Living in the future

[mtbc]

Nearly a decade ago, I mentioned here how science-fiction it felt to be using my mobile handset to be pulling up satellite imagery of my environs. At this point, the future feels even closer: I suspect that it's only my lack of spending that prevents me from having reasonable verbal conversations with AIs. After all, the speech recognition is now pretty good and, although Alexa's dumb as a rock, I can have good textual chats with models like Mistral. I mean, sure, they don't really understand anything and can't be relied on but they're impressive nonetheless and probably somehow soon coming to my home.

I'm not holding my breath for the post-scarcity spacefaring utopia but, at least in form, this does feel like a small landmark, even if I suspect that generative AI trained on a sea of people-output is a diversion away from advancement toward the knowledge-based reasoning for which I might hope. It's enough of a landmark that what it can seem to do is an effective distraction from what it might cost.

Comments

[thewayne]

I remember having so much fun with my Motorola Startac(?) flip phone. Had a nice little hard plastic belt holster. It always felt a little Trek-ish, flipping it closed. Then someone made the Bluetooth com badges that would act as speakerphones for your cell phone. I never got one of those: while I've been a sci fi geek forever, I've never been quite that ostentatious about it.