Technology aside, OpenAI remains so good at productizing this all in a way that gets people excited and wanting to use it. They knew the assignment. The assignment was to create a real-life version of Samantha from 'Her'. And they did it.
Throwflame unveils robot dog Thermonator — with flamethrower attached — The Ohio-based firm have announced the $9,420 bot is available for purchase by the general public and government agencies for the first time.
It's like the This Is Fine dog, just snapped and decided to don a flame thrower to burn it all down faster.
This is the kind of shit evil empires do in dystopian science fiction. Like stuff The Capital would do in Hunger Games.
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On Sunday and Monday night, residents of the northern parts of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp woke up to the sounds of babies crying and women calling out for help.
"Hi. I'm Charlie Stross, and I tell lies for money. That is, I'm a #sciencefiction writer. (...) I—and other SF authors—are terrible guides to the future. Which wouldn't matter, except a whole bunch of #billionaires are in the headlines right now because they pay too much attention to people like me. Because we invented the #TormentNexus as a cautionary tale and they took it at face value and decided to implement it for real."
There’s an LLM called Grok? What the fuck. Seriously. Tech bros understand the absolute most obvious thing from your favorite piece of science fiction, please.
The meaning of grok is in the plain text! We’re not even talking about obvious metaphor, it’s just a made-up word for truly deep understanding and you’re going to name your idiot, fabulist, word generator after it?! #grok#LLMs#TormentNexus#StochasticParrot#Tech
"Did you ever wonder why the 21st century feels like we're living in a bad cyberpunk novel from the 1980s?
"It's because these guys read those cyberpunk novels and mistook a dystopia for a road map. They're rich enough to bend reality to reflect their desires."
Inspired by recent posts by @cstross I'm sure someone has made a corporate looking logo for the Torment Nexus before me but I couldn't find it, so here's my take.
Obviously there's inspiration from Weyland-Yutani with some tech company blue and friendly rounded corners.
The motto is widely attributed to Nicola Tesla. It's probably apocryphal but I think that's even more appropriate.
New York City is using drones to monitor outdoor backyard parties this holiday weekend.
Have we learned nothing from SciFi? These stories are not meant solely to entertain. They hold up a mirror, so we might see our possible future. A black mirror, when necessary.
it’s cool how google saw that episode of black mirror where you get fined for not watching ads and immediately put it on the product roadmap #TormentNexus
Robert Rankin also wrote prophetically about a future where your media devices could detect and reward the attention of your eyeballs BUT HE REALLY WASN’T IMPLYING IT WOULD BE A NET POSITIVE THING #TormentNexus
if you haven’t already, it’s time to start training yourself to sleep with your eyes open… that skill is going to be money soon
I’ve noticed a strong alignment between those who think that the computer metaphor for the brain makes little sense and those who’ve thought about how the brain might give rise to emotion.
As much as I love all the progress happening in NeuroAI to push our understanding of perception, memory & intelligence forward, I very much think they are right - there’s a crucial swath that doesn’t seem to fit with that agenda.
Unlike #ChatGPT, Google’s #Bard has heard of the #TormentNexus. It was definitely from a science fiction novel, but at different times it says the author was Alex Blechman, Neal Stephenson, or Niven and Pournelle. I especially like that last one. 1/