When we discuss animal rights and welfare, we often reference two ideas: sentience (the ability to feel) and sapience (the capacity for have complex intelligence). Yet, when we discuss robots and advanced AI, these two ideas are curiously absent from the debate. Perhaps we are on a technological threshold between "AI" and "dignified AI." Maybe it's time to talk more about robot rights. ...
... It turns out, the stereotypical bright light at the end of the tunnel is real; many people who almost die report the same key visuals. What’s less well known is that survivors also often report an overwhelming sense of peace, gratitude, and even oneness of the world. “You see your life as a whole,” Slater told The Daily Beast, “and you realize the meaning of life is more important than buying my next car.”
So Slater, who’s also co-director of the university’s cutting-edge eventLAB (that’s Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology), decided to use virtual reality to replicate crucial aspects of a near-death experience—and, he hoped, the radical shift in perspective that sometimes accompanies it. ...
Technicolor Creative Studios has teamed with state-of-the-art virtual production company NantStudios on the creation of a new virtual production stage, which will open as part of its 60,000 square-foot Creative Hub in Culver City in 2023.
Technicolor has established the tech partnership and stage build as part of its investment in the future of filmmaking, due to growing market demand for bleeding edge Virtual Production solutions. The new stage will serve the collective of companies under the Technicolor Creative Studios umbrella — including MPC, The Mill, Mikros Animation and Technicolor Games — as well as clients looking to research and develop content utilizing Virtual Production technologies for feature films, episodic, advertising and gaming.
After seeing that Zuckerberg was being roasted online for calling avatar legs “probably the most requested feature on our roadmap," Legboot decided to make them a reality. He grabbed a cheap plastic figure off of Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba, "chopped his legs off," and painted them a shade of Meta blue.
... Founded in December 2021 by Daniel Lubetzky — the founder of Kind Snacks — Starts With Us originally invited people to pledge to “stop listening to react and start listening to understand,” and to “stop letting our differences divide us and start letting them develop us.” Lubetzky — whose father survived the Holocaust — has spent decades working in the Middle East on various diplomatic and business ventures. (In 1994, he founded PeaceWorks, a business that fosters stronger connections between Arab and Israeli communities.) Now, with Starts With Us, the goal is to foster “curiosity, empathy and courage” in the U.S. through content and programming for a range of political affiliations. ...
... “Piecing these numbers together, it’s clear that social media has become an accelerant not only of political division but now national stress,” said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll. “As we think about other detriments to public health social media — when misapplied — is now entering the category of cigarettes, alcohol and other high-risk factors.”
While corporations have been increasingly involved in addressing social issues, some wonder if that might soon change in the coming year. On Tuesday, Forrester predicted that B2C marketers will start to retreat from taking political stances in 2023, especially if conservatives regain control of Congress after the U.S. midterm elections. However, Forrester analyst Mike Proulx said other survey data suggests that people across the political spectrum want ways of seeing the other side of the aisle.
“What it tells us is that more people than not despite the voices that are fueling the divisiveness,” Proulx said. “Most people want to find common ground.”
Virtual being developer Soul Machines and nutrition provider Calocurb have unveiled digital health and wellness coach “Jenny.” The animated AI character combines realistic synthetic media and conversational AI to offer quasi-human guidance for people using Calocurb to improve their health, a first in the market, according to Soul Machines.
COACH JENNY
Calocurb sells a “natural appetite suppressant” and incorporates broader health guidance and education in relation to its main product. Jenny is designed to help customers who have questions about the product or who are seeking advice on reaching fitness goals and other wellness plans. The AI can answer questions using any data on the website, including relevant diagrams and videos. For prospective customers, Jenny can even break down the various purchase options and link to Calocurb’s store. ...
PhilNote: The Stanford Digital Economy Lab produces regular interviews with thought leaders. This is an excellent conversation and a very good window into the current state of the business and culture of the metaverse.
Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable and author of Virtual Society, explains why everything you have heard about the metaverse so far is wrong. Narula argues that the metaverse goes back thousands of years and that our digital future cannot be understood merely by glancing back at the digital technologies that have preceded it. Narula explains why the metaverse will and should matter to individuals and society.
... Now an exciting collaboration between humans and AI machines is pushing this process further than ever before. Soren Arlt, Carlos Ruiz-Gonzalez and Mario Krenn at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, in Germany, have discovered an entirely new phenomena by re-interpreting the results from an automated discovery process. “We go beyond rediscovery and use AI to discover a hidden concept that lies at the heart of quantum optics,” they say.
The new phenomenon has potential application in quantum communication and quantum computing. But more significantly it paves the way for a new field of human-machine collaboration in science. ...
PhilNote: Watch the 5 minute video on The Simulation, which describes how Fable is creating a metaverse where avatars live, react with each other, and are guided and trained by humans.
Fable has unveiled The Simulation, a place where you can create and nurture AI characters and enable them to dwell on their own in different metaverse worlds.
Today, Fable is launching its first town in The Simulation, a place called AI Nouns Town, where owners of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can sign up and adopt AI characters. Rather than play in a world with AI characters, Fable is letting the AI characters play in the worlds. And if Fable puts enough of these worlds together, it can become a kind of metaverse (which is the biggest subject of our GamesBeat Summit Next 2022 event coming on Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco).
As software development company Niantic experiments with increasingly immersive augmented reality activations, the Pokémon Go developer is girding itself for a potential wave of unprecedented legal challenges.
At the moment, the augmented reality space is a bit of a wild west, with creators using Niantic’s technology to virtually modify privately owned locations in the physical world or experiment with brands’ intellectual properties in funky ways. For years, the nascent medium of AR was too small to attract the attention of these rights holders — but as Niantic’s AR technology grows more complex and all-encompassing, the situation could reach a tipping point. ...
One such example of an expanded AR activation is the digital art exhibition put on in New York City’s Times Square by Ukrainian artist Artem “Giant” Humilevskiy, which launched on October 14. The experience lets users superimpose Humilevskiy’s self portraits over Times Square’s usual billboards and digital screens, with some of the art available for sale as non-fungible tokens.
The Times Square exhibition is an eye-catching example of how AR technologies can transform public spaces, but it was also a source of consternation for Niantic’s communications team, which worried that the activation could draw legal challenges from the owners and administrators of the physical billboards that were painted over in augmented reality. ...
This is a valid question, according to legal experts who believe there could be merit to a potential lawsuit by the owners of the painted-over real estate, as well as the brands that paid top dollar for marquee ad space in prominent locations. ...
“I think there’s lots we’re working on that the Supreme Court is going to have to settle eventually,” Morris said.
