technology

Chris Knight's avatar

For some time now there has been one ultimate benchmark for whether or not something has a truly computerized central component: Does it play Doom?  More than thirty years after iD Software released their 3D first-person shooter, it has been ported to seemingly everything from refrigerators to tractors to home pregnancy tests.  And more often than not, they do indeed run Doom.

A few years ago an outfit in Australia called Cortical Labs, working with lab-grown human neural cells, coaxed a Petri dish of neurons into playing Pong.  Which is about as rudimentary a video game as there can get.  Almost immediately the company started getting asked the same question: Could their “brains on a chip” play Doom?  Something that would require substantially more sensory input and calculation than simply moving a virtual paddle up and down.  The real matter was, people didn’t want to know if the neurons
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Chris Knight's avatar

Lately there’s been a little bit of a fad on Facebook: where people are asking ChatGPT to make a caricature of them based on what the AI knows of them.  ChatGPT asks for a photo and some information and it chucks out a pretty neat likeness.

I joined in on the fun.  This is a rather accurate facsimile of my life right now (note the Vault Boy poster from the Fallout games behind me):

Of COURSE I had to include Tammy!  She is certainly a major component of the operations here at Knight Shift Headquarters.  Of my life in general actually, more than I’ve let on.

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Yesterday I came upon a story that has wound up sticking in my gray matter, because what it foreshadows is going to be world-changing in a whole heap o’ ways.  It’s an article on the wargaming website Spikey Bits, of all places.  It has to do with this guy: one Huron Blackheart, of the Chaos Space Marines from the very popular Warhammer 40,000 miniatures game produced by Games Workshop.

A few weeks ago the company announced that Huron is getting a new mini.  A glorious new sculpt that better reflects his malevolence and power.  Here is the preview that Games Workshop published:

Looks pretty gnarly.  I wouldn’t knock on this guy’s front door without my hat in my hands, my hands in plain sight, and a totally cheerful disposition.  And he’d probably still kill ya anyway on general principles.

Anyhoo, that’s the picture of the Huron model that ...

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This is something I wish Dad were still here to tell about it too.  As much as he disdained computers, he would no doubt find this to be very cool…

Two days ago a Beechcraft King Air became the very first aircraft to deploy an “autoland” system after the pilot became incapacitated.  It happened in Colorado.  The Garmin Autoland that had been installed on the plane kicked in and proceeded to automatically guide the aircraft down to a safe touchdown at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport.  After it came to a halt, emergency crew arrived and took care of the pilot, who is reportedly doing fine.
We have entered a new age of air flight, folks.  When this kind of thing gets to be more widely installed, a lot of people are going to be having second thoughts about going up in an aircraft.  Especially in smaller planes that may
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Chris Knight's avatar

Well, it turns out that there was one tiny little thing that I’ve forgotten to do with my book’s manuscript.  I totally overlooked the page numbers.  To be perfectly honest I haven’t needed them all this time.  I’m so intimately familiar with my book, I can zero in on any part of the 140,000-some work.  Page numbers seemed like an afterthought, at best.

Those are what I’m trying to implement.  But I’m having a surprising amount of difficulty.  What I need to happen is for the numbering to begin several pages in, after the dedication, at the start of part one.

But I can’t do that straightforward.  I doubt anyone can.  Doing so requires some splitting the manuscript into sections and that is a task all its own.  And then giving each section its own numbering.

I’m sure this lends itself toward boasting about Microsoft Word’s prowess.  Buuuuut…

There ...

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I regularly work with artificial intelligence as an AI trainer.  I also have a lot of experience in the mental health field, as both a professional helping others and also as a manic depressive who has been a “consumer” of services at various times.  So this article both fascinates me and also greatly disturbs me.

The website Futurism has published a VERY disturbing article about “ChatGPT Psychosis”.  Ever since the rise of that and other popular artificial intelligence “chatbots”, there has been an ever-increasing number of people who have become consumed by the technology.  Maggie Harrison Dupré has turned in a remarkable report illuminating the issue.

From the article:

And that’s not all. As we’ve continued reporting, we’ve heard numerous troubling stories about people’s loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending up in jail — after becoming fixated on the bot.

“I

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Chris Knight's avatar

I love this story!!

I’m impressed by ChatGPT.  But I’ve also got a healthy respect for Atari Chess, a cartridge for the classic Atari 2600 Video Computer System from 1977.  I got Atari Chess when I was nine years old in third grade.  I’d just learned how to play chess and already wanted to get better by having a computer opponent to practice with.  Atari Chess beat me EVERY time.  Then again I’ve only won a single time at chess but that’s beside the point…

Anyhoo, a Citrix engineer set ChatGPT against the Atari 2600 in a game of chess.  And the Atari from almost fifty years ago clobbered the modern AI.

Here’s the full story courtesy of Futurism....

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The past three weeks in American life have been extraordinary, to put it mildly.  There hasn’t been this much history made in my lifetime since the collapse of communism.  In some ways there are parallels between the two.  The Soviet Union fell because of Gorbachev’s reforms in the face of that country’s unsustainable bureaucracy.  And what some are calling American Revolution 2.0 is now transpiring as a consequence of even worse bureaucracy in the United States at last being made accountable to its people.

What President Donald Trump and his administration, and especially Elon Musk and his crack team of boffins at DOGE, are accomplishing just might be the second most dramatic “kicking over the tables at the temple” ever recorded.  There will be volumes written in years and decades to come about the winter of 2025 and the shaking up of the American government that has transpired in less
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Regarding Murthy v. Missouri: the Supreme Court decision yesterday about government coercing social media companies to censor users’ activity based on political content.  SCOTUS decided that the plaintiffs had no standing and dismissed the lawsuit.

This seems like a colossal victory for the government and social media companies.  HOWEVER…

The case was *not* dismissed.  Today’s ruling dealt with the temporary injunction in the case, not the case itself.  The case was REMANDED, back down the legal chain.  It could still come before the high court where the plaintiffs can better frame their arguments with solid evidence of coercion and censorship.

I believe that such a thing is not only possible, it is almost guaranteed to happen.

Twitter, or X as it’s called now, is going to be VERY interesting to watch as it pertains to the case.  When Murthy v. Missouri was first filed it was confronting ...

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No, I am still not going to “write” a blog post using artificial intelligence.  I’m sitting in front of a keyboard composing these words.  If you ever do see a product of AI being displayed, it’s going to state as much.  Which is what I’m doing now.  What you are about to read is definitely the product of artificial intelligence.  It also represents the first time that I’ve used a “chatbot” to generate text.  Up until now I’ve avoided such things.  But as I’m currently involved in a project necessitating some familiarity with AI, there was little choice but to see what it is that I’m getting into.

A friend encouraged me to try ChatGPT.  I’ve been playing around with it since last night, firing hard at its walls.  And I have to say, I am intrigued.  One of the things I asked it to do was to describe the ...

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