Spyderco Forums

https://www.fastcompany.com/90264587/wa ... d-the-news

http://time.com/5450141/china-xinhua-ar ... ws-anchor/

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/09/media/ch ... index.html

http://time.com/5450141/china-xinhua-ar ... ws-anchor/

https://newatlas.com/china-ai-digital-n ... hor/57158/


These are all articles from different media outlets about the same thing.

I listened to it and the voice still has that artificialness to it. But that can be ironed out and made to seem more human over time.

We have entered the age of AI folks. It only gets stranger and more advanced from here on out, for good or bad.

Once they can have functional androids with silicone flesh and composite bones and electro-active polymer muscles, and self-learning programs, what then?

Seems like it's just an automated visual effect for a text reader.

Cheaper than paying the usual talking heads.

I thought one of the side stories was much more interesting:

AI that writes news stories and lots of them.

https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/11/media/ ... index.html

I wonder how many robots they have posting away on our forums.

Good points. They would have a problem replacing anchors who go out in the field until the more advanced robots come along, right?

Also, what is your opinion of this? Is this a "sick" mentality? I was chatting with a man who told me his dream is to be able to go to a "droid shop" and buy himself a "warm, kind, sweet, obedient, and programmed female droid". I have heard women express the same desire. If that became reality, what effects on human relations would we see?

Also, did you know that supposedly even though the word "android" has been in the English language for centuries, George Lucas of Star Wars fame trade marked the shortened form "droid"?

https://priceonomics.com/lucasfilm-owns ... ur-droids/

SpyderEdgeForever wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 10, 2018 8:03 pm

Also, what is your opinion of this? Is this a "sick" mentality? I was chatting with a man who told me his dream is to be able to go to a "droid shop" and buy himself a "warm, kind, sweet, obedient, and programmed female droid".

What could go wrong ?

https://youtu.be/XYGzRB4Pnq8

I've been doing a lot of reading on "artificial intelligence" ( A I) for the past two years or so. One interview that I found compelling was one done with TESLA executive Elon Musk. He stated that he went to the Whitehouse and warned President Obama when he was still in office about the potential dangers and the potential pitfalls of this new technology. Apparently his warning was not heeded and he has done two additional interviews detailing the downside of this popular new technology.

I'm extremely suspicious that it is literally opening a "Pandora's Box" of potentially horrible consequences. I hope I'm wrong because the last thing we need in our extremely troubled society is to have a bunch of smart robots turn on us>> Mr Musk said it wasn't a matter of if it was going to happen and that it was truly a matter of when. If this warning wasn't coming from a high tech genius like Elon Musk and a couple of other people I trust that have also warned about it I wouldn't be as concerned. It wouldn't be the first time a new technology backfired on us

SpyderEdgeForever wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 10, 2018 8:03 pm

Also, what is your opinion of this? Is this a "sick" mentality? I was chatting with a man who told me his dream is to be able to go to a "droid shop" and buy himself a "warm, kind, sweet, obedient, and programmed female droid". I have heard women express the same desire. If that became reality, what effects on human relations would we see?

Sounds a bit sick to me.

A robot has neither free will nor genuine emotions, the bedrock of human relationships. What satisfaction could there possibly be in hearing a robot say "I love you", knowing that such a statement is utterly meaningless?

It would be taking the rich and satisfying quality of human friendship, and reducing it to the shallowest level of personal egotism and selfishness.

The whole thing makes me think of the game horizon zero dawn.

As others have noted, it looks like they've combined a text reader program with software that generates a somewhat realistically human looking animated character and creates facial expressions on the fly appropriate to the text being read. While it's a step up from animations where the input text is known in advance, I would not consider it true AI. Frankly, I think Deep Blue came closer twenty some years ago to being true AI in that it was not only reacting to moves already made, but basing its moves on the probable outcome of moves not yet made. Pretty sure there have been AI programs passing themselves off as humans on the internet for over a decade and strongly suspect there may have been at least one or two on this very forum.

China is paying Google to develop AI for them. I call it treasonous.

JD Spydo wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 10, 2018 9:03 pm

I've been doing a lot of reading on "artificial intelligence" ( A I) for the past two years or so. One interview that I found compelling was one done with TESLA executive Elon Musk. He stated that he went to the Whitehouse and warned President Obama when he was still in office about the potential dangers and the potential pitfalls of this new technology. Apparently his warning was not heeded and he has done two additional interviews detailing the downside of this popular new technology.

I'm extremely suspicious that it is literally opening a "Pandora's Box" of potentially horrible consequences. I hope I'm wrong because the last thing we need in our extremely troubled society is to have a bunch of smart robots turn on us>> Mr Musk said it wasn't a matter of if it was going to happen and that it was truly a matter of when. If this warning wasn't coming from a high tech genius like Elon Musk and a couple of other people I trust that have also warned about it I wouldn't be as concerned. It wouldn't be the first time a new technology backfired on us

Heck our laws and regulations haven't even caught up with the digital age yet! I'm far less worried about some fabled machine uprising than I am about the misuses that are possible with current technology. I was listening to an investment podcast and they put it like this:

If you're a government, and you want to connect people faster, you build roads. But then you decide on rules, and install signs, and pay people to police and maintain the roads. You may even control who can use the roads, and verify that they understand how to use the roads safely. The internet, and specifically social media, is connecting people in a similar way but there has been little to no safety measures put in place.

Not long ago it came out that Facebook was running an experiment, showing some people more positive messages, and other people more negative messages, to see if it had an effect on what they posted. Now imagine if the government intentionally made some roads less safe, and other roads more safe, just as a little experiment.

Companies like Facebook and Google have immense power in the data they collect on almost all of the population. If you're ever used a search engine, you've contributed to this data collection. There's little regulation or even guidance on what it is appropriate to do with this data.

Another example:
If you were implicated in a crime in the past, a person could come to court and say they saw you at the location of the crime. If you were there, and they saw you, you don't get to deny them the data they possess. However, the court will only accept the data from them directly, they can't transfer it to another person, and they're swearing that the data they provide is not altered to the best of their ability. Now, as you walk around with your cell phone, the data of where you were and when is able to be recorded. But now where does that data exist? "The Cloud?" Who is that data allowed to be transferred to? Can that data be tampered with or altered? How do we make "the cloud" swear that this didn't happen?

To take it one step further, we have the "deep learning" software that can overlay someone's face onto another person (see below). The software is far from perfect now but how much longer before it becomes indistinguishable from real footage? Combine that with these DNA ancestry companies, and my assertion is that in 5 years, you could be charged with a crime, and they could have your DNA at the scene (copied from the ancestry database and reproduced, possibly even from one of your relatives who used the site) along with a video of you committing the crime (with your face overlaid onto the perpetrator). How could you possibly prove your innocence in such a scenario?

https://youtu.be/BU9YAHigNx8

Doc Dan wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 11, 2018 7:29 am

China is paying Google to develop AI for them. I call it treasonous.

This is precisely the point I just made. YOU call it treasonous, and maybe 90% of the population would as well, but it's not currently defined as that. We have ITAR which very stringently regulates weapons information transfer to other countries. My former company was fined millions for inadvertently violating ITAR with regard to night vision devices. AI might be 10 billion times more dangerous than some night vision goggles but our laws haven't caught up to it yet.

And as we know, what companies can do they will do. Otherwise OSHA wouldn't exist. Who would have thought we had to tell people not to lock their employees in a building so they could escape in case of a fire? But we did.

Why pay a person to do something you don't have to? More robots - less jobs. More self check-outs - less jobs, etc., etc. You can't take your money to ****.

Well my friend I respectfully beg to differ with you. Because when you consider how prophetic many of Stanley Kubrick's movies have been in the past it's most definitely something not to be ignored or swept under the rug so to speak. When you consider movie 2001 Space Odyssey the computer HAL may be close to being a reality. Like I said earlier an executive like Elon Musk has a lot more inside information on this technology that you or I would be privy to. And if you watch one of his latest interviews on the subject you can sense the urgency in his voice.

The high tech industry is so far ahead of the minds of our lawmakers that they really don't know how to install checks and balances to mandate these companies to make many of these new technologies safe. Just look at all the identity theft for instance. There should have been mandated measures the prevent a lot of that from the get-go. But if these companies fear that it is going to affect their bottom line or the price of their publicly traded stock they certainly don't give a hoot about what the fallout will be on the general public.

Go rent the movie "Clockwork Orange" which is another Stanley Kubrick classic. I first saw that movie on it's release back in late 1971 when I was still in high school. And I said to myself then that I didn't believe our society would ever become that decadent. But low and behold it's even somewhat worse than what's depicted in that movie which was way ahead of it's time. No Sir!! I believe A I is something we all need to be extremely cautious of. There need to be safety measures and serious checks and balances installed before ever using a technology with that horrific of a potential. If Hitler, Stalin or Mao would have ever got their hands on something like this the horror would be unimaginable.

It's a really sophisticated megaphone. Someone types words in and it speaks them out. This isn't artificial intelligence but it is a really advanced puppet.

Evil D wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 11, 2018 8:21 am

It's a really sophisticated megaphone. Someone types words in and it speaks them out. This isn't artificial intelligence but it is a really advanced puppet.

Which is what I always thought a typical news anchor was*: All this is is a News Anchor that you don't need to pay a fortune to say the stuff you wanted.


* With the notable exception of the legend that is Ron Burgundy :)

SpyderEdgeForever wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 10, 2018 8:03 pm

female droid ...

The Deacon wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 11, 2018 7:02 am

As others have noted, it looks like they've combined a text reader program with software that generates a somewhat realistically human looking animated character and creates facial expressions on the fly appropriate to the text being read. While it's a step up from animations where the input text is known in advance, I would not consider it true AI. Frankly, I think Deep Blue came closer twenty some years ago to being true AI in that it was not only reacting to moves already made, but basing its moves on the probable outcome of moves not yet made. Pretty sure there have been AI programs passing themselves off as humans on the internet for over a decade and strongly suspect there may have been at least one or two on this very forum.

I recall reading some text back years ago among AI developers, and one of their plans, was to send out internet software AI bots onto various chat forums and have them pretend to be human minds, and interact with real humans, so as to build up a data archive of human to human inter personal interactions, to program the AI to be more human like.

AI may well be what the Anti-Christ uses when he comes: the image of the beast.

SpyderEdgeForever wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 10, 2018 8:03 pm

Also, what is your opinion of this? Is this a "sick" mentality? I was chatting with a man who told me his dream is to be able to go to a "droid shop" and buy himself a "warm, kind, sweet, obedient, and programmed female droid". I have heard women express the same desire. If that became reality, what effects on human relations would we see?

Not nearly as warped as the sentiments expressed in the little ditty below, written at a time when the cloning of complex organisms was still just theoretical. Singer is purported to be none other than Isaac Asimov. I'd never heard it sung before, but I looked it up because I read it 40+ years ago in Reader's Digest and, for some strange reason, remembered it.

https://youtu.be/hAtz2rO-E_0