2XL – ‘70s toy that faked AI with an 8-track [video] | Hacker News Reader

2XL – ‘70s toy that faked AI with an 8-track [video]

youtube.com

145 pointsfortran7745 comments

We had the second-generation of 2-XL growing up. That version was made by Tiger and used cassettes. There was something mesmerising about it, even though I knew even as a child it was using some sort of "trickery" that I couldn't quite understand.

We had this one too, the one with the blue head. I always wondered how it worked, as cassettes only had two different sides.

Watching this video, I noticed that they must've used the left and right channels on either side for a total of four mono channels.

Unfortunately I never tried to play the cassette in a normal cassette player.

I had a friend lend hers to me when I was a kid, and I did in fact try it in a cassette player! I even tried to make my own cassette, but I soon realized that I couldn't because... All 4 tracks had to be recorded in the same direction.

2-XL used the left and right stereo tracks of each "side" of the tape to store four total synchronized audio tracks, but all in the same direction of play. If you listened to "side A" on a normal cassette player, you'd hear two tracks: one on the left and one on the right. If you listened to "side B" you'd hear the other two tracks, but played backwards.

You could have reversed the audio for two of the tracks before recording.

You'd also have to be very precise in laying down the reversed side, to ensure synchronization

Four track cassette recorders work this way as well. Made many band demo albums with one.

I listened to many a backward message with my old Tascam.

Before then, I used to turn over a spindle, leaving the "rolled" part of the tape outside of the guides, fast forward through the whole tape, then turn over the remaining spindle and close it back up with the tape behind the guides again. This way you were playing the tape backward, but through the back of the tape, so it was a bit muddy, but worked.

With the 4 track recorder, you just mute tracks 1 and 2, and listen to the opposite side of the tape (the side not facing you) backward.

Yea, I was a weird kid. But my best experiment from this ended up on VSauce, so there is that.

I am of the age of these kinds of devices and I don't think, A.I. was really a concept in how it is these days. I remember robot after robot in popular sci fi but outside of the Asimov stories my Dad read, I don't remember thinking about robots as intelligent in the way we think of A.I. now, as being autonomously able to think without being specifically programmed. I think I thought they were kind of clever logic.

AI is an unattainable goal, not because we'll never create it, but because "what is AI" changes over time as we figure out how to do things, and give them their own name. Decision trees, machine learning, deep learning - each of these was "AI" at some point, but now that we can do them the magic is gone and "AI" has become more distant than it was before.

(Heavily paraphrased from a longer post I read years and years ago, no idea where)

To answer "What is AI?" you first have to answer "What is I?"

Check out the Apple ][ at the Dolphin Research Center in 1982, and Ron Reisman’s thoughts about dolphin intelligence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWHCTNztnwQ&t=392s

“It’s gotten to the point that I never say anything about intelligence in general. I don’t know what it means any more. I used to. But then I started trying to test it. And if you think about it for a while, you don’t know what it is.” -Ron Reisman

The best way I heard it phrased was "AI is whatever computers can't do yet".

I think among common people what AI is is clear - a computer that is as smart and clever as a human. That has never changed, and has never been achieved.

But in academia what you say applies since they first thought "well a computer that can hold a conversation must be intelligent", then they created ELIZA, then "well a computer that can win in chess must be intelligent", then we got Big Blue, "well a computer than can recognize objects in an image", etc etc

I get the point but also fully disagree. At the point where computer cognition is good enough for humans to truly fall in love, build friendships or come to hate as an enemy, I personally think not recognizing it as AI will become a fringe belief.

There were plenty of "thinking robots" in Sci-Fi of that era. Asimov aside, one example that immediately comes to my mind is Mike the computer in "Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and the titular villains in Saberhagen's "Berserkers" series; both are from 1960s.

Jonny 5 is alive!

A decade later but you are right there was plenty of AI back then.

I’m sorry Dave…

What do you suppose AI is if not “clever logic?”

The 1920 play that literally introduced the word "robot", Karel Čapek's "R.U.R.", featured fully autonomous AI robots.

In the 70s/80s there were a lot of intelligent robot characters in popular fiction. Metal Mickey, Little Wonder, robot in Lost in Space, K9, Twiggy from Buck Rogers, Muffit from Battlestar Galactica, the ship in Flight of the Navigator, Transformers (sort of), T-bob (M.A.S.K), tons more I'm sure. It was very common for a squad to have an intelligent robot in, or a kid-hero to have an intelligent robot sidekick.

Star Wars!

You must have been just a little too young to have seen 2001 and been caught up in those 60's days of sci-fi. HAL-9000 was a big deal and set the tone for expectations of AI with fully conversational, human-like behavior.

Basically, by the "if it has so much as a single decision in the code, it's AI" definition a lot of people like to push, this is actually AI.

I don’t agree with that. Having my grown up in that era there is t any shortage of content in popular culture that have smart or sentient AI:

- Asimov novels (as you’ve referenced yourself)

- 2001 (Hal)

- Star Wars (R2D2 & C3PO for example)

- Buck Rogers in the 25th C (Twiki & Theopolis)

- Battlestar Galactica (Cylons)

- Alien (Ash)

- Star Trek TOS (I forget the episode names but there’s a few with smart AI)

- Star Trek: The Motion Picture (V’Ger)

…All from either the same era as 2XL or before.

The problem with “AI” as a term is that it can mean multiple things (like “HD”, “smart”, etc) so it will be used and abused by whoever feels it might sell a few copies of something.

An example of this is computer games. AI has never been used to refer sentience but rather the programmed logic of a computer opponent.

Then you have AI in the research sense; which are the technologies another poster described.

You have AI in stories, TV and movies which are often depicted as human-like intelligence, complex reasoning, or even outright sentient.

It was never a term that had one definitive technical definition.

Now you do see researchers retrofitting different classifications of “AI” in a hope to clear up the confusion around the use of the term “AI”. But that’s a more recent (in comparison) development and certainly isn’t something the general populous are aware of.

I had one of these as a child (actually I still have it and it works nicely). We definitely didn't think of it as intelligent in any way. It was hilarious and once we found out about 8 track tapes (which weren't a thing in the UK) enjoyed how cleverly the tape had been put together with the different tracks being aligned. It also used a lot of robot sounds to fill blank spots needed because some questions/answers would be different lengths on different tracks.

About 15 years ago I came across a cache of WAV files that were clips of 2XL talking and various sound effects, which I quickly archived. Playing them then, and again just now brings up a lot of nostalgia.

I should play a few of them out through the Google Home to scare the hell out of the kids.

They had me at Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Rextg2Nyc

(I'm bistellar: I love both Star Wars AND Star Trek!)

Star Wars is just another Galaxy in the mirror universe.

There's even a Disco Cow Girls Star Wars Mirror Universe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0PLHZhvg4Y

Reminds me of the similarly simple toy I had for the 1981 board game "DarkTower". It was a plastic tower with a few light bulbs and some buttons that you pressed at various times during your turn to encounter adversaries and fight battles. It took my young mind a while to figure out that it didn't actually know where you were on the board or even in the game and was just some very simple logic.

Big fan of Techmoan, if you haven't heard of him I highly recommend checking out his series reviewing vintage hifi.

He also used to and still sometimes does action camera reviews! VU meters and various other interesting oddities! Very highly recommended.

He usually uploads on Saturdays, at least as far as I've noticed.

I had one! it was awesome, I used it all the time to play music too because it was a regular 8 track player.

Dude, I was a kid in the 70s and I remember playing with it. We all knew it was an over glorified "choose your own adventure" 8-track audiobook player.

We put normal 8 tracks in it all the time - it was hilarious.

Saying it "faked AI" is a bit disingenuous

I love this. But the title is sensationalized, classic YouTube content creator. If it's faking anything, it's faking simple logic.

So is a lot of the stuff marketed as machine learning or AI.

With an input/outpt data approach that was limited enough, there was the Magic 8 Ball.

https://magic-8ball.com/magic-8-ball-answers/

No learning actually necessary for an MVP, certainly not AI but there will always be people who want to believe in some fairly thin smoke & mirrors.

I watch Techmoan a lot and I rarely if ever think clickbait, they are almost all straightforward. It was apparently advertised as smart, having a personality, etc

The way Youtube works these days, creators pretty much have to have something to hook people or else their videos gain popularity too slowly and are quickly pushed out of view. It sucks, and some channels are worse than others, but it's a consequence of how human brains work and the Youtube ranking algorithms.

Perhaps creators could include an official non-sensationalized title in the video description that we can use on sites like HN.

I love techmoan

My stepbrother had a 2-XL. He never had any interest in it but I loved it. The narrator's voice was very un-robotlike but that didn't matter. It was interactivity in something other than a video game, which was a rarity at that time.

What does it help spraying/cleaning the solder joints? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amuRIydCoJk&t=6m07s

He's actually spraying the manually adjustable potentiometer (audio volume control pot) intending for the contact lubricant to get inside its moving parts and condition the electrical "wiper" inside the pot for the precise reason that it is an unsoldered circuit connection and subject to unreliable contact from either or both of disuse or overuse.

When an analog volume control responds unevenly or makes static when adjusted, try technician-in-a-can, no soldering usually involved.

thanks for the explanation!

One of my favourite artifacts is my Star Wars original soundtrack on 8-track ("20th Century Tapes (P) 1977 20th century Records" TW8-2-541). It's just a fun bit to have on the shelf. Picked it up at a garage sale.

It was one of my favorite toys!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com