Andrew's AI Crash Course

Update 1: added an album of AI edit quirks below

Update 2: a fresh French look into the future of AI 

Update 3: AI as a means not an end in-and-of itself

Update 4: AI data centers are not what you think! 

Q: eh! can you spot the difference on this blog?

A: new header Web maps & AI for the public good

Have I mentionned that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders? Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. This post follows on my last AI trial, a long conversation here. Let's see here some lessons-learned in this blog, Medium Professional Channel here (Personal here) & elsewhere:

Blog

Community Engagement Series (2023)

22: AI Prompt Engineering Trial 1

23: AI Prompt Engineering Trial 2

A.I. Series (2024)

"AI for the rest of us"

Medium 

2017 

The robots aren’t coming… they’re here!

2022

The future is digital… only it’s not what you think!

2023

AI isn’t coming… it’s here!

When is AI not AI?

Stop AI scraping your Internet data

When is AI good AI?

2024

When is IT bad IT?

When is AI more than AI?

A divergence of AI

2025

Thither, AI?

Yon, AI!

Flickr

AI-edits in Google Photos

These AI-edited shots aren't about removing elements - esp. people - per se, but rather about removing parts that detract from the photo; in other words, both tools and pitfalls in this narrow AI context. I don't think it's worth it, however, do you? Photo pros like Martin Bond here and Paul Nickeln here certainly don't!

French Connection 

I closed my Medium series on AI (see 2025 above) with Flavien Chervet: he pushes us past next-gen AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) towards "Creative Super Intelligence"; a recent presentation here (go to settings cogwheel for English auto-translate or French original) complements what I found the best intro to AI in English here (French original here)... As seen under both 2025 Medium posts above, he's part of the French & European AI wave to the American & Chinese ones.

AI-ding Tool

Here are case studies that point to a useful role for AI: to aid in accelerating preparatory work, rather than to replace actual work; it still needs to be done by humans with the help of traditional IT incl. complementary AI tech:

• Stanford professor who co-founded 4 startups: How to use AI as a 'force multiplier' to start a business - Source: CNBC
• Google's AI 'co-scientist' cracked 10-year superbug problem in just 2 days - Source: LiveScience
• ‘I sent AI to art school!’ The postmodern master who taught a machine to beef up his old work - Source: The Guardian
• “Periodic table of machine learning” could fuel AI discovery - Source: MIT News

Aaand...

... everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about AI Data Centers:

***

This wraps up a blog started 15½ yrs. ago , as I move on to my life’s next phase - deets in banner menu & sidebar index on desktop here - quite happy with 365 posts, just over ⅔M hits, incl. just under 20K this month - tho I haven't paid Google Analytics to discern their provenance - thanks for reading!

One last map request

Note: this blog won't die... monthly hits almost 20K mid-April! Seen on desktop here, that also lists top reads.

When visiting the nearby village of Pontacq (Flickr & village site), the glorious sunshine showed the Pic do Midi de Bigorre (Wikipedia) so clearly we could see the observatory atop! It's the left peak in the central massif below.

Reposting stories from original website

As I prepare to end this blog, let's follow on recent updates: 

Aug. '24: A return to my roots
Oct. '24: "Where in the world...", updated
Oct. '24: Global sea level rise revisited
Oct. '24: Northwest Passage Reloaded
Nov. '24: Cumbria classic revisited...
Dec. '24: Exhuming my thesis area... & Jan. '25: update
Jan. '25: London Thames Barrier... & Feb. '25: update
Feb. '25: Beechey Island update
Feb. '25: East Anglia Peatlands revisited

I now re-posted ftom my original "www.zolnai.ca", a new chronological blog of my life & work web  from 1957 to 2001, incl. the evolution of my websites:

aizonline.blogspot.com

It's linked as "prof. portfolios" atop right banner menu on main blog, desktop link below:

blog.zolnai.ca/?m=0

Following on from my map re-visits atop, here's one last request posted, before my closing blog to recap my AI themes here and on Medium.

A conversation with AI (long read)

Update: a short read on Medium tells "the story behind the story" of American & French Revolutions.

Shakira YouTube channel posted this video #LMYNLWorldTourCDMX: 

How a confusion between CDMX (Ciudad Mexico) and MCDX (1410 in Roman numerals) lead to a far-ranging AI chat thru culture, geography, career and climate activism. MSFT Copilot (here) transcript (Italics: me, regular: Copilot):

East Anglia Peatlands revisited

Update1: see clipped oroginal and working vector datasets posted as detailed at bottom.

Update 2: added DIY map-mapping workshops & notes to help citzen science

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

As news abounds about Arctic Permafrost & Peatlands degrading faster than thought (Copilot), this may be a good time to bring back some Natural England and Environment Agency data under Open Government License (OGL, National Archives). The upshot is that returning peatlands to their original state is the biggest climate change mitigator in the UK detailed here & here: briefly, peatlands either degraded thru neglect or converted to farm land, not only shrinks & stops being floodwater catchment, but it converts carbon sinks through sphagnum moss into carbon emitters thru windborne dried peat. In other words, re-watering peatlands dwarf efforts from other mitigation of climate change (see sources at bottom).

Beechey Island update

Update: see aerial shots from 1968 posted on Facebook Group "Remembering the Franklin Expedition" here

 A previous blogpost here almost 7 years ago showed how to use a niche product to create detailed elevation model of Beechey Island. Posted on Google Earth here (download & open it in Google Earth, see 'GE' below), it allowed to add a Parks Canada photo of the Franklin Expedition landing site: it was the first one uncovered by University of Alberta's Owen Beatty in 1984, the year before I spent a summer in the Arctic 'nearby' the other side of King William Isl. on the west shore mid-Boothia Peninsula... We were in fact told to report any unusual findings!

London Thames Barrier update

Update 1: here is the transcript of Hansen's latest "in plain English" (alt. here)

Update 2: here is the Climate Cultures article this map was used in, thanks Lola Perrin.

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Two weeks ago I recreated Sea Level Rise (SLR) and Risk of Flooding (RoF) maps for the lower Thames River near the Thames Barrier (blog) for a WhatsApp Group considering the future of its ageing infrastructure w.r.t. recent climate extremes. This week came a global and urgent update affecting Sea Level Rise, by James Hansen who sounded the alarm ~ 35 yrs ago (go to 1981 & 1988 in Medium): a paper incl. supplementary materials "Global Warming Has Accelerated" (Columbia) c/w companion webinar (Columbia).

A brief web history of mine

As I wind down my blog posts and I quit socials, perhaps this may be a good time to reflect on my Web journey that started almost 40 years ago (a recap of my IT journey is here)...

But wait... Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent it til just over 35 years ago (Wikipedia)! That's because I had a site dubbed HTTP in 1986, see inset below:  "world wide web" hadn't been coined yet, but I knew as a student at late 70's University of Calgary of Ted Nelson's failed Project Xanadu (Wikipedia), to try and link all forms of knowledge via hypertext; it failed partly due to Nelson's eccentricity,  partly because there was no global network to carry it. 

London Thames Barrier revisited

Update 2: see renewed Sea-level Rise extents according to new information here 

Update 1: see addition at bottom... thanks to our indefatigable London climate activists!

Further to my original blog post 3½ yrs. ago here, I was asked to share maps of the area surrounding the Thames Barrier (Wikipedia): A WhatsApp group considered the necessity for a second barrier under Climate Change that increases both flooding and sea level seasonal elevations. 

Exhuming my thesis ... an update

Update 2:  ... aaaand I didn't plan on having yet another one here!

Update 1: this is my last post as I move on. Didn't plan it that way, but ending where I began  _is_ satisfying.

New Years Eve 2000 racing by Greenwich Meridian

Update: note a dash of AI mixed in at the bottom for fun

Our TV rung in 2025 live in Paris in my time zone, and six hours later in NYC dropping its ball in Times Square; nothing matches however this cracking event in London to usher in the New Millennium: barges were aligned in the middle of the River Thames, spaced exactly 1 s. apart as the earth rotated past midnight GMT in London, from the Meridian at the Millennium Dome to the east, to Vauxhall Bridge to the west.