Morris Minor Owners Club

Blaketon wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 9:16 am So far as I know, it is still illegal to refuse legal tender, in settlement of a debt. In terms of coinage, that means up to a full bank bag of said denomination, so the council could refuse your monthly council tax in bronze. Alas many large organisations seem to act is if they are above the law or that their legal departments can make it.

les wrote: ↑Thu Aug 24, 2023 9:54 am If only it was about HUMAN thought Les.

Wasn’t it human thought that is/ was developing AI ?

From what I have seen, A.I. = G.S. (Genuine stupidity).

There is information about legal tender on the Bank of England website, and apparently it is a bit of a myth.

As I understand it, if you offer legal tender to pay for something; you cannot be sued for not offering to pay, but whoever you are paying does not have to accept legal tender or any other form of payment for that matter.

Apparently, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, only Royal Mint coins are legal tender, bank notes are not.

i use Wightlink ferries,Portsmouth-i.o.w.-and back weekly,in my lorry. they refuse to take cash,but as my Company have an account,that's no concern to me..and i bring my own food and drink..but if everyone on board refused to pay with their cards or phone,they'd have a mountain of food rotting away,and would have to eventually accept cash.
but it isn't going to happen..because people are too weak

sid wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 12:23 pm i use Wightlink ferries,Portsmouth-i.o.w.-and back weekly,in my lorry. they refuse to take cash,but as my Company have an account,that's no concern to me..and i bring my own food and drink..but if everyone on board refused to pay with their cards or phone,they'd have a mountain of food rotting away,and would have to eventually accept cash.
but it isn't going to happen..because people are too weak

Where's the like button?

I've made this point countless times to a countless number of people but cards and phones are just too convenient for them to think about the impact it'll eventually have on their childrens' future freedom.

And that just about sums up the problem today - people cannot think clearly or far enough ahead to see the inescapable consequences of how we are being willingly conditioned to sleepwalk into a coming dystopian nightmare.

Who hasn’t got a debit card and phone ? ——- What’s the problem ? ——Regarding security, all you need is common sense, admittedly, it’s not that common. Future children’s freedom ? I think we’re getting carried away here !!

I went to the Halifax bank today with my account pass book.

The cashier told me that they are doing away with books, and making the accounts card only.

I believe this is the first step toward closing the branch. The choice of attending the branch will no longer exist. Sad.

All of the banks want to close their high street branches, sadly. And they will.
A great loss to us older folk, but we can’t change the flow of change anymore than our parents or grandparents could.

Too many ‘changes’ in there

SteveClem wrote: ↑Fri Sep 29, 2023 7:09 pm Too many ‘changes’ in there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BgF7Y3 ... DavidBowie

As somebody who works with machine learning or "A.I." models, don't worry. They're extremely stupid and just produce results that are determined by and entirely derivative of their training data. People are being fooled because language is fudgeable enough that comprehensible sentences can be built by training a model on trillions of examples of existing text and graphing things like word proximity. 2D imagery is similarly built from existing examples.

All of these training data sets and samples were taken from authors and artists without permission or note of copyright of course, just as Google began indexing the early internet built by enthusiasts for the betterment of society, and then sold the results back to us through advertising.

As such, "A.I." is currently machine learning plus branding to attract gullible investors and prop up a technology industry that has repeatedly failed to find the next "big thing" - it certainly wasn't virtual reality headsets, the "metaverse", or cryptocurrency. It will be used to further precaritise, emiserate and eliminate low-paid workers if the results can be made to be passable enough, but I don't see it being part of some wider conspiracy because it is so often wrong (confidently so as it has no concept of syntax let alone truth). Its best use-case at the moment is perhaps to replace more customer service staff and make it even more difficult to phone up a company to solve a problem!

In regards to cash vs. being tracked through digital means of making transactions. It is a false choice, it's perfectly possible to build a digital platform where transactions are not tracked and there are many advocates for it, just not in powerful positions at the top of businesses with an interest in tracking you.

People blame the young for how they deal with changes in society but pause for a second to consider who has been in charge for the last 30 years. Could it be that you oldies are just unsatisfied with the consequences of your actions and voting records?

———or maybe ‘us’ oldies, have learnt a thing or two over the years.

Its best use-case at the moment is perhaps to replace more customer service staff and make it even more difficult to phone up a company to solve a problem!

And that's the best use? Goodness only knows what the worst example might be! Such systems should be banned and companies forced to employ an adequate number of staff to provide customers with good service. When I started work in IT many years ago, our goal (apart from making money) was to improve things for everyone, and there have been some fantastic advances that I support and applaud; but the abysmal fall in service standards is not an acceptable result.

Derby City council have introduced an AI service for people needing to renew their ‘blue badges’
They say it is to improve the service, read ‘to save money’.
It’s not going well, the robot seems to have trouble understanding the local dialect/accent.

simmitc wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 11:37 am

Its best use-case at the moment is perhaps to replace more customer service staff and make it even more difficult to phone up a company to solve a problem!

And that's the best use? Goodness only knows what the worst example might be! Such systems should be banned and companies forced to employ an adequate number of staff to provide customers with good service. When I started work in IT many years ago, our goal (apart from making money) was to improve things for everyone, and there have been some fantastic advances that I support and applaud; but the abysmal fall in service standards is not an acceptable result.

Businesses can't afford to employ humans any more.

Humans might go off work to have a baby, or become ill and not be able to work.
Much better to employ some solid state technology.

The manufacture of technology, and the resources used are harmful to the environment. Few people seem to think about this.
Go into your local second-hand phone shop and ask them if they have got any Fairphones.....

And the cloud that data goes into....massive energy user. And crypto mining.....huge contributor to climate change.....

It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.

Jayne and I were out for a walk yesterday and thought we would pop into Greggs for a treat. Unfortunately they could only accept cash, no cards. Something to do with the heavy rain and their internet connection. I did chuckle to myself.

SteveClem wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 12:27 pm
It’s not going well, the robot seems to have trouble understanding the local dialect/accent.

Well if it can't understand the dialect there, how's it going to work out when they get some of the other harsher, brisker dialects. I can think of a few .....

There's been a few versions of this sketch over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

Proposal now to check up on benefit claimers' bank accounts every month to check for fraud.

Lots of talk about AI recently.

I am not sure how old Monty-4 is; but I reckon he might be laughing on the other side of his face one day.