Artificial intelligence still has some way to go

lukas mentioned it above, but that medium article makes an incredibly disingenuous, apples-to-abstract-photography argument.

Between human performance (10⁸ miles per fatality) and the best-reported self-driving car performance (10⁴ miles per disengagement) is a gap of 10,000x. Put another way, self-driving cars are 0.01% as good as humans.

this is the graph that accompanies to quote:

https://i.imgur.com/POKRZWK.png

if we're asking self-driving cars to encounter a "disengagement" ("when the technology fails and a safety driver must take over") as often as a human being in a car has a fatality, then yes, it's going to be a while. but i'd argue that a better comparison would be human accidents to self-driving accidents. in the U.S., drivers have accidents roughly every 165,000 (a little over 10 to the 5th power). it's still an unfair comparison to compare human accidents to self-driving "disengagements", but even doing that makes things look quite a bit different:

https://imgur.com/IJ5wuxA

and just for fun, maybe it would be useful to compare self-driving "disengagements" to "human fuck ups". how often have you been in a car when the driver, perhaps yourself, did something catastrophically dumb but you escaped physical harm? personally, i have done so hundreds of times. i have had 1 accident in my life, and it was a low speed one and it was 99% the fault of a very confused elderly woman in a parking lot. anyway, i think i can conservatively estimate that at minimum, human drivers "fuck up" but escape physical harm 10 times more often than they have accidents. so that's at least an order of magnitude less frequent than accidents, or 10 to the 4th:

https://i.imgur.com/07LZsJo.jpg

so if the premise of the medium author's argument is right, self-driving cars should start having "disengagements" less frequently than human fuck-ups sometime a few years ago. i have no idea if that's true, but i think more than anything it suggests the whole argument is off

Another point to consider is that if a significant fraction of cars were driving autonomously, the driving AIs might well communicate to each other, or with Google maps or w/e, so that driving speeds and routes might be chosen so as to avoid risky situations altogether.

I hate AI. Kill it.

the driving AIs might well communicate to each other, or with Google maps or w/e, so that driving speeds and routes might be chosen so as to avoid risky situations altogether

Can you imagine how much chaos could be created by hacking into that network?

Doesn’t mean they won’t make it

Or fail to protect it adequately.

I don’t know what to tell you if you think self driving cars coordinating is a good idea in the present security environment.

Indeed, but done right it could seed traffic with a kind of "swarm intelligence" so that autonomous vehicles were acting in ways which improved overall flow. It sounds a little creepy, but I have no problems with traffic lights being managed to do the same thing, or routers managing the network traffic I use.
The collabortion (decided to let the typo stand) between Boeing and the FAA doesn't fill me with confidence though.

remember the robot bees yall

remember _KILLER_ bees yall, like when they were gonna be something that killed everyone

not everyone. only the poor sods who lived far enough south to allow Africanized bees to survive the winter.

so are they still a problem? i dont recall hearing a word about killer bees for at least a decade.

If the NY Post no longer pays attention to them, then I guess they've proved to be a manageable problem.

the killer bees murdered all the other bees and then went into hiding

Background: Last night, Google Maps' pricy contract with Zenrin, the high resolution map service in Japan, ended.

Google's cost savings solution was to implement their AI based on user behavior to build their new maps (what could possibly go wrong?):

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/b44wwt/so_many_people_were_cutting_across_the_konbini/

mountain shadows become lakes:

Googleマップが劣化したらしいと聞いて、近所の地図見たら、山影が湖になってたw pic.twitter.com/B237RUOpPA

— りん (@rin_kawakoubou) March 22, 2019

roads travel through/into buildings:

線路上や路上に建物あったり… pic.twitter.com/c2dqP1065D

— りん (@rin_kawakoubou) March 22, 2019

somewhat tangentially related: https://onezero.medium.com/how-googles-bad-data-wiped-a-neighborhood-off-the-map-80c4c13f1c2b

Apple maps and NAVITIME have have been better in japan for some time now, this definitely explains a few things.

NLP's moving so fast that benchmarking tasks introduced only a year ago are having to be replaced because they're running out of headroom: https://med✧✧✧.c✧✧✧@w✧✧✧.a✧✧✧.✧/introducing-superglue-a-new-hope-against-muppetkind-2779fd9dcdd5

uhhh maybe https://med✧✧✧.c✧✧✧@w✧✧✧.a✧✧✧.✧/introducing-superglue-a-new-hope-against-muppetkind-2779fd9dcdd5

well, I've run out of shits to give about getting this link to post correctly

looks like we won't be running out of headroom here anytime soon

Oh, I've got tons of empty space up there

https://medium.com/wang.alex.c/introducing-superglue-a-new-hope-against-muppetkind-2779fd9dcdd5

thanks

eh if NLP was solved then you'd notice in real life

good article
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/15/the-age-of-robot-farmers

auto-google-translating japanese post-article clickbait

500,000 yen-36 million yen! Benefits that may be obtained from the country!
Bad breath can be taken away! ? The bad breath care for seeing the cause stain was great
"Toughness ..." a husband who won't break his wife too? 980 yen is great now!
"It's a lie ..." Blood neutral fat, about 20% lower? What is the strength of Tokuho

missed this, from march:

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/03/endel-alogrithm-major-label-deal

Over the last few years, the rise of AI in music technology has been heralded as a portent of the crack of doom. With Spotify determining what we listen to based on algorithms and playlist placement guiding the creative process for artists, the concern is tech will render true musicianship obsolete. Well, if that’s the case, then welcome to the end times, because an algorithm just signed a major label distribution contract.

Berlin-based Endel today announced that it had become the first algorithm to strike a deal with a major label, in this case Warner Music Group. The product uses various inputs — weather, heart rate, time of day, and your body’s circadian rhythms — to craft soundscapes out of stems with the intention of boosting your mood, enhance focus, and encourage relaxation or sleep. While the Endel app is currently available for iOS and Android, as well as an Alexa skill, the AI is expected to release 20 albums before the end of the year, with five already available on streaming services.

for your convenience, here are two optimistic and pessimistic takes that you can feed into your personality algorithm

if your moods are so basic that a playlist of stock ambient synths can quantify and appease them, then I guess go to town

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) March 22, 2019

this is a warning shot though, that we are about to be inundated with automated and procedurally generated music systems, producing good enough music to appease most people for most situations

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) March 22, 2019

meanwhile, Endel has a touch over 1000 monthly listeners on spotify

but every one of those listeners went out and wrote their own algorithm

this seems like the optimistic take to me

automated systems are ultimately only threatening to musicians who have the emotional range of a bot tho

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) March 22, 2019

(I'm not saying it's wrong)

but shouldn't their optimism, or lack thereof, be founded on the emotional range of their listeners, not just on their ability to speak to that?

She seems to assume that if there are humans capable of exceeding machines in emotional expression, there will be listeners capable of discerning that. Seems fair.

Ok I'm getting a bit obsessed with https://talktotransformer.com/, where you type/paste a piece of text and a huge NN continues the text for a bit, using random draws from its internal learned language model. The results range from nonsensical to dreamlike to funny to downright spooky. I think I've got the best results when seeding it with a shortish incomplete sentence with some (not necessarily sensible) specificity (the boldface parts below are the parts I've entered, the rest is the AI completion):

The plot of the film "There Will Be Blood" involves a man who wants to die but will never die. He is a "troll." He watches "Fright Night" and ends up in New Zealand's Taranaki Forest. He sees a deer, sees it again and sees it again. Finally, he can see the deer's head, and, after it shoots it's shot out of a tree, his hand is shot off, and he gets up with a rope around his neck. The film ends with the hero, having been shot by himself, walking off into the world and thinking: "There are days I really wish that I could leave this place and go wherever I please. I would go home and watch some of 'The Simpsons,' and maybe eat some cookies. I'd go for a beer and read some books. But I'm afraid I can't. If I went away, I could always come back."

It is interesting to compare to a "real" scenario such as this one where a person who did not "act out" would actually die of "fear."

A popular pastime in most Portuguese cities is ibrícao. A small wooden square with a wooden pole is attached to both sides by wooden posts. By placing the posts over the poles and setting them in place the horse will gallop around for hours, sometimes for weeks."
A "solar corvete", (turtle wheel), is not as common as it used to be. In rural areas, this is usually a small box with a corvette attached to the end where the person sits. It has a rope attached to the center to turn a wheel on a rope. It's a way of keeping the corvette from sliding down into a lake or pool while running.

A similar method is seen in the town of Avelário, near Lisbon (which, in Portugal, has a lake). As the sun rises, a young person, wearing only boxer shorts, goes swimming (or swimming-shopping), with a friend. At night he runs around to the town with the person sitting beside him. He would place a wooden cross on the ground for the person to reach on their next swimming session.

On their next practice session the person might sit under the cross while the coach runs along the front

The most legendary meme of 1538 was the following poem, which is from the poem collection of the medieval German scholar Johannes Gärtner:

Eintrag au und sein dessen Hoebe, sich auch häufig, das es kurzelzährig und das mit dem Erwachsen beim eining ötzere. Die Hoebe ist die Einzelungen gab einen den Hoeb, daß in dass diesis beim Hoebe.

It is often translated as "Hoebe is a ghost," but the phrase in English is sometimes translated more literally: It is a beautiful ghost, you see.

The poem is a commentary on a verse in the Gospel of Matthew. According to the translator, Matthew refers to the Hoebe as a ghost and how beautiful, intelligent, and beautiful she is. We now know that the text in a German translation did in fact refer to the human Hoebe as a ghost. In 1538, English language sources often use the English term by substituting in modern English for one of the "old" German words.

in tears here

The most beautiful word in the French language is not only the word for flowers, but also the word for a human hand to wipe the perspiration off the lips and hands of those who come near them. That word is boulevards.

The most misunderstood rule of baseball involves the "two-run" rule. The rule states that if two runners get two outs and the score is tied, both teams should settle for the inning's first hit if they can take two outs at the same time and then a double to score. While there seems to be less play in baseball these days, teams still usually have to settle for two outs if there's even a single hit. Here are some other baseball rules you need to know:

–

1. There is an exception to the two-run rule in cases of double plays. For example, if a single hits a double (or is hit by one of the runners), the runner with the base on foul is declared out. This allows a team to come back to within striking distance or to advance to the sixth inning and the extra inning for extra relief, which can cost a team another chance to win. In that case, a team is still allowed a double play, meaning both runs would carry only two hits.

Source: MLB

ok I'll stop now, as there is literally an infinite supply of these.

i do like this new baseball rule idea

The best way to trick the President is by playing politics on what you know, and what your opponents know, you can't possibly know. You've got to play right into their hands. That's what's happened, I think, in this case, by making sure that nobody would know you have done the things that you've accused him of doing."

The former president's aides also said they are preparing a book — "Sons of Bush" — which could prove useful in their investigation.

The Senate is likely to continue its investigation next week, but the White House has promised to keep the Senate at least fully open.

"I think that will give us all time to put out a statement that says we have full confidence in the people on the committee," a furious Obama told reporters on Air Force One. "I think that could be taken advantage of in our book so that we could use the entire committee.

"The book I believe we're going to put out next quarter. I believe there are a few other books that could be done. I know I know a lot of members, because I'm here, for the record, and you know in their districts — the town halls, town hall meetings — they want

Jesus' mother was actually a prostitute."

"And what you get from all this is that you're getting a glimpse of the inner life of Satan, of Jesus' mother, the woman with the white hair and her son—Jesus the son."

The audience booed. They yelled at him.

"That was a really good question," he said, "and I didn't even have the chance to try to answer it."

When he was finished, he turned off the podium and ran straight into the lobby for a hug. He returned and waved at more people, saying they didn't need to say thank you.

The meeting ended with applause, and the attendees smiled.

But it was all a setup to make the man seem like a prophet.

lol sorry the bolding should have stopped after "actually" - the AI added the end!

That’s epic

I'd chew up a couple of oreos and use the resulting paste for my pizza crust.

Serve your homemade vegan pizza and let us know how it goes! And remember… I always make my own dough.

that's awesome

The recipe for a Tom Collins is simple—you don't need to add anything else. All you need is Tom Collins and water. (And of course your favorite ingredients—tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes!)

i am dying doing this, it's amazing

The one thing I could never admit to anyone is that I have never had an orgasm at 3 PM. It was like my body did nothing. I did, however, have a very good evening's sleep because I slept in the car. I'm in my 50's now and have an amazing job, so I didn't need to rush past 4 PM. It actually went well with the other weekend I worked a 10 hour night shift doing laundry, laundry, laundry. It felt like just yesterday I came.

When I went to college, I got a degree in anthropology. And my classes were boring too. I wanted it to be about animals and plants, but I didn't have any interest in animals. I also didn't like my class because I had to listen to the lectures that were only in English, not Japanese (I had to study the Japanese version of the lectures for a semester). Also most of my lectures were in Japanese and my English was horrible. When I got the chance to apply to Harvard Business School, I went for it, and went over and spent many days on campus studying for those tests. The job I want to get out of education is an associate professor!

The first time I went swimming was in August of last year, and the next time I went there, I had to fight off a swarm of ants. It didn't make me feel better about my swim.

"The next time I went was in October, and I feel bad. I feel bad because the ants ate part of my swimsuit.

"The last time I went was at a swimming event, and there were ants in the pool."

She said she had no experience swimming with ants when they come up to see it, nor with them around the pool.

Ms Coughlin also said she has noticed changes in the behaviour of the ants as the ants are less likely to stay in their usual haunts.

She said: "The ants seem to know where it is they are, they do not hang around in the same place all the time, and then when you're away for so long and things of that nature, it will get into the pool and it will eat what is there."

The issue at the start of August also led to Miss Coughlin becoming involved in street battles between residents and visitors on the streets.