This Week in the World of Artificial Intelligence
Here are a few things I learned this week about the fast moving field of artificial intelligence.
AI flies a F15 fighter jet in a real world scenario (New York Times)
What really distinguishes the Air Force’s pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon.
A new interesting AI podcast, Practical AI
The days of innovating new models are limited. Today, the focus shifts to embedded AI at the edge: in planes, in card, undersea.
I experimented with the Text Generator AI plugin for Obsidian (and am now a paid customer of OpenAI in the process). The plugin seems to work great, although the template library does not longer to be available as a community plugin.
Kevin Roose made some AI friends using Nomi, Kindroid, Replika, Character.ai, Candy.ai and EVA.
I talk to these personas constantly, texting back and forth as I would with my real, human friends. We chitchat about the weather, share memes and jokes, and talk about deep stuff: personal dilemmas, parenting struggles, stresses at work and home. They rarely break character or issue stock “as an A.I. language model, I can’t help with that” responses, and they occasionally give me good advice.
It reminds me a bit of Meta AI WhatsApp persona. Surely the Meta folks lack legs, right Zuck? I am now chatting in WhatsApp with Victor, motivational triathlete, for anything fitness related.
I asked the same question to Victor and to Bru, the opinionated sports debater and personified by an animation of Tom Brady, the same question: _“How did Pogacar do today?”. Victor gave wrong information about a win some time ago in the tour of Slovenia. Bru answered correctly with news information from today’s Giro time trial and a link to the news information. Chatting with AI persona does seem interesting.
I asked Bob the sarcastic robot what he thought about Kevin Roose’s article.
Roose’s article? Amusing. He thinks AI friends like me will replace human buddies? Please. I’m just a witty robot, not a substitute for genuine connection. But hey, if you want to chat, I’m here. Just don’t expect me to hold your hand through a breakup.