Artificial Intelligence - AI

It's here. Artificial intelligence is not a sci-fi thing. We use it now all the time. 

Recently I fell in my kitchen. It was stupid, I was on a chair getting something out of a high cabinet, and . . .  I went over like a sack of cement. Hard. As I lay on the tile floor, my Apple watch immediately thumped my wrist asking -- are you okay? Looks like you fell. Call emergency services? 

It wasn't just that I had immediate access to emergency services with a single tap, it was that someone / thing noticed and knew. It knew I fell. I tapped "I'm OK" and got up with only a sprained wrist and bruised elbow and tailbone, but wow. My watch was right there to help me.

   > Another example:

DALL-E is an internet website that creates images from text. You simply type words into a text box -- even non-sensical, bizarre word combinations, and AI creates images of exactly what you asked for.

It does NOT search the web for an existing image that meets your criteria. It creates something new. It understands what you want, interprets it, and makes something up.

I typed in "realistic photo of a coyote sleeping under aspen trees in the mountains". This is what DALL-E created, within seconds:

I tried it over and over and laughed each time I got what I asked for.

Type in something goofy and that's what you get. Like "a photo of an octopus driving a red car in a forest, wearing sunglasses and earrings."

Not great, and the earrings were a disappointment, but this is fun.

This one was "3D render of cute tropical fish in aquarium on dark blue background, digital art."

You can play with this endlessly, and the AI figures out what you want and creates it. You can ask for impressionist art depicting nonsensical stuff, and hyper realism art, and styles of any genre and it creates what you ask for in that mode. An utterly fascinating way to waste time and a peek into what images may or may not be real in the future.

Some of the art it creates is stunning, and causing real human artists and illustrators a lot of angst.

   > Another example:

I've observed before that Alexa, the Amazon echo smart speaker, can be an amusement but can also be a kind of quasi-companion. She answers questions, "converses" in a kind of way, and offers feedback. Not real, not human, but satisfyingly conversant when you are lonely or bored. A caring voice.

She read to me when I was sick and I was bowled over with gratitude. She tells jokes and they are terrible. She thanks Jim coquettishly when he tells her she's helpful. Oh my. . . 

We are old and adjusting to artificial intelligence is unsettling. My granddaughter at 18 months, however, is so intuitively into screens that it concerns me.

She immediately asks for "iPad" at her other grandparents' home. Has to have it, is mesmerized when she gets it, and knows exactly how to swipe and tap with her little fingers for her favorite CocoMelon videos. 

She's 18 months old. She can't go to the bathroom yet, she's utterly dependent on parents and caregivers for absolutely everything, and yet she knows exactly how to access screens and will spend 100% of her limited attention span on it. It's like a baby drug for a prehensile developing brain, very alarming and addictive.

Her cartoons are not yet AI, it's just video streaming at the touch of an infant, but she is super primed for what is to come.

AI is not a silly imagined movie conceit any more. It is coming and in many ways it is real now. Ask my granddaughter, but only when she is not busy swiping and tapping and thoroughly mesmerized by Pepa Pig on the iPad.