No, there’s an actual paper where that term originated that goes into great deal explaining what it means and what it applies to. It answers those questions and addresses potential objections people might respond with.

There’s no need for–and, frankly, nothing interesting about–“but, what is truth, really?” vibes-based takes on the term.

Of course, in this case, the older folks are talking with AI characters who are not real.

Pitching talking to nonexistent people as a fix for dementia, as opposed to the problem you’re trying to solve, is, uh, innovative. Among other things.

As a complimentary service, it is accessible to anyone with a landline or mobile phone and bridges the technological divide by not requiring an internet connection or even a computer. Critically, this promotes equitable access to cutting-edge technology that can benefit older Americans.

Kind of seems like actually providing the things people can’t readily access would be more valuable than lotus-eating-as-a-service, but I guess that’s why I’m not pulling down big VC bucks.

For concerned family members and friends, the service can call individuals on certain days and times to check in on them and provide telephone-based companionship.

“concerned”

The company has 60 people.

Who could actually talk to the older Americans in question, but are instead tasked with simulating conversations for them instead.

Look, I’m not going to pretend I call my relatives as often as I ought to. But I truly cannot imagine being one of those 60 people. I can’t put myself in the mindset of someone who would want this job, who would want this effort to have been a part of their life and career.

I laughed at first, but then I realized I’d have found Starfield vastly more interesting if weird stuff like this happened all the time on purpose and they leaned into it with small quests. This one bug delighted me more than any of the actual quests I can remember at this point.

It almost feels like Starfield was ambitious in the wrong ways. Bethesda trying to aim for Disco Elysium-ish oddness might not have turned out great, but I think it would have made more of a lasting impression.

Some ships do have emergency antimatter generators per the TNG Technical Manual, but they’re hideously energy-intensive to run–something like a 10:1 ratio of deuterium used for each unit of antimatter. They only make sense to run in the rare situation you absolutely need to warp to safety when you somehow have deuterium and a warp core but no antimatter.

But holodecks apparently have their own infinite power supply incompatible with any other Starfleet technology, so perhaps Voyager used the holodeck replicators to generate deuterium to run their antimatter generator whenever the Doctor isn’t practicing his sermons.

Efficiency would be abysmal even by the normal standards of this process, but it beats walking back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Environmentalists are fond of saying that “There is no second Earth“. They are wrong! Here’s why:

There is an entire second Earth right here on Earth.

Second Earth is a waterworld. It’s the vast Pacific Ocean that covers half the planet.

Well, he’s a little fuzzy on the concepts of halves and wholes, but let’s hear him out on colossal geoengineering projects.

[The AI]’s going to fall in love with you

Fortunately for everyone, they went out of business before a mandatory reporter had to make the weirdest call ever to CPS.

Ah, right, I guess that’s why other vending machines never caught on. Why spend $2 on a Snickers at work when a quick trip to the grocery store can get you candy for way less?

What you’re overlooking this time is vending machines sell convenience, not just single-serving portions. The fact that very few customers really need ammo without leaving the store/mall is indeed why this is a questionable business model and not just a sketchy one.

I’m puzzled, though, by the belief that hunters are more likely to make overpriced, impulse purchases of ammo than mass shooters. I’m even less inclined to buy that than ammo from a vending machine.

You’re forgetting mass shooters, i.e., the people who don’t care if they’re identified or if they’re getting a good price. Safe to say they’re not worried about their credit rating if the plan is to take on a SWAT team in 20 minutes.

American Rounds

What, was the Circus of Values brand too expensive to license?

Oh, hey, I’ve run into this in the wild–the Kalendar AI people keep ineptly trying to start a conversation to sell some kind of kiosk software by referencing factoids they scraped from our latest press release. They’ve clearly spent more effort on evading spam filters and rotating domains than they have on anything else, but they helpfully use “human” names ending in “Kai,” so creating a wildcard filter wasn’t too hard.

Credit where it’s due: I’d never heard of Kalendar or the software company who hired them, but this experience has told me everything I need to know about both of them. If you don’t sweat the details and rate sentiment change using absolute value, that’s kind of impressive.

Addressing the “in hell” response that made headlines at Sundance, Rohrer said the statement came after 85 back-and-forth exchanges in which Angel and the AI discussed long hours working in the “treatment center,” working with “mostly addicts.”

We know 85 is the upper bound, but I wonder what Rohrer would consider the minimum number of “exchanges” acceptable for telling someone their loved one is in hell? Like, is 20 in “Hey, not cool” territory, but it’s all good once you get to 50? 40?

Rohrer says that when Angel asked if Cameroun was working or haunting the treatment center in heaven, the AI responded, “Nope, in hell.”

“They had already fully established that he wasn’t in heaven,” Rohrer said.

Always a good sign when your best defense of the horrible thing your chatbot says is that it’s in context.

I’m just going to pretend that’s one of the researchers from Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather.

I conclude that scheming is a disturbingly plausible outcome of using baseline machine learning methods to train goal-directed AIs sophisticated enough to scheme (my subjective probability on such an outcome, given these conditions, is ~25%).

Out: vibes and guesswork

In: “subjective probability”

I felt the exact same way about the conversation you mentioned. I really liked the idea of the quest, but way they handled it just utterly drained all the stakes. And as you noted, it’s weird to see a misstep like this after they nailed it once in Sumeru.

“We’re all in grave danger! What? Well no, we can’t give specifics unless we risk not getting paid. Signed, Anonymous”

I mean, I wasn’t exactly expecting the Einstein-Szilard letter 2.0 when I clicked that link, but this is pathetic.

lmao, Zoom is cooked. Their CEO has no idea how LLMs work or why they aren’t fit for purpose, but he’s 100% certain someone else will somehow solve this problem:

So is the AI model hallucination problem down there in the stack, or are you investing in making sure that the rate of hallucinations goes down?

I think solving the AI hallucination problem — I think that’ll be fixed.

But I guess my question is by who? Is it by you, or is it somewhere down the stack?

It’s someone down the stack.

Okay.

I think either from the chip level or from the LLM itself.

Oof, I definitely did that once or twice.

It really does seem like they decided to bring this sequence up to introduce settlement building and power armor early. I get why they did it, but man, I do not think it ultimately has the effect they wanted.

Maybe a controversial suggestion, but my advice is to ignore the Minutemen stuff until late in the game. Just don’t even go to the museum until you’ve followed some leads and want something else to do for a bit.

This is definitely not the intended way to play, but I promise the story flows so much better without it. Setting out to find your kidnapped son just to immediately get sidetracked helping some uncharismatic misfits set up mattresses is just an underwhelming start to an otherwise decent game.

Doing all this stuff later on, when you’ve actually demonstrated you’re a badass survivor and the OP gear you get free from the Minutemen quest actually feels earned, just feels much smoother. It’s a great coda that they unf put two minutes into the game for some reason.

B.S., a former partner at Andreesen-Horowitz

Lmao, of course.

and former chief technology officer of Coinbase

I.e., the company that survived by shedding a ton of employees, like 40% of headcount or something. I do not see this tactic working well when they’re trying to win friends and influence cops by hiring their failsons into sinecure positions.

What makes all this funnier is that it’s trying to thread the needle of embracing fascism while simultaneously seething with contempt for 99.999% of the people in the movement.

“If you think about the major journeys within a restaurant that can be AI-powered, we believe it’s endless.”

My dude, you work for Yum Brands, not Starfleet Command. Nobody taking a “major journey” inside a Pizza Hut needed AI help to get there. (Though they could probably use a cup of water, and maybe an Uber home.)