I hear it rather too often, and have commented on strategies to delay upgrades until Microsoft get the bugs out of a release, but here’s an article that might help you improve performance if your machine seems to be running slower after an upgrade …
Always good to get a review of the latest scams, and to put your mind at rest too. I intend to write another post for the Cardiff u3a website soon, and this article will be useful background …
It was less than 12 months ago that we had a session looking at the emerging technology of Large Learning Models (LLM) and in particular Chat-GPT and Dall-E from Open AI. In fact it was the meeting we had on the 23rd March, and this was the article I created for that meeting; I also put a slightly different version of it on the public Cardiff u3a website. Sianed and I also debated the topic in September, an experience neither of us would willingly go through again!!!! So with so much having happened in such a short period of time, it certainly seemed right to revisit the topic and see what’s happened.
First some background, some developments and some resources for you to follow-up, then some notes and content from three member contributions. We have Jonathan, Iain and Phil to thank for these.
What do we mean by Artificial Intelligence. Well, nothing that’s really appeared in the past 15 months it would have to be said. Some articles for you to consider …
Race to AI: the origins of artificial intelligence, from Turing to ChatGPT – in this article from The Guardian the background to what is, and what is not, artificial intelligence is explored and whilst recognising that a step-change has occurred, we have not yet reached the “nirvana” of artificial intelligence.
A simple guide to help you understand AI – in this animated webpage from the BBC, you have the “Janet and John” introduction to artificial intelligence. That’s not meant as an insult in any way, it’s a very straightforward introduction to the subject and if you switch the animations on you will get a full-experience.
Much of the attention in the past year or so has been focussed on LLM and Chat-GPT. Which? attempts to answer the question – “is it safe to use” in this article, but comes up with more questions than answers, but it does a bit of explaining along the way, but actually the best way to find out what Chat-GPT can do, is to try it yourself, which you can do here, after signing-up for an account on the Open AI servers.
Some experiments and experiences. We kicked-off here with Jonathan telling us about his experience of using Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft has released several AI “Copilots” that can complete different tasks for different purposes.
At a basic level Copilot can be accessed directly through copilot.microsoft.com where it acts as a kind of Bing-ChatGPT. It can answer questions, create text, jokes, poems, songs and images much as we’ve seen in Chat GPT. When providing information it will reference the source material. And also send you on a shopping spree if you wish!
Copilot is now fully integrated into the Bing search engine and Edge browser. Open Edge from the Windows taskbar to bring up the browser. Copilot is the top icon in the vertical tabs on the right. Clicking on it will open a sidebar which looks much like the page we’ve seen above. A different tab will open the AI Image Creator. Copilot in Edge can work with web pages, for instance generating a summary of complex articles. It will work in chat, compose and insight modes. It offers three conversation styles for your own composition – creative, balanced or precise!
Copilot in Windows is currently being rolled out in Windows 11 updates. It can help with a variety of tasks, both relating to your PC’s settings and to generative assistance. For example, Copilot in Windows can turn on your computer’s dark room, organize your windows, write an essay, help you shop, and more with a simple conversational prompt.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 involves the integration of the Copilot AI assistant into Microsoft’s 365 productivity software family. For example the suite of Microsoft 365 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, will be infused with Copilot to optimize workflow, such as generating text and tables in Word, summarizing and drafting emails in Outlook, and generating Python visualizations in Excel. This is clearly a more advanced development of Copilot AI, intended for the business market, currently on offer for £30/month!
There are further business related Copilots for Security, Service and Sales.
All are under continuous development so will no doubt involve rapid change and improvement over time.
Of all the commercial developments in the past year it’s Microsoft that’s led the way, but Google’s working hard to keep-up, first with it’s Bard model, and latterly with it’s Gemini software.
Iain led us through some of the features of Bard and this article indicates the differences between Bard and Chat-GPT. Iain was particularly struck by the way the system seemed to learn from one day to another. An inappropriate response to a question of taking your grandchildren somewhere in Cardiff, had been replaced by a much more acceptable answer. How does this happen? Has it learnt something? Or, is it’s previous answer become part of the resource that it uses to find responses. I guess we’ll never know!!
Since the meeting Iain has also shared with us in the Artificial Intelligence Forum a really interesting and potentially useful use of AI in interpreting scrolls recovered from the eruption of Vesuvius. There are many really useful uses of AI, as the Royal Institution lectures showed us. I aim to add Topics to that Forum over the next few weeks (and months) as they emerge, and I encourage you to do the same.
We then had an illuminating presentation from Phil, that I encourage you to look at.
It starts off with Phil’s interest in Family History and his ancestor’s death from cholera which prompted him to enquire about that epidemic.
He then asked Chat-GPT to write an essay (which he’d had to do in an earlier life) on the topic “Liberal and Utilitarian Educational Thinking in 19th Century Great Britain: A Comprehensive Analysis with Reference to Cardinal Newman”
He felt that the attempt was worth at least a B+
He then shared with us some images created by Image2Go.com not all of which totally hit the brief he’d requested.
Finally a very thought-proking article – AI Needs to Be Both Trusted and Trustworthy – a theme picked-up by Ian (not Iain) on Signal with his reference to the fact that Chinese academics wary of their reputations have moved towards implementing new guidelines to protect the quality of their research.
I’ve put quite a few articles up on Flipboard in the past couple of months. I aim now to move some of them into the Artificial Intelligence Forum on Thought grazing with a brief commentary, and I invite your replies/comments. I think this move indicates that I will be using the Forum more for reference, and Flipboard more for news. I think that makes sense.
Remember the digital chip that was inserted into the Covid 19 vaccine….the one that would kick into action at some unspecified date and force you to do things that you might not have considered before? Mine forces me to buy tech products. That digital chip even knows my P.I.N. number. An Apple Watch was one of my most recent purchases but I might say that I’m absolutely delighted with the device. It looks after me; a bit like having Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder. It does things for me that are really useful, potentially even vital.
It has a feature called Fall Detection. Those who know me will know that I’ve had a few falls over the last few years. I’ve sustained quite a few injuries including three broken ribs once. Believe me, falling over is no fun. Luckily, every time it has happened there have been kind Samaritans around, but what if I took a tumble whilst on a park walk, where there was nobody around? That is where Fall Detection comes in. The watch will know when you’ve fallen over. On the screen it will show a message, “You’ve fallen over. Are you O.K.?” You then have one minute to respond to that message. If you don’t respond within one minute, it will send for an ambulance, sending it to the GPS location provided by your watch. Here are a couple of videos. https://youtu.be/yZgzAhBa7Kc?si=2eTcmhPMFsJgIpKi. And https://youtu.be/OWasOBv15qk?si=zjaMW5gnKDcX8j2H
Medical I.D. You can tell your phone and your watch your ailment and prescription details. Now, I know we should be wary of giving computers too much sensitive information but as far as I know, this information can be gained from my watch by medical professionals in times of trouble only.
Health monitoring. The watch can give you all sorts of information about your health. This includes a step counter, sleep monitor, it can even monitor your walking steadiness. It is even said that it can detect atrial fibrillation although you might want to check that out yourself. The more expensive models have blood oxygen and ECG apps included. I went for the cheapest model, the SE second generation. (£219 at the moment). I think that is sufficient for my personal level of hypochondria.
A torch. Nifty ! There are a couple of ways to get the screen to light up, giving you roughly the illumination level of a candle. Sufficient to help you find the toilet during night time excursions in unfamiliar hotel rooms. Use Siri (yes, the watch has Siri) and simply say ’Torch on’, or for Harry Potter fans, say ‘Lumos”. To switch off, simply place your hand over the watch face.
Answer the phone. If your phone is in another room and rings, you can accept the call from your watch, speaking and listening to your watch. You can also send text messages to your watch using Siri.
Alarm clock / timer. Simply ask Siri to set an alarm. It wakes you with vibrations on your wrist. This is actually a really pleasant way to be woken up.
Things to be aware of.
The Apple Watch works in conjunction with your iPhone. It won’t do much on its own.
I haven’t looked in to this, but I’m pretty sure that there are alternatives in the Android world that will do pretty much the same thing.
There are other, far cheaper brands of Smart Watch available. I tried a £40 model but I had to stop using it because it made my wrist itch.
Oh, and just one more thing, especially for the gentlemen in the group.
[A short series of posts that I aim to also put up on the Digital Matters page of the Cardiff u3a website]
If you watched Rip Off Britain on January 15th [Episode 35 of Series 15 at c. 29mins 45secs into the programme] you will see an expert describe the Scam that one of our members has experienced recently and which has led me to write this post which may well be the first of a number on the subject of Scams.
This scam manifests itself by your computer screen being taken over by a popup which also freezes your screen. You are instructed by a voice-over not to turn off your machine but instead to ring a telephone number where you will be “assisted” to unlock your computer which has been locked – in this case supposedly by Microsoft, but it could be any large tech company – for your protection.
This alarming message plus the fact that your screen has frozen may lead you into thinking you better click on the button to seemingly connect to Microsoft. This will lead to a telephone conversation where you will be requested to supply information that will undoubtedly lead to fraud.
Do nothing!
Note well: No tech company will approach you in this way. They will not be doing this form of online monitoring of your devices. In this case the scam is preying on the fact that you are being led to think that your Windows Defender Security package is not working properly. No tech company would readily admit to its users of a deficiency in their programs in this way – that could lead potentially to legal action being taken against them. For a genuine issue they might issue an alert on their webpages and a request to upgrade (or whatever), or they might be forced to send an email to registered users, but they would not send unsolicited messages in this way.
It is important to realise that with this scam, at this stage, the scammers know NOTHING about you. The scam works by malicious code having been added to a website you are visiting, or to an advert on the website you are visiting. The simple solution is to press F11 to unlock your screen, note the website address and make a note not to go to that site again. [I would probably also recommend clearing your internet cache and history from your browser before closing down your computer; waiting a few moments; and then re-booting it.]
The more long-term solution is to install an Ad Blocker such as AdBlock Plus as an extension to your browser. This would act in conjunction with your standard security software which on a Windows machine could well be Windows Defender.
Happy, safer surfing.
If you want to see the recording of the message that our Digital Matters member made of the scam, watch the video below …
Apologies from Christine, Jo & Paul, Jeanne & Mick, Kate, Jen, Jonathan, David Hughes, Tony and Sianed.
We welcome Iain King to his first meeting.
Thanks to Phil for his presentation on his visit to Bletchley Park.
I then went through a variety of “interesting” items that I’d put up on Flipboard, highlighting the ones on Meta introducing a possible subscription model to avoid sanctions from the EU on data sharing; an article from Which? on printer ink; useful things you can do with a smart plug; and how to keep your iPhone safe from thieves.
Before we adjourned to The Gatekeeper for a Christmas drink, we had a quick run round the room for issues.
Anne still hadn’t found a solution to her McAfee in Spanish language problem.
Phil enquired how many members had a screen protector on their phones, and whether they had been installed in-store, or not. Quite a few members had and they reported that they worked well.
Sheila requested a reminder on how SIM Locks worked and were set up. I’ll add a Topic to the Hardware and Software Forum.
Jenny reported that she was shortly leaving Cardiff to return to London, but was having email problems that we talked through with her.
Iain enquired whether he (as a Windows 10) should upgrade to Windows 11, or not. I said that it was a very personal decision, that might be guided by how old his PC was. As Microsoft are still supporting that version of Windows it was not as pressing as earlier versions.
Yvonne had an iPhone 8 – I think she was enquiring whether it should now be replaced. Well … if you can afford it, yes; otherwise if it’s still doing all you require then, no. But gradually some apps will stop being supported and you’ll need to consider replacing it.
[I’ll add some notes from the 9th hopefully soon, Sianed has sent me these and I’ll format them at the same time.]
The group was asked to share their thoughts on the best (or worst) experience with computers they have used.
So many of the group said their experience of computers first arose as a necessity in the workplace. These was often computers that had huge servers needing a whole room to house them.
Most found these systems initially challenging, but have come to appreciate that living in the modern era demands knowledge and competency in their use.
Here is a summary of their comments:
Jenanne – Likes her Apple and is very happy with it.
Jo – Liked the Hewlett- Packard Filofax – uses computers out of necessity
Paul – Used a Data Processor @work punch tape/card – print out
Uses an Apple power bar – 40 “ hard drive
Ian Liked the Apple Classic – original.
Kate Did not have any positive or negative thoughts/experience
Ralph Really liked the Spectrum 48 as one could programme it
S 128 – very good the software games in the form of floppy discs
Nita Used the Unix system at work – not a big fan, the computer took up a whole . room due to their massive servers
Used a dell machine with a dot matrix printer
Now uses a Apple and is happy with it.
Sheila introduced to computers @work in the Civil Service – ZX Spectrum (again an . enormous sized machine).
Now is an Apple fan ++ uses i mac.
Lynnett At work First used a Bletchley Park IBM type computer.
Now uses computers as they are a necessity.
Yvonne First used a BBC computer with 5” floppy disc – ‘Find Spot’ games found them
useful with the family
Anne Just uses computers does not like them particularly – “them and us”
Mike First used computers at work in the Civil Service. He wasnt their bigest fan as he
did not fully understand them but were a necessity. Thinks of them as are tools,
and would be lost without his i-pad
Phill Likes the smart phones. Finds the QR codes very useful -especially for parking
(millenium Centre – but tickets for show and parking at the same time.)
