What Does the Future of the Adult Entertainment Industry Look Like
Every industry in the world is subject to the changes that development and technology bring, so the adult industry is no exception to this rule. Sometimes there will be bigger changes and bounces, but sometimes they will be slow, which we will not even notice at first.
When it comes to technology, we can expect literally everything, from virtual reality experience to holograms and simulations in which we will feel like we are part of them. These are big steps, but in the meantime, smaller ones are happening. For example, some porn productions are already doing socially useful work, helping critical groups of people, or caring for the environment. Their earnings are high, so it is really noble that they do, although such a thing is rarely expected (at least if we believe what the conservative people say).
CONCLUSION
The adult industry as we know it today will not stay that way. There will be many changes, many innovations, but also adjustments to the old ones, as well as their improvement. ...
It is up to us to fight prejudice and, of course, to respect that choice which is diametrically different from ours – because differences make the world beautiful.
See the full story here: https://thevideoink.com/future-of-adult-entertainment-industry/
A Perspective of Americans’ Attitudes Toward Artificial Intelligence (Market Research by the Stevens Institute of Technology
PhilNote: this research covers a good spectrum of issues and beliefs, with lots of graphs.
KEY FINDINGS
- Although adults have concerns about the potential negative consequences of greater AI adoption, nearly half (48%) believe the perceived positives of greater AI adoption in everyday life outweigh the perceived negatives.
- Adults believe AI should play a greater role in a number of tested industries in the future, including technology (66%), manufacturing (61%), logistics (58%), and retail (52%).
- Despite a general openness to AI playing a larger role in different industries, adults believe that among the specific tasks tested, most are still best accomplished by humans alone or with some degree of assistance from AI.
- Concern about AI’s potential negative consequences is high, with adults most concerned about a loss of personal privacy (74%), AI being used irresponsibly (72%), reduced employment opportunities (71%) and reduced human connectedness (71%), among the tested options.
• Half of adults (52%) believe it is likely that AI will become smarter than humans, and nearly two thirds (63%) believe AI will control too much of everyday life.
3. Majorities of adults believe AI has played a role in loss of trust in elections (57%) and institutions (56%), as well as the spread of misinformation (58%), political polarization (53%), and threats to democracy (52%).
• Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe that AI has played a role in the spread of misinformation (64% vs. 56%) and in loss of trust in institutions (62% vs. 54%).
4. Adults view facial recognition as a responsible use of AI technology, and are comfortable with using it for tasks such as finding missing persons (70%) and pets (68%), for law enforcement use such as identifying and monitoring criminals (65%), and for identifying fraudulent behavior when making purchases (64%).
• Deepfakes, which are highly convincing digitally altered sound and images that are made to appear real, prove to be more divisive. Adults are nearly evenly split on whether using AI to create deepfakes is a responsible (38%) or irresponsible (36%) use of the technology.
See the full report here: https://www.stevens.edu/sites/stevens_edu/files/files/AI-survey/AI-Summery-Deck.pdf
WHY AI CAN’T REALLY FILTER OUT “HATE NEWS”
Michael Egnor: What terrifies me about artificial intelligence — and I don’t think one can overstate this danger — is that artificial intelligence has two properties that make it particularly deadly in human civilization. One is concealment. Even though every single purpose in artificial intelligence is human, it’s concealed. We don’t really understand it. We don’t understand Google’s algorithms.
There may even be a situation where Google doesn’t understand Google’s algorithms. But all of it comes from the people who run Google. So the concealment is very dangerous. We don’t know what these programs are doing to our culture. And it may be that no one knows, but they are doing things.
Michael Egnor: And the second problem, which René Girard (1923–2015) , a French philosopher, wrote about extensively, is the concept of mimetic contagion… we are imitating animals, and no other animal imitates anywhere near the way we do. And we imitate particularly other humans desires’. Advertisers notice that if they show a popular quarterback drinking a certain brand of soda, other people will want to go out and buy that same soda. But that’s kind of an odd thing. Why would we imitate what that guy wants? ...
I can imitate a guy in China, at exactly the same moment that everybody else in the world imitates the same guy. And it takes zero seconds to do it. And that’s never happened before. Humanity has never had that kind of interconnectedness. And that mimetic contagion, according to Gerard is lethal to mankind.
...Michael Egnor: And it can happen like kerosene with a match. It can happen at incredible velocity and incredible ferocity. And these are incredibly dangerous things that we’re dealing with it. Frankly, I think that some of our political crisis in this country right now is because of that. It’s because of the bias inherent in our information and the enormous potential for imitation for mimetic contagion.
...Note: Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is not buying into this widespread belief. He told COSM 2021 last week, Artificial General Intelligence isn’t happening. What is happening is a huge increase in surveillance — control by AI companies who continually monitor us, not by “thinking machines.”
See the full story here: https://mindmatters.ai/2021/11/why-ai-cant-really-filter-out-hate-news/
I Spent 24 Hours in the Metaverse. I Made Friends, Did Work and Panicked About the Future.
Avatar meetings are great.
Look, it’s hard to take your editor seriously when his voice is coming from a legless Milhouse from “The Simpsons.” Still, after a few minutes sitting around a virtual conference table, we both realized it was better than a boring ol’ Zoom. It felt like he was really sitting across from me, making direct eye contact.
Avatar meetups aren’t great.
Meetings in the metaverse are nice, in part because you have control over whom you invite. It’s like the next evolution of a private Facebook Group or video call. What happens, though, with public groups any avatar can join? I found out when joining Microsoft-owned AltspaceVR.
Solo stuff is fun.
There are loads of stuff to do on your own, including games and my new favorite: working out.
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/metaverse-experience-facebook-microsoft-11636671113
Researchers Develop New Approach for Robotic Exosuit Assistance
The new approach relies on robotic exosuit assistance being calibrated to an individual, and it adapts to various different real-world walking tasks in just seconds. The bio-inspired system uses ultrasound measurements of muscle dynamics, which enables it to be personalized and activity-specific for users.
...“We used ultrasound to look under the skin and directly measured what the user’s muscles were doing during several walking tasks,” said Nuckols. “Our muscles and tendons have compliance which means there is not necessarily a direct mapping between the movement of the limbs and that of the underlying muscles driving their motion.”
...“From these pre-recorded images, we estimated the assistive force to be applied in parallel with the calf muscles to offset the additional work they need to perform during the push off phase of the walking cycle,” said Swaminathan.
See the full story here: https://www.unite.ai/researchers-develop-new-approach-for-robotic-exosuit-assistance/
Meta CTO thinks bad metaverse moderation could pose an ‘existential threat’
While the full memo isn’t publicly available, Bosworth posted a blog entry alluding to it later in the day. The post, titled “Keeping people safe in VR and beyond,” references several of Meta’s existing VR moderation tools. That includes letting people block other users in VR, as well as an extensive Horizon surveillance system for monitoring and reporting bad behavior. Meta has also pledged $50 million for research into practical and ethical issues around its metaverse plans.
As FT notes, Meta’s older platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been castigated for serious moderation failures, including slow and inadequate responses to content that promoted hate and incited violence. The company’s recent rebranding offers a potential fresh start, but as the memo notes, VR and virtual worlds will likely face an entirely new set of problems on top of existing issues.
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22779006/meta-facebook-cto-andrew-bosworth-memo-metaverse-disney-safety-content-moderation-scale
AWE 2021: Hands-on with Holoride and its automotive VR fun
Holoride is a very original startup in the XR ecosystem because it focuses on in-car VR entertainment.The idea is that during a trip the passengers can enjoy a VR experience that follows completely the movement of the car: if the car is going forward, you move forward at exactly its same speed inside VR, if it turns left, you turn left, and so on. If the motion of the car is synchronized with the one in the VR application, there shouldn’t be any kind of sensory mismatch, and so no motion sickness. This makes the experience much more fun and enjoyable than just playing a regular VR game or video while you are in the car.
...Since the games must follow the movements of the car, which are unpredictable, the games running on Holoride must adapt to whatever movement is happening and can not rely on a predefined path. This creates new challenges for what concerns the game design. The company provides an SDK, called Elastic SDK, that offers facilities to developers to create Holoride-compatible content. Holoride is looking for interested developers, and you can register your interest here if you want.
