British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

RE: Weeks 27 & 28 - The Championships, Wimbledon (grass) - main draw

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Loved Monfils celebration on beating Humbert and Humbert was laughing along with him at the end. Great to see Monfils get through !

Brendan F · Intermediate Club Player

The word pesky to me just evokes memories of Scooby Doo as a synonym for meddlesome, so I can hardly see how it can be seen as a derogatory term, unless there's some kind of arch-liberal think tank which decides when words are no longer acceptable and the rest of us (apparently we can't be called the great unwashed anymore either) are expected to fall into line with their diktat.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Brendan F wrote:
The word pesky to me just evokes memories of Scooby Doo as a synonym for meddlesome, so I can hardly see how it can be seen as a derogatory term, unless there's some kind of arch-liberal think tank which decides when words are no longer acceptable and the rest of us (apparently we can't be called the great unwashed anymore either) are expected to fall into line with their diktat.

Got it in one, Brendan, unless you want to include annoying, exasperating, irritating, galling, irksome or bothersome in your list of synonyms, certainly nothing derogatory. Happy to be counted as one of "the great unwashed". wink

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Ok! Ill bow out and consider myself wrong (or alone!) on this one. Lets focus on the tennis

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Never rely on A1 is my takeaway

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
Never rely on A1 is my takeaway

Ah - not sure I agree! AI wasnt necessarily wrong, it just didnt have the context, which I still disagree with but it seems that is personal choice. ANd it seems I am also a bleeding heart liberal, and most likely a Commie if I was in the US! biggrin

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:
Never rely on A1 is my takeaway
Ah - not sure I agree! AI wasnt necessarily wrong, it just didnt have the context, which I still disagree with but it seems that is personal choice. ANd it seems I am also a bleeding heart liberal, and most likely a Commie if I was in the US!

I said never 'rely' on A1

Not never use it

christ · Futures level

AI should never, ever be trusted. Ever. Because it is simply a collation of input data with no common sense applied it can be - and often is - completely wrong. Anyone can post on the internet that "Rod Laver won Women's Wimbledon in 2024" and if it gets picked up as a humorous misquote and "goes viral", AI will report it as truth.

... on the other hand, using the "see one, play one" philosophy, from Google AI:

"AI Overview
The term "yank" can be offensive, but it depends on the context and who is using it. In some contexts, particularly outside the United States, it's a common and often playful term for Americans. However, within the US, especially in the South, it can be a derogatory term for someone from the North.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Outside the US:
Common usage:
In many countries, particularly in the UK and Australia, "yank" is a common and relatively neutral term for Americans."

My added emphasis.

indiana · Tennis legend

FWIW ( and "pesky" to my mind was always a sideshow to what Blue Belle was most concerned about ) if I google in the normal way "pesky meaning" the first entries I get are :

Cambridge Dictionary: annoying or causing trouble

Merriam-Webster: troublesome, vexatious

Collins Dictionary is out of the generality in giving:

1. causing a great deal of trouble; worrying, uosetting or annoying

2. characterised by violence; turbulent

( their #2 I have honestly never heard of or considered and is not at all related to this forum usage )

For I would say the context we use the word, generally in respect of foreign players entering GB tournaments, and the spirit in which it is written is surely pretty clear.

Tanaqui · County player

christ wrote:
AI should never, ever be trusted. Ever. Because it is simply a collation of input data with no common sense applied it can be - and often is - completely wrong. Anyone can post on the internet that "Rod Laver won Women's Wimbledon in 2024" and if it gets picked up as a humorous misquote and "goes viral", AI will report it as truth.

... on the other hand, using the "see one, play one" philosophy, from Google AI:

"AI Overview
The term "yank" can be offensive, but it depends on the context and who is using it. In some contexts, particularly outside the United States, it's a common and often playful term for Americans. However, within the US, especially in the South, it can be a derogatory term for someone from the North.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Outside the US:
Common usage:
In many countries, particularly in the UK and Australia, "yank" is a common and relatively neutral term for Americans."
My added emphasis.

Just to add to this: Google AI is NOT a search engine. Google AI summaries are NOT always accurate representations of whatever it is summarising. It's a predictive large language model (LLM) that just strings together responses based on what's statistically likely to come next.

The same is true of any LLM-based AI such as Copilot.

On top of that, LLMs (and their art-producing equivalent) have horrendously high environmental costs (water, power for data centres) and have unethically (and possibly illegally; court cases are in progress) used cooyrighted content to train their models.

Please do not use LLM-based AIs.

(Note that I am not against using AI altogether: I think it has fantastic applications in areas like medicine for reviewing slides of cell samples and medical images to identify cases of possible concern for trained professionals to then review. Those kinds of applications have been trained and rigorously validated on carefully selected training data.)

Sorry to add to the off-topic discussion in this thread!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Tanaqui wrote:
christ wrote:
AI should never, ever be trusted. Ever. Because it is simply a collation of input data with no common sense applied it can be - and often is - completely wrong. Anyone can post on the internet that "Rod Laver won Women's Wimbledon in 2024" and if it gets picked up as a humorous misquote and "goes viral", AI will report it as truth.

... on the other hand, using the "see one, play one" philosophy, from Google AI:

"AI Overview
The term "yank" can be offensive, but it depends on the context and who is using it. In some contexts, particularly outside the United States, it's a common and often playful term for Americans. However, within the US, especially in the South, it can be a derogatory term for someone from the North.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Outside the US:
Common usage:
In many countries, particularly in the UK and Australia, "yank" is a common and relatively neutral term for Americans."
My added emphasis.
Just to add to this: Google AI is NOT a search engine. Google AI summaries are NOT always accurate representations of whatever it is summarising. It's a predictive large language model (LLM) that just strings together responses based on what's statistically likely to come next.
The same is true of any LLM-based AI such as Copilot.
On top of that, LLMs (and their art-producing equivalent) have horrendously high environmental costs (water, power for data centres) and have unethically (and possibly illegally; court cases are in progress) used cooyrighted content to train their models.
Please do not use LLM-based AIs.
(Note that I am not against using AI altogether: I think it has fantastic applications in areas like medicine for reviewing slides of cell samples and medical images to identify cases of possible concern for trained professionals to then review. Those kinds of applications have been trained and rigorously validated on carefully selected training data.)
Sorry to add to the off-topic discussion in this thread!

Well, I agree with all of this and I wasnt commenting on AI in general - I do have misgivings, obviously, around quality of output and reliability; I also think it can be useful in things like Co-Pilot for reviewing wording on things like documents, to help get the tone right, although it is pretty much like Grammerly in that useage. And definitely in terms of some business applications such as data analysis and synthesis e.g taking a clients business data and syntheisising it to identify business issues and opportunities is something I have used it for.

Anyway, off piste - I used it here to highlight the concerns over "Yank" as a phrase, I personally believe that it is an outdated and derogatory term. I used Google AI to support me. Others dont agree and want to or are happy to continue to use it. That is fine, but please be aware it will irritate the heck out of me!! biggrin

indiana · Tennis legend

Google AI is not a convincing support! It is a very random unstructured output from random stuff throughout the Internet.

As CD says, use it if you wish, but don't rely on it.

Surely a normal google search gives a far more accurate picture?? It for instance makes very clear how "Yank" can be considered derogatory.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 2nd of July 2025 11:15:45 AM

Canda · Lower Club Player

Im sitting on Court 2 today. Looking forward to watching Billy and Arthur later after Madisons match. Anyone else watching on Court 2 today? Has been raining. Covers coming off now

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Great day of tennis hopefully! Enjoy!