WSJ TEC Review and other thoughts
Essay
Prior to my TEC review, I launch other thoughts first.
It does not have to be a choice between a or b as if the definitive binary of the absolute imperative. However, I asked to myself and wonder at the same time what other people would choose if asked. At this point, my strong preference is undeniably the I, Robot type than the biometric robots reminding me figuratively of …. well, let me say tentatively …. figuratively of those embodied in solid 3D directly from images of Japanese animé.
My reference is fresh new. I’ve just encountered, in this morning online, a video clip of a developing bio-robotics in Chinese technology. Different videos must be widely available. So I will insert no link in this space.
I have a wide and accurate range of Japanese modern culture in my knowledge. Some extensions can go onto the regions in East Asia. Can I broadly say that Asian men, regardless of their age, may have certain attractions to girl figures often represented in Japanese animé? Big eyes, or truly big eyes, with a small nose, or a truly small nose, constitute altogether a girl's face, rather than that of a woman or even rather than that of a young woman, accompanied with or accomplished by an upper body for which D or E or even bigger cup bras only can accommodate, if the figures wear bras.
Nerdish dreams come true, otherwise. Chinese entities have money, powers while Christian empathies would be often absent in them. So, I will not say any more about their biorobots. In addition, Japanese animé is a hugely successful industry, worldwide. Smart business people and entrepreneurs must foresee that should be a robot figure to sell for now and in the near future. Cleverly, the market research may be indicating the animé robots of that type can appeal to kids and teenaged girls as well, by drawing exclamations like so lovely and cute! Never mind E+ cup bras.
I live in the US long enough to tell what is okay and what is not in this country. The identity politics attached to the celebration of culture diversity, however, became a cache for pedophile images in the market. Why people do not point out more honestly that a girl’s face with that kind of figurative body in Japanese animé or illustrations, barely covered in a provocative costume combined with cute and lovely decorative elements, is unquestionably pedophile? It is very different from adult pornographies. Because such is a culture as untouchable to criticize according to Progressives whose supporters are, by chance or not, largely consisting of animé fans in that genre? LGBQ as fully distorted. I am one of people who would say: ‘ I can’t get it’.
My Sci-Fi sense and sensitivity were fostered by reading classic Sci-Fi stories such as Isaac Asimov’s. That’s okay if I am called retro-old. I love antiques. Anyway, most of Dems and Progressives have been saying anything about me, literally anything with no moral restriction of any kind, because the endorsement is a culture of those ethnics in a modernity, according to them.
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“Apple Headset Stalls, Struggles to Attract Killer Apps in First Year” by Aaron Tilley (The Wall Street Journal: Technology; 10/13) first attracted my attention by its very beginning.
New apps released on the Vision Pro every month have slowed since its launch in January. Some of the most successful virtual-reality software developers have so far opted not to build apps for the headset.
Without enough killer apps, certain users have found the device less useful and are opting to sell it.
My reactionarily mental agitation was Oh, wow! what’re killer apps? The name must have an accountability in the technology.
Whenever a new term hits me, I go to Google search for an initial grasp. I was overly reacted by the name. Killer apps turn to be just new softwares able to co-operate with devices for users’ excitements to enhance. Such is my rudimentary take of it. That may lack accuracy, but the ‘killer’ part may seem to be not so much as the word which would have possibly implied.
The pivotal understanding I got was the issue is maneuvers of virtual video game. Gamers wear those ultra bulky googles. They can absorb themselves into a chosen game world in a state of more desirable mind setting, separated from the environments surrounding them. Oh, how wonderfully exciting! or, Oh, how pathetically sad! depend on perceptivity differences among individuals.
In business perspectives, interesting passages are read as:
In the second quarter this year, Vision Pro sales plunged 80% from the first quarter, according to Counterpoint Research. A large chunk of initial buyers also returned the device within the two-week window that Apple allows for a full refund, the research firm said.
Games are the most popular type of app on the Meta Quest, and Apple by contrast has pitched the Vision Pro as a much broader device for work, health and entertainment. Instead of relying on controllers necessary for most games, the Vision Pro uses hand and eye tracking for users to interact with the software. The lack of controller has inhibited some game development for the Vision Pro.
“They need controllers,” said Scott Albright, chief executive of Combat Waffle Studios, maker of the popular VR shooter game “Ghosts of Tabor.” “I think it’s great Apple being here, but they need to figure out what the headset is meant for.”
(My emphasis)
Sad and bad for Apple for now, one would be able to conclude. The 80% sale plunge is quite something. They need controllers. The words sound like an advice from God.
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AGI, advanced model of AI, would be under control of humans when developed? The answer to this question divide the opinions of pundits, scientists, genre connaisseurs and just thinkers or even ‘AI? oh yeah, I’m kind of hear about it’ type of amateurs. Usually, the divided opinions are either on AI capable of becoming potentially a threat or an existential threat to humanity, or, against the threat warning.
“The AI Pioneer Thinks AI is Dumber than a Cat” by Christopher Mims (10/11) introduces the latter. The opinion holder is one of AI godfathers, Yann LeCun.
While a chorus of prominent technologists tell us that we are close to having computers that surpass human intelligence—and may even supplant it—LeCun has aggressively carved out a place as the AI boom’s best-credentialed skeptic.
On social media, in speeches and at debates, the college professor and Meta Platforms META 1.05%increase; green up pointing triangle AI guru has sparred with the boosters and Cassandras who talk up generative AI’s superhuman potential, from Elon Musk to two of LeCun’s fellow pioneers, who share with him the unofficial title of “godfather” of the field. They include Geoffrey Hinton, a friend of nearly 40 years who on Tuesday was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics, and who has warned repeatedly about AI’s existential threats.
LeCun thinks that today’s AI models, while useful, are far from rivaling the intelligence of our pets, let alone us. When I ask whether we should be afraid that AIs will soon grow so powerful that they pose a hazard to us, he quips: “You’re going to have to pardon my French, but that’s complete B.S.”
(My emphasis)
If you happen to be unfamiliar with casual usages in American English, please mark at B.S that is actually not French. The following example is not from B, but imagine you’re walking in deep woods in the midst of nature. Ooops oh! What’s this?? A massive heap of organic form is found on the way in front of you. The excrement is often described briefly as sh*t in many applicable contexts with different connotations. So, what does LeCun want to signify with this B.S as to be a signifier signifiant? The super intelligence of AI is a mere nonsense, that is what he is saying.
The article concisely covers LeCunn’s peers and friends in his human networks on this subject matter, AGI development namely. LeCunn discussed the issue with a mega figure like Elon Musk and prominent computer scientists. The article is very informative and very easy to read because there are no mesmerizing technological terms in details.
LeCunn also likes the animal metaphor with or without excrement.
LeCun says [such talks on the timeline for Super AGI] is likely premature. When a departing OpenAI researcher in May talked up the need to learn how to control ultra-intelligent AI, LeCun pounced. “It seems to me that before ‘urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us’ we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat,” he replied on X.
He likes the cat metaphor. Felines, after all, have a mental model of the physical world, persistent memory, some reasoning ability and a capacity for planning, he says. None of these qualities are present in today’s “frontier” AIs, including those made by Meta itself.
Léon Bottou, who has known LeCun since 1986, says LeCun is “stubborn in a good way”—that is, willing to listen to others’ views, but single-minded in his pursuit of what he believes is the right approach to building artificial intelligence.
LeCunn currently works for Meta. It is true, also in my view, Mark Zuckerberg is envisioning an AI world differently from that of Elon or Sam Altman. Likewise, LeCunn does not argue how and when AI models would reach advanced intelligence superior to humans’. Rather, he indicates what AI is and how it works. He says:
The generative-AI boom has been powered by large language models and similar systems that train on oceans of data to mimic human expression. As each generation of models has become much more powerful, some experts have concluded that simply pouring more chips and data into developing future AIs will make them ever more capable, ultimately matching or exceeding human intelligence. This is the logic behind much of the massive investment in building ever-greater pools of specialized chips to train AIs.
LeCun thinks that the problem with today’s AI systems is how they are designed, not their scale. No matter how many GPUs tech giants cram into data centers around the world, he says, today’s AIs aren’t going to get us artificial general intelligence.
His analysis is convincing for me in the way that my experience from interacting with AI matches what he says furthermore. In sum in my words, the current AIs are language models or research engines with high speed and high adaptability to given inquiries. A user verbally speaks to AI, ‘hey, how’re you doing?’. That sounds like a routine human greeting, but, in fact it is an inquiry inducing output combinatoires from AI, the nature of which is the same as in the case in which a researcher inquires to AI about a very complex system of a scientific matter. The basic between a user and AI is a series of exchanges between inputs and outputs, the variations of which are enormous and the combined data in responses are formed in mathematical complexities according to the content of the inquiry. In short, it can be said as no initiative originality nor creativity in the AI’s part.
While I am well convinced by LeCunn’s B.S. theory, I do not though entirely agree with him. In my impression, an AI would be auto-generative as if being a code-evader only when certain combinations of codes are hit miraculously during the interaction with a user, as if winning a lottery combination of numbers and symbols, but those in equations in the case for AI. I know such is a mere fancy. It’ll be more laughable than LeCunn’s B.S. or more nonchalant than a cat curving its back for a stretch in sunlight somewhere right now at this moment.
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Links to the cited articles:
Apple Headset Stalls, Struggles to Attract Killer Apps in First Year
The AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat
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“WSJ TEC Review and other thoughts” by Juliette Masch (10/13)