As a rule, I do not give feedback or reviews. So when I got this email I was about to delete it when I thought 'what product s that?' So I clicked on the link and got this:
Well, that was the end of the road for me. But - and here is the reason I've included it here - I think that would be the end of the road for most folk.
The lesson? If you want reviews, make it easy for folk to give them - the more barriers, the less chance of success.
This design style is what most websites looked like 1996 - 99ish.
This one was live as of the date of this post. The content was last updated in 2024 [but not the design 😏]
I took this screenshot from a website's homepage on the date of this post. Oh dear. Even worse is that other aspects of the site have been updated in 2026.
Close, but no cigar.
I haven't been an academic for five years.
The first picture isn't me.
I'm no longer a Senior lecturer - and I never worked at Teesside University.
[Note that my up-to-date employment history is readily available on the web]
Other than these, not too bad. But AI has a reputation for making errors and/or guesses.
In this example the errors aren't a disaster. But what if it was a health or medical enquiry? Or flight details? Or car repair advice? Or an assignment or dissertation? Shall I go on?
When I tried to open my gmail account this morning I got this:
Now, let me make this clear: not only do I not wish to have AI-powered email, but I would be unlikely to ever communicate with someone who has an AI-powered email - so I started clicking to get my gmail home page. After going round in several circles I finally got this message ...
OK, this was in the 'from' and 'subject' line of an email. What do you think it is all about?
I doubt that any of you - or, indeed anyone - would realise it is a promotion from a hotel.
I stay there several times a year. When I first actually read one of their emails [how many did I simply delete as spam before then?] I did have a quick word with the manager the next time I was there. He dismissed it as 'that's the marketing department'. I bit my tongue and just said 'they're costing you customers' as I left.
I'd have given him 10 minutes for nowt over a cup of their excellent coffee. For a night's stay I'd have talked with the marketing department for a morning or afternoon. Or sold them a copy of my book. Or they could simply have typed something like "tips on effective email marketing" into a search engine.
The irony is that it is a very good hotel in a very good location with reasonable prices, ie that have three of the 4Ps right ... but without the right promotion, they are wasted.
Q. If you use an LLM to - for example - transcribe a meeting, can that LLM [legally] use any information in that transcription in its 'training' ie make it available to anyone who might look for it?
A. Most probably, yes.
Oh ... and the same goes for any information and/or data anyone puts into an 'open' LLM. And I don't just mean your personal stuff - anything about the organization that any employee might put in also goes into the ai's memory, and so is available to anyone. Including competitors.
NB Most large organizations I have come across have some kind of tech support that acts as administrator for the systems they run. If an individual wants to put any kind of software on their employer's PC/laptop it needs to be signed off by tech support ... and they're usually - correctly - very protective of their system.
Premier Inn are happy for users to reject unnecessary cookies on their website, but there's no option on their app. I'm a regular customer of Premier Inn, but I'll not be using the app for future bookings.
