worked when my wife wanted one.
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