Author: admin

If I were a member of SAG-AFTRA, I would certainly do everything I could to fight for the right to not eventually be replaced by an AI. And I think this issue goes beyond monetary interests. It speaks to questions that are far deeper.

An analogous battle once took place on the Broadway stage. At some point technology had advanced to the point where musicals could replace orchestras with high quality recordings. To do so would certainly have saved a lot of money. And some theatergoers might not even have noticed the difference.

But there would have been a difference. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians fought long and hard to not be replace by machines. And our collective theater-going experience is far richer because of their victory.

The same goes for human actors in movies. There is something beautiful in the bond between human performer and human audience. It would be a shame if that bond were to end up being broken, or replaced, by some technological alternative, simply in the name of cost-cutting.

At midnight last night the actors of SAG-AFTRA went on strike, joining the already striking screenwriters. To kick things off, the SAG-AFTRA union president, Fran Drescher, gave an fiery and defiant speech.

This is the first time that two major Hollywood unions have been on strike at the same time since 1960. when Ronald Reagan was the president of the actors’ guild. Reagan, of course, famously went on to become president of the United States.

Maybe one result of all this is that Fran Drescher will also one day become president of the United States. That would be a fascinating turn of events.

But if that happens, the worst nightmare of Republicans will come true. America will finally become a Nanny state.

I was talking with my mom today, and the conversation got around to the future of wearable technology. We found that we agreed very strongly on one thing.

It would be great to have an ordinary looking pair of glasses, with a little unobtrusive camera and a little unobtrusive display that does just one capability: When you are talking to somebody, it shows you their name.

Just think how much social awkwardness and embarrassment would be saved by this one simple innovation. I suspect that if it came on the market today, millions of people would buy it.

I’ve been thinking that it would be fun to explore puzzles that combine math challenges with lexical challenges. Here is a simple example:

Consider the following sequence:

Four
Twelve
Thirty three
Thirty six

(1) Can you figure out the pattern?

(2) What number might come next in this sequence?

I will give the answer in a few days.

If you were to read the Wikipedia “about today” page faithfully every day, eventually you would see the names of nearly all the famous people. For example, today I learned that it’s the birthday of both E. B. White and Robert the Bruce.

Theoretically you could follow all of the links, and use the Wikipedia to learn about the lives of the famous people. By the end of a year, when the cycle repeats, you would have learned quite a bit.

I wonder whether that would make you a better person.

The central mystery of human existence is faced by every individual sooner or later. The mystery is this: We do not know when we will die, but we know for certain that we will.

Think about how much philosophy, literature, and religious thinking has circled around this one basic fact of our existence. We will never completely come to terms with this mystery, but we will always be in mutual orbit around it.

There is a reasonable chance that in number of years from now, everyone you know will be looking into virtual screens that only they can see. You will be too.

Some of these screens might be visible all the time. Others might just pop up as needed, such as when it’s time for an appointment, or to show the way to a subway entrance around the corner.

So you will know that other people are seeing things that you cannot see. And they will know the same about you.

I wonder what sorts of social protocols will evolve around this capability. Perhaps there will be some movement of your head, or some flicker of your eyes, to indicate “I’m not actually looking at you right now, I’m looking at a screen.”

But it might be something else entirely. I guess we won’t know for sure until it happens.

Let’s extrapolate forward to A.I. assisted interaction. Eventually we get to a place, for better or worse, where your personal A.I. assistant knows both your entire personal history and the contours of your particular way of thinking.

It is reasonable to infer that such an A.I. will eventually be able to prompt you to remember anything you might have forgotten. We’re talking birthdays, business plans, bank passcodes, quotes from books and songs, street addresses, favorite movies, foods and drinks of family and friends — in short, anything.

Eventually the interface to access this info will become so seamless that it will be essentially instantaneous. The moment you begin to ponder that particular memory item, the answer will appear to you. The entire process of remembering, from start to finish, will be visible only to you.

I wonder whether this will be a good thing.

Every once in a while, in spite of myself, I really notice reality, in all of its strangeness and beauty.

In those moments I am filled with awe, and I wonder why it is that I spend so much of my life not noticing reality.

In the last year we have seen an enormous leap in consumer-facing A.I. For example, products such as Dall-E2 and MidJourney are able to create realistic images and art from natural language descriptions.

Soon these techniques will allow each person on the planet to have a personal custom tutor. Any new knowledge or skills that you wish to gain will be presented to you in a manner that is optimized for your own individual knowledge base and learning style.

When such technologies become mature, people will be able to acquire new skills with an ease and facility that will be remarkable by today’s standards. It will not yet be Trinity learning how to fly a helicopter, but it will be a lot closer than anything we have seen until now.