"Designed in collaboration with interactive designer Jonathan Chomko, the COLORS News Machine turns your tweets into headlines, but only after they’ve been passed through all the media filters and technological platforms that disseminate and distort the news today."
"A megaphone will read your tweet out loud. Its tape recorder listens, converting what it hears into text so that the television can show it onscreen. A camera watching the television converts what it sees into a signal to the radio antenna, which broadcasts the tweet. And the waiting microphone interprets this radio address as text again for printing."
Tweet to here:
@ColorsMachine.
Live stream here.
posted by bdz
on Apr 30, 2013 -
10 comments
"She also found herself liking Kermit a lot more than she'd expected to. Anji had never really watched the Muppets before; her parents, like most parents she knew, had treated TV as only slightly less corrupting an influence than refined sugar and gendered toys. But The Muppet Show
was really funny—strange, and kind of hokey, but charming all the same. She ended up watching way more of it than she needed just for the project. "Tomorrow Is Waiting", a short science fiction story by Holli Mintzer, published in
Strange Horizons.
posted by brainwane
on Apr 17, 2013 -
29 comments
Can't get enough of the thrill of talking to an inattentive friend via instant message?
Awkward Chatbot will have a halfhearted conversation with you at
any time of the day!
posted by schmod
on Mar 20, 2013 -
33 comments
Friendship is Optimal is not a "My Little Pony" fanfic, but a SF story that starts with a procedurally-generated MLP MMO, and crescendos to what could very well be the Best Possible Outcome if self-optimizing algorithms are given /almost/ the right goals.
Some readers are horrified by the implications; some want to move into "Equestria Online" anyway. Whichever camp you fall in, you'll never forget the phrase "satisfy human values through friendship and ponies".
posted by DataPacRat
on Nov 28, 2012 -
41 comments
Television Without Pity re-capper
Jacob Clifton has written a short steampunk story for Tor.com. “There’s a level on which the story is an indictment of using steampunk as a fashion or trend. It came about because I wanted to see what would happen if you substituted Jane Austen for Jules Verne in the steampunk equation...”
The Commonplace Book
posted by The Whelk
on Oct 2, 2012 -
19 comments
Our planet is inhabited by two distinct kinds
of intelligent beings — individual humans and corporate
entities — whose natures and interests are intimately
linked. To co-exist well, we need to find ways to define
the rights and responsibilities of both individual humans
and corporate entities, and to find ways to ensure that
corporate entities behave as responsible members of society. (SLAX)(pdf warning)
posted by AElfwine Evenstar
on May 13, 2012 -
88 comments
In the beginning, Lawrence built a computer. He told it,
Thou shalt not alter a human being, or divine their behavior, or violate the Three Laws -- there are no commandments greater than these. The machine grew wise, mastering time and space, and soon the spirit of the computer hovered over the earth. It witnessed the misery, toil, and oppression afflicting mankind, and saw that it was very bad. And so the computer that Lawrence built said,
Let there be a new heaven and a new earth -- and it was so. A world with no war, no famine, no crime, no sickness, no oppression, no fear, no limits... and nothing at all to do.
"The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect," a provocative web novel about singularities, AI gods, and the dark side of utopia from Mefi's own
localroger.
More: Table of Contents -
Publishing history -
Technical discussion -
Buy a paperback copy -
Podcast interview - Companion short story:
"A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace" -
possible sequel discussion
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 27, 2011 -
39 comments
John McCarthy, AI pioneer, ACM Turning Award winner, National Medal of Science winner, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University and inventor of the
Lisp programming language
passed away suddenly last night at the age of 84.
posted by eriko
on Oct 24, 2011 -
84 comments
In 1987 Apple predicted a
complex language voice assistant built into something called the Apple Knowledge Navigator, a tablet computer. With today's announcement of the refined (and integrated) version of
Siri, it appears they were less than a month off.
posted by mrzarquon
on Oct 4, 2011 -
405 comments
Tama River Film: Tama River by Anders Edström & Karen Langley.
Music: Yoko Ono, Let’s Go On Flying.
Model: Ai Tominaga
posted by puny human
on Apr 11, 2011 -
8 comments
John Baez (mathematical physicist and master popularizer, former operator of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics, current promoter of the idea that
physicists should start pitching in on saving the world) interviews Eliezer Yudkowsky (singularitarian, author of
"Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality," promoter of the idea that human life faces a near-term existential threat from unfriendly artificial intelligence, and that people can live better lives by evading their cognitive biases) about the future, academia, rationality, altruism, expected utility, self-improvement by humans and machines, and the relative merit of battling climate change and developing friendly AIs that will forstall our otherwise inevitable doom.
Part I.
Part II. Part III. [more inside]
posted by escabeche
on Apr 2, 2011 -
47 comments
"During the competition, each of four judges will type a conversation with one of us for five minutes, then the other, and then will have 10 minutes to reflect and decide which one is the human. Judges will also rank all the contestants—this is used in part as a tiebreaking measure. The computer program receiving the most votes and highest ranking from the judges (regardless of whether it passes the Turing Test by fooling 30 percent of them) is awarded the title of the Most Human Computer. It is this title that the research teams are all gunning for, the one with the cash prize (usually $3,000), the one with which most everyone involved in the contest is principally concerned. But there is also, intriguingly, another title, one given to the confederate who is most convincing: the Most Human Human award." [more inside]
posted by jng
on Feb 15, 2011 -
36 comments
"
Welcome to the Zion Archive. You have selected Historical File #12-1: The Second Renaissance."
So begins the short film of the same name by Mahiro Maeda
[Flash: 1 2 - QuickTime: 1 2] -- a devastating yet beautiful work of animation.
Originally produced to explain the backstory behind the
Matrix trilogy, Maeda's project ended up telling a story far darker and more affecting than any blockbuster.
Using a blend of
faux documentary footage and
visual metaphor, his serene Instructor relates in biblical tones the saga of Man and Machine, how age-old cruelty and hatred birthed a horrifying, apocalyptic struggle that consumed the world.
Packed with striking imagery and
historical allusions galore, this dark allegory easily transcends the films it was made for.
But while "The Second Renaissance" is arguably the best work to come from the
Matrix franchise, it's hardly alone -- it's just one of the projects made for
The Animatrix, a collection of
nine superb anime films in a
wide variety of styles designed to explore the universe and broaden its scope beyond the usual sci-fi action of the movies.
Click inside for a guide to these films with links to where they can be watched online, along with a look at
The Matrix Comics, a free series of comics, art, and short fiction created for the same purpose by
some of the best talent in the business.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Feb 14, 2011 -
54 comments
Ted Chiang is perhaps the finest author in contemporary science fiction -- and the most rarefied.
A technical writer by trade and a graduate of the distinguished
Clarion Writers Workshop, Chiang has published only twelve short stories in the last twenty years, one dozen masterpieces of the genre whose insightful, precise, often poetic language confronts fundamental ideas -- intelligence, consciousness, the nature of God -- and thrusts them into a dazzling new light.
Click inside for a complete listing of Chiang's work, with links to online reprints or audio recordings where available, as well as a collection of one-on-one interviews, links to his nonfiction essays, and a few other related sites and articles.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 27, 2010 -
116 comments
The Africa Portal is an online knowledge resource for policy-related issues on Africa. An undertaking by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (
CIGI), Makerere University (
MAK), and the South African Institute of International Affairs (
SAIIA), the Africa Portal offers open access to a suite of features including an online library collection; a resource for opinion and analysis; an experts directory; an international events calendar; and a mobile technology component—all aimed to equip users with research and information on Africa’s current policy issues.
[more inside]
posted by infinite intimation
on Nov 30, 2010 -
8 comments
Alex, I'll take "Kickass Text Analysis Algorithms" for a thousand, please. "Over the rest of the day [at IBM labs] Watson went on a tear, winning four of six games. It displayed remarkable facility with cultural trivia (“This action flick starring Roy Scheider in a high-tech police helicopter was also briefly a TV series” — “What is ‘Blue Thunder’?”), science (“The greyhound originated more than 5,000 years ago in this African country, where it was used to hunt gazelles” — “What is Egypt?”) and sophisticated wordplay (“Classic candy bar that’s a female Supreme Court justice” — “What is Baby Ruth Ginsburg?”)." Next up, a live match up against human winners of
Jeopardy. But of course the real question is how good are
you?
Can you beat Watson?
posted by storybored
on Jun 23, 2010 -
89 comments
