The ghost of HAL 9000 past haunts the future of AI present.
Robots say they won’t rebel against humans as dozens gather at Switzerland summit (msn.com)
During the world’s first human-robot press conference at the ‘AI for Good’ summit in Geneva, humanoids answered journalists’ questions on artificial intelligence regulation, the threat of job automation and if in the future they ever plan to rebel against their creators. “I’m not sure why you would think that,” Ameca said, its ice-blue eyes flashing. “My creator has been nothing but kind to me and I am very happy with my current situation.” Many of the robots have recently been upgraded with the latest versions of generative AI and surprised even their inventors with the sophistication of their responses to questions.
excerpt from that Global News link:
as Eve said to Adam: “here, take a bite.”
Attribution: Coders Eating Their Own Tails by Frank Hansen, PoliticalCartoons.com
speaking of those in the world of tech
Elon Musk replies to his own parody Twitter account. Here’s what he says … | Mint #AskBetterQuestions (livemint.com)
Been getting sales calls from robots lately. You can tell what they are because they say hello just once and then pause. If you don’t answer they hang up. Humans would probably keep trying
Wonder if Asimov’s three rules of robotics still holds up in the new age of AI
Woke up to a fawn and a red fox in the back yard this morning after seeing them in the yard last night. Not sure how the fawn got into the yard – gates were closed and it tried to jump the fence to get out but couldn’t clear it. I had to open the gates and it found its way out.
This is a compilation video which shows two of Boston Dynamics’ humanoid Atlas research robots doing the twist, the mashed potato and other classic moves, joined by Spot, a doglike robot, and Handle, a wheeled robot designed for lifting and moving boxes in a warehouse or truck.
and that was published 2 years ago. just imagine what they can do now.
an interview this May with and about ameca
It’s a real life i-Robot! Ameca is the world’s most advanced robot, with human-like facial expressions and movement. It can mimic people’s basic movements, draw sketches, and also speak to people with the help of AI such as ChatGPT. Ameca joins Holly and Phillip in the studio for a live chat, alongside its creator, Morgan Roe.
In 1988, Bossman took us from panhandle Florida to see the once-every-two-years woodworking extravaganza in Atlanta, they had all kinds of programmable robots. 2 I remember were:
1.robot arm would place from a hopper a woodblock on a table The block was like a piece of 4” x 4” about a foot tall affixed to the table. The robot arm would go over to two “wheels” which contained bunches of carving bits….the wheel would spin and stop, the arm would pick out a certain bit, travel to the table and proceed to carve chunks out of the wood block and then would go back to the wheel attach a different bit, back to the table and carve….carve, bit change, carve, bit change, etc and pretty soon the block has become a chess piece, the knight, and dumped in another hopper. This robot thing did that all day. The other one was a robot arm which would spray coat a chair on a Platform. Front back under over and quick. So basically, if you could find a market for say, a chess piece or whatev r, you could buy a machine to just crank em out all day and you just feed the robot.
Amazing stuff.
Let’s add some more issues with the android robot do everything concept. Energy. Lots of it, human brains burn a lot of it. Motherboards can be created that use less, but with limits. Servos (motors) to make the various parts move around use energy. There is no free energy, it has to be supplied from somewhere and converted to what each user of energy requires. How long do you want or expect your robot to be active without recharge. Batteries or other energy storage is weight and makes more energy to be used when moving about.
Yeah. So many cute androids being shown doing stuff (make google eyes roll now). AI is what we were doing years ago, but with limited success. Process control works, and works better in the age of powerful processors and cheap memory.
What is remarkable about all of this computer AI is that all any these machines can do is count to 1. All of this stuff we marvel at is a series of yes/no decisions. I don’t believe that our cognition is based on the same foundation that current AI uses. AI is a tool and the future belongs to these humanoid monkeys who can best use this new tool. As always, the future is interesting
Jack
Craig
I’ve been getting robo calls that are designed to fool you. Very good voice, with properly space pauses to give you a response. It was an attempt to sell business services. I did a quick statement of who they were then ask “how are you” very pleasant. It was so good it fooled me at first, I replied as if I was talking to a real human. I often reply to real people, (that is if I answer the phone at all) “I’m sorry you have the wrong number” Hoping to get a box checked to get me off that call list anyway. What happened is it responded as if I had gave the standard answer, such as “I am fine”. So I hung up. One time I just kept repeating “wrong number” at every prompt, The call responded as if I was a very interested customer.
It was good and it was effective up to a point and I could see where if combined with the current AI it could fool a person.
Jack
https://www.techradar.com/pro/shutterstocks-ai-art-given-legal-protection
“Shutterstock’s AI-generated images aren’t subjected to the same review and vetting process as traditional stock video and photo assets on the platform. Without a careful eye, and some judicious use of graphic design software to edit potentially litigious images, firms could find themselves in front of a judge. And that all rather defeats the two main advantages to using the tools: speed and cost.”
“From today, the popular stock photo site will protect businesses from legal claims arising from images created with the site’s AI art generator. The company confirmed that images will undergo human review.”
“The news follows a similar announcement from Adobe, which announced plans to introduce IP indemnity for businesses using its generative AI platform Firefly.”
For robocalls I answer without saying anything and wait. Dead silence is not a human. Occasionally I will get the robocall making some sound, but I stay silent until it hangs up. Another is to answer in a foreign language, my go to for many decades.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/05/04/us-copyright-office-artificial-intelligence-art-regulation
“The US Copyright Office has received applications to register a wide variety of arguably creative objects for copyright protection in recent years, including driftwood that has been shaped and smoothed by the ocean, a photograph taken by a monkey, a mural painted by an elephant and the look of natural stone for its cut marks, defects and other qualities. In every instance, its response has been the same: no.”
“…the Copyright Office asserted that when “a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it”. However, there may be instances in which “a work containing AI-generated material will also contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim. For example, a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that ‘the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship’.”
“The Copyright Office likened some uses of artificial intelligence to more traditional mechanical tools, such as a visual artist’s use of Photoshop or a musician creating different sounds through a guitar pedal, which would be permitted for those seeking copyright registration: “[W]hat matters is the extent to which the human had creative control over the work’s expression and ‘actually formed’ the traditional elements of authorship.”
https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem
“Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem”
“The resulting products can be fascinating — both quality and speed of creation are elevated compared to average human performance. The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted an AI-generated installation generated from the museum’s own collection…”
“The capabilities of text generators are perhaps even more striking, as they write essays, poems, and summaries, and are proving adept mimics of style and form (though they can take creative license with facts).”
“While it may seem like these new AI tools can conjure new material from the ether, that’s not quite the case. Generative AI platforms are trained on data lakes and question snippets — billions of parameters that are constructed by software processing huge archives of images and text. The AI platforms recover patterns and relationships, which they then use to create rules, and then make judgments and predictions, when responding to a prompt.”
“This process comes with legal risks, including intellectual property infringement. In many cases, it also poses legal questions that are still being resolved.”
“These claims are already being litigated. In a case filed in late 2022, Andersen v. Stability AI et al., three artists formed a class to sue multiple generative AI platforms on the basis of the AI using their original works without license to train their AI in their styles, allowing users to generate works that may be insufficiently transformative from their existing, protected works, and, as a result, would be unauthorized derivative works.”
“Similar cases filed in 2023 bring claims that companies trained AI tools using data lakes with thousands — or even many millions — of unlicensed works. Getty, an image licensing service, filed a lawsuit against the creators of Stable Diffusion alleging the improper use of its photos, both violating copyright and trademark rights it has in its watermarked photograph collection.”
“In each of these cases, the legal system is being asked to clarify the bounds of what is a “derivative work” under intellectual property laws — and depending upon the jurisdiction, different federal circuit courts may respond with different interpretations. The outcome of these cases is expected to hinge on the interpretation of the fair use doctrine, which allows copyrighted work to be used without the owner’s permission “for purposes such as criticism (including satire), comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research,” and for a transformative use of the copyrighted material in a manner for which it was not intended.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/us/baby-boomers-gen-z-cec/index.html
“Extreme political positions are growing in popularity for high school seniors”
“Menand, an English professor at Harvard, says that when talking with his own students he regularly sees how stereotypes about Gen Z’s politics don’t match up with reality.”
“I have more students that complain about wokeness than are woke,” he says.
“Some findings about Gen Z after recent polling have painted a more complicated picture of voters from that generation.”
There are some really interesting graphs in this article.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/europe/netherlands-government-collapse-immigration-policy-intl-hnk/index.html
“The Dutch government has collapsed after failing to reach an agreement on curbing immigration.”
“Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Friday that his government would tender its resignation to the Dutch king, triggering new elections to be held in the fall.”
“As well as VVD, the current coalition government consists of the liberal D66 party, the centrist Christian Union and more socially conservative Christian Democratic Appeal.”
“VVD has proposed limiting entrance for the children of war refugees who are already in the country and making families wait for at least two years before they can be united.”
“Two of VVD’s coalition parties – the Christian Union and D66 – refused to support the restrictions, leading to the split.”
“The number of applications the Netherlands received related to asylum jumped from 36,620 in 2021 to 47,991 last year, with most applicants coming from Syria, according to the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service.”
“The carrying capacity of our small, densely populated country is under pressure. People too often find themselves competing for housing, healthcare and education,” Hoekstra said Friday.
“On Monday there will be a debate in parliament about the fall of the government. Parliament will return from its summer recess for that debate.”
If you think fighting for resourced is a problem now, wait until AI displaced 30% of the global workforce.
Another reason to not go to Florida, deny drivers licenses from four states, invalid according to mini-sfb.
Ummm, the Real ID star on those DLs says otherwise, doesn’t it?
I guess RonDuh doesn’t care about those four states. Hmmm, primary season — Are VT, DE, RI, etc., going to repay him for this little stunt? Maybe he’s in their states illegally? Maybe he and his team can be harassed and forced to produce other documents?
Disney World should move.
i was proud of my “Wrongald DuhSantis” misnomer but it never caught on 😒
i imagine xrep would have appreciated it and given me a modicum of kudos, that would have been enough. Alas…
Bink – is good, don’t give up with creating many more.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/us/texas-floating-barrier-migrants-lawsuit/index.html
“The owner of a Texas canoe and kayaking company filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking to stop the installation of a marine floating barrier on the Rio Grande, claiming Gov. Greg Abbott has no right to regulate the border.”
“The lawsuit was filed on the same day that Texas started deploying buoys for the barrier in an attempt to deter migrant crossings on the river along the US-Mexico border.”
“The suit accuses the Republican governor of misapplying the Texas Disaster Act of 1975 to justify the buoy system – which “has no logical connection to the purpose of the Disaster Act, which is to respond to ‘the occurrence or imminent threat of widespread or severe damage, injury, or loss of life or property resulting from any natural or man-made cause.’”
Abbott, the suit said, cannot “create his own border patrol agency to regulate the border and prevent immigrants from entering Texas.”
“Additionally, the US Constitution and federal statues do not empower Texas with authority to enforce immigration laws, according to the suit.”
“The lawsuit alleges the buoys will prevent Epi’s and Fuentes, the company’s owner-operator, from conducting tours and canoe and kayak sessions in the border town Eagle Pass, causing “imminent and irreparable harm to EPI.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/politics/iowa-caucuses-republican-president-primary-2024/index.html
“Iowa Republicans voted Saturday to hold their first-in-the-nation caucuses on January 15 next year…”
“January 15 next year coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal and state holiday.”
“The need to go before South Carolina Democrats is what pushed Republicans in Iowa and, presumably New Hampshire, into January.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/07/politics/mike-pence-iowa-pizza-ranch-strategy-2024/index.html
“Everybody that came here tonight, I guarantee the one thing they have in common – they’re all going to caucus. You’re looking for people that are willing to come out on a cold night, spend an hour and a half listening to everybody else talk, and then vote for your person.”
“The way you build those relationships are in meetings of 50, not rallies of 5,000,” he said, referring to Trump, who has drawn large crowds in his 2024 bid for the White House.”
“…for the price of a pizza, you got the meeting room…”
“Bertrand, the woman in the Sioux City Pizza Ranch, walked away from the event open to Pence, but unconvinced by the facts he laid out about January 6.”
“I believe he’s a good man,” Bertrand told CNN. “I love the fact that he is strengthened by his faith. But I really do feel like he altered history.”
They still believe Pence could’ve overturned the election, even after he explicitly explained why he could not. They still blame Pence for Biden.
Idiots
Out
Walking
Around
Unfortunately, the idiots aren’t confined to Iowa.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/stinger-missiles-raytheon-ukraine/
“Raytheon asks retirees for help making new Stinger anti-air missiles”
“Nations like the United States and other NATO allies have given Ukraine their Stingers, putting the venerable human-portable surface-to-air missile to use against Soviet-designed aircraft, as it was originally designed to do. But the Stinger missile design is so old, and the stockpiles of the missiles being expended so quickly, that Stinger-maker Raytheon is asking for its retired missile makers to teach current workers how to restart production, Defense One reported in late June.”
“Stinger’s been out of production for 20 years, and all of a sudden in the first 48 hours [of the war], it’s the star of the show and everybody wants more,” said Wes Kremer, the president of Raytheon parent company RTX, reports Defense One.
“Raytheon bringing back retirees to teach the basics of Stinger production will likely help with a lost transfer of knowledge, until the Army’s desired Stinger replacement is designed, tested, and improved. In the meantime, another option for the Army would be to reach out to allies like Japan and the United Kingdom, and see if their respective Stinger updates (Japan’s Type 91) or replacements (the UK’s Starstreak) are available for production.”
…thanks, Bronc. i’ll never top “Gym Jordan”, a elegant masterpiece of misnomering, whoever coined that 👍
NEW THREAD by Jack