watercooler_guy

I think they just mean the robot does the tasks autonomously without human intervention. The G1 is just the physical body, it still needs software to drive its decisions

I strongly second this. The JetBrains model is the best of both worlds and everybody wins. Being able to own a certain version of the software at my option makes me feel respected by the company, and it's also motivation for the company to continue delivering real value to users over time -- they gotta earn that subscription fee :)

Depending on the product, another model I like is dual licensing, where if you're an individual or noncommercial user, you get one price/it's free, and if you're a commercial customer, you get another price/subscription agreement

I think the novel and interesting tech is still happening, its just that without the colorful ads for it on TV, and without the software being packaged up and sold with pretty box art that you can physically hold, it doesn't feel as much like a capital-E Experience. It's probably the Internet's fault that we don't do things like that anymore, but the upside is that we now have access to so many ideas and applications from all over, even ones that aren't commercially viable.

Some that look exciting to me are: an AI that lets you animate still photos realistically [1], a simple website that guides you to discover new parks, eateries, and other places near you [2], an AI that colorizes old black-and-white photos/video [3], a Street View style map of the game world from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", with some 1st person 360 degree photos [4], and a tiny game engine that lets you distribute your whole game physically via printed QR codes [5].

If marketing and graphic design people ever felt like getting together to do some 'side projects', I vote that they should make print ads for apps/websites that they like :)

[1] https://github.com/AliaksandrSiarohin/first-order-model

[2] https://randomlocation.xyz (https://randomlocation.xyz/help.txt for customization)

[3] https://github.com/jantic/DeOldify

[4] https://nassimsoftware.github.io/zeldabotwstreetview/

[5] https://github.com/kesiev/rewtro

This was an interesting application of neural nets and a good write up! I’m curious how a game might be made from scratch using a neural net, i.e. what would it train on? I think this would be a cool technique to have at our disposal because games implemented as neural nets might make data mining harder, so all the cool secrets in the game wouldn’t be immediately exposed upon release :)

From the author's twitter, here are links to a download of the network and to a site that lets you view the network architecture as a flow chart: https://twitter.com/madebyollin/status/1566886407117107200?s...

Very, very cool project! I think I actually prefer this streetview approach to the floating noclip approach, because a map + streetview that works like google maps cements the feeling that the game world is as real as my city -- here's the map in my web browser, no need to run a video game!

To your knowledge, are there any special tricks to store many panorama images so you could feasibly capture entire paths continuously through the map, or even entire maps for smaller games?

The website specifies that these are “simulations” (re-creations of the games’ apparent behavior that attempt to stay faithful to the original) and not “emulations” (reproductions of the actual hardware behavior of the circuitry): http://www.madrigaldesign.it/sim/info.php

This is, I think, the killer technology that would allow VR to be seriously used for meetings with other people, especially in business. If these avatars can be animated continuously as someone is speaking, so that lip movements are matched, that would seal the deal.

The article states that it was the CFO, not the CEO, of Bed, Bath, and Beyond

I think that’s an interesting connection and way to look at this. I first encountered that sort of artistic inspiration on a Twitter account that randomly generated sheet music snippets. Sure the generation could be garbage, but that gives the artist a starting point to say “this is bad because X, it should be more like Y”. And of course with these AI models, the generation is more likely to be good. Having a divined/generated starting point for creative work can definitely be an invaluable tool.

I‘ve always been a big fan of creepypastas —- they can be really well done and scary in novel ways. To some extent, I believed some of them to be real when I was a kid.

If creepypastas were “invented” today, would they have made as big of a cultural splash? Or would they get lost in a sea of other content, or be debunked and discarded too quickly?

Edit: I re-read the list and noticed some more recent creations on there, like The Backrooms. Maybe it’s less about believability and more about being a good story, which the Internet is still great at facilitating. So I guess my question is, did anyone else believe some of the earlier creepypastas, and was believability important to the popularity back then?

It was my understanding that the observer effect (the act of observing a system can affect that system) is not due to the system "knowing" that a conscious mind is observing it, but rather that the instruments used to observe the system alter the system. But then this essay says

> the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The Universe is entirely mental.

So what is this "mental nature of the Universe"? If the things we see at the macro scale are not made of underlying particles and waves, what are they made of?

This is about using AI to solve problems in ways humans couldn't even think of (e.g. wacky but optimal 3-D printed designs for building materials).

Wow, imagine curling up in your cozy, carved-out dwelling deep underground to read manuscripts by candlelight...

or more realistically, to hide from violent sieges on the city

That’s a really neat idea, what better way to intuitively understand what a program is doing than a familiar physical environment in front of you.

Reminds me of the esolang Taxi, where you perform computation by giving directions to a taxi driver carrying “passengers” (data) around a city [1]

The city metaphor would probably create a whole new genre of software-art too, where you can optimize for beautiful layout/architecture as well as efficiency.

[1] https://bigzaphod.github.io/Taxi/

Off topic, but I think that stripe.com page you've linked to is the most beautifully designed modern webpage I've ever had the pleasure of scrolling. It's the 3d objects that move ever-so-slightly along with my cursor passing over them that does it for me.

The author of the linked article seems to contradict himself. He writes:

>Gato’s ability to perform multiple tasks is more like a video game console that can store 600 different games, than it’s like a game you can play 600 different ways. It’s not a general AI, it’s a bunch of pre-trained, narrow models bundled neatly.

But the article also quotes a DeepMind blog post, which reads:

>The same network with the same weights can play Atari, caption images, chat, stack blocks with a real robot arm and much more, deciding based on its context whether to output text, joint torques, button presses, or other tokens.

"The same network with the same weights" isn't a bundle of narrow models, it's one generalist model. I think that's more impressive than the article's author gives it credit for. Really feels like the beginning of C3PO type droids -- they don't have to be as smart or creative as a human, just adequate at a wide enough set of useful tasks

Could you expand on what you mean by this? What kind of new social structures are enabling progress in this way?

The part about being able to focus at your girlfriend’s place is interesting, because I experience the same thing. When someone is sitting near me and working at the same time as me, I don’t go on all my usual distraction tangents, I actually get stuff done. I think it’s a subconscious fear of being seen as weird or unproductive by someone I care about, when we’re both supposed to be working. Maybe having a “work chaperone” is the solution for us?

Based on conversations I've had with people about uploading conciousness, my experience has not been that people think of it as a monument to their ego. For those with interest in this tech, the understanding seems to be that they will continue to percieve and think through this new, uploaded form. This also seems to be how it's usually portrayed in media (e.g. Black Mirror's "San Junipero" episode) though of course, it may turn out to be impossible.

I guess I haven't spoken to enough rich, eccentric types :) But seriously, if there are people who think of it like building a monument to one's self, I'd be interested in whether/why that is satisfactory for them.

> Grudge like Japanese girls under my bed etc.

That’s a hell of an experience to mention casually! Did you wish for these terrifying encounters and they happened? Or the control over your dreams isn’t that fine grained?

Do you have any links on this? Not that I doubt it, I’d just love to read more or see a demo

Maybe I’m overlooking something from the article, but shouldn’t it be possible to just run TropeTrainer in a Win95/XP VM on a modern OS?

Opinions such as the author’s are often mocked or attributed to an older, less tech-savy generation (see the “not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment” copypasta[0]). But I really think there’s something to this, as the author has found: having an internet-connected phone on you at all times makes it too easy to waste hours doing nothing in particular, instead of living your life. I’ve recently made it a personal policy to catch myself doing non-purposeful activity on my phone and put it away. And at least for me, my quality of life is better when my mind is not constantly abuzz with stimulation.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/not-a-cell-phone-in-sight

A good way to know for sure would be to use a sharpie to draw a mark on the inside of the particular chamber you step into before the machine is activated. Then, after you are copied, both people will have the memory of drawing such a mark. But the copy, who just materialized in a second chamber, will be surprised to find that there is no mark in front of him.

>maybe consciousness is a side effect, an emergent phenomena. once the brain gets complicated enough it will just arise (on a scale)

This is my feeling too. Since the brain is just physical matter arranged a certain way, doing a certain type of processing, I really think it possible that some computer programs we use today are also doing the right kind of processing to grant them a simple subjective inner experience. Of course most programs don’t have a way to tell us if that’s the case, except maybe GPT-3 :)

> are our decisions ours? or some inner layer in us creates the decision and then we just consciously observe it / let it play out

I have evidence for it being the latter: our higher brain functions let us rationalize, to ourselves, the decisions that were deterministically made by our subconscious, so it feels like “you” made the decisions “because you wanted to”. People who have the connection between their brain hemispheres severed can unconsciously reach a decision in one hemisphere, but then consciously rationalize it in the other hemisphere, without having experienced the making of the decision [0]:

>In one example of this kind of test, a picture of a chicken claw was flashed to the left hemisphere and a picture of a snow scene to the right hemisphere. Of the array of pictures placed in front of the subject, the obviously correct association is a chicken for the chicken claw and a shovel for the snow scene. Patient P.S. responded by choosing the shovel with the left hand and the chicken with the right. When asked why he chose these items, his left hemisphere replied `Oh, that's simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed'. Here the left brain, observing the left hand's response, interprets that response in a context consistent with its sphere of knowledge—one that does not include information about the left hemifield snow scene.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/123/7/1293/380106

If within those books there is knowledge/instructions on semiconductor manufacture and computer networking, then we could rebuild the internet with relative ease and re-disseminate our books at that time.

I vaguely recall someone or some group compiling instructions for 8-bit CPU chip manufacture in case of a worldwide catastrophe. Google isn't finding anything, but maybe someone else knows what I'm talking about?

I’m all for VR and AR to become widely used. But I don’t believe cell phones are going away in their current capacity. VR is something you do at home, because you can’t walk around outside without seeing what’s in front of you. So you’d still need a phone if you want to be connected while outside.

And I’m not educated on the timeline for shrinking AR tech down to fit in normal glasses that people want to wear around, but it seems like gesture control and being able to make private phone calls/texts are big hurdles there, that a phone already handles great.

As the professor stated, intelligence is a continuum -- so then at what point does an AI have conscious inner experience, thus making it deserving of rights? I'm excited as the next sci-fi fan for strong AI, but I'm fearful that we will create (or have already created) machines capable of suffering, but with no way to tell us.

but isn't it good that the standards aren't coming from Facebook, but rather will have to come from a more neutral source? I also wouldn't expect a big corp to be the one to create open standards for the rest of the community.

The way I see it, Facebook kicking off the push towards a metaverse is kind of like Bell Labs creating Unix. Sure it took a big corp with a lot of money, but that gives the rest of the community something to emulate and build off of, or decide what parts they do and don't like, and so eventually we'll have the metaverse equivalent of Linux. (edited for clarity of the first paragraph)