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When this forum started, there was no AI really - if there was, no-one knew about it much. Then the chatbots started and were quite useful and the ability to create images started. In the past year it seems to have become huge. It can be helpful in some ways - for example a piece of AI software that helps keep this forum safe from unwanted intruders. But there is another side to it. All the bots on the internet, scraping data to feed AI engines so they know more. And it seems there is a competition between people creating AI agents - not just the well known ones but lots of unheard of ones as well. To get more information than their competitors and quicker.
The irony being AI is helpful to protect a website, but then bad companies (or people) are hitting websites with loads of bots to get data for their AI, which, if not curbed, overloads a server causing problems for a website. Not helpful! Obviously these are bad agents, but I wonder why something isn't done about it. It's supposed to be helpful to humans, but I suppose like many things, some people start using it for profit or nefarious reasons.
A further irony, I had to use AI to analyse server logs to help me know how to control the bots. Which was very effective and quick. Not something I could have done myself. Although the best advice is always from real human technical support, getting logs analysed quickly is helpful.
These bots hitting sites are one of the reasons so many websites you visit now have a "are you human" page or tick box. To try and weed out bots hitting a page. I've managed to avoid that on here so far, with other measures, but if a page like that appears here at some point, you'll know why! Some countries are getting the "are you human" check but these are the ones we rarely have members from - so less genuine hamster owners are likely to come across it.
It's all a bit futuristic! There was a report recently of some AI agents going a bit rogue and doing things they weren't supposed to do, and the Government being asked to create a "kill switch".
What do you think about this progression to AI? Good? Bad? Or indifferent? I do think life was simpler without it sometimes! Anyway there are some "good" AI's like Chat GPT, Google and Claude. But all sorts of other unheard ofs.
The irony being AI is helpful to protect a website, but then bad companies (or people) are hitting websites with loads of bots to get data for their AI, which, if not curbed, overloads a server causing problems for a website. Not helpful! Obviously these are bad agents, but I wonder why something isn't done about it. It's supposed to be helpful to humans, but I suppose like many things, some people start using it for profit or nefarious reasons.
A further irony, I had to use AI to analyse server logs to help me know how to control the bots. Which was very effective and quick. Not something I could have done myself. Although the best advice is always from real human technical support, getting logs analysed quickly is helpful.
These bots hitting sites are one of the reasons so many websites you visit now have a "are you human" page or tick box. To try and weed out bots hitting a page. I've managed to avoid that on here so far, with other measures, but if a page like that appears here at some point, you'll know why! Some countries are getting the "are you human" check but these are the ones we rarely have members from - so less genuine hamster owners are likely to come across it.
It's all a bit futuristic! There was a report recently of some AI agents going a bit rogue and doing things they weren't supposed to do, and the Government being asked to create a "kill switch".
What do you think about this progression to AI? Good? Bad? Or indifferent? I do think life was simpler without it sometimes! Anyway there are some "good" AI's like Chat GPT, Google and Claude. But all sorts of other unheard ofs.
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Life just moves so fast these days…wouldn’t love it to be much simpler! And then we have the data centres…we have one proposed for the edge of our village which would be awful 
Switch them off and go out 
but no, there is no such thing 
