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Pure opinion, but I feel like the UK has a strong cultural bias towards doing things the way they’ve always been done, which can make us a bit resistant to new

Pure opinion, but I feel like the UK has a strong cultural bias towards doing things the way they’ve always been done, which can make us a bit resistant to new technologies and ways of doing things.

ben_w 2y ago
Based on my experience growing up in the UK, then having long visits to the US and moving to Germany… the UK overall is fairly open minded to new tech and social change. Well, so long as the monarchy and the castles remain.
ethernot 2y ago
I don't think we're resistant, just hesitant pragmatists. When something new and shiny turns up, we don't necessarily accept the marketing saying it's going to improve our lives. Best to wait for someone else to get through the early adoption pain and work out all the kinks so we don't have to waste our time on it if it turns out to be a lemon. With this strategy I entirely missed blockchain, crypto and NFTs and am in the process of missing AI.
- antirez 2y ago
  To think that AI is as irrelevant as blockchain, crypto and NFTs is a tragical error many are committing, sir. Those things were trivial and useless and it was clear since the start, and even if tons of money and marketing were put inside, nothing changed because of the blockchain, at least nothing useful. AI is a completely different story: you likely not even realize you are already a heavy user just as a side effect of everything technological you use, from voice dictation, to medical, to all the images you see around. Soon also: when you are going to watch a movie. Moreover LLMs are already transforming the way people work. These two entities, blockchian and AI, have very little in common if not the hype.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    AI and Crypto both use extraordinary amounts of electricity but at least AI actually does something and has replaced Google for me in at least 50% of searches.
    - labster 2y ago
      Is that because AI has gotten better or because Google has gotten worse?
      - ben_w 2y ago
        IMO, both. There's a lot of stuff that LLMs can do for me that Google never could, like synthesise a new python script to solve some idea I want to iterate on. But also, Google results nose-dived and only recently seemed to get less bad… though now it seems to be the turn of the YouTube home page to be 60 items of which 45 are bad, 14 are in my watch later list already, and only 1 is both new to me and interesting.
  - ethernot 2y ago
    So what you're saying is that blockchain, crypto, NFTs had no application up front. Correct. I agree there. What I am saying is that the applications of AI cannot be fulfilled to the level of the promises made. The promises were made to solicit hype to generate cash, not because the idea was viable or achievable on proof. When we reach maturity, we'll see what is left and I'll wait for that. That's fine. In the mean time I'll have to put up with cats appearing every time I search for dogs in Apple Photos and arguing with ChatGPT about its understanding of the relative magnitude of 9.9 and 9.11, while everyone tells me repeatedly with sweat on their brow that WhateverMODEL+1 will make that problem go away, which it didn't on WhateverMODEL-3,-2,-1,0. Only another $2 billion of losses and we'll nail it then!!! The end game for all technology changes is not what we think it will be. Been in this game a long time and that is the only certainty.
    - yesco 2y ago
      I'm not sure what promises you are talking about, but I've found LLMs to be extraordinarily helpful for both my job and daily life. They are excellent at translation, summarization, troubleshooting, and brainstorming. I've used OpenAIs API to translate an entire epub, including the HTML so images are retained and the results were shockingly good after some prompt fiddling. With Claude I've received some excellent advice on decorating my living room, organizing my schedule, and quick hypotheticals. There are no pinky promises here, it already works. For general Q&A they can hallucinate, but so long as you are using it to augment your productivity and not as a driver this isn't any different than using stack overflow, or any other kind of question you might ask on the internet. It's basically a non issue too if you upload a document into its context window and stick to asking questions about that document though.
      - ethernot 2y ago
        Honestly, and this is not personal, I doubt your ability to determine a bad summarisation or translation outcome. My wife is a professional translator and spends a good deal of time picking up the steaming wrecks that LLMs have left after someone went for the "cheap" option first. And we're talking best of breed stuff like DeepL here. As for the other points, I rather like to spend some time thinking on them personally. If you're not connected to the decision yourself, what are you?
- slantaclaus 2y ago
  I’m glad my view of my country or any country isn’t so small that I would imagine everyone thinking or acting a certain way
jajko 2y ago
Could be, but a bit of conservatism ain't gonna hurt, more conservative nations like Switzerland or nordics are doing more than fine long term, QOL is top notch globally for various reasons. Much better than having sheepish mentality and chasing what rest of the crowd is chasing too, shows some character and thinking for oneself and not being an easy subject to manipulation. X was almost pure toxicity even before musk's ego trip and I never understood why I should care about some random brainfarts of people 'I should be following', don't people have their own opinions formed by their own experience? Thats rather poor way of spending limited time we have here, on top of training oneself in quick cheap dopamine kicks which messes up people for rest of their lives. ChatGPT at least tries to be added value, but beyond a bit better search, hallucinating some questionable code and some random cute pics (of which novelty wears off extremely fast), I don't see it, I mean I see the potential, just not reality right now. Plus that code part - I want to keep training myself and my analytical mind, I don't want to be handed easy answers and become more passive and lazy. That's why I do git via command line tool and not just clicking around. That's why I don't mind at all doing some easier algorithms instead of having them served. My employer only wants good result, I am not working in sweat shop being paid by number of lines of code per day. Quality life is about completely different things anyway. IMHO UK is fine in this regard.
Barrin92 2y ago
I think the Brits are pretty fast at adopting technology, their digital public service infrastructure for example is excellent as is their research and engineering sector but I think they have a pretty big distaste for hucksterism or fads and a very no-nonsense attitude. Sort of like us Germans but less digitally averse and with a better bureaucracy.
- twixfel 2y ago
  I'm British but have lived in Germany for several years. I'd say the Germans are explicitly more conservative than Brits. Germany has several aspects in business and law which do, and admittedly I never lived in medieval times, literally feel like something out of some medieval guild system. "I must tithe to the Driver's Guild" is the long and the short of the entire learning to drive system here for example. And Germans just accept it, or even more pathetic, defend it. They just accept having these legally mandated wallet inspectors / guild members ambushing them every now and then for cash. Baffling.
ozim 2y ago
People living in techno bubble are always surprised how much „normal” people are behind and how much they don’t care. I see people who are doing white collar jobs where most of it is doing stuff on computers being absolutely not interested in any of it. I work with generally people from all over Europe and it mostly is the same so I would not say Brits are like that but more generally people have bias towards doing things the way they’ve always been doing. Last month our company released new interface because old one is built on unsupported tech and with all the regulations we have to change it anyway - outrage lasted 2 weeks - people are getting used to new way and in 2 months no one will remember the old way.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  There's many people like me who were born and pushed for more tech and are now back pedaling. You start to see through the trends, the marketing, the manias.. and nowadays the disconnect between joy, usefulness and actual results.
asveikau 2y ago
You're talking about the country that started the industrial revolution.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  They're talking about a country that still has Kings and an unelected senate.
  - pezezin 2y ago
    Plenty of modern countries still have kings. In practice it doesn't affect democracy much, other than being another source of waste and corruption. The House of Lords though, now that is weird.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Versus a country where many places even in big cities still expect to check a signature for payment. Lack of adoption of chip-and-pin is baffling.
dukeyukey 2y ago
Hard disagree. You might think that, then you see how other countries do things, and you realise we're actually pretty good at adopting new stuff. Not the best, but better than most.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Facts. It’s why they have no semiconductor industry, why their cars are all literally the most unreliable brands, and why they are becoming poor af compared to Americans. I’m so tired of euros trying to act smug about them not working hard. There’s a reason why the EU and the UK are fading into obscurity.

ben_w 2y ago

Based on my experience growing up in the UK, then having long visits to the US and moving to Germany… the UK overall is fairly open minded to new tech and social change. Well, so long as the monarchy and the castles remain.

ethernot 2y ago

I don't think we're resistant, just hesitant pragmatists. When something new and shiny turns up, we don't necessarily accept the marketing saying it's going to improve our lives. Best to wait for someone else to get through the early adoption pain and work out all the kinks so we don't have to waste our time on it if it turns out to be a lemon. With this strategy I entirely missed blockchain, crypto and NFTs and am in the process of missing AI.

antirez 2y ago
To think that AI is as irrelevant as blockchain, crypto and NFTs is a tragical error many are committing, sir. Those things were trivial and useless and it was clear since the start, and even if tons of money and marketing were put inside, nothing changed because of the blockchain, at least nothing useful. AI is a completely different story: you likely not even realize you are already a heavy user just as a side effect of everything technological you use, from voice dictation, to medical, to all the images you see around. Soon also: when you are going to watch a movie. Moreover LLMs are already transforming the way people work. These two entities, blockchian and AI, have very little in common if not the hype.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  AI and Crypto both use extraordinary amounts of electricity but at least AI actually does something and has replaced Google for me in at least 50% of searches.
  - labster 2y ago
    Is that because AI has gotten better or because Google has gotten worse?
    - ben_w 2y ago
      IMO, both. There's a lot of stuff that LLMs can do for me that Google never could, like synthesise a new python script to solve some idea I want to iterate on. But also, Google results nose-dived and only recently seemed to get less bad… though now it seems to be the turn of the YouTube home page to be 60 items of which 45 are bad, 14 are in my watch later list already, and only 1 is both new to me and interesting.
- ethernot 2y ago
  So what you're saying is that blockchain, crypto, NFTs had no application up front. Correct. I agree there. What I am saying is that the applications of AI cannot be fulfilled to the level of the promises made. The promises were made to solicit hype to generate cash, not because the idea was viable or achievable on proof. When we reach maturity, we'll see what is left and I'll wait for that. That's fine. In the mean time I'll have to put up with cats appearing every time I search for dogs in Apple Photos and arguing with ChatGPT about its understanding of the relative magnitude of 9.9 and 9.11, while everyone tells me repeatedly with sweat on their brow that WhateverMODEL+1 will make that problem go away, which it didn't on WhateverMODEL-3,-2,-1,0. Only another $2 billion of losses and we'll nail it then!!! The end game for all technology changes is not what we think it will be. Been in this game a long time and that is the only certainty.
  - yesco 2y ago
    I'm not sure what promises you are talking about, but I've found LLMs to be extraordinarily helpful for both my job and daily life. They are excellent at translation, summarization, troubleshooting, and brainstorming. I've used OpenAIs API to translate an entire epub, including the HTML so images are retained and the results were shockingly good after some prompt fiddling. With Claude I've received some excellent advice on decorating my living room, organizing my schedule, and quick hypotheticals. There are no pinky promises here, it already works. For general Q&A they can hallucinate, but so long as you are using it to augment your productivity and not as a driver this isn't any different than using stack overflow, or any other kind of question you might ask on the internet. It's basically a non issue too if you upload a document into its context window and stick to asking questions about that document though.
    - ethernot 2y ago
      Honestly, and this is not personal, I doubt your ability to determine a bad summarisation or translation outcome. My wife is a professional translator and spends a good deal of time picking up the steaming wrecks that LLMs have left after someone went for the "cheap" option first. And we're talking best of breed stuff like DeepL here. As for the other points, I rather like to spend some time thinking on them personally. If you're not connected to the decision yourself, what are you?
slantaclaus 2y ago
I’m glad my view of my country or any country isn’t so small that I would imagine everyone thinking or acting a certain way

jajko 2y ago

Could be, but a bit of conservatism ain't gonna hurt, more conservative nations like Switzerland or nordics are doing more than fine long term, QOL is top notch globally for various reasons. Much better than having sheepish mentality and chasing what rest of the crowd is chasing too, shows some character and thinking for oneself and not being an easy subject to manipulation. X was almost pure toxicity even before musk's ego trip and I never understood why I should care about some random brainfarts of people 'I should be following', don't people have their own opinions formed by their own experience? Thats rather poor way of spending limited time we have here, on top of training oneself in quick cheap dopamine kicks which messes up people for rest of their lives. ChatGPT at least tries to be added value, but beyond a bit better search, hallucinating some questionable code and some random cute pics (of which novelty wears off extremely fast), I don't see it, I mean I see the potential, just not reality right now. Plus that code part - I want to keep training myself and my analytical mind, I don't want to be handed easy answers and become more passive and lazy. That's why I do git via command line tool and not just clicking around. That's why I don't mind at all doing some easier algorithms instead of having them served. My employer only wants good result, I am not working in sweat shop being paid by number of lines of code per day. Quality life is about completely different things anyway. IMHO UK is fine in this regard.

Barrin92 2y ago

I think the Brits are pretty fast at adopting technology, their digital public service infrastructure for example is excellent as is their research and engineering sector but I think they have a pretty big distaste for hucksterism or fads and a very no-nonsense attitude. Sort of like us Germans but less digitally averse and with a better bureaucracy.

twixfel 2y ago
I'm British but have lived in Germany for several years. I'd say the Germans are explicitly more conservative than Brits. Germany has several aspects in business and law which do, and admittedly I never lived in medieval times, literally feel like something out of some medieval guild system. "I must tithe to the Driver's Guild" is the long and the short of the entire learning to drive system here for example. And Germans just accept it, or even more pathetic, defend it. They just accept having these legally mandated wallet inspectors / guild members ambushing them every now and then for cash. Baffling.

ozim 2y ago

People living in techno bubble are always surprised how much „normal” people are behind and how much they don’t care. I see people who are doing white collar jobs where most of it is doing stuff on computers being absolutely not interested in any of it. I work with generally people from all over Europe and it mostly is the same so I would not say Brits are like that but more generally people have bias towards doing things the way they’ve always been doing. Last month our company released new interface because old one is built on unsupported tech and with all the regulations we have to change it anyway - outrage lasted 2 weeks - people are getting used to new way and in 2 months no one will remember the old way.

agumonkey 2y ago
There's many people like me who were born and pushed for more tech and are now back pedaling. You start to see through the trends, the marketing, the manias.. and nowadays the disconnect between joy, usefulness and actual results.

asveikau 2y ago

You're talking about the country that started the industrial revolution.

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
They're talking about a country that still has Kings and an unelected senate.
- pezezin 2y ago
  Plenty of modern countries still have kings. In practice it doesn't affect democracy much, other than being another source of waste and corruption. The House of Lords though, now that is weird.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  Versus a country where many places even in big cities still expect to check a signature for payment. Lack of adoption of chip-and-pin is baffling.

dukeyukey 2y ago

Hard disagree. You might think that, then you see how other countries do things, and you realise we're actually pretty good at adopting new stuff. Not the best, but better than most.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

Facts. It’s why they have no semiconductor industry, why their cars are all literally the most unreliable brands, and why they are becoming poor af compared to Americans. I’m so tired of euros trying to act smug about them not working hard. There’s a reason why the EU and the UK are fading into obscurity.