Rachael McKelvey

• ChatGPT isn’t quite ready to take over the world but that doesn’t’ mean it won’t try
• The weather outside is weather
• The Edinburgh Reforms package of financial deregulation.
• How many World Cups do you have left?
• We are now entering “No, that’s for Christmas!” season

ChatGPT isn’t quite ready to take over the world but that doesn’t’ mean it won’t try
The internet is awash with people thinking the end is neigh because ChatGPT can write you an entire novel, this entire twitter thread was quite compelling in the case of fiction but for anything that requires a shred of truth? That’s the truly terrifying bit.

A tool that can make misinformation credible simply by the act of repetition, that doesn’t check its own work and delivers in an authoritative tone. Ooof, that’s quite a thing, isn’t it?

Against a digital landscape that already touts mistruths as fact and a world where the inherent biases in data sets get compounded consciously and unconsciously, how much can it really learn about the world from essentially looking at itself in the mirror?

The weather outside is weather
I am British after all…Isn’t it cold has been basically the conversation starter for the last week, because to quote the greatest line from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”…”The weather outside is weather” and yes I sing it all the time, rain or shine.

But seriously in the last two weeks I have a photo of a red admiral butterfly sunbathing on the wooden tortoise in our local park and now I have a phone full of photos of inches of snow. While the beauty of living in the UK has always been mild weather, I’m not sure you can argue that

The Edinburgh Reforms package of financial deregulation
The 9th December saw the current Chancellor of the Exchequer *checks notes*, still Jeremy Hunt, announce a set of reforms designed to drive growth and competitiveness in the financial services sector and my gut feeling is we should all be a little bit concerned.

Following the financial crisis of 2008 and the impact of Brexit I am not sure that making the new statutory objective of the FCA “international competitiveness” really fits with their goal of regulation, where competitiveness is already implied. We shouldn’t be in yet another deregulation race to the bottom to promote short term growth. I feel like everyone needs to rewatch The Big Short.

(Solvency II, Senior Manager Regime changes and bankers’ bonuses take up a whole different part of my brain. and is a whole other discussion)

How many World Cups do you have left?
My earliest memory of a World Cup is being sent out from a lecture theatre for talking while England were playing in secondary school, I’m not sure how that was meant to be punishment, but it was when I first started to calculate how many World Cups I had left in my life.

Being held only once every 4 years you are born with a finite amount of World Cups. Adjusted for the currently life expectancy of 80.90 years for a female in the UK I have 20 World Cups in my lifetime and 2022 marks the halfway point.

Is 10 World Cups enough to see football come home? Surely we should make home a bit more appealing?

We are now entering “No, that’s for Christmas!” season
We have officially entered the “no, that’s for Christmas” phase of December and while we traditionally don’t do Christmas in our household – it’s quite possibly nearing a decade since I’ve put a tree up but one thing, I can get on board with Christmas about is THE FOOD.

This is the second weekly food shop where a few items for Christmas have been added to the delivery, this week it’s been jars and freezer goodies, so far I have held the initial seminar explaining the items that should not be used because “they are for Christmas” and I eagerly await the first utterance of “no that’s for Christmas!” of 2022.

Current watch: Liar – Without wanting to give the entire plot away because it is so worth a watch – Joanne Froggatt plays teacher Laura and Ioan Grufford plays renowned surgeon Andrew (When he played Pip in Great Expectations in 1999…be still my teenage heart) when paths cross beyond just hello at the school gate neither realise quite how far the consequences of their date will ripple out. It is a gripping thriller where truth and consequence are constantly examined from both sides.

Current read: Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind – Nancy Kline – This book came recommended, despite being written over 20 years ago (1999) it’s served as timely reminder post pandemic that we don’t often gives ourselves time to think and in the ever rush of back to back meetings in a remote world that we probably also don’t give groups enough time to think either.

Kline lays out 10 principles of the “Thinking Environment” to create the conditions for the human mind to think effectively and creatively, it works on all minds no matter what the age. It was an engaging and warm read that has left a lot to reflect on.

Most impactful listen: Re:Thinking with Adam Grant – Why data don’t have all the answers with data scientist Andrea Jones-Rooy
Data skeptic and comedian Andrea Jones-Rooy data scientist joins Adam Grant to talk all things data, the joy and pitfalls of sharing data on social media, how science methodology is just comedy and why we should consider sharing methodologies over outcomes when sharing research.. I ooo’d, I arrh’d and it most definitely got me thinking.