#basic knowledge for artificial intelligence | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

technon899 · 1 year ago

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technon913 · 1 year ago

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facebookcumshots · 9 months ago

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CRIMINALS WITH POOR INFORMATION SOURCES BEHAVING ERRATICALLY (NOT TRYING TO REMAIN UNDETECTED OR BASICALLY TOTALLY INSUFFICIENT KNOWLEDGE) CONTROLLED OR GUIDED VARIOUS WAYS TO MINIMIZE TERROR. IF YOU'RE ARGUING TERROR SHOULD INCREASE OR EVEN BE ALLOWED ANYWHERE YOU ARE WRONG. STRAIGHT UP OPENLY BEING CRIMINAL IS WRONG AND NEVER ALLOWED OR ENCOURAGED.

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light-of-laurelin · 1 month ago

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I wrote a research paper last semester on the impact of AI in education and when it was time for peer reviews they were all like this. “I only use it for…” and I’m like dude you shouldn’t be using it at all.

My best friend is unfortunately dating a tech bro and is super into it and I cannot get her to understand that it is not a thinking machine and is only as good as the input it’s trained on and could never tell you something new.

#artificial intelligence is a misnomer #there is no intelligence happening here #also if you were curious the studies show that teachers using it to build curricula have had good results #but everything about students using it to complete work has been a disaster #false confidence and unable to identify knowledge gaps and diminished critical thinking skills #not to mention having basically no retention of the material #I am turning into Sarah Connor

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getbasicidea · 1 year ago

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Get to know about the 4 main types of AI.

#get basic idea #knowledge #basic idea #knowledge base #basic knowledge #artificial intelligence #tech

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phantomrose96 · 1 year ago

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The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

#chrissy speaks

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beescake · 1 year ago

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i am in love with your sollux i think

sollux love party :]

if you’re interested heres some of my personal fondness thoughts on him.. big warning for the mega long read ahead aye

as we alr know sollux's rejection of participation somewhat mirrors dave's rejection of heroism, but even without getting cooked to completion i still find sollux's character v compelling beyond the fourth wall

as someone who doesnt get a pinch of that Protagonist Sparkle to begin with, he can openly say he wants to leave anytime…. and unlike dave, he actually Can leave the scene anytime. but he can never be truly Free from the story via permanent character death like the other trolls.

his irrelevancy is indeed relevant - he’s there so u can point him out.

while his image is intended to be a relic of past internet subculture, his role is not only about hehehaha being a Chad or a 2000s cyberforum 2²chan haxxor ragequit gamebro.

his continued existence also happens to add a Bit to the overarching themes of homestuck! a Bit that gives him longer-lasting thematic relevance compared to the trolls who could’ve had more character potential but didnt get to survive beyond the main story.

the Bit in question:

his defiance contributes to the illusion of agency (treating characters = people with autonomy). he’s “aware” of it, and that recognition is worth noting enough to forcibly keep him alive as both reward and punishment.

considering how his personality & classpect is designed its definitely a very haha thing for hussie to do LOL. he’s made to be op asf so he's resigned to doing dirty work, gradually deteriorating along the way but never truly dying. as fans have mentioned before, him openly rejecting involvement after a while of grim tolerance is like if the sim u were controlling suddenly stopped, looked up and gave u the finger while u were step six into the walkthrough for Every Possible Sim Death Animation.

but since he’s just a sim… the more he hates it, the more you keep him around. if ur sim started complaining abt your whimsical household storyline you’d definitely keep that little fuck.

but yeah i like that sollux is just idling. the significance of his presence being that one dude who's always reliably Somewhere, root core Unchanged, no individual ambitions (possibly due to fear of consequence?), and design-wise: a staple representative product of his time.

compared to dirk's character, who has aged phenomenally well into the present (themes of control + AR + artificial intelligence, clearer exploration around navigating relationships/sexuality, infinite possibilities of self-splinterhood and trait inheritance), sollux's potential is really... contained. bitter. defeatist. limiting and frustrating in the way old tech is.

the world continues moving on to shinier, brighter, more advanced automated things - minimalist and metaverse or whatever but sollux is still here 🧍‍♂️ going woohoo redblue 3d. (tho personally i imagine his vibe similar to what the kids call cassette futurism on pinterest mixed w more grimy grunge insectoid influences eheh)

conceptually-speaking,

at the foundation of it all, the rapid pace of modern development was built off the understanding of ppl like sollux in the past, who were There actively at work while the dough was still beginning to rise

thats one of the cool things abt the idea of trolls preceding humans! the idea that trolls like sollux excelled back when lots of basic shit still needed to be discovered, building structures like networks and codes from scratch, and humans will eventually inherit and reinvent that knowledge in ways that become so optimized it makes the old manual effort seem archaic, slow, and labour-intensive.

but despite information/resources/shortcuts being more accessible now, much of the new highly-anticipated stuff released on trend still end up unfinished, inefficient, or expiring quickly due to cutting corners under severe capitalistic pressures

meanwhile, some of the old stuff frm past generations of thorough, exploratory and perfectionistic development still remains working, complete, and ever so sturdy.

those things continue to exist, just outside our periphery with either:

zero purpose left for modern needs (outdated/obsolete)

or

far too important to replace or destroy, bcs of its surprisingly essential and circumstantial usefulness in one niche specific area.

which are honestly? both points that sum up sollux pree well.

dramatic ending sorry. anw are u still on the fence or are u Sick abt him like me </3

#ask #anon #sollux captor #homestuck #hs2 spoilers #2023 #vioart #hs2 sollux explaining girls and bitches to john: 🗣️🗣️🗣️#mr foods‚ setting up the visuals: LMAO ok pause. cool story bro theyre all gone its just u n ur sandwich bro.#now that i think abt it sol's kind of a toaster? awkwardly takes up countertop space #lacks the versatility and sociability of an air fryer/pressure cooker. unwashed and littered w crumbs!#but sometimes the clear‚ frank simplicity of the toaster is a temporary lifesaver for ppl who struggle w low appetite / decision fatigue #or ppl who just have a habit of eating toast for breakfast LOL #and eh ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ even if u dont feel like toasting today thats ok he's still gonna be sitting there 👍👍#a funnyman..... i curse him in my pan but root for him in my biscuit 🫶

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viridianriver · 4 months ago

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'Artificial Intelligence' Tech - Not Intelligent as in Smart - Intelligence as in 'Intelligence Agency'

I work in tech, hell my last email ended in '.ai' and I used to HATE the term Artificial Intelligence. It's computer vision, it's machine learning, I'd always argue.

Lately, I've changed my mind. Artificial Intelligence is a perfectly descriptive word for what has been created. As long as you take the word 'Intelligence' to refer to data that an intelligence agency or other interested party may collect.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back when I was in 'AI' - the vibe was just odd. Investors were throwing money at it as fast as they could take out loans to do so. All the while, engineers were sounding the alarm that 'AI' is really just a fancy statistical tool and won't ever become truly smart let alone conscious. The investors, baffingly, did the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears while screaming 'LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU"

Meanwhile, CEOs were making all sorts of wild promises about what AI will end up doing, promises that mainly served to stress out the engineers. Who still couldn't figure out why the hell we were making this silly overhyped shit anyway.

SYSTEMS THINKING

As Stafford Beer said, 'The Purpose of A System is What It Does" - basically meaning that if a system is created, and maintained, and continues to serve a purpose? You can read the intended purpose from the function of a system. (This kind of thinking can be applied everywhere - for example the penal system. Perhaps, the purpose of that system is to do what it does - provide an institutional structure for enslavement / convict-leasing?)

So, let's ask ourselves, what does AI do? Since there are so many things out there calling themselves AI, I'm going to start with one example. Microsoft Copilot.

Microsoft is selling PCs with integrated AI which, among other things, frequently screenshots and saves images of your activity. It doesn't protect against copying passwords or sensitive data, and it comes enabled by default. Now, my old-ass-self has a word for that. Spyware. It's a word that's fallen out of fashion, but I think it ought to make a comeback.

To take a high-level view of the function of the system as implemented, I would say it surveils, and surveils without consent. And to apply our systems thinking? Perhaps its purpose is just that.

SOCIOLOGY

There's another principle I want to introduce - that an institution holds insitutional knowledge. But it also holds institutional ignorance. The shit that for the sake of its continued existence, it cannot know.

For a concrete example, my health insurance company didn't know that my birth control pills are classified as a contraceptive. After reading the insurance adjuster the Wikipedia articles on birth control, contraceptives, and on my particular medication, he still did not know whether my birth control was a contraceptive. (Clearly, he did know - as an individual - but in his role as a representative of an institution - he was incapable of knowing - no matter how clearly I explained)

So - I bring this up just to say we shouldn't take the stated purpose of AI at face value. Because sometimes, an institutional lack of knowledge is deliberate.

HISTORY OF INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

The first formalized intelligence agency was the British Secret Service, founded in 1909. Spying and intelligence gathering had always been a part of warfare, but the structures became much more formalized into intelligence agencies as we know them today during WW1 and WW2.

Now, they're a staple of statecraft. America has one, Russia has one, China has one, this post would become very long if I continued like this...

I first came across the term 'Cyber War' in a dusty old aircraft hanger, looking at a cold-war spy plane. There was an old plaque hung up, making reference to the 'Upcoming Cyber War' that appeared to have been printed in the 80s or 90s. I thought it was silly at the time, it sounded like some shit out of sci-fi.

My mind has changed on that too - in time. Intelligence has become central to warfare; and you can see that in the technologies military powers invest in. Mapping and global positioning systems, signals-intelligence, of both analogue and digital communication.

Artificial intelligence, as implemented would be hugely useful to intelligence agencies. A large-scale statistical analysis tool that excels as image recognition, text-parsing and analysis, and classification of all sorts? In the hands of agencies which already reportedly have access to all of our digital data?

TIKTOK, CHINA, AND AMERICA

I was confused for some time about the reason Tiktok was getting threatened with a forced sale to an American company. They said it was surveiling us, but when I poked through DNS logs, I found that it was behaving near-identically to Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, and other companies that weren't getting the same heat.

And I think the reason is intelligence. It's not that the American government doesn't want me to be spied on, classified, and quantified by corporations. It's that they don't want China stepping on their cyber-turf.

The cyber-war is here y'all. Data, in my opinion, has become as geopolitically important as oil, as land, as air or sea dominance. Perhaps even more so.

A CASE STUDY : ELON MUSK

As much smack as I talk about this man - credit where it's due. He understands the role of artificial intelligence, the true role. Not as intelligence in its own right, but intelligence about us.

In buying Twitter, he gained access to a vast trove of intelligence. Intelligence which he used to segment the population of America - and manpulate us.

He used data analytics and targeted advertising to profile American voters ahead of this most recent election, and propogandize us with micro-targeted disinformation. Telling Israel's supporters that Harris was for Palestine, telling Palestine's supporters she was for Israel, and explicitly contradicting his own messaging in the process. And that's just one example out of a much vaster disinformation campaign.

He bought Trump the white house, not by illegally buying votes, but by exploiting the failure of our legal system to keep pace with new technology. He bought our source of communication, and turned it into a personal source of intelligence - for his own ends. (Or... Putin's?)

This, in my mind, is what AI was for all along.

CONCLUSION

AI is a tool that doesn't seem to be made for us. It seems more fit-for-purpose as a tool of intelligence agencies, oligarchs, and police forces. (my nightmare buddy-cop comedy cast) It is a tool to collect, quantify, and loop-back on intelligence about us.

A friend told me recently that he wondered sometimes if the movie 'The Matrix' was real and we were all in it. I laughed him off just like I did with the idea of a cyber war.

Well, I re watched that old movie, and I was again proven wrong. We're in the matrix, the cyber-war is here. And know it or not, you're a cog in the cyber-war machine.

(edit -- part 2 - with the 'how' - is here!)

#ai #computer science #computer engineering #political #politics #my long posts #internet safety #artificial intelligence #tech #also if u think im crazy im fr curious why - leave a comment

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kimyoonmiauthor · 5 months ago

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Why Spell Check (and some grammar check) isn't AI

So I've seen in the wake of Nanowrimo some people claim that spell check is AI and thus is like Gen AI, and I saw the claim originator on Twitter, but when I pressed them, they basically tried to say they had a degree in computer science, so when I pressed into them if they knew what they were talking about, they couldn't answer because obviously don't know about AI.

For some background I've done some light programming (If you look at the Korean name generator, that's all me). And I also have relatives that did programming.

Here, I can lay out how spell check works without AI or a fancy algorithm.

The oldest spellchecks didn't use AI or Gen AI, they used what is your basic corresponding tables.

If you use something like google sheets (database), you can do this pretty quickly yourself though with a lot of manpower.

Here is a list of commonly misspelled words.

Add that with another table with how they are commonly misspelled.

Then you need a table with "common typos"

Then you need one more table for "Words the user adds."

The algorithm is basically this: Set up a loop. A loop is a mechanism that has an algorithm (or set of instructions in it) which repeats until a certain instruction is met. This loop with this algorithm will check for words. In this case, anything with letters, usually encompassing ' and - (though some programs ignore dashes).

So[,][ ]it[ ]will[ ]look[ ]at[ ]letters[ ]in[ ]this[ ]sentence[ ]and[ ]figure[ ]out[ ]if[ ]it[ ]is[ ]spelled[ ]correctly.

The first loop in the previous sentence will look at the word "so" by selecting everything it knows to be a letter in English. Tada "S, o" Then correspond that to the dictionary. So shows up in the dictionary listing it has of English words. Thanks Webster. (If you're British, the OED)

The Algorithm concludes the word is spelled correctly. No more work needs to be done on So. The next word is it "i, t" correspond that to the dictionary and so on.

If you have a "bad word" for example "alot" then the work is, word is spelled incorrectly. Next "work to be done" is to find out if this word is in the "commonly misspelled" words list. If yes, then underline the word in red to get it corrected.

AKA run Algorithm to underline word (usually a few lines of code if you're doing it the old way).

Then the algorithm moves on. The function of right click/Cntrl click is saying, OK, this word, "alot" is it commonly misspelled? Here are a list of corrections according to this other table. This is the work that needs to be done: We need a popup table. We need to pull from the database this misspelling, and then we need to pull from this other database and pull corresponding correct spellings based on this. Then you set up an if-then If the user clicks on this word, change highlighted word.

This is your basic spelling algorithm. You do not need gen AI for this or AI.

Grammar works similarly. You need a table, the type of speech it is (n, v, adv, adj) and then to load in "rules" one should use. You do not need AI. You need some basic programming skills. On the table of somewhere between "Hello, world" (1) and "OMG, I created artificial intelligence like Data " (10) My "Korean name generator" is like 2.5? in difficulty (minus all of the language and cultural knowledge). Haha. Still mocking myself. But a Spellcheck is not far from that. it is like 3. You could build one fairly easily with PHP and database access to a dictionary and misspelled words with corrections.

But Google pulled from the Enron Emails.

In this case, you can sorta fuzzy logic it and create bigger algorithms, mostly to sort out the *grammar* and *New words* that were used that aren't already in the database, which basically is another loop, but with an add to database function. (i.e. table). Then you would correspond this with another loop to look at "odd grammar" and flag it.

You can use AI to sort it faster than a basic algorithm, but nope, you do not need AI to correspond it. A basic algorithm would do. You can also use AI for "words that look similar to this one" and "Words commonly used in place of this one"

But overall, You do not need AI for a grammar check. You only need a dictionary, a set of commonly held rules of English and exceptions (maybe some Noam Chomsky, though he's controversial), and then some programming skill to get past the hurdle.

But Grammar check could use AI

AI as it stands is basically a large algorithm to match large datasets to the words you use. But the problem is that the datasets are taken from users who did not volunteer to put in that information.

It is not Data on Enterprise have novel experiences of every day and learning how to function in the human world by processing it through a matrix of quantum computing.

So WHEN grammar check does use AI, the AI is mostly doing the crunching of the corresponding the information into a more neat table option, as I understand it. It is not the same thing as Gen AI or your average spell check and Microsoft algorithm from say 2000.

Those are not equal things. Instead, adding Gen AI to say, Microsoft Word, is more like stealing your words for the machine (which BTW, Microsoft absolutely did and you need to transfer out to Anti-AI programs/Apps.) and corresponding them for Gen AI future use for people who can't write worth a damn, and then "averaging" it out. Elew. Who wants to write to the average? That's anti-Creative.

And just because it uses an Algorithm, doesn't automatically use AI.

Look, I can write a algorithm now:

Loop: If you want to be strong...

Go outside.

Do cardio.

Go lift weights.

Make sure you eat a healthy diet and balanced which includes reducing refined sugars and do not eat bad fats.

That equally is a set of instructions, but that's not automatically AI.

I programmed my calculator to spit out the quadratic formula. And this isn't even officially programming, this is a script. Dudes, if you're going to call that AI, then you need help with learning computer programming.

The threshold for making AI v spellcheck is a lot, lot higher programming than a set of simple tables and a loop that looks for letters and spaces corresponding it to an existing dictionary. If that's you're threshold for AI, then when you type words, you are caught in an algorithm. Ooooooo... OMG, when you pull up a dictionary to spellcheck yourself, that's AI. C'mon. The threshold is a might higher to make AI or "victim of algorithm" as in Twitter.

So anytime someone says, "All Spellcheck uses genAI/AI" Laugh in their faces and say no. 'cause like, I'm a terrible programmer, and even I'm like, Meh, not that hard to set up spell check, give me a solid dictionary database and I'll do ya.

That said, A human will beat AI on grammar anytime and will be able to sort weird spellings faster and A-OK, or not.

#writing advice

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literaryvein-reblogs · 4 months ago

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hey i was wondering if you had any tips for writing dialog in a sci-fantasy world? or just sci-fantasy concepts. thanks!

Writing Notes: Science Fantasy

Science Fantasy - (sometimes referred to as technofantasy) a subgenre of speculative fiction that includes elements found in science fiction and fantasy.

Though speculative works can be traced back thousands of years, the science fantasy genre began to take a clearly defined shape in the 19th century with works from authors like H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley. These giants of speculative fiction dreamed up gadgets and gizmos, fantastic monsters, and flying ships aplenty.

At the time, the stories they wrote were referred to as "scientific romances," which basically equated to fantastic explorations of scientific concepts and technologies. Or rather, they created works of science fiction that relied upon and embraced fantasy elements to fill in the blanks.

Science fantasy has fluctuated a bit in application over time, especially during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, in which works of strictly hard science fiction were more celebrated, but the tradition never really went away.

Science Fantasy works take traditional Fantasy and Science Fiction tropes and throw them in a blender, purposely creating a setting that has the feel of both.

Expect to see a lot of classic Fantasy tropes (e.g. warriors with swords, dragons, wizards, castles, and elves) AND a lot of standard Science Fiction tropes (e.g. spaceships, aliens, lasers, scientists, robots, and Time Travel).

The fundamental difference between science fiction and fantasy lies in the realm of plausibility:

Science fiction takes what we know about scientific facts and technologies and proposes situations that might arise from the development of these ideas.

Fantasy focuses on the impossible or implausible, presenting situations and settings wholly dependent on magical and supernatural elements.

Fantasy and science fiction speculate on realities that differ from ours by magical OR scientific means.

Science fantasy speculates on realities that differ from ours by magical AND scientific means.

Science fiction focuses on what the future might hold for us based on science and technology:

How would society change if medical knowledge eliminated the aging process?

What are the consequences of climate change?

Science fantasy does the same but throws the fantastic into the mix:

What if a supernatural being offered us immortality?

Can we fix climate change with magic?

However, don’t confuse science fantasy with soft science fiction, which does not offer explanations for how its technology works, but also does not use magic to explain technology. Some works of fiction might occupy a fuzzy gray area between the two.

Fantasy explores the magical and supernatural without speculating about science or technology:

What would a world with dragons be like?

What if vampires lived among us?

Science fantasy throws science, technology, and futurism into the mix:

What if we discovered a planet with dragons?

How would society exist in a future with vampires?

Science fantasy may also arguably describe character oriented stories where the fantastic elements are very subtle and are common to both science fiction and fantasy.

Examples could include Paranormal Romance which just happens to involve Applied Phlebotinum, Time Travel or Artificial Intelligence.

Many such stories strive to keep the fantastic elements understated (often in the form of minimal Special Effects) in the interest of focusing on human drama.

Examples of Science Fantasy

R. L. Stine's Goosebumps: A kids' horror anthology series which features various sci-fi or fantasy monsters in each book.

The Twilight Zone: The earliest TV series in America to show the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction get blurred, from ghostly flying saucers to tales of a man who could create anything with a tape recorder.

Artemis Fowl: This is a major part of the premise, as the novels focus on Artemis' interactions with magic and the fairy folk while both sides make use of highly advanced technology. It's squarely between the two as well.

Subgenres of Science Fantasy

Sword and Planet. A popular genre in pulp fiction magazines, sword and planet stories send a human protagonist to a planet where they must contend with an alien society, usually with a sword in hand. It has the vibes of sword and sorcery—but in space. Not all sword and planet is science fantasy, but a sizable portion of it is. Example: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Science and Sorcery. Proposed by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, consists of stories wherein two distinct realities—one grounded in science and the other one of magic—interact with one another. This could include supernatural beings from another dimension invading a future Earth or an intrepid star traveler slipping through a portal to a mythical realm. Example: City of Bones by Martha Wells.

Magipunk. These stories blend magic and technology to create a fantasy science where magic either enables technology or is considered another form of technology. Think of flying machines powered by wizards or sentient war machines imbued with and controlled by the spirits of the dead. This subgenre can itself house many subgenres, several of which fall under the punk genre as well, like steampunk or magipunk (also known as magepunk, aetherpunk, or dungeonpunk). It can even include a "harder" punk genre like cyberpunk, but with stronger fantasy elements. Example: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone.

Dying Earth or Planet. This subgenre doesn't always mean the stories are about the end of our Earth, though the rise of climate fiction would make it seem so. Beyond that, it can often mean any fictional planet in the ever-expanding universe, or it could even be referring to some other world that exists in a different time and place. Sometimes, the "dying world" can be an abstract representation of a clash between an old way and a new way, too. So given these various circumstances for a Dying Earth, a solution can manifest itself in infinite ways—as you might imagine—and each one being equally techno-fantastic. Example: The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe.

Weird Fiction. A mutation of speculative genres like cosmic horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction. As such, it tends to leave the reader feeling curious, disturbed, fascinated, or some combination of the three. The genre got its start with the likes of authors such as Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and continues with modern mavens including Jeff Vandermeer and China Miéville. It is often considered a subgenre of horror, but enough elements of prescient technologies and fantastic entities are present to shelve it under science fantasy, too.

Writing Tips: Science Fantasy

Identify a focus. What do you want to stand out about your story, or what central concept should everything revolve around? Examples: Star Wars started with the hero’s journey and built out from that. Shadowrun wanted to be a fantasy version of cyberpunk.

Choose complementary tropes. Take the elements you know and love from both science fiction and fantasy, and start mixing them into something that makes sense for your story.

Avoid the kitchen sink approach. It might be tempting to sweep both shelves into the pot. After all, we love everything about science fiction and fantasy, so we want to include it all. However, this can create a jumbled mess or something that has so much going on that each ingredient can’t be properly appreciated. It can be done, but it takes a masterstroke to do it well.

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Writing Prompts: Science Fantasy

The Fantasy Fiction Continuum

To write dialogue in this genre, consuming media (e.g., books, films, TV series, screenplays) related to science fantasy might help inspire you, such as the examples above or your own favourite books, films etc in this genre. And you can find more examples in the linked sources. Hope this helps with your writing!

#anonymous #science fantasy #genre #writing tips #writeblr #writing notes #literature #writers on tumblr #writing reference #dark academia #spilled ink #writing prompt #creative writing #fiction #writing ideas #writing inspiration #writing advice #on writing #writing resources

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technon899 · 1 year ago

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carionto · 2 years ago

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Aliens are floored by tardigrades

Life is pretty resilient. It has to be, especially if the rest of the Galaxy thinks we're from a Deathworld. In comparison then, if their planets are not as demanding, would life there ever be under enough pressure to survive to go to the extreme lengths that some Earth creatures do? I think one of the most profound things aliens might learn from Earth and Humanity is just how powerful life itself can be.

That itself could shake their understanding of themselves - a billion year old civilization could never even conceive of a thing we accept as simple fact, ushering a revolution in thinking not seen in eons.

___________________________

The Galactic Coalition scientists are busying themselves with obtaining, analyzing, categorizing, and integrating the libraries of information Humanity has brought with them as they incorporate into the greater space faring matrix of civilizations.

A good grasp of Physics, though lacking in certain fields for now; unmatched Engineering doctrines, they really do think of everything, although, perhaps, better to say - they really do attempt everything, then take notes and improve for the next attempt.

Chemistry is another fine addition to the collective knowledge base, a disproportionate part of the catalogue is comprised entirely of explosive reagents and combinations - always good to know more about what NOT to do.

And Biology. Oh boy. What a chaotic but beautiful but also disturbing mess. Life on most planets has a long period of just chugging along, surviving as best it can, until eventually something has the bright idea to evolve the ability to have bright ideas. Then in almost no time at all (on a cosmic scale) a dominant intelligence emerges and civilization alongside it, and in the blink of an eye it finds itself exploring the stars.

A similar pattern happened on Earth, but interrupted alarmingly often by utter catastrophes. Humans call them Mass Extinctions. It is exceedingly rare to find life that can talk about its own extinction events. Kind of deflates the term a bit. Life on planets as inhospitable (by Galactic norms) as Earth tends to be found only as fossils, and almost always on the microscopic level - very rarely do they get the chance to form more complex and advanced lifeforms before the planet with its harsh conditions and scarce resources kills it just as randomly as it spawned it.

We were incredibly saddened to learn from the Humans that the biodiversity of Earth had dwindled by roughly 85% since they accidentally created that giant hole on their planet, and that it had already been on a steady decline before then. Even so, when they revealed there were still 2.4 million species alive on Earth was a shockingly high number. Most are on the brink of extinction, yes, but the fact remains that Earth is easily one of the most biodiverse planets in the Galaxy.

Then we started looking at each individual species and learned about the Tardigrade.

what

It is literally the toughest creature ever discovered, and it's not even close. At least, so far, we haven't looked at absolutely everything Earth has or had yet.

It can just... basically turn itself off and then back on again when the outside becomes livable again - Cryptobiosis, or suspending their metabolism, something we considered only possible through artificial means. And the levels of various extreme they can endure and still be alive would just be utterly ridiculous if they didn't give us samples to confirm for ourselves.

Then we came across the term Extremophile and just decided to take a day off.

#earth is weird #earth is space australia #earth is a deathworld #nature is weird #tardigrade #that's how my brain works #I too learned of that term only now #so it was time to stop before things got out of hand #carionto

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hjgouldmusic · 24 days ago

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RAIN WORLD: URBAN AU

yes i have an anthro au kjhsdf its basically if the iterators made slugcats and scavengers smart and them put them in their cities to replace the ancients once they all ascended (theres a lot more to it from here :3)

im gonna be writing urban au in individual issues, but im gonna be doing two separate series of issues side by side.

first series will focus on the main 10, mostly survivor, starting from his eviction notice (explained in the cut)

second series will focus entirely on outlaw when she reaches adulthood (thatll be explained in the future)

introducing rain world: urban au (series 1)

thousands of cycles after the ancients' mass exodus into the void sea, sliver of straw is right on the cusp of a massive breakthrough in the search for the triple affirmative. moon, having been questioning her kind's purpose for some time now, talks sliver of straw out of the search, not wanting to lose her if she does find the key to ascension.

eventually, virtually all of the other iterators come to the same conclusion as moon, finding the search for the triple affirmative pointless without any ancients left to receive the result of their hard work. in their newly developed freedom, each iterator begins to conduct their own personal experiments on the local fauna and flora.

a proposition soon arises from one group of iterators: what if they took the most intelligent species present in their world and brought their primal knowledge even further? the thought wasnt born from a fondness of the ancients, but rather for the presence of intelligent beings in general (if anything, the ancients stood as a bar that the iterators now sought to surpass).

some iterators argued that the scavengers were this intelligent species, due to their tribal nature and economic system. others argued that the slugcats had the most potential for intelligent beings, due to their more compassionate and parental natures. eventually, they decided on using both species and having them live alongside one another. with their plan now laid out, the iterators begin capturing every single scavenger and slugcat they can, placing them into a stasis of sorts as they work to artificially develop their physiology to become comparable to that of the ancients. this process takes a long time, but is eventually successful.

once the iterators become satisfied with the amount of intelligent creatures they have amassed, they begin releasing them into their own cities. together, the creatures rebuild society together under the belief that they had simply gone through some vague "blackout event" and are repairing their own society, rather than adopting everything the ancients abandoned.

the iterators observe as the "scugscav" society begins to branch off from the ancients that came prior, building their own cultures and beliefs and (whilst nonexistent in their world) aligning themselves with more human qualities. human fashion, human entertainment, human industry, etc. unfortunately for some, this also includes human economy and, as a result, human financial struggles.

due to the time it had taken to develop the scugscav society's intelligence, the iterator structures had slowly succumbed to the elements and fallen into a state of disrepair. some structures crumble as a result. the remaining iterators, wanting to avoid the same fate, join together to develop a new system in which they can enlist the help of their citizens: the expedition program.

being an employee of the expedition program (dubbed an expeditionist) entails being dispatched to the lower iterator facilities once a month for ~5 days at a time, and completing jobs such as mechanical repair, item retrieval, pest control, etc., all whilst guided by the iterators themselves. the job immediately becomes very notoriously precarious, and doesnt see a lot of members even despite the large payouts being an expeditionist delivers. after an incident involving the disappearance of one expeditionist (nomad) and the resulting permanent disfigurement of another who had been sent out to search for them (artificer), every member of the expedition program leaves, save for one (spearmaster).

the main 10 are split into 2 'friend groups' of sorts, all living within the city of metropolis atop five pebbles

survivor, monk, watcher, gourmand, saint

hunter, artificer, rivulet, spearmaster, enot

over the course of the main story, all 10 of them reach a point of financial/personal struggle that brings them into the expedition program.

survivor, working as a freelance photographer and struggling with money, is evicted from his apartment. as he searches through job listings with his longtime friend watcher, he comes across one for the program. the payout and low work hours entice him deeply, helped even more by the promise of new, unique scenery that he could take photos of. unaware of the dangers of the program, he joins.

monk, running a small pet store with her friend, friend, sees little business and needs a second job to keep the doors open. she and friend argue on who should get the job, the both of them trying to volunteer themselves. monk wins the argument, and in her search for jobs, peaks in on survivor and watcher, overhearing their talk about the program. monk knows that survivor would try to argue against her joining, as hes very protective of her, so she joins in secret.

hunter, having been funding artificer with her pay working as an iterator messenger, doesnt have the money for medication and treatment for her rot. having been longtime friends with spearmaster, a loyal expeditionist, and after learning about artificer's time in the program (in the same team as spearmaster no less), she decides to join, figuring that she's well capable of succeeding in the position.

watcher, deeply fearing for survivor as he signs up for the program, can only settle her concerns by accompanying him. so, as survivor joins, she does too.

gourmand, as an executive chef at a popular restaurant, works long hours and feels burnt out and guilty that he had to work instead of spending more time with his adopted children monk and survivor. the pay that the program offers, in combination with the low number of required work hours, promises plenty of time to spend with his children, which is enough to convince him to join.

artificer, after her injury within the program, left to pick up a regular job. she is frequently fired from each job she gets, usually due to her uncontrollable explosive abilities. she's eventually deemed unfit for employment anywhere else, and even though hunter comes in during this time to support her, the guilt of living off of someone else's paycheck eats away at her until she rejoins.

rivulet, a guitarist, finds her band struggling with inner conflict amidst a diminishing number of live shows (and as a result, money). they eventually meet spearmaster, and through them learn about the expedition program. wanting distance from the band for some time, a decent income, and to be closer to spearmaster, rivulet joins.

spearmaster never left the expedition program, and remained the sole expeditionist for several years after nomad's disappearance and artificer's incident.

saint, similar to watcher and survivor, learns about monk's joining of the program and fears for her deeply, knowing how overeager and naive she can be. so, they join too, desperate to protect their partner despite their own lack of physical strength.

enot, a friend of artificer (and in turn hunter, spearmaster, and rivulet), lives on the streets of metropolis and survives off of pick pocketing. she does it willingly, enjoying the lack of commitment to a job of any kind, as well as the nefarious nature of being a pickpocket. however, when everyone else joins the program, she worries that they may not be around as much as they used to, so she joins too to circumvent that fact (yea she just joins cuz she doesnt want to be lonely).

as the slugcats convene as expeditionists, the two groups very quickly mesh and become one group of 10. lots of stuff happens after that (but im actively writing it so i will not synopsize it all here, theres a lot planned :3)

theres a lot of characters i plan to include so i have a lot of refs to make skdjfsdlk ive got most of the slugcats done though so im posting them next

#rain world #rain world downpour #rw survivor #rw monk #rw hunter #rw watcher #rw nightcat #rw gourmand #rw artificer #rw rivulet #rw spearmaster #rw saint #rw inv #rw enot #rw urban au #rw urban au series 1

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getbasicidea · 1 year ago

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Get to Know About the 4 Main Types of AI.

#get basic idea #knowledge #basic idea #knowledge base #artificial intelligence #tech

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panthera-dei · 1 year ago

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I got another witchy FAQs question so I want to go ahead and share it.

This time, we're talking some basic chaos magic with different types of thoughtforms!

Please note that I am not an expert in chaos magic, nor do I consider myself a chaos magician, so feel free to (kindly) leave feedback or corrections as needed. ^^

Thoughtforms 101

Definition of Thoughtform: Thoughtform is a catch-all term from any entity that was created with or by human thought (conscious or otherwise).

Types of Thoughtforms: Common thoughtforms include sigils, servitors, thoughtform companions (aka tulpas), daemons, and egregores.

Sigils: Most folks who create sigils and use sigil magic probably don't think about sigils as a type of chaos magic or a thoughtform. However, sigils actually do fall into this category. Think of a sigil as being like a simple computer program that's powered by your mind. You give the program a basic function (such as protection or prosperity) and the magical "coding" of your intentions allows the sigil to carry it out.

Servitors: If sigils are basic computer programs, then servitors are robots. They're not sentient per se, as they still require the coding and programming that comes with intention and magical energy. Yet they're much more complex than a sigil and can carry out higher-level functions & multiple tasks (e.g., drawing in people to shop on your Etsy page for prosperity, or actively guarding a space or casting a magic circle for protection).

Thoughtform companions: The widespread term for this type is "tulpa," and creating/having one of these thoughtforms is commonly referred to as "tulpamancy." Since there's also a widespread controversy over these terms, I don't use them myself. I say "creating or working with a thoughtform," and I'll refer to the entity as a thoughtform or thoughtform companion. Regardless of the terminology or beliefs behind this category, they are defined as a separate consciousness created by the thoughts and actions of a human. The human is typically referred to as the "host," since the companion is typically treated as its own separate consciousness. These are fully sentient, autonomous beings with their own thoughts and feelings. They're generally created, either intentionally or not, as friends for the host (hence my personal terminology for them).

Daemons: This category is similar to a companion, but with a different origin and function. Daemons have been documented since ancient Greece, to my knowledge. A daemon is also a sentient entity, however, they are not created intentionally by the host (although they can be brought to the forefront by the human in question). A daemon is instead a conscious entity created by, and representative of, the human being's subconscious mind. They typically serve as helpers and mental guides for the human. They are not considered separate entities; instead, they're part of you.

Egregores: These are essentially the AIs of the thoughtform world. Whereas companions and daemons exist within the human mind, egregores are similar to servitors and sigils - created by the mind, but separate from it. Egregores are often made or manifested by a group of people intentionally for a purpose. E.g., a coven may create one as a guardian or a spiritual guide. They're also often created by accident from widespread symbols - for example, branding. And nations. Every time somebody posts a picture of the Starbucks logo, you're most likely feeding an egregore, according to one theory I've heard. Do I believe that personally? Not sure. (I do have an exact source for this one available on request.) As far as I know, egregores exist with varying degrees of sentience, power, and free will depending on the individual scenario (much like artificially intelligent computers & androids in science fiction).

Pop Culture Entities / Deities: These are often referred to as PCEs or PCDs. I prefer the former but I often use them interchangeably. Some folks prefer to be more specific. For example, Raiden from Mortal Kombat is considered a god in that series, so many folks would consider him a pop culture deity. Whereas Dean Winchester is *not* a deity in Supernatural - so he could be considered a pop culture entity instead. However, this is up to the preferences of the individual entity & practitioner.

Differences between PCDs and Egregores: Egregores are ALWAYS created, intentionally or not, by human energy and thought. PCDs, on the other hand, can have a mixed origin sometimes. Some of them may be pure egregores, manifested on purpose or by accident. Others may be preexisting spirits - often nature spirits that are aligned closely to the fandom content - that latch onto a fictional work as a power source, and eventually fuse with it. And then another theory is that PCDs are *all* preexisting spirits or even deities wearing a mask - so for example, folks with this belief would say that PCD Marvel Loki is just Loki appearing in a different form/aspect. I personally think that all PCEs have a unique origin and I try not to make any assumptions.

Where do I fact check you and/or learn more?: Unfortunately, it is *really damn hard* to find good, solid information on pop culture work because it's very new. And while there's *lots* of info on chaos magic, you have to be careful to check the reliability of the source, much as is the case with demonolatry sources. Fortunately, Tumblr is a great source to find other pop culture practitioners. I personally also have *some* sources available for these topics on request, I'm just too lazy to dig through my Drive right at this moment. :)

#thoughtforms #tulpamancy #chaos magician #chaos magic #sigils #servitors #egregores #pop culture paganism #pop culture witchcraft #pop culture magic #witchy tips #witchblr

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mckitterick · 2 years ago

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The End Is Near: "News" organizations using AI to create content, firing human writers

source: X

an example "story" now comes with this warning:

A new byline showed up Wednesday on io9: “Gizmodo Bot.” The site’s editorial staff had no input or advance notice of the new AI-generator, snuck in by parent company G/O Media.

G/O Media’s AI-generated articles are riddled with errors and outdated information, and block reader comments.

“As you may have seen today, an AI-generated article appeared on io9,” James Whitbrook, deputy editor at io9 and Gizmodo, tweeted. “I was informed approximately 10 minutes beforehand, and no one at io9 played a part in its editing or publication.”

Whitbrook sent a statement to G/O Media along with “a lengthy list of corrections.” In part, his statement said, “The article published on io9 today rejects the very standards this team holds itself to on a daily basis as critics and as reporters. It is shoddily written, it is riddled with basic errors; in closing the comments section off, it denies our readers, the lifeblood of this network, the chance to publicly hold us accountable, and to call this work exactly what it is: embarrassing, unpublishable, disrespectful of both the audience and the people who work here, and a blow to our authority and integrity.”

He continued, “It is shameful that this work has been put to our audience and to our peers in the industry as a window to G/O’s future, and it is shameful that we as a team have had to spend an egregious amount of time away from our actual work to make it clear to you the unacceptable errors made in publishing this piece.”

According to the Gizmodo Media Group Union, affiliated with WGA East, the AI effort has “been pushed by” G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller, recently hired editorial director Merrill Brown, and deputy editorial director Lea Goldman.

In 2019, Spanfeller and private-equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired Gizmodo Media Group (previously Gawker Media) and The Onion.

The Writers Guild of America issued a blistering condemnation of G/O Media’s use of artificial intelligence to generate content.

“These AI-generated posts are only the beginning. Such articles represent an existential threat to journalism. Our members are professionally harmed by G/O Media’s supposed ‘test’ of AI-generated articles.”

WGA added, “But this fight is not only about members in online media. This is the same fight happening in broadcast newsrooms throughout our union. This is the same fight our film, television, and streaming colleagues are waging against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in their strike.”

The union, in its statement, said it “demands an immediate end of AI-generated articles on G/O Media sites,” which include The A.V. Club, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, The Onion, Quartz, The Root, and The Takeout.

but wait, there's more:

Just weeks after news broke that tech site CNET was secretly using artificial intelligence to produce articles, the company is doing extensive layoffs that include several longtime employees, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. The layoffs total 10 percent of the public masthead.

*

Greedy corporate sleazeballs using artificial intelligence are replacing humans with cost-free machines to barf out garbage content.

This is what end-stage capitalism looks like: An ouroborus of machines feeding machines in a downward spiral, with no room for humans between the teeth of their hungry gears.

Anyone who cares about human life, let alone wants to be a writer, should be getting out the EMP tools and burning down capitalist infrastructure right now before it's too late.

#artificial intelligence #journalism #writing #disasters #the end times #late stage capitalism

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