Doom scrolling and the next financial crash!

talexuser

I just don't believe the AI hype. Many questions I put into google involving technical terms the first paragraph is just wrong. One example the other day I wanted a small Win10 program to guarantee alpha order copies to an exFat drive (which windows copy does not do). The first suggestion was a Mac program that does not run in windows, the answer yes, you are correct it will not run in windows, next suggestion, a Linux program, answer yes you are correct it will not run in windows, the next suggestion a windows utility, I reply this only works for Fat32 drives, not for exFat (I already have this program), answer yes you are correct it is only for Fat32 drives, try this script to run in powershell. I know a little bit about scripts so copied it into a bat file and tried it - it did not work. So much for Intelligence.

aroominyork

Methinks you guys should take this to a tech forum. Now, about those Japanese smaller company funds...

Bostonerimus1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82125965#Comment_82125965

I've asked Gemini cross border taxation questions and the answers are often vague or just wrong. I put this down to the AI being taught on all the bad answers posted to Reddit which drown out the more accurate answers of professionals and a few knowledgeable amateurs. Reddit content should get a very low weighting in the fitting.

GeoffTF

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82126208#Comment_82126208

You can misuse AI, but that does not mean it is useless. It is improving rapidly.

Bobziz

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82126395#Comment_82126395

Absolutely, and like any tool you need to learn how to use it. For tax questions I tend to ask it to use only HMRC sources.

Bostonerimus1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82126395#Comment_82126395

The problem is AI comes with an aura of perfection and many people will take its answers as correct 100% of the time.

The LLMs themselves are showing marginal gains for large training costs, but the "harnesses" to apply AI are getting more useful. I assume AI will get embedded into many things and there will be ups and downs. I work with a software engineer that has used Claude Code to port some routines from one DAQ board to another and it worked very well. However, the actual code isn't easy to follow and he's not sure how efficient it is and is worried about maintaining it.

I'm not completely against AI, but I do find the current crop of AI CEOs to be scary and the way it's being financed and the scale of the infrastructure being built seems unsustainable to me.

Bostonerimus1

I've used Gemini for US/UK cross border tax questions and most of the time it's right, but it often gets some details wrong. A while back it had not caught up with a new HMRC policy to tax lump sum distributions from US DC retirement account. It eventually started to get it right, presumably after new training. However, I would use a cross border tax specialist AI that is deeply trained on HMRC, IRS and professional tax specialists data and was guaranteed to be up to date.

I don't think the future is General Intelligence, but it might be Specialized Intelligence.

Dead_keen

For the oldies among us, as translated by ChatGPT:

1. An MP3 player is a bit like a record player.
2. Like an album cover, songs are displayed in the order that they are laid down.
3. @talexuser would prefer to have the songs in alphabetical order.
4. There is a bit of a disagreement about how to change the order of the songs.
5. In the old days, you could record the songs onto reel-to-reel tape, cut the tape between songs with a razor blade and splice the pieces back together in a different order. Voilà: a new running order.
6. The disagreement is essentially about whether AI suggested the wrong digital equivalent - or suggested the right one but the user ran it incorrectly.

If it was me, I would open Claude Code or Codex and say: Find the songs on my computer and do whatever you need to do to so that my MP3 player plays them in alphabetical order. (***)

(*** an over-simplification - I'd ask it to find me a better MP3 player that allows different ways of sorting songs (as the Phantom of The Opera doesn't work for me in alphabetical order) but, failing that, I'd (i) tell it where the files were as I don't want it rummaging all over the place, (ii) test it on one album first, and (iii) not delete anything until I am happy it works properly.

EthicsGradient

I really, really, really think this conversation about alphabetising your record collection needs to be taken somewhere else. It has zero to do with "the next financial crash", even if people feel AI ought to have a better ability to fix every last detail of their lives.

masonic

I'd like to apologise for taking the bait. I shall delete my off-topic posts. It is now clear to me that there is an intent to derail this thread and unwillingness to engage in the proper place. Nevertheless, I have created the following thread for the OP to continue discussing with an audience that is more likely to be helpful.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6682324/alphabetising-200gb-plus-of-classical-music-arranged-in-composer