{"id":193175,"date":"2025-06-18T01:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T01:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/193175\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T01:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T01:42:09","slug":"watch-out-hallucinating-humphreys-about-in-whitehall-artificial-intelligence-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/193175\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch out, hallucinating Humphrey\u2019s about in Whitehall | Artificial intelligence (AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I doubt that government officials consulted their AI tool, Humphrey, on what it should be called (UK government rollout of Humphrey AI tool raises fears about reliance on big tech, 15 June<\/a>). It could have advised that in the 1970s the name was used for a milk marketing campaign: \u201cWatch out, there\u2019s a Humphrey about<\/a>.\u201d That line will now have a whole new meaning. Having spent the last few weeks voting in the Lords to try, in vain, to achieve protections for the creative industries from AI abuse, that meaning might be prophetic. On a personal level, my husband is angry that his name is being stolen again.
Sue Miller<\/strong>
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords<\/p>\n

Your report (The \u2018death of creativity\u2019? AI job fears stalk advertising industry, 9 June<\/a>) quotes the chief executive of a big ad agency saying \u201cAI will disintermediate a large number of jobs\u201d. I asked an AI tool to put this into plain English. Ten minutes later, it\u2019s still thinking about it. Perhaps absurd management euphemisms is one area where the human brain can still cut through the crap more effectively than AI?
Neil Cole<\/strong>
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire<\/p>\n

Heather Stewart says large language models, while destroying creative jobs and careers, \u201cremain prone to casually making things up\u201d (Policymakers who think AI can help rescue flagging UK economy should take heed, 15 June<\/a>). Could her article spur MPs into taking meaningful legislative action to protect their own positions?
Jonathan J Ross<\/strong>
Sheffield<\/p>\n

Re Heather Stewart\u2019s article, I\u2019m\u00a0not a specialist, but has anyone tried unplugging AI, going for a walk and then going back to check\u00a0what\u2019s happened? If the door\u2019s locked, we\u2019ve had it.
Gavin Greenwood<\/strong>
Brighton<\/p>\n

To check one AI\u2019s \u201challucination\u201d flaws, can we not use another AI to check what the first AI has produced, and possibly made up?
Alan Worsley<\/strong>
Hull<\/p>\n

As the English language still seems to lack a verb meaning \u201cto generate something via AI\u201d, might I suggest \u201cto bot\u201d? This would provide a quick means of asking whether someone really did the work themselves or just botted it.
Edmund Doragh<\/strong>
Schw\u00e4bisch Gm\u00fcnd, Germany<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/strong>email<\/strong><\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/strong>letters<\/strong><\/a> section.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I doubt that government officials consulted their AI tool, Humphrey, on what it should be called (UK government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-193175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114701831008562911","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}