By Bruce Whitehead
Copyright scotsman
In return for turning a blind eye to Trump’s obvious shortcomings as a person, we get a £150bn deal to allow US tech giants to build new plants here to process trillions of transactions in the coming wonderland of so-called “AI” or artificial intelligence. I don’t see how enormous computers delivering history essays or novels by plagiarising other people’s work can be called intelligent; all they do is to make a vast number of data comparisons extremely quickly, and then spew them out as advice. They’re certainly artificial, but will they deliver all these new jobs claimed by Starmer? All the evidence of labour-saving technology is that it has a net effect of removing jobs. After all, why would global investors put money into AI corporations if it’s going to increase their wages bill? And hey; isn’t Trump supposed to be all about bringing jobs to the US? Then, on the nuclear power deal, there’s the usual spurious claims about how green nuclear energy is, and how many jobs it can generate. The University of Birmingham’s Energy Institute looked at this recently and concluded that until the waste disposal problem has been solved, nuclear power is not environmentally sustainable. The government is building a vast “repository” (dustbin to you and me) where all the waste will go. It will cost hundreds of billions and take 20 years to build. Uranium-235 is running out too and the University says it may only be extractable for 100 years. So what would you do I hear you ask. Well, the answer is a couple of miles offshore; a few hundred yards if you’re in Queensferry. Tidal stream energy is already being captured by seabed turbines, which can power all our energy needs. Forever. As long as the moon sticks around.
