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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • So what will everyone having their own AI look like in a way that doesn’t just sound like a chatGPT joke? What would make it a desirable future?

    I guess that depends on how much authority you’d want to delegate.

    For me, it would be nice if I could have it do things like shopping tasks without being more of a pain than doing the task myself. For example, I needed to buy a hot-water carpet cleaner today. It would be great if I could tell it

    Hey Staffie, buy a carpet shampoo machine for home delivery within the next two weeks. Pick a highly rated machine from a widely recognized brand, and focus on carpet cleaning and water extraction performance, I don’t need any upholstery cleaning features. Don’t spend over $400. If the best option is under $200 don’t ask, just buy it. If it’s over $200, show me the top two options before buying.

    And end up with something pretty close to what I’d have picked if I did the shopping myself.

    It would also be great if I could have it reliably perform arbitrary tasks that it isn’t specifically programmed to do. Like

    Hey Staffie, check if I’ve got enough PTO to take next Thursday and Friday off, and if so, reserve a campsite for me at Foo State Park for three nights, preferably one close to the water, then send Mr. Boss an email letting him know I’ll be out those days.

    If it were particularly smart it would infer from previous conversations that I might want a 1lb propane cylinder, marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey bars added to my grocery list and would add them automatically (because it already knows my preferences about small automatic expenditures like that and is aware of the spending limits I’ve given it).

    Then it might come back a few minutes later and say

    'Hey boss, all the campsites within 250 of the water are already reserved, but site 1701D, which is near the only restroom and a tailhead, is available. Reviewers report that the park WiFi access point is installed at the restroom, so that site has good free internet service. Shall I reserve it?

    So yeah, in general, the ability to take arbitrary directions and execute them in reasonably intelligent ways (for example If I ask for a site Foo State Park, and there are two such parks in my country, it should be able to guess which park I’m talking about based on the context (like, if I’m reserving 3 nights and one of the parks is an hour down the road and the other is a two day drive, just assume the closer one)) and not require pre-programmed interfaces to every single thing. It should be able to search the web, find the interfaces humans use, and use those to do the kinds of things humans can do. It should also have some capabilities to use my accounts and passwords under a delegated authority to get shit done as my authorized assistant.

    Ideally it should also do things like observe my choices and infer my preferences so it can constrain choices it offers me:

    Hey Staffie, order lunch from Subway for pickup at 3.

    Sure boss, do you want your usual 6 inch turkey sub?

    Yep

    Nacho cheese chips or salt-n-vinegar?

    Nacho.

    Done, I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

    Stuff like that.




  • About 15 years ago I saw an independent film at a local theater and it turned out that the guy who made it was couch-surfing the country showing the film at small theaters and was staying that night with a friend of a friend, so after the showing we went over to the friend’s place to hang out and talk.

    The guy who made the film was pretty cool and told us lots about the process. Basically he spent a year and all his time and money on it, borrowed money from everyone he knew, and pulled favors from all his friends and their friends to get access to locations for shooting, costumes, props, etc.

    What it came down to was that at that level there is no process. You just call in every favor you can, make lots of promises you can’t keep, max out your creative problem-solving abilities, and hope like hell you can get it done enough to show before you completely run out of money and friends.

    While we enjoyed the film quite a lot the dude was not terribly happy with it (all he could see at that point were mistakes and limitations), and was beyond broke (that’s why he was couch-surfing his way through the cities he was showing in, he could barely afford transportation to the next city).

    Film making technology has come a long, long way since then, so you could probably make a similar quality film much easier and cheaper now (I wouldn’t be surprised if the expensive cameras he was renting at the time are outclassed by what you can do now with a nice phone and a second-hand Canon). But the rest is probably pretty similar. Lots of dollar-stretching and creative problem-solving.