Cleaners, or as I call them...

glorified corridor furniture.  Seriously.  What exactly is it that cleaners do.  On my walks about work over the last couple of weeks I see completely unable to go anywhere without at least bumping into 2 “cleaners”.  And I use parentheses deliberately.  Because as yet, after 6 weeks of being at this university I have, as yet, to actually do any cleaning.

What I have seen is people which look like they’ve had their souls sucked out of their eye-balls stand around in small groups talking about inane drivel.  “Ooo have you seen Shelia today….blah blah blah …. doesn’t treat her right …. blah blah … if I were her ….”

I’d like to point out that by and large I am not complaining about the general cleanliness of the place.  Although it would be good to have the bin in our office emptied more than once a week.  My point is this.

What is the point of paying people by the hour for a full days work when all they can manage is to empty a bin once a week.


This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2]

[^1:] http://morganbye.net/2009/09/cleaners-or-as-i-call-them) [^2:] http://morganbye.net/blog/?p=45

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Rant #37

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?