No higher ROI AND they now have a mission critical dependency on a powerful third party (rather than on the far more fragmented and generally weaker counterparties which are employees).

Even on pure business terms and not even considering the longer term accumulation of problems and hence fall in returns over time due to second order problems of using AI in certain areas (i.e. the consequences of the much higher high-severity-error rates of AI compared to even barelly trained humans or the inability of AI to learn and improve) it’s a seriously incompetent choice.

I mean, you can excuse a Manager for not understanding the higher level structural problems of AI given how much the messaging around it for non-techies so far has just swamped people with “butterflies and rainbows” views on AI, but considering the risks of dependencies on third parties is a central skill for any decent Upper level manager as is looking at what an investment is returning and pivoting when it’s not delivering.

The Government of a country with a centuries-old traditition of keeping the plebes under control and who are currently licking the arse of the modern day version of the NAZIs will never accept that there are technical limitations for their project of detecting and suppressing in the cradle any realistic organised forces for change.

Literally the only time in the last 3 centuries that Britain moved away from the mindset that the upper classes should control the rest was after over a million working class Britons with military training came back from WWII, and by the 80s they were already walking back on the achievements of that period.

Worry not, the bought up or blackmailed politicians in power in Europe and America will still try it.

It is hilarious how America is suiciding itself at multiple levels with its latest dick-wagging:

• It’s seriously pissing off its allies and pushing neutrals away.
• It’s showing the US’ force projection capabilities as a much smaller and weaker stick than they have been boasted as being.
• It’s acceleraring the move away from Oil and the USD status as Reserve Currency is linked to Oil trade and when it ends, well, Helloo hyperinflation!
• It’s acceleraring the move away from Oil when the US is commercially doubling down on Oil, which means that the US is stuck in a commercially fast shrinking market and in developing yesterday’s Technologies.

IMHO, we are right now living the end days of an Empire, something that even in the Modern Era only seems to happen maybe once a century.

It’s almost as if the Free Market isn’t at all good at finding the optimal balance at a Strategical level …

Now, just take that analysis a little bit further by adding the consideration that those elected to manage the nation aren’t actually doing that and wondering why.

I bet it will yield interesting results about whose interests such people really serve.

It’s often best the short and sharp pain of pulling out a tooth than the lesser but chronical pain (and possible nasty eventual consequences) of a rotting tooth.

I think that’s a different element from the one I’m talking about.

Surviving in challenging conditions does generally yield respect from others (something which doesn’t just apply to old people), plus it builds character (though the quality of that character varies and is not necessarily good), thus it made sense to respect one’s elders back when reaching old age was a pretty good indication that one had gone through a lot and survived, something that doesn’t at all apply to most boomers from nations which were wealthy and stable during their old life or those born in wealth since such people could didn’t really fought to survive and probably got where they did by coasting along.

However even the qualities needed to survive in challenging conditions aren’t the same as Wisdom (they can include it, but not necessarily), both back then and now. In my experience the struggle for survival alone doesn’t grant Wisdom - Wisdom requires broad life experience, and whilst age does help one to accumulate life experience, it most definitely does not automatically give it - if you’ve lived most of your 80 years of life in one place and with one occupation, your life experience is nowhere near that of, say, a young adult who has been force to emigrate and worked all kinds of jobs with all kinds of people.

So whilst I agree with your point about how people have respect for people based on their long year when in the present day that respect isn’t really deserved because said old age doesn’t correlate with certain personal qualities anymore, I think that even back when old age DID relate with such quality, it was only an indicator of Character and Experience (often in a very narrow sense) rather than actual Wisdom.

All I hear is nothing-indexing with nothing.

Exactly.

The greatest problem of Representative Democracy where each representative stands for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people - meaning voters can’t know the person, only their carefully managed external image - is that it’s selecting people for just Salesmanship capabilities, and salespeople are seldom good at anything that requires logical and honest thinking (in my experience, the best salespeople believe their own bullshit, and that’s not at all possible if one’s views are detailed and honest, rather than vague and full of wishful thinking).

So the top managers of a nation are people selected for personal qualities that are almost antithetical to the qualities a good manager should have.

No doubt her own grandparents firmly believed that the future was the Buggy Whip industry.

Age is not at all the same as Wisdom.

In fact I’m starting to think that if you don’t get a broad life experience and recognize the need to and start walking down the path of Wisdom early enough, the natural calcification of habits and thinking, and increased emotional comfort from what is familiar that come to all of us with aging, will actually result in one becoming less wise with age.

Even when the brain is sharp, if one is not wise enough one’s comforting feelings from certain beliefs will shut off accepting all evidence or conclusions leading elsewhere. When the brain is not sharp enough, this is pretty much guaranteed, IMHO.

Also, already 10 years ago, corporate backends were pretty much already all running on Linux.

In big companies the stuff running in Windows has long been just been the Views in a multi-tiered Model-View-Controller systems architecture, whilst the data and logic sat in servers.

From my own experience, on the technical side it’s mainly the sunk cost into making the custom frontends in Windows and certain apps used to fill the gaps not covered by corporate systems (for example Excel and Outlook) that have held Windows in place.

On the management side, it’s probably a question of support contracts and friendly rather than professional relationships with specific Windows-only 3rd party vendors.

Not at all denying your point (which I totally agree with), just pointing out that in big enough companies to have their own software developers and proprietary systems, the movement away from Windows has been going on longer than that, just less visible to most people because what was being moved over was back and middle tier stuff.

Whilst people kept dreaming about the Year Of Linux On The Desktop, Linux had, since the 90s, quietly and steadilly been eating away at the responsabilities of software running on the Desktop.

If only the muppets in my homeland were half as competent as the bloody French.

I shall not lower myself to use the newfangled Mathematical inventions of the Arabs and instead keep doing Mathematics like the Romans!

This one specifically had people’s addresses, so it was reasonably simple to match to people’s identities if you had other data containing identity and address.

About a decade ago, when I still lived in Britain, the project to keep central copies of GP patient data came and it was possible to Opt-Out.

I expresselly filled the paperwork to opt out of it with my GP, because by then I did not at all trust British Governments (all this was after the Snowden Revelations, plus having been in Finance in the 2008 crash and seen how that was dealt with by both British major parties, I fully believed they were corrupt as fuck) and expected that all that healtcare data would be misused including, sooner or later, being sold out (or even given) to the Private sector.

Here we are now, and lo and behold…

PS: By the way, if I remember it correctly this data was already sold to Google years ago, supposedly “anonimized” but in such a weak and inefective way it was proven it could easilly be de-anonimized.

Indeed: most of present day America, especially the far-right, would be incredibly hostile towards a middle eastern guy preaching a philosophy of peace and equality and who was openly against the “money lenders”.

It’s obviously meant to be an homage to medical doctors.