... What is hardest to appreciate in A.I. is the improvement curve.
“The broader intellectual world seems to wildly overestimate how long it will take A.I. systems to go from ‘large impact on the world’ to ‘unrecognizably transformed world,’” Paul Christiano, a key member of OpenAI who left to found the Alignment Research Center, wrote last year. “This is more likely to be years than decades, and there’s a real chance that it’s months.” ...
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2018, I have tried to spend time regularly with the people working on A.I. I don’t know that I can convey just how weird that culture is. And I don’t mean that dismissively; I mean it descriptively. It is a community that is living with an altered sense of time and consequence. They are creating a power that they do not understand at a pace they often cannot believe. ...
The coders casting these spells have no idea what will stumble through the portal. What is oddest, in my conversations with them, is that they speak of this freely. ... They believe they might summon demons. They are calling anyway. ...
I cannot emphasize this enough: We do not understand these systems, and it’s not clear we even can. I don’t mean that we cannot offer a high-level account of the basic functions: These are typically probabilistic algorithms trained on digital information that make predictions about the next word in a sentence, or an image in a sequence, or some other relationship between abstractions that it can statistically model. But zoom into specifics and the picture dissolves into computational static. ...
PhilNote: here is another approach to defining and recognizing intelligence.
… To address these limitations [of the Turing Test], there is an urgent and critical need to develop a more nuanced and comprehensive framework for evaluating AI capabilities across multiple dimensions of intelligence.
This insight led me to develop the “AI Classification Framework.” The ACF is a new approach to evaluating AI capabilities based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences was first proposed by psychologist Howard Gardner in 1983. Gardner argued that intelligence was not a single, unified entity but rather a collection of different abilities that could manifest in a variety of ways. ...
Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder of OpenAI, gives a 25 minute developer demo showcasing GPT-4 and some of its capabilities/limitations. At about 18 minutes he shows how it takes a drawn diagram and turns it into a working website. Around 19 minutes in he shows how it can help you complete your taxes. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=outcGtbnMuQ
The European Union’s implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is poised to trigger worldwide changes on familiar platforms like Google, Instagram, Wikipedia and YouTube. The DSA addresses consumer safety while the DMA deals with antitrust issues. Proponents say the new laws will help end the era of self-regulating tech companies. Although as in the U.S., the DSA makes clear that platforms aren’t liable for illegal user-generated content. Unlike U.S. law, the DSA does allow users to sue when tech firms are made aware of harmful content but fail to remove it. ...
For Big Tech “companies to decide what is and what isn’t forbidden without any separation of power, without any accountability, without any reporting, without any possibility to contest, it’s very dangerous,” Henri Verdier, the French ambassador for digital affairs, told Technology Review. ...
Politicoconfirms that “TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have now confirmed they will face the strictest rules under the EU’s content-moderation law, the Digital Services Act.” The European Commission can impose fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s annual global revenue if it finds that VLOPs violate DSA rules.
... The panel discussion turned toward AI’s potential application in Hollywood. When asked if they could see if AI could be incorporated in the writers room, Lindelof responded, “For sure. My guess is, it starts as a lark. Fundamentally, no writer that I am aware of wants to be replaced by generative artificial intelligence. But at the same time, if you think of it more as a tool, you can have a lot of fun with it if it bolsters the process.” Hernandez guessed that Hollywood isn’t far away from an AI-generated feature. ...
Ultimately, Lindelof noted, Mrs. Davis is a comedy and while it does tackle larger moral and ethical quandaries surrounding the tech, “the show is fundamentally hopeful. It asks, ‘What do we do with this tool?'”
... The conference’s SXSW Interactive program has become a mecca for cannabis and psychedelics advocates in recent years, giving them an opportunity to reach a wider audience despite federal prohibitions on drugs and an inability to market any legal products. ...
“VR technologies are going to be a powerful adjunct to support psychedelic therapy,” said Walter Greenleaf, a neuroscientist and medical technology developer at Stanford University. “And it’s emerging pretty fast.” ...
The psychedelics industry is advancing on two parallel tracks. On one, companies test drugs such as psilocybin, MDMA, LSD and ayahuasca in clinical trials, seeking regulatory approval to sell them for ailments including depression, PTSD and anxiety. On the other path, places such as Oregon, Seattle and Colorado are decriminalizing or legalizing use — and in some cases creating standards for therapists to oversee hallucinogenic trips.
Both tracks have sparked questions about how to optimize the malleable brain state the drugs create while avoiding risks of improper influence (think brainwashing on steroids) or psychosis (when the patient loses long-term touch with reality). One solution that’s been proposed is talk therapy to “integrate” a hallucinogenic experience; but there are concerns that this could be cost-prohibitive. ...
Some academics and entrepreneurs are pitching VR as a solution. ...
... One example of how AR can increase engagement is the Lush “Snow Fairy” WebAR campaign that featured three unique experiences: a personalized gifting flow, a holiday-themed face filter and a fully immersive portal environment. Leveraging the cross-channel power of WebAR, the experience was distributed as both an in-store retail experience and across a variety of online channels. Each unique experience featured a connection to the next, delivering a fully immersive journey through snow-laden forests and into the enchanted world of the Snow Fairy.
While Lush made headlines last year for its decision to step back from major social media platforms, the immersive Snow Fairy experience provided an opportunity for digital brand engagement that isn’t reliant on social media. ...
A little over 50% of the votes in Estonia's parliamentary elections over the weekend were cast online — marking what appears to be the first mostly online nationwide election in the world.
Estonia has been a pioneer in "i-voting," first offering it as an option in 2005. The number of citizens taking advantage of internet voting has crept up since then.
Still, the Baltic state remains a global outlier when it comes to online voting. ...
Despite Estonia's success with internet voting, it could be hard for other countries to implement it on a large scale, according to Steve Kremer of the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation. ...
The results are so ultra-realistic it’s going to become harder and harder to distinguish what’s real from what’s not. ...
Rather than answering our questions, a TikTok spokesperson provided a statement that read, “Being true to yourself is celebrated and encouraged on TikTok. Creative Effects are a part of what makes it fun to create content, empowering self-expression and creativity. Transparency is built into the effect experience, as all videos using them are clearly marked by default.”
But there’s a fraught debate about whether filters enable self-expression or cause users, particularly young girls, to hold themselves to unattainable ideals. ...
“It’s good that people are freaking out. It’s raising awareness. Is that really beauty? Do we really want young girls to dream about becoming the clone of a clone?” she asks.
...you are firmly grounded in a time and place. There are waves rippling around you, orange cones to indicate the boundaries of where you can go, and tiny little people on the island of La Kalma talking to you. Why are the people so tiny? Well, because you’re an enormous sea kraken. But to these people, who saw you grow up from an adorable, teeny-tiny kraken, you are just a person. And now that you’re 16, it’s time for you to get to work. ...
Sticking and building with your tentacles is full of feedback that feels completely real. If you try to pick up something huge with the tip, your tentacle streeeeeeetches until it unsticks and thwaps someone right into the sea. ...
Look, I get it: Reading is boring. ... Tentacular does give you the option of using the O button to rapidly click through dialog. But every time I slowed down, I caught something sly and funny, like a villager shrieking “Mommy!” when I accidentally shot a cannon at her. ...
The PSVR 2’s comfort also makes that much easier to achieve. I love the accessibility of the Meta Quest 2 (getting it set up and switching between users is much easier), but the PSVR 2 is just much, much easier to wear. The headset’s balance is better. I don’t feel like I have something huge and sweaty hanging off my face, and the controllers are much more comfortable and stable, better able to cope with Tentacular’s tactile challenges. ...
