corobo

Internet rule: if a comment starts with "So" it's going to be the least charitable version of what you said, haha.

Nah. If I were reviewing something without having been given the instruction "please be truthful, I need to make this perfect" or similar, I would default to encouraging the skill rather than trying to help perfect the output. In doing so I would overlook minor issues that will iron out with experience across multiple works.

If the person was submitting the result to a competition or something and asked my opinion on that specific work, then my approach would be different. Not cruel and hurtful, course not, I'd just mention things that would otherwise be annoying and petty to bring up.

In the case of pre-sapient AI, it won't hurt (and may even be helpful to the relevant dev) to point out where it's tripping over into uncanny valley. There's no benefit to encouragement in this situation as it's not learning a skill, it is trying to replicate the output of one.

Fair point that.

> If it was your buddy's sister doing this rendition

No. She is sapient and has thoughts and feelings that need taking into account. I would be more likely to disregard minor negatives in favour of any positive words I could find.

When AI is on the same level I personally will be more mindful of how my words affect its feelings, sure, until that time AI music will get honest reviews from me.

So far I've seen a whole load of awful timings, weird pronunciations of words, and infinite boredom. Humans are still in the lead on this one.

My immediate thought too when I heard this one from that other AI music app that was on the front page yesterday.

It's a description (Wikipedia intro by the looks) of Cola, but could easily be droning on about Coca Cola specifically while you're stuck in a lift.

https://sonauto.ai/songs/rsNs3yET01kQrFGiT1qS

We're gonna need adblock enabled earbuds soon lol

I imagine Stephen Hawking would have found a use for this had it been available before everyone got used to his computer speaking voice. Anything that may cause someone to lose their ability to speak along the lines of your example.

Another might be for placeholdering - you could use an array of (licensed and used appropriately) voices to pitch a TV show, film, radio show, podcast, etc to give people a decent idea of how it would sound to get financing and hire actual people to make the real version. Ofc you'll need an answer to "why don't we just use these AI voices in the actual production?" from people trying to save a few quid.

Simple one- for fun. I'm considering AI cloning my voice and tinkering around until I find something useful to do with it. Maybe in my will I'll open source my vocal likeness as long as it's only to be used commercially as the voice of a spaceship's main computer or something. I'll be a sentence or two factoid in some Wikipedia article 300 years from now, haha.

Universal translator - if an AI can replicate my voice it could have me speak all sorts of languages in real-time.. sucks to be a human translator admittedly in this use case. Once the tech is fully ironed out and reliable we could potentially even get rid of "official" languages (eg you have to speak fluent English to be an airline pilot - heck of a learning curve on top of learning to be a pilot if you're from a country that doesn't teach English by default!)

I dunno if it'd be a weird uncanny valley thing, I wonder how an audiobook would sound reading a book in my own voice - unless I'm fully immersed in fiction that's generally how I take in a book, subvocalising with my voice in my head - maybe it'd help things bed in a bit better if it's my own voice reading it to me? If so I wonder how fast I could have AI-me read and still be able to take in the content with decent recall.. Might have to test this one!

Splintering off the audiobook idea - I wonder if you could help people untrain issues with their speaking in this manner? Like would hearing a non-stuttering version of their voice help someone with a stutter? I am purely in the land of hypothesis at this stage, but might be worth trying! Even if it doesn't help in that way, the person with a stutter would at least have a fallback voice if they're having a bad day of it :)

E: ooh, having an AI voice and pitch shifting it may help in training your voice to sound different, as you'd have something to aim for - "I knew I could do it because I heard it being done" sort of theory. The first example that popped into my head was someone transitioning between genders and wanting to adjust their voice to match the change.

I imagine there's other fields where this may be useful too - like if you wanted a BBC news job and need to soften out your accent (if they still require Received Pronunciation, idk)

Admittedly I could probably come up with more abuse cases than use cases if I put my mind to it, but wanted to stick to the assignment :)

Ah. I think the wording plus the existing downvote when I read your reply made me not even consider it might be literal and not at all snarky.. I'd like to blame my British sarcasm-as-a-first-language upbringing, but really that one's on me.

For what it's worth I've popped an upvote on your comment and will go out of my way to double check snark is actually snark before replying to things in future.

Sorry for the misfiring assumption!

Thank you for the clarification.

Not sure I understand the snarky turn at the end there but I imagine I'm just lacking whatever context you have! No problem :)

"I can't do much else, may as well keep folks up to date" I guess.

If they're sitting on the shore with a fully stocked rescue boat delaying help to post their edits, aye I'd be peeved too. Otherwise, might as well keep info updated as it becomes known.

One of the beauties of the internet is that there's enough people willing to do the work to keep the rest of the world up to date with real-time information.

Chances are changing tenses was just a single command anyway, `./pastTensify.sh "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt..."` or whatever the Wikipedia bot command equivalent would be.

Adding actual information about the event will naturally take a little longer as it needs writing first - they probably fired off the pastTensify automation while writing the meat and potatoes of their edit.

Now I think about it the only times I've almost rolled or sprained my ankle has been during a bit of my usual walk that is "the flat bit" in my head, but has changed on me e.g. after rain softens up the ground plus a horse has gone thru leaving footstep holes which have then dried solid.

I'll have to mix up the path I take around that bit to keep my brain awake and aware! Good shout!

I usually follow tractor tyre lines as it was until recently working farmland (I'd never want to damage the crops!) but it's just regular grass this year so I can walk wherever freely - I think the farmer sold the land so the council can run a road through the middle of it.. trying to get the most out of it before it's paved over and I need to find a new regular trek haha

My best walk for hills is (sort of) literally storming a castle haha. Infinite dopamine when I trek up that way, fully agree with that hypothesis!

A little bit deadly if it's been raining but if it's dry out it's a heck of a workout going directly up/down the pictured desire path rather than following the proper path round and up. Usually I'll go up the steep and down the regular path rather than risk breaking my neck in public, that would be embarrassing.

Loads of steep but this-side-of-possible hills around the local castle ruins - built on a hill as pictured, plus where the former moat was, and plenty of hills and valleys around the immediate area :D

http://share.cohan.dev/1rRbH.jpg

That last point about it feeling nicer mentally rings true for sure. I much prefer to walk over uneven terrain such as through a field rather than the super flat (former railway line) path to the side of it.

Every so often I do hit a wonky patch that I'm surprised didn't cause an injury or sprain but so far so good. That's mostly on me for combining the enjoyment of uneven terrain with an enjoyment of nighttime walks haha, but does happen during the day too now and then.

Good to hear it might be a little bit beneficial too! Yay for eccentric walking!

Similarly my band refuses to release an album until we have a huge audience!

Seriously though, write for you! The eyeballs will come later

I dunno if I'm just being overly picky because I know it's AI generated but it feels like the timing is all off in this example (musicians please chime in!)

Sort of like the musical equivalent to someone trying to do a comedy set off a teleprompter

I recently had this in regards to roll-on deodorant and ballpoint pens.

If there's ink/deodorant available, rubbing it on paper/skin will deposit it.

If there's no ink/deodorant available, this causes friction on the rollerball causing it to rotate and reload the liquid.

Such a simple concept but hard to get right (at least initially) - Ball too big, concept doesn't work. Ball too small, it'll leak everywhere.

Someone came up with the idea in 1888, but it didn't really work out until 1943.

Neat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen

And of course there's a whole other can of worms in what it took for me to be able to express this wonder to people all over the world via this comment

I think this is where things diverge depending on what troubles the ADHD brings you. It's kinda like debugging a program except the program is your brain - and yeah in the UK it's medication only by default, had to sort out the CBT side of things myself when I realised the meds were helping but not quite doing enough alone.

I originally went for help with low confidence which expanded out to digging into and addressing self-esteem, confidence, social anxiety, procrastination, and perfectionism.

If I'd taken one general thing from it though it's "do I have evidence or is this an assumption?" - if I have no evidence (that I'm terrible at my job, I did bad, that guy hates me, etc) then I should reevaluate if it's even accurate before doing anything with the thought

Writing things down when things go wrong was a big part of it too - what's the situation, what led to the situation, is it possible to view the situation in a better light, if not how can I fix the situation, if I can't fix things myself is there anyone that can help me with this situation rather than wallowing in it. That sort of thing.

As I say I imagine it'll differ from person to person so other people may have an entirely different experience with it, I'm not sure. Definitely worked for my systems/coding flavoured brain though, really was like debugging faults in a program. Figure out the underlying issue, try a fix, did it work? y/n? If no, try another fix. If yes, work on the next problem.

I dunno to be honest, I don't know of any kids diagnosed with ADHD to think of as examples.

Looking back on my own life (diagnosed early 30s, but part of the process was looking at how I was in school): I struggled to keep up with the bare basics outside of lessons - getting ready for school on time, remembering books, remembering to tell my parents I/they needed to do stuff on specific dates, doing (small amounts of) homework.

On the social front - Billy no mates until college (where I met people who were as weird as me), constantly bullied for reasons I couldn't figure out, could not work out how people managed to make friends. Felt like I'd missed the day of school where they taught everyone how to socialise and be normal. It was also like my prime directive was "don't speak unless spoken to" haha. So damn quiet.

Unless someone directly invited me or gave me permission to do an activity that activity was just for other people, not for me. Dancing, sports, and pianos weren't even on the table lol.

Aye same - I did great up until I had to make my own structure.

Decent enough in school but dropped out of college twice. Fell into an entry level IT job with loads of scripts, processes, and procedures but the more I progressed the more autonomy I was given and the worse I performed.

Was mostly terrible but occasionally amazing (enough to keep my job at least) for ~10 years then bumped into the ADHD symptoms at some point, got myself checked out, got the diagnosis.

Doing pretty well now (tho never perfect) with medication and a stint of cognitive behavioural therapy to help set up my own structure. Getting there!

> My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a child actually affected by ADHD

The second D - disorder. When it affects the kid's ability to learn, socialise, etc

Music with intermittent control updates was great, reminded me lofi ATC exists (lofi music with airport control tower audio)

https://www.lofiatc.com/

I think the tech has caught up, and the market is ready, for Furby 2.0

Digging into the abstractions of life (with my admittedly non-medical non-scientific background) it seems that if you really boil things down it's all dopamine

Dopamine reward: Anticipation, something good happens, repeat

Addiction: Anticipation, something good happens sometimes, repeat

To answer the question from that standpoint, reward the player.. but not too much :)

Everything on top of that is there to get the person into the loop in the first place

In the footer there's a link to this page which seems to do that

Could probably do with being the default view, aye

https://openalternative.co/alternatives/

I can't wait for the fines to be handed out for unmarked adverts haha

Every new media format seems to have to learn these things themselves, often in order:

1. Turns out you need moderation

2. Don't poke the RIAA. If you wake them up everyone is getting sued.

3. Adverts need to be made clear they're adverts

buserror has quit (*.net *.split)

Well yeah I was making a little bit of a joke there. It's also a handy place to keep the rest of my stuff, receive letters, use as an address for banks, sleep in known comfort, all the good stuff that comes with having a fixed abode

If it was the only thing stopping me doing the nomad thing I'd set it up at a friend's house (with payment in terabytes of storage) or aye colo it

A small town (~70k pop) in the middle of England. Pre-covid the pay in local IT was quite a hindrance (£25k/yr is pretty much the average locally) but it's a great place to be now that remote work is a bit more normalised :)

Plenty of trails to walk or cycle, fields everywhere to shortcut through, decent train and motorway connections to the major cities on the rare occasion I do need to be on-site.

There's even a castle to explore within walking distance :)

Well that is fair, and I think that is the entire concern with artificial super intelligence isn't it? That we can't predict what it would do.

If I could accurately predict what a superintelligence's goals would be I'd have a decent career advising AI companies on their alignment concerns :)

Just taking a swing at it with this ol' legacy wet brain because it's fun to think about. There's nothing to buy, it is an opinion. Heck, it's practically just an exercise in writing science fiction at this stage.

What do you think it would do?

Oh good, I thought iOS Firefox was forgetting to load its cookie jar again

I'm sure he'll realise one day that to do that the super AI will have to get rid of money (after figuring out how to get us to post-scarcity, of course) - or at least demand it be redistributed fairly.

Ain't no way the millionaires and billionaires of the world are going to accept being on equal footing with the poors, haha. Outside of the folks that fear Skynet, I imagine this is the real concern with alignment.

How can a being of pure logic look past the hoarding of resources? If a monkey in captivity was hoarding all the food we'd step in and make sure the other monkeys had food to eat. I have to imagine the next intelligence above us would consider doing the same for us if given the power to do so.

We'll never get to a point without an "Us vs Them", or "Have and Have Nots" - it's tragic, and I really hope I'm wrong, but I have infinite doubt on this one.

Having said that I'll give anything a go, we're still stuck in the age of monarchies over here on Normal Island. AI wants to take over? I'm down to give it a shot as long as it promises to not wear a crown during a recession, haha

There's definitely a Fight Club single-serving friend reference to be had here.

Both in terms of cheap throwaway reference and maybe that's actually how he does it?

When I was commuting a lot I'd always see the same faces, eventually got to nattering with some of them. Nothing super deep or anything but that's probably more on my social ability than possibility :)