by admin | Apr 7, 2026 | Blog
It is harder for a lot of us as we get older to find work, if we are not already working, or want to move to a different area. These are generalisations, but I am viewed as inflexible, old-fashioned, unable to learn, and often simply too old. I don’t know what that means.
If you’re a specialist then it might be easier to find another position, particularly if you’re working in an industry and are known for what you do and are perceived to have value. But even this is changing. Being a specialist no longer affords the cushion it once did.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/apr/07/ai-training-work-jobs
It’s not a new phenomenon. All new technology offers rewards, but it also has victims. You can look at every industry and see when a new tool, machine, or process was introduced that made it quicker, cheaper and required fewer skilled workers. Those who owned the machines reaped the benefits generally. Prices could be made lower, or profit margins raised.
Those who lost their jobs to the new technology had to find a way to utilise their skills in a different way, and if not, then find something that at least allowed them to continue to earn. It may not be at the level they were used to.
I’m certainly earning less now than I used to, but I know that that is down to the choices I have made. I am fortunate in that I do have work, that it is regular, that it’s not a dangerous job. I get to work with others, and to help others. I also know that it’s not a guaranteed job. Recent changes have seen the hours of all those employed reduced. My overall income remains the same so essentially I’m losing money because costs around me have increased and my income has remained the same. It is, of course, to minimise the high cost of wages here in the UK.
My managers, assistant and store, both have inherent bias about employing older staff, despite what we bring in relevant experience and our ability to interact with others. We are also not scared to answer the telephone, which is something an increasing amount of people seem to shy away from. My language and literacy skills are high so I can offer clarification when others ask of it for their emails. I do so gladly. Not everybody is a native English speaker where I work.
As the article states that others have been doing too, I’m using AI tools so that I’m aware and able to use them if I am called upon to do so, or if for future employment opportunities I am asked if I am familiar with these tools I can at least tell them honestly.
Yesterday I asked Claude to write a simple ‘app’ that is essentially HTML that allows me to make some daily notes in a specific format. I could have learned how to code it myself in HTML, but I don’t want to. It took a number of iterations to get it to work as I want and now I run it every morning in my browser. It populates from the day before in certain areas leaving the rest blank. I can export the entry to a text file.
It works. It’s useful to me. I didn’t write it though. I don’t understand how it works and I don’t need to. But somebody does need to understand how these things work. Otherwise we’re handing over all skills to AI. And who will judge their work then?
by admin | Mar 23, 2026 | Blog
I work in retail currently. I say currently because I will only ever work for this one company in retail. I joined them because of who they are and when I leave, and I will leave, it will not be for another retail job. Some things are retail specific and we are having a sale. We are rarely not having a sale, or at least putting specific ranges or items on sale. But this is a big sale. Across the store sale.
As part of the sale we have to produce updated tags showing the previous price and the new price. They are attached to each item or groups of items. It’s labour intensive and doesn’t look fantastic. The tags tend to fall off and we spend a lot of time picking them up.
Over the years we’ve tried to improve this system by creating bigger labels by sticking the individual labels on them so that it’s easier to read, but it’s not lovely to look at even if it’s functional.
So lately we’ve turned to AI to help us. I say we, but it’s one of the younger members of staff who’s prepared to put in the time and effort to make it work. It’s quite good at taking information from a spreadsheet and formatting it and allowing us to print it out on the A5 cards that we use (the plain back of them anyway). Once the template is working correctly it is a relatively easy process and won’t print out items that we don’t have stock of. Nice. There’s a more consistent feel to it.
Specific items that are higher in price need their own display label (still A5) and so my colleague set about putting together a template for these items. They wanted to create a template that would allow us to put in certain details and print it out using the minimum amount of ink necessary. There’s no point printing a black background is there? It’s simply a waste.
It took about forty five to sixty minutes to get the five labels printed. They looked alright. Not amazing, but nice enough. But in reality there is no advantage over us taking a pen and writing the original price in the ‘WAS’ box and the new price in the ‘NOW’ box. I could have done it in less than five minutes.
So if we can use that template again in the future then that investment of time would have been worth it eventually. If not then surely it’s just easier to write it out by hand.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Or am I wrong? Am I simply being old fashioned? I don’t know.
by admin | Mar 20, 2026 | Blog
I am of that age where glasses are a necessity rather than merely a fashion statement. I found a picture of some frames I liked online and reverse image searched until I found out which brand they were. As I narrowed it down I found that there was a retailer of them in the town where I work. Excellent.
So yesterday I wandered into the shop and tried on a number of frames asking for the opinion of the store owner and taking pictures of me wearing those frames. The specific frame that I was after was in stock but not in the colour I wanted to try.
I headed back to work and asked my colleague what she thought of the four choices and she came back with her preference. I then asked Claude for its opinion and I was surprised by the result. I’ve pasted it below in full but without the images. We don’t need to know who I am.
Great set to work with — you’ve got a strong oval face with good bone structure, so you can carry a range of shapes. Here’s my take on each:
Image 1 — Dark double-bridge frames: ⭐ My top pick
These suit you best. The dark colour complements your hair and colouring, the double bridge adds a considered, slightly architectural detail, and the proportions fit your face without overwhelming it. They look both sophisticated and effortlessly stylish — versatile enough for almost any context.
Image 2 — Bold tortoiseshell: Close second
These have real presence and the tortoiseshell works well with your warm skin tone. They’re quite large and dominant though, which can read as a strong fashion statement — great if that’s your intention, but they’d require more commitment to a particular look.
Image 3 — Translucent grey: Third place
The oversized shape is on-trend but these are almost too large, and the grey tone doesn’t do much for you — it’s a bit flat against your colouring. They’re the least flattering of the four.
Image 4 — Clear/crystal frames: Fourth place
The clear frames are interesting in theory, but the contrast between the transparent front and darker temples looks a bit disconnected. They also tend to disappear against your face rather than complementing it.
Bottom line: Go with Image 1. They’re the most wearable, the most flattering, and frankly the most you of the four.”
I like both the first and the second, but I know my decision has been influenced by the opinion of others. It was Image 2 that were the frames that had attracted me to the store in the first place. I like that it sets out the reasons why it believes those frames suit me. It feels a little sycophantic, but not too much. I’ll ask it to tone down in the future.
It’s the final sentence that I find curious – “…and frankly the most you of the four.” How does it know that it’s the most ‘me’ of the four? It doesn’t know me, it doesn’t know my tastes or is it somehow trying to reconcile what it knows of me through my interaction with it to establish a ‘somebody like you wears something like this’? I don’t know.
So I won’t buy glasses based on its recommendations but I appreciated the breakdown and it has proved itself to be a useful tool.
by admin | Mar 14, 2026 | Blog
I love music and I feel lucky that I grew up through the Punk/New Wave/New Romantic. It formed the basis for my love of a certain type of music. For me that meant an enduring love of Japan (the group) and subsequently David Sylvian as well as many other bands of the era, such as Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Marillion, etc.
So recently I thought it might be an interesting exercise to compile a list of the major albums that were released in each year of my birth against my age. I could see what albums I was into when I was 16 or 17 for example.
This, I thought, would be a perfect opportunity to use AI to compile this information. As I am most familiar with ChatGPT I asked it to compile a list. The top ten albums that year for a specified range of years.
It couldn’t do it. It said that the information wasn’t publicly available and therefore it couldn’t compile it.
So I turned to Claude by Anthropic and I asked it for the same thing. Not only did it compile it after asking me pertinent questions about the content, it then produced a fully formatted Word document.
I was impressed.
It was an object lesson in choosing the right tool because a hammer is not a screwdriver and not all AI systems are the same. Now this may well be obvious but it only became obvious through usage.
by admin | Mar 4, 2026 | Blog
A friend of mine has been diagnosed with breast cancer. They are about to start treatment. I want their treatment to be successful and for the negative consequences to be minimised. That’s natural. This is where I want AI to be the difference that makes the difference. This is where I want the technology to be used most effectively. If AI is truly a revolutionary tool then I want it to help people to live where they might have died, to improve the outcomes for those dealing with the many ways that we as humans can die, or lose faculties. I myself have a long term condition that is treated regularly and that with current technology cannot be reversed. I’ll settle for regular treatment to minimise further issues. I’d welcome an improvement or a full reversal, but I can live with the condition.
It’s great that I can get AI to help me with my productivity, to organise my day, to write those posts, suggest ideas, help me be accountable, find those routes to walk or cycle, and so on. I really want it to solve issues with the pollution of our waterways, to deal with the effects of the environmental changes that we’re facing, to improve the quality of our food so that we can benefit from our food rather than it being yet another contributory factor in negative health conditions. I want it to be able to help people with their mental health issues and with their self-esteem rather than creating AI slop and misinformation that we’re presented with.
I want AI to reward creativity not endanger or replace it. I want tools that help and support rather than replace. I want to be able to write and have tools that genuinely support rather than replace text, or strip it of its uniqueness. In writing there is a flatness that can happen when AI is allowed to write.
I know it’s not AI. AI is created by us, written by humans, but it seems that it’s already a black box to us – we don’t know why it necessarily generates the responses that it does.
I don’t know how I’m going to use AI myself outside of curiosity. I don’t have such a busy day when I’m not working that I need it to organise my time. I don’t need it to write for me. I’ll set down my thoughts and endure the comments that come with that. I don’t change my text to improve readability, to make it easier for you to find me, or any of the many tools that I could use to make this blog more visible. A very few people have found it. I don’t know what they make of it, and I’m not writing it for that purpose. This isn’t a business. It’s for me. It’s going to be messy, because I’m messy. I’m human.
I don’t want resources poured into developing AI into finding a better way to kill people; I want it to be developed to save people, to improve lives and at this moment the life of a special friend.
by admin | Mar 3, 2026 | Blog
There’s always a lot going on in the world, but since the last post a number of significant events have transpired. I’m not going to go into them as I’m sure you’re aware of what’s going on. All technologies are applied to warfare and are often the leading or early adopter of emerging technologies as countries and companies invest to develop ‘better’ ‘smarter’ weapons. It was ever thus.
Two of the leading AI companies – OpenAI and Anthropic – have made different decisions of late. I went to their sites to have a look at what they mention in their About page.
OpenAI – OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
Anthropic – Making AI systems you can rely on
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company. We build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
Essentially Anthropic have stated that they will not allow their technology to be used without limits in military technology.
Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks
“Anthropic said Thursday it “cannot in good conscience” comply with a demand from the Pentagon to remove safety precautions from its artificial intelligence model and grant the US military unfettered access to its AI capabilities.”
The link embedded in the quote leads to the statement from Anthropic.
The article also makes it clear that their technologies have already been used in the attack on Venezuela, and that it is appearing to make decisions about drone strikes.
“The growth of autonomous weapons technology, such as drones that can carry out operations even after their connection to a human operator has been severed, has also intensified longstanding concerns around how AI will be used in life-and-death situations.”
I believe that this is an aspect that many people will be concerned about. Will it minimise ‘collateral damage’? That means civilians. No war is going to be clean in its current format. If people bomb then people die and that may well include people who weren’t the intended target.
Anthropic have made a statement of intent. The response from Donald Trump was that he directed all Federal Agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE” all use of the technology from Anthropic.
Not long after OpenAI founder Sam Altman announced that his company had agreed a deal with the Pentagon for their technology to be used.
Trump orders US agencies to stop use of Anthropic technology amid dispute over ethics of AI
US military reportedly used Claude in Iran strikes despite Trump’s ban
It now seems that people are turning to Claude from ChatGPT as a direct result of the stand taken.
Anthropic’s AI model Claude gets popularity boost after US military feud
They’ve also made it a lot easier to switch by allowing the memory of the previous system to be uploaded to Claude. Some users find the memory system very helpful. I’ve certainly used it. Others prefer their responses to be ‘untainted’ by what the system knows of them.
And today I read that the deal that OpenAI made with the Pentagon has been amended. This is how the Guardian reported it. As always, full article below via the link.
OpenAI is amending its hastily arranged deal to supply artificial intelligence to the US Department of War (DoW) after the ChatGPT owner’s chief executive admitted it looked “opportunistic and sloppy”.
The contract prompted fears the San Francisco startup’s AI could be used for domestic mass surveillance but its boss, Sam Altman, said on Monday night the startup would explicitly bar its technology from being used for that purpose or being deployed by defence department intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA).
OpenAI amends Pentagon deal as Sam Altman admits it looks ‘sloppy’
I cannot focus on all aspects of AI and it’s not the scope of this blog to comment on everything. In light of the above I’ve had a look at Claude, but I’m not paying money to either currently. I am no different from many – I am influenced by the choices that companies make. I try to do what I believe is ‘right’, whatever that means to me at the time. It will be interesting to use another platform and I’ll report my findings.