What did people do before they started using AI for everything?
PLUS Identify the new product picture, autonomous driving trucks are learning the easy way, and Menu Mistakes
A bit late today as we contended with late vacation food poisoning, returning our rental car in insane traffic, and we shed a few tears saying good-bye to Costa Rica
NEW PRODUCT: Guess what this is
Starting a new feature, showcasing the brilliant new products coming down the pipeline. Here is the inaugural choice. The answer will be in an article on Thursday.
MAIN COURSE: Autonomous driving trucks being trained on a simulator
Some humble suggestions for more reality
Here is a story on a new company (behind paywall) that is eschewing driving on real roads for testing their trucks in favour of simulated driving. The company involved says their custom built simulation has lots of real world data and that this is a great way to train the onboard AI. Pretty easy to get these digital twins (creepier use of this word coming in next article) to rack up 100,000 miles racing around on computer chips.
In pre-historic times, I completed a research project in grad school on the use of simulation for complex financial decision-making so I have a little knowledge about simulation. The key word is simulate; that is, not real; a simplified abstraction. The company’s tell is that this training is aimed at trucks mostly travelling on straight highways with less traffic. Hopefully they will be posting which highways these trucks will be plying so that I can avoid them.
We have just completed a 5 week road-trip covering 12,000 kilometres in Costa Rica (for my American readers that is 2.5 times across the United States, before Greenland, Panama, or Canada are possibly added). We have encountered approximately 10,000 curves in the roads, 9500 motorized 2 wheeled vehicles of all types, most carrying with 2 or more people, on both the right and left of you simultaneously, 5000 pedestrians on the sides of highways that have neither medians nor shoulders, 3 dogs sleeping on the road, and 4 iguanas at various speeds crossing in traffic (there may have been fatalities). Presumably this truck simulation includes these kind of unforeseen things happening on their roads.
Come on David, some of you are thinking, you are driving around sleepy little Costa Rica, a tropical tourist haven where you start drinking cocktails at noon. What could your travels possibly have to do with trucks?
Pictured above is one of the Caribbean terminals of the super port that is now Limon. On the other side of the country is the emerging port of Caldera. With the long ongoing problems with the cost and access of the Panama canal, Costa Rica has built a land canal process. In addition, Costa Rica has no railways. So everything moves here by truck.
That means there are trucks - a very large number of trucks - on most of the same roads encountering the same hazards that I described above. I will believe in the safety of autonomous self driving trucks trained on a simulation, or any training method, when they can actually rack up 25 kilometres (for my American readers not all that far) on Costa Rican highways.
SECONDI - 5 Inappropriate Uses for Generative AI
This section is inspired by the 1964 song People by Barbra Streisand. Definitive line is “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world”
Here is an article that describes how on a woman’s first date, the guy admitted to working up an 8 page psychological profile on her compliments of ChatGPT. She wasn’t that taken aback as evidently the profile was quite good. Now I think they both are nuts but I come from a world where you got to know someone slowly not told by a machine who they are. These are people who need people only after a clear computer based thumbs up. She also later did another AI profile on herself just for laughs.
Now here is some completely surprising research; people that are GenAI power users or spend the most time using it, are developing addictive-like behaviours. Did not see that coming at all. Many are very needy individuals. Evidently these are people who think they don’t need people but they really do but they just can’t bring themselves back to reality.
On the other hand there are people that want people forever. Here is a tear-jerking story about a guy - who with his 92 year old mother’s assistance - is making a digital twin of her so that future generations can speak to her in GenAI forever. I find this creepy but maybe in the near future when we are just semi-intelligent, highly indulged bits of protoplasm living in buckets this will seem normal.
Evidence is mounting that some younger members of our society have poor social skills as they enter the jobs market. These are people who are forced to like people but are deadly scared of them. Again, this is something I didn’t see coming. For the first time in 200,000 plus years of homo sapiens, we have some members who can barely communicate with others. I’m going to go way out on a limb here to speculate that it might be caused by too much interaction with technology, asynchronous computer mediated contact with people, and not enough time with real people right in front of you saying and doing unexpected things. This article outlines a solution that apparently is a bit of hair of the dog: let’s have technology, in the form of AI coaching and rehearsing, improve these missing human social skills. Right!
You wake with sore throat, a bit of a cough, light congestion, and some sneezing. We used to say you probably just a have cold, but Post-Covid many people seem to have forgotten about the 18 or so viruses that cause colds. So to be safe you Google your symptoms, aiming for some semi-authoritative source like Medline or the Mayo Clinic. Besides saying you probably just have a cold, these sources will throw in a few other diseases just in case you are the one in a million that doesn’t have a cold. Now though Google will be pushing its new and very error prone AI overviews for medical advice, which will be the first thing you see in any Google search results. These will tell you, in an authoritative no further questions need to be asked voice, that you have cholera not a cold, and you will be dead quite quickly without intravenous fluid injections and antibiotics.
MENU MISTAKES
Based on real headings found in Apple News sources
After an unusual, tough interview process I found out that working for the cartel isn’t that bad.
So NASA is funding a study to grow mushrooms in space to feed you on your trip to Mars, where NASA has also discovered you will likely be killed by toxic dust. From the same people who leave astronauts in orbit for an extra 270 days on a 10 day trip. Where do I sign up? The woman getting the funding sure is happy. I think it is called a noble grift.
Thanks everyone for reading. Comments, likes, restacks and messages all greatly appreciated. Back on Thursday with the results of the polls and the real nature of the new product. Hint: It is another great investment prospect.
I’m living through #4.. The connected generation is struggling with basic communication.
Addiction irony
The more we rely on AI to ‘fix’ human connection, the more we… lose human connection. [Insert Barbra Streisand weeping.]
The autonomous truck training highlights a gap, and that is, simulations, no matter how advanced, are only as good as their designers’ understanding of chaos. Costa Rica’s roads (with sleeping dogs and darting iguanas) reveal how much unpredictability we take for granted in human judgment.
As we delegate more of our humanity to machines (judgment, connection, even grief) what’s left for us to do? And who do we become in the process?
Thank you David.