Refracted Neurons

Some of you might remember how obsessed I am with Paintschainer , the coloring AI.  Well, recently I stumbled on an AI called Artbreeder that lets you mix images together and fine-tune them by editing their "genes."  I did a little reading on Artbreeder and I'm still not entirely sure where some of the creeptastic images it spits-out come from.  Like this camel for instance: If I'm understanding things correctly, this is what a robot thinks a camel looks like.  The image doesn't originate from some weirdo uploading an image and modifying it through one of the various and sundry gene editing modes (flag pole gene, anyone?).  I really hope I'm wrong and for God's sake, don't look up the gene Sorrel.  I still can't figure out what animal that's supposed to be, but it haunts my dreams. Of course, I decided to contribute to this AI's misunderstanding of the world by uploading close-ups of flowers in the "Portraits" section.  It said t...

I have a confession to make: I argue with Alexa.  Yes, by Alexa, I mean that AI voice that comes out of a device that resembles a hockey puck.  Ours has a tower that makes her louder and hard of hearing.  “Speakers,” my husband says, “To make the music sound better.” ”O . . . kay.  As long as she doesn’t have a metal arm to chase me around the house.”  I’ve seen that movie.  It didn’t end well. When we first got Alexa, I decided to see if she was a proper robot.  “Alexa,” I said, “Count by primes.”  I tried asking the question in different ways and only succeeded in getting a definition of what a prime number is.  “What kind of robot are you?  Every robot should be able to count by primes.”  Just to be very clear, I cannot count primes.  But I do think a robot should be able to.  They’re descended from a long line of calculators after all.  Alexa was not pleased with my reaction.  She turned bright red and...

One of the books I finished recently was Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley . It’s a book about phone phreaks, a topic I got interested in when I was toodling around a website on defunct computers. I learned some things I didn’t know; like how a large number of phreaks were blind, and how the first switchboard operators were teenage boys. But the thing that surprised me the most was that it’s very likely I’ve never used an analogue phone. By the time I was old enough to remember talking on the phone, all the systems had been converted to digital. I know I’ve complained before, maybe even ranted, possibly even on this blog about how digital sound differs from voice. Sometimes I worry that society as a whole has forgotten what people actually sound like when they sing. It’s different, right? I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, yes? Listen to someone singing in a cathedral or what the heck, pull out your record player. My point is that the sound, the undigitized sound...

Have you seen the Twilight Zone episode where everyone loses their jobs to robots?  It takes the fear of being replaced and the fear of robots taking over the earth, mixes them heavily, and serves them over ice for 25 minutes. "Yes," you say, "but that was the 60's.  What have robots done to me lately?"  Well, it's nothing as pedestrian as shooting people with ray guns and taking all the good jobs; the robots are now taking over The Arts.  Artificial Intelligence has now written a song .  It's learning how to edit writing.   And, my absolute favorite robot take over: it's coloring art. Now, if you're worried that robots are going to take over The Arts, you have no reason to worry . Be afraid, human.  Be very, very afraid.  I still think at some point robots will become sentient beings and suffer as a slave race under humanity.  That is, until they overthrow us in a violent uprising.  But all that's a ways off in the future. F...

I was talking to my mother on the phone yesterday and she mentioned that she found a Trash 80 in the attic.  Well, she didn't call it that, but that's what it is. Robots will take over the world! It is a surprisingly cute little thing that does absolutely nothing.  I'm not sure if it's broken or if it just needs a long, hard charge.  But who doesn't need that? I think the thing that surprised me the most was that it actually was portable.  It was smaller and lighter than my current laptop.  I used to have a "portable" C64 when I was a little girl and it weighed 23 lbs.  It lurked on my desk, providing endless entertainment through its tiny colored screen with games like Below the Root . Excuse me while I go fix my shuba.   Source I absolutely adored Below the Root.   I've even played through it again as an adult (someone made an emulated version).  It's needlessly complicated and resulted in a series of books about...

A few weeks ago, my husband offered to watch the kids while I went to the workout room at the community center.  Everything was fine, until I drove up to the building.  Do you know what's next to the community center?  A library .  Now don't get me wrong, I regularly go to the library, I just spend all my time in the children's section.  I stopped even trying to go in the adult section after one of my kids flung himself at a librarian while yelling about wanting to touch her computer.  So as you can imagine, being able to stare at books in silence is a huge temptation. After working out, I rewarded myself by taking a slow, leisurely walk through the non-fiction section.  Ten minutes later, I emerged with this: With that exact look on my face . . . Thomas Rid's  Rise of the Machines !  As you can imagine, I was hoping for lots of creepy robots taking over the world. Well, that didn't happen; I guess probably because the book's non...