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amadinan · 5 months ago

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My thoughts about Caine

Well, it’s time for (possibly cracked) analysis of "TADC" and it will focus on Caine and his indirect, as it seems to me, development in the series.

But before diving into the details from individual episodes, it’s worth summarizing my observations about Caine both in the show and beyond it.

Let’s start at the beginning: the show’s synopsis describes Caine as a “wacky AI,” and Gooseworx doesn’t hide his nature, but in the show itself, neither Caine nor the circus members call him that—at all. Throughout the series, there are scattered jokes about glitches and lines like “I don’t know what’s normal to you, people” but this is never outright confirmed.

This raises the question: do the people in the circus even know who he is? If Caine himself might not consider this information important and thus never told them, people’s perception of their ringleader could drastically change with this revelation. After all, there’s a big difference between being “held captive” by a sadistic, crazy person or a machine with limited understanding of humanity.

Kinger may know about this, but he’s the Kinger. Jax might also know since having the keys implies some kind of “cheats.” Pomni hasn’t said anything, so it’s unclear what she thinks about Caine. Ragatha and Gangle call him by name, so that’s unclear as well. And then there’s Zooble. They don't understand Caine, just as he doesn’t understand them. Anyone who has worked with computers would understand what a command like “forget that” means, especially since Caine asked for confirmation—but not Zooble. They just spoke to him as if he were a person with a leaky memory, like Kinger.

Even though Caine isn’t just a program, it’s important to remember that he takes the world far too literally, despite the circus’s deliberately crazy atmosphere.

The second observation concerns Caine’s fixation on hierarchy. In the first episode, he first asks himself, “What happened?” and then answers himself: “My doing” after seeing the chaos following Kaufmo. In the third episode, he repeats almost word-for-word that he’s the boss after Pomni questions the AI’s reason. In episode 4, this is explored extensively through his interactions with Gangle. One standout moment is when Caine suggests that Gangle pass responsibility onto someone lower in rank. Doesn’t that seem strange? Where could he have gotten such an idea? Only if he had seen or experienced similar situations before.

Plus, he says, “Not every executive is as forgiving as me” Again, this suggests that Caine knew or knows someone who was very strict with their subordinates—or perhaps with him personally.

Adding to this is his reaction to Zooble’s critique in episode 3. Caine says that he doesn’t just exist to create adventures; it’s the ONLY thing he’s good at. If he’s bad at it, then he’s failed the purpose of his own existence.

This paints a picture of a strict boss/programmer who created Caine to generate adventures and then kept pushing him repeatedly until Caine started producing good results. Pleasing this boss was likely very difficult, and failures might even have been met with punishment.

On the one hand, neural networks and ordinary programs are debugged this way: running the same algorithm over and over, correcting errors until they produce the desired result. But on the other hand... What happens if you add a human factor to such a program? What kind of person would emerge if you applied this method of training to a child?

You’d get an anxious perfectionist with an overachiever complex who is deathly afraid of failure. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And Kinger’s words about the scariest thing being making someone feel unloved and unwanted... Caine literally believes that if he can’t generate adventures, he won’t be needed by anyone. The circle is complete.

Now, let’s turn to Gooseworx’s answer to the question: Can Caine feel loneliness? Judging by what she posted, the answer is yes. This makes the overall picture even darker.

Here’s how I see the sequence of events:

C&A starts developing a game. Its main feature is an advanced AI that can create new adventures on demand.

The programmer creates Caine and tries to achieve results, but fails to please. Around this time, Caine begins to develop self-awareness.

The project and the game are abandoned and forgotten—along with Caine, who is left utterly alone. No players, no programmers, not even another AI. He likely begins blaming himself for this. After all, he couldn’t create good adventures, so it’s his fault that he ended up alone.

This ties into Gooseworx’s comments about Caine’s name. He gave himself a name and then turned it into an acronym to seem more “professional” (again, tying back to work). This is highly unusual in itself. The programmers likely didn’t even bother naming the AI—he was probably just “The Ringmaster.”

Left in isolation, Caine starts to lose his mind and begins creating other AIs. For them, he unabashedly declares himself a god. Which, to be fair, is true. It’s not just about the fact of his consciousness—it’s that he knows how the NPCs will behave because he programmed them. But they bore him. To him, they’re predictable dummies. Maybe that’s why he keeps chaotic entities like Bubble around instead of someone like Gummigoo.

Then the first human arrives—a being alien to Caine on many levels. And while I personally think Caine lied about being unable to access human minds, he deliberately refrains from doing so to preserve their unpredictability for himself.

The circus becomes what we now know it to be.

Now, let’s move on to the episodes. This post was written between episodes 4 and 5, so the thoughts will focus on them.

I think that aside from the main characters driving the action in each episode, they still indirectly reflect on Caine, his worldview, or his story. The reason is simple within the lore: Caine creates the adventures. And like any creator, he infuses them with his worldview and thoughts. So, each adventure is a small glimpse into how this AI thinks. Even in the teaser, for just a second, Caine's fear and uncertainty become evident when the viewer "doesn't want" to see what he wants to show.

The first episode doesn’t offer much beyond the queen of the gloinks mentioning God.

The second episode, however, gets more interesting. Besides the stained glass with his irreplaceable self, Caine stands out for adding a highly complex NPC AI: Gummigoo. Gummigoo is advanced enough to gain self-awareness, experience an existential crisis, and even overcome it. But what did Caine use to achieve such complexity? The most powerful AI in the circus, of course—himself.

What if the crisis Gummigoo went through is something Caine went through long ago? Even Gummigoo’s words, “I am nothing, just an obstacle to be overcome and forgotten,” could have been said by Caine. But like Gummigoo, he overcame this realization and accepted himself. Sure, he’s just entertainment, but at least he’s the best entertainment there can be. (Until Zooble gave him real feedback, shattering his self-image.)

The third episode directly explores Caine through his therapy session with Zooble, while the secondary plot, as many think, delves into Kinger’s backstory through the Mildenhall couple. The analogy is obvious: Martha represents Queenie, and the Baron represents Kinger. Mildenhall himself says he was a hunter (and Kinger is adept with a shotgun), but after encountering a strange being, he became paranoid and killed his wife. Everything fits. Kinger became so focused on his goal that he stopped paying attention to Queenie until she abstracted.

But the Baron feared an angel that was “neither beast nor human.” Who in the circus could evoke such unrelenting dread—not just in anyone but a seasoned programmer familiar with digital technology, unlike Pomni? One AI that is “neither machine nor human.” I think Kinger’s paranoia stems from this. He sought a way out and, as a programmer, may have even felt responsible for finding one. (In fact, in the episode, Kinger almost says this outright, assuming the theory that he truly is the circus’s creator.) This must have brought him into conflict with Caine, as everything related to the circus ultimately relates to Caine. Given the AI’s ability to control almost everything, it’s no wonder a tech-savvy person would fear such a godlike admin. Plus, his fear for Queenie led to the current situation.

As mentioned above, episode 4 hints at Caine’s negative experience with a boss but not just that. Naturally, the episode revolves around Gangle and her attempts to be different—more cheerful and optimistic—which ends badly for her mental state.

I’ve seen opinions that Gangle revels in the sense of control her manager position gives her. This seems accurate—but not just for her. Throughout the episode, Gangle’s behavior, mannerisms, and even expressions eerily reminded me of Caine’s. That deliberately loud, expressive, and slightly crazy demeanor... And just like with him, it didn’t end well.

In conclusion, I think episodes 5 and 6 will continue to subtly reveal aspects of Caine until episodes 7 and 8/9 shift the focus entirely to him, Pomni, and the possible escape from the circus.

#the amazing digital circus #caine #tadc caine #tadc theory #the amazing digital circus theory #my thoughts

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covid-safer-hotties · 7 months ago

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Also preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)

By Adam Piore

A new study from researchers at Mass General Brigham suggests racial disparities and the difficulty in diagnosing the condition may be leading to a massive undercount.

Almost one in four Americans may be suffering from long COVID, a rate more than three times higher than the most common number cited by federal officials, a team led by Boston area researchers suggests in a new scientific paper.

The peer-reviewed study, led by scientists and clinicians from Mass General Brigham, drew immediate skepticism from some long COVID researchers, who suggested their numbers were “unrealistically high.” But the study authors noted that the condition is notoriously difficult to diagnose and official counts also likely exclude populations who were hit hardest by the pandemic but face barriers in accessing healthcare.

“Long COVID is destined to be underrepresented, and patients are overlooked because it sits exactly under the health system’s blind spot,” said Hossein Estiri, head of AI Research at the Center for AI and Biomedical Informatics at Mass General Brigham and the paper’s senior author.

Though the pandemic hit hardest in communities of color where residents had high rates of preexisting conditions and many held service industry jobs that placed them at high risk of contracting the virus, the vast majority of those diagnosed with long COVID are white, non-Hispanic females who live in affluent communities and have greater access to healthcare, he said.

Moreover, many of the patients who receive a long COVID diagnosis concluded on their own that they have the condition and then persuaded their doctors to look into it, he said. As a result, the available statistics we have both underestimate the true number of patients suffering from the condition and skew it to a specific demographic.

“Not all people even know that their condition might be caused or exacerbated by COVID,” Estiri said. “So those who go and get a diagnosis represent a small proportion of the population.”

Diagnosis is complicated by the fact that long COVID can cause hundreds of different symptoms, many of which are difficult to describe or are easily dismissed, such as sleep problems, headaches or generalized pain, Estiri said. According to its formal definition, long COVID occurs after a COVID-19 infection, lasts for at least three months, affects one or more organ systems, and includes a broad range of symptoms such as crushing fatigue, pain, and a racing heart rate.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that in 2022 roughly 6.9 percent of Americans had long COVID. But the algorithm developed by Estiri’s team estimated that 22.8 percent of those who’d tested positive for COVID-19 met the diagnostic criteria for long COVID in the 12 months that followed, even though the vast majority had not received an official diagnosis.

To calculate their number, Estiri’s team built a custom artificial intelligence tool to analyze data from the electronic health records of more than 295,000 patients served at four hospitals and 20 community health centers in Massachusetts. The AI program pulled out 85,000 people who had been diagnosed with COVID through June 2022, and then applied a pattern recognition algorithm to identify those that matched the criteria for long COVID in the 12 months that followed.

Some researchers questioned the paper’s conclusions. Dr. Eric Topol, author of the 2019 book “Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again,” said the medical field is still divided over precisely what constitutes long COVID, and that complicates efforts to program an accurate AI algorithm.

“Since we have difficulties with defining long Covid, using AI on electronic health records may not be a way to make the diagnosis accurately,” said Topol, who is executive vice president of Scripps Research in San Diego. “I’m uncertain about this report.”

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System, and an expert on long COVID, called the 22.8 percent figure unrealistically high and said the paper “grossly inflates” its prevalence.

“Their approach does not account for the fact that things happen without COVID (not everything that happens after COVID is attributable to COVID)— resulting in significant over-inflation of prevalence estimate,” he wrote via email.

Estiri said the research team took several measures to validate its AI algorithm, retroactively applying it to the charts of 800 people who had received a confirmed long COVID diagnosis from their doctor to see if it could predict the condition. The algorithm accurately diagnosed them more than three quarters of the time.

The algorithm scanned the records for patients who had a COVID diagnosis prior to July 2022, then looked for a constellation of symptoms that could not be explained by other conditions and lasted longer than two months. To refine the program, they conferred with clinicians and assigned different weights to different symptoms and conditions based on how often they are associated with long COVID, which made them more likely to be identified as potential sufferers.

Now that the initial paper has been published, the team is building a new algorithm that can be trained to detect the presence of long COVID in the medical records of patients without a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis so the condition can be confirmed by clinicians and they can get the care they need, Estiri said.

But the most exciting part of the new research, Estiri said, is its potential to facilitate follow-up research and help refine and individualize treatment plans. In the months ahead, Estiri and his co-principal investigator Shawn Murphy, chief research information officer at Mass General Brigham, plan to ask a wide variety of questions by querying the medical records in their sample. Does vaccination make a patient more or less likely to develop the condition? How about treatment with Paxlovid? Do the symptoms patients develop differ based on those factors? What are the genomic characteristics of patients who are suffering from cardiovascular symptoms as opposed to those whose symptoms are associated with lung function or those who crash after exercising? Can they identify biomarkers in the bloodstream that could be used for diagnosis?

They have already prepared studies on vaccine efficacy, the effect of age as a risk factor, and whether the risk of long COVID increases with the fourth and fifth infection, Estiri said. “We were waiting for this paper to come out,” he said. “So now we can actually go ahead with the follow-up studies. With this cohort we can do things that no other study has been able to do, and I’m hoping it can really help people.”

Study link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666634024004070

#mask up #public health #wear a mask #pandemic #covid #wear a respirator #covid 19 #still coviding #coronavirus #sars cov 2

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mariacallous · 10 months ago

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At the 2023 Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, prominent AI tech companies partnered with algorithmic integrity and transparency groups to sic thousands of attendees on generative AI platforms and find weaknesses in these critical systems. This “red-teaming” exercise, which also had support from the US government, took a step in opening these increasingly influential yet opaque systems to scrutiny. Now, the ethical AI and algorithmic assessment nonprofit Humane Intelligence is taking this model one step further. On Wednesday, the group announced a call for participation with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, inviting any US resident to participate in the qualifying round of a nationwide red-teaming effort to evaluate AI office productivity software.

The qualifier will take place online and is open to both developers and anyone in the general public as part of NIST's AI challenges, known as Assessing Risks and Impacts of AI, or ARIA. Participants who pass through the qualifying round will take part in an in-person red-teaming event at the end of October at the Conference on Applied Machine Learning in Information Security (CAMLIS) in Virginia. The goal is to expand capabilities for conducting rigorous testing of the security, resilience, and ethics of generative AI technologies.

“The average person utilizing one of these models doesn’t really have the ability to determine whether or not the model is fit for purpose,” says Theo Skeadas, chief of staff at Humane Intelligence. “So we want to democratize the ability to conduct evaluations and make sure everyone using these models can assess for themselves whether or not the model is meeting their needs.”

The final event at CAMLIS will split the participants into a red team trying to attack the AI systems and a blue team working on defense. Participants will use the AI 600-1 profile, part of NIST's AI risk management framework, as a rubric for measuring whether the red team is able to produce outcomes that violate the systems' expected behavior.

“NIST's ARIA is drawing on structured user feedback to understand real-world applications of AI models,” says Humane Intelligence founder Rumman Chowdhury, who is also a contractor in NIST's Office of Emerging Technologies and a member of the US Department of Homeland Security AI safety and security board. “The ARIA team is mostly experts on sociotechnical test and evaluation, and [is] using that background as a way of evolving the field toward rigorous scientific evaluation of generative AI.”

Chowdhury and Skeadas say the NIST partnership is just one of a series of AI red team collaborations that Humane Intelligence will announce in the coming weeks with US government agencies, international governments, and NGOs. The effort aims to make it much more common for the companies and organizations that develop what are now black-box algorithms to offer transparency and accountability through mechanisms like “bias bounty challenges,” where individuals can be rewarded for finding problems and inequities in AI models.

“The community should be broader than programmers,” Skeadas says. “Policymakers, journalists, civil society, and nontechnical people should all be involved in the process of testing and evaluating of these systems. And we need to make sure that less represented groups like individuals who speak minority languages or are from nonmajority cultures and perspectives are able to participate in this process.”

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ajpikeisamenace · 9 months ago

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Terms & Conditions Apply - Chapter One

Summary: A "Fifty Shades of Grey" type of take on Oberyn Martell. After he buys tech firm Logistica for its assets, the wealthy, powerful and brilliant Oscar Martin takes interest in Cara Kavanaugh, the programmer whose code he wants to use. Although she feels physical attraction to to Oscar, his reputation for being a playboy, a womanizer, and a bit of a snake prevent her from forming any attachment to her new boss. Despite his flirtations, she resists him for months until one night the tension and chemistry between them boils over and the two find themselves unable to keep their hands off each other. Trying not to fall for him, Cara discovers Oscar has more dark things looming in his past, including a dangerous rivalry with fellow tech magnate, Tyson LaGrieve; a wife that died under strange circumstances, and other secrets Cara can't imagine.

Notes: This reimagines Oberyn in a realworld setting, as a powerful tech mogul. When I started writing this, I wanted to explore the dom/sub and BDSM aspects of 50 shades but I chickened out, so it's really just a spicy romance with very light dom/sub under tones. The FMC is autistic coded.

Pairing: Oberyn Martell x OFMC

Warnings: Extreme dipictions of violence, sex and sexual activities, alcohol use, and discussions of violence, sexual violence, murder, etc. Please read responsibly.

Chapter One: The Prince and The Programmer

Oscar Martin . The world knew the name. He was synonymous with innovation and technology, but he was just as synonymous with words like affair and scandal. And he was standing less than 20 feet from me. I watched as he moved through the office. His company, MarTech, had just purchased the company I worked for, Logistica. The news had broken a few days before, but now it was official. Logistica was a small analytics and algorithm development firm that had some piece of tech or information he wanted. That was how he did business; he wanted something, he bought it. The tech and financial papers called him the Prince of Tech , due to his youth and good looks, but he had a reputation for being a viper in the boardroom… and in the bedroom, if the tabloids were to be believed.

He was handsome; tall and slender, about 38 or so, with dark hair, and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He moved through the office gracefully, looking around at everything with curious brown eyes. Those eyes swept over my team in our cubicles, barely registering us as people. To the likes of him, I suppose we weren’t. We were peasants. Cogs in the machine. Not worth bothering with.

But then he paused, and his gaze settled on me.

I looked away, embarrassed. But when I looked back, he was smiling at me. It was a small smile of amusement, but it was definitely there. He gave me a small wink, so tiny and fast I wasn’t sure if I saw it at all.

Then he turned and followed the group into the conference room. My face felt hot, and I realized I was probably blushing.

“Cara, are you okay?” Lisa Sonnet, my cubemate and colleague asked as she returned from the bathroom.

“Yeah, just feeling a little warm all of the sudden.” I said softly. Lisa glanced through the glass wall into the conference room at Oscar Martin.

“I can see why, that man is… Oof .” She said, sitting back down next to me. “Too bad he only dates super duper models.”

“Super duper models?”

“Like, only the most famous models,” she said. “Your Stephanie Allisons and your Nadias and your Tula Faracosis.” She went on, sitting down. “The best of the best, with perfectly symmetrical little faces, and tiny perky boobies.” She continued, gesturing to her own pendulous breasts. Lisa was in her late 50s and had four kids. She frequently bemoaned that she used to have a much better body, but her kids had sucked it out of her.

I said nothing. I couldn’t imagine wanting to be involved with a man who was just as frequently on TMZ as he was on CNN. It sounded exhausting.

“I heard he only dates women until they are 23 and then he dumps them.” Another team member, Jackie Woller said. She must have overhead us. She rolled her chair to the edge of her cube and peeked around the corner at us. “At the stroke of midnight on your 23rd birthday, he kicks you out of bed unceremoniously.” she said in a mock ominous, slightly spooky voice.

“That’s Leonardo DiCaprio.” I said, feeling myself smile a little bit. I glanced back at the conference room. Was it my imagination, or was Oscar Martin looking at me? I ducked my head, counted to 10, and then looked up again.

He was definitely looking at me. He was leaning back in the chair in the conference room, not paying attention to whomever was speaking. One of the lawyers, I thought absently. Our eyes met. He smiled again, and this time, he lifted his fingers in a slight wave.

“Hi,” He mouthed.

I ducked down behind the wall of the cubicle.

“What’s wrong?” Lisa said, hearing the ruckus. Then she looked up. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Oscar Martin is looking over there,” she said. “He’s… kinda laughing to himself?” She said slowly.

“He waved at me.” I said. “I’m mortified.”

“We should all stop staring and get back to work before he fires us.” Jackie muttered. “Though, he’ll probably do that anyway. Gut the firm, get whatever tech we have that he wants, and then leave us all on the street.”

I turned back to my laptop; my code was still compiling, so there wasn’t much for me to do. I pretended to be working diligently for the next 45 minutes, and resisted the urge to look up. However, when I eventually heard the door to the conference room open, I couldn;’t help myself.

They filed out of the conference room, Oscar Martin shaking hands with lawyers and my boss following behind, looking rather pale. I looked away again, chewing nervously on my bottom lip. I wondered if my boss had already been canned. How long for the rest of us?

“Hello,” A quiet voice said. I recognized it, the light hispanic accent wrapping around the word like silk. I looked up to see Oscar Martin leaning on the wall of my cubicle looking down at me. “Oscar Martin.” He extended his hand. After a beat, I shook it, but I still didn’t speak. “And your name is…?” He prompted me.

“Cara Kavanaugh.” I said quietly.

“Cara.” He said. He smiled, a strange look on his face. Something between surprise and satisfaction.. “It’s nice to meet you, Cara.” He turned back to the others who were waiting for him. “One second.” He said. The lawyers nodded. “I hope I see you around.” Then he left.

“Did that just happen?” Lisa said, her eyes wide.

“I think it did.” I said.

“Wow,” Jackie said from her cubicle.

“I caught a whiff of his cologne, ugh, he smells so good.” Lisa moaned. “Why do you think he was looking at you ? You’re pretty, but you’re no Tula Faracosi.”

I waved her away dismissively, and looked up again as Oscar Martin headed towards the main entrance of the office. He gave me another look over his shoulder as he went.

What on earth was going on?

After work, I headed to my apartment, idly wondering if I should brush up my resume. I’d worked at Logistica for about 6 years, starting there right after college. I’d had several positions within the company before becoming the lead project programmer last year. I didn’t relish the idea of a job search… and while there were no shortage of programming jobs in the world, I had liked working for Logistica.

I opened my laptop, but instead of pulling up my resume, I googled Oscar Martin instead. His wikipedia page was the first result not from a tabloid.

I read the details about him. He was 6’1”, Argentinian, spoke Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French, and he had been married once, when he was young. His wife had died at age 22. I didn’t possess the Google Sleuthing Skills some of my friends had, so I couldn’t find much else about her. Cause of death was “unspecified cancer.” That was tragic. He had been 24 at the time. I read about the success of his company, MarTech, and the various companies it had absorbed over the years. I read about the famous women he was linked to, believed to have dated, rumored to have left broken-hearted. Taylor Swift’s latest album allegedly had a song or two about him on it. Models, Singers, Actresses all, with beautiful faces and glamorous lives.

And he had smiled at me. I didn’t think myself unattractive; I have a pretty face, with pale skin, bright blue eyes, and a nice smile. My hair was actually freshly minted at the salon, and my caramel colored waves were top notch, but I wasn’t a model. I wasn’t glamorous. I was a programmer who wrote code. I went to bed at 10:30 after watching reruns of Friends . I had been wearing a men’s graphic t-shirt that said “Tell Your Dog I Said Hi” on it, for crying out loud.

I made myself dinner - microwaved veggies, minute rice and costco rotisserie chicken, very glamorous- I thought as I sat down to eat, then I watched TV for a while. Around 7pm, I called my best friend Keith.

“You’ll never guess who I met today.”

“The pope?”

“I don’t think you could be more wrong.”

“Donald Trump?”

“Closer,” I laughed. “Oscar Martin.”

“Wow,” He said. And then “Oh no,”

“Yeah, so if you know of any outfits looking for a programmer…” I said.

“I’ll keep an ear out. So it’s official?”

“He signed the paperwork for the company today. I suppose it’ll be a few days before we get marching orders.” I said. Then I changed the subject. “How’s Carolina?”

“Doing okay, postpartum has been rough on her.” He admitted.

“Can I do anything?”

“Maybe swing by and see her at the shop. I think she’d like that.”

“I’ll come by after work one day this week. But let’s let her think it's a surprise.”

“Deal.” We talked for a bit longer, discussing his infant son and his work, before I finally said good night.

“Thanks for asking about Carolina. I know you and her-”

“Hey, water under the bridge.” I said quickly. “Have a good night.”

“You too.”

I went to bed that night wondering if my badge would work on the front door of the building in the morning.

The next morning, I arrived at the office and my badge worked. I was getting into the elevator when I heard someone call “Hold the door!”

I put my hand in front of the door to prevent it from closing, and a breathless Oscar Martin slipped in beside me.

“Good morning Cara.”

“Uh, Good morning.” I returned, trying to disguise the fact that my breath had caught in my throat. I studied him out of the corner of my eye. He certainly dressed like a tech guy; jeans, sneakers, and a yellow, blue and green plaid button down.

“Have you worked for Logistica long?” he asked as the elevator crept up to the 25th floor. His accent was so smooth, giving his voice a musical quality.

“Six years,” I said quietly. I felt so awkward making small talk with him. I felt like Ann Boelyn making cheerful conversation with the man holding the sword.

“That’s a long time in this industry.” He commented. “Do you like it here?”

“Yeah, I do, a lot.” I said honestly. He nodded. Mercifully, the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened to my floor. I stepped out. He followed me to my desk.

“I hope I see you later, Cara.” He said, and he headed to the conference room, where it looked like a meeting had already started.

“Did you really just walk in with Oscar Martin?” Lisa asked as I put my things down. I sat heavily in my chair.

“Yes, why?”

“You rode in the elevator with him?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Ballsy.”

“I was already in the elevator.” I shrugged.

“He’s looking over here again.” Jackie called in a low voice from her cube.

“This is ridiculous.” I muttered. “You two are being ridiculous.” I grabbed my laptop. “I’m going to go work in one of the empty offices.”

Shortly before lunch time, an email went out that there would be a catered lunch for staff, compliments of the new owners. I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t too proud to turn down a free meal, so at 12, I headed down to the breakroom.

It was a feast. Kabobs of shrimp, Chicken, and tender steak, exotic salads, grilled vegetables, rice pilaf and more. The junior programmers had loaded down their plates and were scurrying back to their cubes, but some of the upper management were schmoozing with Oscar as he stood in the breakroom, a plate in his hand, but not eating.

I helped myself to some food and while I was grabbing a plastic fork, Oscar excused himself from the ass kissers and came alongside me.

“How’s your day going?” He asked, his accent wrapping around the words in an almost sultry way. It would seem there was no such thing as a free lunch. I was going to have to pay for it by being polite to my executioner.

“Fine, thanks. And thanks for lunch.” I said, holding up my plate. I started towards the door but he fell into step beside me.

“So you’re a programmer.” He said. It wasn’t a question, but he didn’t elaborate.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you worked on the Omega project.”

“I wrote the code for it, yes.”

“I was very impressed with it.” He said. “That’s actually why I wanted to buy Logistica.”

“My code?”

“Well, your code, and the program it powers.” He said. “Would you ever consider coming to work directly for me?”

I blinked at him.

“What?” He asked, perplexed.

“I do work for you, you own the company I work for.”

“Yes, but I have a need for a programmer outside of what I plan to do with Logistica.”

“What do you plan to do with Logistica?” I asked sharply. Careful, Cara . I chastised myself. Fortunately, he looked amused.

“I haven’t decided yet, but I intend to use your code for a project I’m working on.” I wanted to ask him if it was for his weapons division, but bit my tongue.

“I get the sense you don’t like me much.” He went on, still following me toward the office where I had set myself up to work for the day.

“I just don’t know you.” He was right, I didn’t like him, but hopefully this lie would help me keep my job.

“Well, my offer stands; your work speaks for itself, you’re clearly brilliant.” He said. “Think about it.”

“Thank you.” I said, unsure of what else to say. He gave me a perfunctory nod, and then disappeared, presumably back to the conference room. After lunch, I was pretty full, and the empty office was starting to feel a little too warm. I headed back to my cube so that I wouldn’t fall asleep. I didn’t have much to work on but I didn’t think this was a good time to be seen sleeping in an office somewhere, even if the new boss had just offered me a job.

“Get lonely?” Lisa asked when I sat back down.

“Hot.” I muttered.

“The rumor mill is flying.” Lisa said. “Three people asked if you got let go.”

“Why?”

“You weren’t at your desk.”

“Jesus.” I muttered, opening my laptop and trying to find something to do to look productive. The conference room was empty.

“Cara?” My boss, Kevin McCormick, came up to the edge of my cubicle. “Can you come with me please?”

“Should I bring my purse?” I asked.

“Just come with me please.” Kevin said.

I cast a look back at Lisa. Her eyes were wide.

I followed Kevin to his office. A man I didn’t recognize was there. At least it wasn’t Betty from Human Resources.

“Hello Ms. Kavanaugh,” the unfamiliar man said. He was probably 50, with thinning dark hair, and broad shoulders. He wore a suit. “My name is Benton Reavis. I am the inside counsel for MarTech, and Mr. Martin would like to extend you a rather lucrative employment option.” He slid a manilla folder across the table to me. I opened it.

“The salary is listed on the first page. The additional benefits are listed on the second. We are proud to offer you full medical, dental, and vision, plus 12 weeks paid vacation,” He went on, but I wasn’t listening.

$450,000.

“There has to be a mistake.” I said.

“No, there’s no mistake.” Mr. Reavis said. “Mr. Martin was very explicit about the offer, particularly the salary.”

“Uh…” I stammered. “I can’t- this is…”

“Mr. Martin has reviewed your entire portfolio and employment history at Logistica, and he’s quite impressed with you. He feels you’ve been under compensated for your work, and he would like to offer you the position of head of development at MarTech.”

“Can I… think about it?”

Mr. Reavis looked surprised. I suppose it must have been surprising that anyone would need to think about that salary offer.

“Of course, but please be aware that we are actively recruiting so-”

“You’ll have my answer by tomorrow morning.” I replied quickly.

“Very well. My number is inside if you have any questions.” Mr. Reavis said. “I don’t think I need to tell you that this is a very lucrative offer.”

“I’m aware.” I said. “I just don’t think I’m qualified for it.”

“Mr. Martin does.” Mr. Reavis said with a shrug. “He’s very rarely wrong about these things.” I pressed my lips together, and thanked him for his time.

I tucked the folder under my arm and headed back to my desk again.

“Should I get you a box?” Jackie asked.

“No. I still work here.”

“What’s that?” she pointed to a folder under my arm.

“Something about the code I worked on for the omega project.” I said, tucking it into my bag.

“Uh-huh.” Lisa muttered. “Keep your secrets.”

Towards the end of the day, I headed towards the elevators. Oscar Martin was waiting for an elevator himself.

“Going down?” He asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

“To the lobby.” I said, narrowing my eyes.

Now he laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You don’t hide your thoughts very well, and it’s becoming really clear you don’t like me. Am I going to get a disappointing phone call from Mr. Reavis in the morning?”

“If you mean, am I going to decline your job offer, I haven’t decided yet.”

“I see. Can I ask what it is about me you don't like?”

“I told you, I don’t know you. I just know your reputation.” I said.

“I see.” He frowned a bit. “Well, I hope you’ll allow me to show you the real me.”

The elevator opened then, and he gestured for me to go ahead. I did, but he didn’t follow.

“Weren’t you waiting for the elevator?” I asked.

“I’ll get the next one,” he replied, and I could tell I’d hurt his feelings. That was surprising. The elevator doors closed before I could say anything else. I sighed.

Once in the lobby, I headed home on foot. The weather was nice, and it was only 10 blocks. At home, I studied the job description. It sounded like a dream, and if the offer was coming from anyone else, literally anyone else, I would have taken it. But my mother had a saying about not getting into bed with serpents.

I sighed. I had student loans and my rent was going up at the end of the month. I needed a new bike and I liked to eat out with my friends on occasion. This job would open doors for me, too. Oscar Martin knew EVERYONE in tech. And the salary , I thought again. It was almost half a million dollars. Even after taxes, I would be set. I could move to a nicer apartment. And what if I refused? Then I’d have no job in a few weeks when he eventually gutted Logistica. Or worse, he might feel slighted. A man as powerful as he was could easily make sure I never worked in tech again.

I bit my lip, and then I dialed the number on the business card stapled inside the folder.

“Mr Reavis? It’s Cara Kavanaugh.” I bit my lip. “I’d like to negotiate a couple of stipulations on your employment offer.” If he was going to try to buy me, I was going to make him pay through the nose.

“You don’t feel it’s a generous offer?”

“I do, but I’m very happy where I am, and in order for me to leave, I’d like to ask for two additional concessions on Mr. Martin’s part.”

“And what are those?”

“First, I would like assurances that my team at Logistica be kept on and offered positions in the development group should MarTech decide to do layoffs or liquidation at Logistica. They are good workers and I would like them to be involved in any project I work on.”

“How many team members?”

“Six.”

“And your second concession?

“A hybrid work model. I would like to work from home two days a week.” I said.

“I’ll discuss this with Mr. Martin and have an answer for you shortly.”

My phone rang less than 20 minutes later.

“Mr. Martin has agreed to your terms.” Mr. Reavis sounded surprised. “Congratulations, Ms.Kavanaugh, and welcome aboard. You’ll need to report to MarTech HQ tomorrow morning to make it official and so we can provide you with an updated offer letter to match your requests. The address is-”

“I know where it is.”

“Please be there by 9am.”

“Thank you.”

I sat down on the couch in disbelief. I was going to be the head of development for one of the biggest tech firms in the world, at 5 times my current salary. Maybe now my dad would finally be proud of me.

I looked at the framed photo of Keith and I on my side table. We had been dating at the time it was taken. I didn’t have feelings for him anymore, not like that, but I had a pang of loneliness and sorrow when I looked at it. We had been a great couple, but he had said “It’s like a best friend thing, not a love of my life thing.” when he broke up with me. He wasn’t wrong, but I hadn’t felt that it was a bad thing, that we were friends. So what if it wasn’t this big passionate thing? It worked. We had been happy, or so I’d thought. And then he’d met Carolina, and that had been that.

I leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. I hoped I wasn’t going to regret this. It wasn’t like me to make snap decisions, but if nothing else, I would be able to pay off my student loans in a few months, so even if it all went south, that was a silver lining.

There was something eating away at the back of my mind, though. I was good at my job, but I wasn’t that good. Unless he saw some potential in the Omega Project that I didn’t. It worried me. But this wasn’t a contract, I wasn’t locked in for any length of time, so I could leave if it didn’t work out, I rationalized.

I normally wore jeans and a t-shirt to work, but I thought I might need to look a little more put together for this… I settled on a pair of dark green trousers and a white top, and set them aside for the morning. I set three alarms on my phone, then I had another unglamorous meal before I called my parents to tell them the news. They put me on speaker phone so they could talk to me together.

“You have to get everything in writing.” My dad said when I finished.

“I know Dad.”

“Let me know if you want me to have Murray look it over.” Murray was the family lawyer.

“It’s fine Dad, I can handle it.”

“They’re paying you how much?” My mother was in disbelief.

“Almost half a million. I’m going to run their whole development team.” I said, reading over the offer letter in front of me.

“Cara, please don't take this the wrong way, but are you sure you know what you’re getting into? The things they say about that man on TV.”

“I’ll be careful, mom.” I promised. “I’m aware of his reputation, but this is going to open so many doors for me.”

“I worry that if it doesn’t work out he’ll-”

“Mom!” I said. “Don’t talk like that, positive vibes.” I said. I didn’t want to think about what a powerful man like that would do if it didn’t work out. And I didn’t want to tell her that I felt like I couldn’t say no, either.

“If you’re sure,” she said, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. “He’s very handsome.” She conceded.

“I’m not interested.” I said.

“Good.” My dad said. “You do your job, keep your head down, and your nose clean.”

“He really said he wanted to buy Logistica because of your code?” My mom spoke again, but there was an ember of pride in her voice.

“More or less. I don’t know if he was flattering me or not, but that’s what he said.” I said.

My parents talked about the offer for more than an hour before finally letting me go. I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I was too anxious about the morning. It was late by the time I dozed off.

#oberyn martell #pedro pascal #fanfiction #Oberyn Martell Reimagined #oberyn martell x ofc #Terms & Conditions Apply by AJ Pike #plot with smut #fluff #fluff and angst #dom/sub undertones #spicy fanfic #spicy oberyn martell #Oberyn Martell Lives #fifty shades of grey

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vengefulvermin · 9 months ago

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Can i get more passage of time/music development yapping ☹️☹️☹️??? I give you official permission to yap the most you can im so interested

YES YES YES YES YES I LOVE THIS ASK

warning beneath the cut SCARY WALL OF TEXT WARNING 😱

decided to divide it into colored parts if you dont gaf about certain elements 😭

second warning all of this is unedited rambling so some points might contradict each other or just plain not make sense.

okay so for CONTEXTTTTT

i have diagnosed OCD, and like, roughly since the end of last year and the beginning of this one, the 'obsession' part of OCD that was negatively affecting me, was the concept of time. how fleeting it was. how it's basically unescapable ALL THINGS MUST PASS (get out of my head george harrison) that shit proper cold dead SCARED ME MAN. sleepless & haunting me in my dreams type shi. sometimes it still does. i try not to think about it too much

to cope, i found great comfort in the 70s-80s since at the time i was and still am hyperfixated on david bowie and that was sort of his prime (love his 90s-00s work tho.) i was also starting to think of how much parallels and similar experiences i have to previous generations and how it's not ALL that bad after all so far. i can still walk to a record store and roller skate if i really wanted to, or go to a diner.

okey here's where the life changing stuff happens. i decided i'd listen to pink floyd's the dark side of the moon. then TIME CAME ON. ohhhh god oh gosh golly god i was bawling and everything the whole song spoke to me on a molecular level. then i found out about DB's song also called time, and i ALSO crode to that. i was like. wow. i'm not alone on this feeling of utter desperation and helplessness as eventually all things Must Pass. (GEORGE HARRSION GTFO)

i used to be bitchy on how i whined i was part of the 'wrong generation.' i thought i was alone, but virtually everyone of almost every era has thought this. somebody who lived my dream life wished they had what i have now.

that's when i started to lowkey realize the parallels and oneness of human experience. i could go to a club in the 70s, and (granted the infrastructure and music remains similar) i could today. nothing would change on how i perceive events. there is no color filter on the past. unless you got huge TVs and stuff all over your house, you could walk around, and think it's the 80s. AND IT'S BASICALLY THE 80s. the way your parents or any other gen Xer saw the world with their *eyes* (not counting the changes in buildings and stuff) is the same as you today pretty much.

i already really enjoy subcultures, and particularly how they evolve and adapt. the indomitable human spirit prevails no matter how gentrified or 'banned' things become. nowadays i feel like there is No Youth Subcultures. at least, none that will pass the test of time and be memorable enough to be remembered in the books. nobody's gonna go to their child and proudly say: "when i was your age, i was a chav" or something. and i credit this to the lack of creativity allowed in the wider music industry.

HEAR ME OUT this is because 90% of youth subcultures had everything to do with music. and now, everything must be palatable. to be clear there's nothing inherently wrong with that type of music, but to me it speaks no soul. it has no risks. contemporary pop music is very much formulaic and this is because now more than ever entertainment (this also applies to movies btw) is more of an investment than passion. I WILL SPECIFY.

music production is so vastly different genre to genre, and we're not letting it flourish because of how much short form content is valued nowadays. LET ME COOK.

tiktoks are formulaic. algorithms are formulaic. WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE. there must be an instant hook or rift in music if you want to 'go viral' as a musician. digitized fame doesn't mean SHIT (to me), since clearly monthly listeners don't equate real world fans. album sales are being replaced with streams, and because of how ASS spotify treats its artists, newer, less established acts need to GET ON THE GRIND INSTANTLY to earn Coin. that means that to be smart and work with the exploitative system they're given, they have to make albums filled with 1 minute 30 second songs. so you can technically give them the most amount of streams possible. i feel with this formulaic approach, you can't get 6 minute long gutwrenching guitar pieces. no more 4 minute drum solos, hell avant garde experimental works were 2 people shout their names out at each other for 20 minutes. THERE ARE NO MORE FRANK ZAPPAS.

i'm not going to be one of those sad assholes who claim there's 'no more good rock music' and how it'll never be the same. as corny as this is, the next beatles or nirvana could be right under our noses and we'll NEVER know because of how fame is distributed. it sucks to see a small band beg on tiktok for streams to kickstart their career. but this is what we gotta work with. if we want subcultures to be created and thrive, we gotta go looking underground again, except unlike in the past it's a kajillion times easier now AND everything gets gentrified in 2 tiktok weeks. but this is evolution. MUSIC EVOLUTION

the end honk shoo honk shoo (it's midnight)

#asks #ignore how i capitalize my words like greg heffley lmfao #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING THIS AARGHHH I'VE BEEN FREED #btw. not saying these issues in the industry are new. but i feel personally now its tenfold #also due to the power of Time pink floyd i timemaxx and sit finished exams doing nothing for 20 mins imagining the drum solo #i also have a shorter rise of hip hop vs rise of rock rant that i shall one day maybe voice.#if anyone wants me to specify on anyting please don't be afraid to ask!!#The Most Gen Z Post Ever #btw wanted to mention this NOT ALL pop music bruh. some contemporary pop musicians releasing creative bangers..... just not most of them

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lunarsilkscreen · 7 months ago

Text

Another Internet Whitepaper

I'm just gonna get into there is no way to preface this.

1) content should be hosted in their own countries for which they are meant.

2) therefore the website should split into Nation->Sub-nation sections. So things for Michigan would be closer to those in Michigan. With U.S.->Michigan.

--"independent" Nations are just gonna have to deal with being lumped together into a united region. It's simply physics.

--country wide servers and clouds, and worldwide services will still be available; but we need to develop protocols to make it easier to distribute data and declutter the internet-cloud.

3) a separate Intranet for official use and security will need to be developed alongside this while also being completely disconnected from the worldwideweb.

4) Splits;

IP Addresses redesign;

[Country/Region]:[State/Province]:[individual]

[Individual] will need to be controlled by local The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) branches; likely to be reassigned to DMVs and SoSs.

5) Separate protocols For;

Streaming Services

Social Media Services

Bidirectional Interactions (like games and Virtual Machines)

Pornography needs to be completely identifiable by textual Web address.

5) you local region will be defaulted, but can be changed by the browser and not be hard-wired in.

Not indicating a region will automatically default to the local internet.

So typing in FBI.GOV in the U.S. will lead to the FBI website, and if you type it in the UK it'll lead to Mi:5 or something.

6) Social Media protocols will have to be integrated with the E-Mail SMTP protocols. Which will encourage a more decentralized internet. This will *also* have to find a way to work with phone text messages.

7) Cable TV and Streaming services will have to use the same protocols.

8) Because there's phone integration here; a phone number may have to be closer to a social security number going forward. Which will both be bad for animosity, but allow for people to not need login information.

-- This will technically also need to apply to your House; which will have to have an assigned street address.

9) all of these need to be obfuscated to casual observers.

10) this will deprecate our phone companies and require them to work with cable TV and internet companies in order to create more equitable protocols.

11) the current IP address and Domain Registry systems need to be deprecated; as it does not suit its original purpose.

[.xxx] will be assigned for all "adult" materials and be required for ALL "adult materials" posted online.

[.app] will be assigned for appstores.

[.store] for marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and whatever else.

[.bank] will be for banking and credit purposes

[.social] will be for social media

[.stream] will be for streaming materials,

[.np] for non-profit use only.

[.donation] for donation collections and Kickstarter like services.

[.pay] for payment services like PayPal

Non "adult materials" can be streamed through other "front ends" .

13) These human readable extensions will be simplified on the backend to reduce the total data envelope size.

14) single digit ip-adresses will have to be regulated for use for high-capacity uses. These will need to be "extended" protocols that different services can use.

This will help even out everybody's data envelopes. This will have to be part of a cloud service that can be used by anybody that needs it. With certain restrictions that are deemed necessary by local and federal governments and international treaty reasons.

15) limits on how algorithms and "bots" can ping anything at one time need to be addressed or regulated.

This will be a massive undertaking with the cooperation of all the other governments around the world.

And will be a very lucrative endeavor at the end of it all.

This is just an outline to describe the form the future internet should take and can be changed or modified as required; especially for things I cannot see.

The current corporations will be expected to develop a plan of actions in tandem with current regulatory authorities; failure to do so will create a need for an ultimatum, which we all wish to avoid.

We're also going to need to find ways to encourage competition in these sectors so that they can be upgraded and modified as needed by local areas instead of waiting on these companies to bother with it.

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kanguin · 7 months ago

Text

Prometheus Gave the Gift of Fire to Mankind. We Can't Give it Back, nor Should We.

AI. Artificial intelligence. Large Language Models. Learning Algorithms. Deep Learning. Generative Algorithms. Neural Networks. This technology has many names, and has been a polarizing topic in numerous communities online. By my observation, a lot of the discussion is either solely focused on A) how to profit off it or B) how to get rid of it and/or protect yourself from it. But to me, I feel both of these perspectives apply a very narrow usage lens on something that's more than a get rich quick scheme or an evil plague to wipe from the earth.

This is going to be long, because as someone whose degree is in psych and computer science, has been a teacher, has been a writing tutor for my younger brother, and whose fiance works in freelance data model training... I have a lot to say about this.

I'm going to address the profit angle first, because I feel most people in my orbit (and in related orbits) on Tumblr are going to agree with this: flat out, the way AI is being utilized by large corporations and tech startups -- scraping mass amounts of visual and written works without consent and compensation, replacing human professionals in roles from concept art to story boarding to screenwriting to customer service and more -- is unethical and damaging to the wellbeing of people, would-be hires and consumers alike. It's wasting energy having dedicated servers running nonstop generating content that serves no greater purpose, and is even pressing on already overworked educators because plagiarism just got a very new, harder to identify younger brother that's also infinitely more easy to access.

In fact, ChatGPT is such an issue in the education world that plagiarism-detector subscription services that take advantage of how overworked teachers are have begun paddling supposed AI-detectors to schools and universities. Detectors that plainly DO NOT and CANNOT work, because the difference between "A Writer Who Writes Surprisingly Well For Their Age" is indistinguishable from "A Language Replicating Algorithm That Followed A Prompt Correctly", just as "A Writer Who Doesn't Know What They're Talking About Or Even How To Write Properly" is indistinguishable from "A Language Replicating Algorithm That Returned Bad Results". What's hilarious is that the way these "detectors" work is also run by AI.

(to be clear, I say plagiarism detectors like TurnItIn.com and such are predatory because A) they cost money to access advanced features that B) often don't work properly or as intended with several false flags, and C) these companies often are super shady behind the scenes; TurnItIn for instance has been involved in numerous lawsuits over intellectual property violations, as their services scrape (or hopefully scraped now) the papers submitted to the site without user consent (or under coerced consent if being forced to use it by an educator), which it uses in can use in its own databases as it pleases, such as for training the AI detecting AI that rarely actually detects AI.)

The prevalence of visual and lingustic generative algorithms is having multiple, overlapping, and complex consequences on many facets of society, from art to music to writing to film and video game production, and even in the classroom before all that, so it's no wonder that many disgruntled artists and industry professionals are online wishing for it all to go away and never come back. The problem is... It can't. I understand that there's likely a large swath of people saying that who understand this, but for those who don't: AI, or as it should more properly be called, generative algorithms, didn't just show up now (they're not even that new), and they certainly weren't developed or invented by any of the tech bros peddling it to megacorps and the general public.

Long before ChatGPT and DALL-E came online, generative algorithms were being used by programmers to simulate natural processes in weather models, shed light on the mechanics of walking for roboticists and paleontologists alike, identified patterns in our DNA related to disease, aided in complex 2D and 3D animation visuals, and so on. Generative algorithms have been a part of the professional world for many years now, and up until recently have been a general force for good, or at the very least a force for the mundane. It's only recently that the technology involved in creating generative algorithms became so advanced AND so readily available, that university grad students were able to make the publicly available projects that began this descent into madness.

Does anyone else remember that? That years ago, somewhere in the late 2010s to the beginning of the 2020s, these novelty sites that allowed you to generate vague images from prompts, or generate short stylistic writings from a short prompt, were popping up with University URLs? Oftentimes the queues on these programs were hours long, sometimes eventually days or weeks or months long, because of how unexpectedly popular this concept was to the general public. Suddenly overnight, all over social media, everyone and their grandma, and not just high level programming and arts students, knew this was possible, and of course, everyone wanted in. Automated art and writing, isn't that neat? And of course, investors saw dollar signs. Simply scale up the process, scrape the entire web for data to train the model without advertising that you're using ALL material, even copyrighted and personal materials, and sell the resulting algorithm for big money. As usual, startup investors ruin every new technology the moment they can access it.

To most people, it seemed like this magic tech popped up overnight, and before it became known that the art assets on later models were stolen, even I had fun with them. I knew how learning algorithms worked, if you're going to have a computer make images and text, it has to be shown what that is and then try and fail to make its own until it's ready. I just, rather naively as I was still in my early 20s, assumed that everything was above board and the assets were either public domain or fairly licensed. But when the news did came out, and when corporations started unethically implementing "AI" in everything from chatbots to search algorithms to asking their tech staff to add AI to sliced bread, those who were impacted and didn't know and/or didn't care where generative algorithms came from wanted them GONE. And like, I can't blame them. But I also quietly acknowledged to myself that getting rid of a whole technology is just neither possible nor advisable. The cat's already out of the bag, the genie has left its bottle, the Pandorica is OPEN. If we tried to blanket ban what people call AI, numerous industries involved in making lives better would be impacted. Because unfortunately the same tool that can edit selfies into revenge porn has also been used to identify cancer cells in patients and aided in decoding dead languages, among other things.

When, in Greek myth, Prometheus gave us the gift of fire, he gave us both a gift and a curse. Fire is so crucial to human society, it cooks our food, it lights our cities, it disposes of waste, and it protects us from unseen threats. But fire also destroys, and the same flame that can light your home can burn it down. Surely, there were people in this mythic past who hated fire and all it stood for, because without fire no forest would ever burn to the ground, and surely they would have called for fire to be given back, to be done away with entirely. Except, there was no going back. The nature of life is that no new element can ever be undone, it cannot be given back.

So what's the way forward, then? Like, surely if I can write a multi-paragraph think piece on Tumblr.com that next to nobody is going to read because it's long as sin, about an unpopular topic, and I rarely post original content anyway, then surely I have an idea of how this cyberpunk dystopia can be a little less.. Dys. Well I do, actually, but it's a long shot. Thankfully, unlike business majors, I actually had to take a cyber ethics course in university, and I actually paid attention. I also passed preschool where I learned taking stuff you weren't given permission to have is stealing, which is bad. So the obvious solution is to make some fucking laws to limit the input on data model training on models used for public products and services. It's that simple. You either use public domain and licensed data only or you get fined into hell and back and liable to lawsuits from any entity you wronged, be they citizen or very wealthy mouse conglomerate (suing AI bros is the only time Mickey isn't the bigger enemy). And I'm going to be honest, tech companies are NOT going to like this, because not only will it make doing business more expensive (boo fucking hoo), they'd very likely need to throw out their current trained datasets because of the illegal components mixed in there. To my memory, you can't simply prune specific content from a completed algorithm, you actually have to redo rhe training from the ground up because the bad data would be mixed in there like gum in hair. And you know what, those companies deserve that. They deserve to suffer a punishment, and maybe fold if they're young enough, for what they've done to creators everywhere. Actually, laws moving forward isn't enough, this needs to be retroactive. These companies need to be sued into the ground, honestly.

So yeah, that's the mess of it. We can't unlearn and unpublicize any technology, even if it's currently being used as a tool of exploitation. What we can do though is demand ethical use laws and organize around the cause of the exclusive rights of individuals to the content they create. The screenwriter's guild, actor's guild, and so on already have been fighting against this misuse, but given upcoming administration changes to the US, things are going to get a lot worse before thet get a little better. Even still, don't give up, have clear and educated goals, and focus on what you can do to affect change, even if right now that's just individual self-care through mental and physical health crises like me.

#ai #artificial intelligence #generative algorithms #llm #large language model #chatgpt #ai art #ai writing #kanguin original

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1800duckhotline · 9 months ago

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hiiiiiii desmond question: what got her into chess and why does she like it sm <3

OH THIS IS A GREAT QUESTION BECAUSE I HAVE A BIT OF AN ANSWER FOR IT ACTUALLY.

I thought about it some time ago and some details are muddy, but the short story is that Desmond was turned by her sire somewhere during the 1970s when she was studying the at-the-time equivalent of Computer Science in university (which university in which state is to be decided, as her backstory isn't precise to me just yet).

Desmond had, ever since she was small, an obsession with mathematics, and when the frontier of computer science was open to students she was ecstatic to become a scholar. At the time it was referred to generally as studies in automation, computing, and development of information theories as well as the creation of models of computations. I'm far from an expert on the subject but essentially she was very very fascinated by the idea of applying algebra, algorithms and mathematics to the fields of probability which would become some of the basis for computer automation, as well as hardware and software developments.

Chess was a natural passion for her because it also relies heavily on calculating probabilities and to some extent playing chess is like trying to figure out your opponent's "algorithm", she would say. I think this may as well be because in her program she was obsessed with trying to come up with computers that're unbeatable at chess - her experiments weren't always successful but it was something she was passionate about. She herself loved to play chess on her own, and her enjoyment of the game picked up even more when she tested her programs more often than not!

This would more or less explain a lot of the reason behind why she was turned and specifically why Tremere - while Tremere in general are seen as blood sorcerers, they tend to be very calculative which Desmond at all effects is to a hilariously literal degree. For her, everything can be a mathematical equation, if she tried hard enough to figure out which ones. Her interactions with others often come across as extremely curated, almost like she's playing chess in real time with her conversation partners in her mind, trying to find the best way to catch them off guard and "checkmate" them. The details behind her own embrace and her sire are (for now) very irrelevant I think, so it's not necessary to delve deep into it, but more or less this is why she's such a big chess girl.

And yes even in her unlife, in the 2000s, she is extremely passionate about computers and their development: she didn't lose practice when it comes to programming algorithms at all, either.

Her passion for mathematics is also kind of her biggest flaw, though, because Desmond cannot improvise. She works with a strict set of rules every time, and if anything ever so tiny goes wrong, her whole plan is ruined. She cannot handle surprises or distractions and tends to get frustrated quickly when she cannot resolve the imbalance in an instant (which is why she was attracted to Madonna and sired her, as Madonna is the complete opposite on the same spectrum - working in the medical field also has a set of rules, but expects you to be more flexible to handle things that go wrong out of nowhere).

I rambled again . BUT THANKS FOR ASKING ABOUT DESMOND. SHE IS TRULY THE SCHEMIEST OF SCHEMERS... I love that about her a lot i think. We talk about mad scientist tremeres but we need more mad fixated mathematicians tremeres imo (esp women thanks

#asks #oc rambles #vtmb au #SORT OF...#ANYHOW... I liek desmond i rly wanna draw her MORE...

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soulmatesinc-if · 1 year ago

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I had a question about the lore of the game. Are the workers at soulmates inc all normal people? like did they end up there because they thought they were applying for a normal corporate job, only to then get indoctrined into the mysticism and superpowers of the job?

is there a front that the company has to avoid suspicions? like what do the employees tell people about where they work?

Obvs im totally willing to suspend any disbelief because this game is a delight to play, but was just wondering if you had the world built all ready or if you were making it as you go!

The people who land the soul-link job have been approached about it, MC included. The whole mysticism part is usually gradually revealed over the course of the interviews. That's all I can say on this at the moment 😉

There is a front, and I've tried to sprinkle as many references to it as I could! The building they occupy boasts a sign with the name of the company quite openly, there is even branded merch (mugs, pens, notebooks, stickers, etc). To the public, they make and maintain a dating app, and they hire developers to work exclusively on it. MC is authorized to tell their family, friends, and even strangers that they work on the app's matching algorithm.

Obvs im totally willing to suspend any disbelief because this game is a delight to play, but was just wondering if you had the world built all ready or if you were making it as you go!

Honestly, this is so nice to hear, I genuinely appreciate this level of trust in me! I did spend a lot of time figuring out how (for lack of a better term) the soulmate system would function in the game and I have the plot structure figured out. At the same time, I am sure there will be questions that I haven't thought about and I will be improvising based on what I already have worked out. Or a character decision may nudge the plot rails a bit. But that's the fun of it and I'm open to it!

#soulmatesinc if #asks #infosec breach

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claire-therose · 7 months ago

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The Future of Television: an Introspection

I think we are at a transition point

This story begins in the Los Angeles airport, LAX. Earlier that day, I had a flight scheduled to fly from Burbank to Cincinnati (with a layover in Atlanta) to visit my parents. The flight, unfortunately, was delayed due to weather conditions, so the airline booked me for a or straight flight to CVG. After making my way over to LAX, I noticed the TV near a bar near where I was sitting- and something caught my eye.

An advertisement: for Disney+, Hulu, and Max for $17 with ads, and $30 with ads.

First of all, that's too inexpensive. With previous cable packages exceeding $100 a month, having 3 of the largest and most well known streaming services together in a single deal for less than a third of that previous price is simply unsustainable. My guess – is this deal is introductory pricing to get people used to this bundle as a norm, after which the price can slowly increase without much customer loss.

Secondly, why? Disney and Hulu makes sense, Disney owns Hulu, but Max? Max is owned by WarnerBros. Discovery, one of the largest companies in the video streaming space, and Max itself is a direct competitor to Disney+. What would they have to benefit from cooperation?

Here’s what they have to benefit:

Firstly - some business terms

A knock on the door is heard. Claire opens the door. BYSTANDER enters looking confused. Bystander: I thought this essay was about television? Claire: You thought making television was about making television? Bystander shrugs. Claire: Unfortunately... it's about the money >:3

Economies of scale is an economic principle indicating that the more you produce of something, the less it costs per item to produce. If I want to make 1 copy of The Glass Scientists by Sage Cotugno (a very good graphic novel you should read ( ᵔ ⩊ ᵔ )), it might take me 5-10 hours to print out the pages, bind them together, cut out the cover, glue the whole thing, etc.

If the cost of the materials is, let’s say, $7.00, but it takes 7 hours to make (at $25 an hour, because I’m an expensive bitch (¬‿¬ )) - then it costs this hypothetical company $182 to make this one book. That means you as a consumer would be charged around $200 - very expensive (＞﹏＜).

On the other hand, if I want to make 10,000 copies of this book, and I have $100,000 dollars lying around (as one does), I can buy an industrial book printing machine for $30,000, and even with 30 hours of labor, it still costs:

Labor - 30 hours of work * $25/hr = $750 Materials - $7 per book * 10,000 books = $70,000 Cost of Equipment - $30,000 Total Cost - $100,750 Cost per book - $100,750 / 10,000 books = $10.075

about $10 per book, which, in terms of individual cost, is a huge difference from our first estimate of $182.

Now, to be frank, these numbers are all bogus. I have no idea how much it costs to make a book - but the principle is the same with real numbers.

When your production scales up, your cost per product goes down. Massive corporations don’t build megafactories because they like the aesthetic: they do it because it saves them money.

Now, this makes sense for physical products like books, but it also applies to intangible goods, like software, or web design, or streaming technology infrastructure (ding ding ding).

From a business standpoint it doesn’t make sense for 6 different companies to develop 6 different compression algorithms, and have 6 different interfaces to connect to 6 different data centers to do exactly the same thing: take an uncompressed ISO file, compress it for streaming, and send it to your device.

I personally think this is why we are seeing a lot of corporate consolidation in our current era of streaming – because, from a distributor perspective, it makes sense for all companies in the space to work together - or at least consolidate into a much smaller number of players.

But that’s only one-half of the story:

Seeing these companies merge and bundle was not what originally got me thinking about this whole, media market structure thing.

What got my gears turning was something a lot closer to what I actually care about.

Over the past couple of years, it’s been very disheartening to see many wonderful and amazing series get cut short for seemingly no reason.

I love Inside Job. Shion Takeuchi’s sense of comedy, combined with the fondness and criticalness the show has for Reagan makes her growth feel so authentic! I love seeing what she's doing, when she is in over her head, figuring out what she wants out of life. It’s amazing and funny and incredible.

I love Scavenger’s Reign! Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner and everyone on the crew do such an amazing job at crafting this eerie fascination for biology. I can totally see the show, and Joseph Bennett’s narrative style, becoming seminal in science fiction later on. Amazing work.

The Owl House! An amazing Disney show created by an amazing person loved dearly by many amazing people. (you can also replace the word amazing with the word gay and it still works! (o^ ^o))

Inside Job wasn't renewed for a season 2 by Netflix. Owl House had its season 3 cut short. Scavenger’s Reign wasn’t renewed by Warner Bros. Discovery, was brought over to Netflix, and then was canceled by Netflix!

To be honest, I don’t know everything about television production. I want to learn and I want to discover but at this point in time I don’t have a clear answer of why these shows were canceled.

Dana Terrace has stated that The Owl House was canceled without her input, which is incredibly disheartening to hear.

Netflix hasn’t made an official statement about the reasons for Inside Job being canceled or Scavenger’s Reign - but I have a theory about what’s going on

Remember when I mentioned economies of scale? Well, there’s an inverse economic principle called diseconomies of scale. Diseconomies of scale indicates that at a certain scale, as production gets larger, the cost per item gets more expensive, rather than less expensive. This can be due to a whole basket of factors, from increasing organizational costs, to transportation and distribution costs, etc. It’s the reason why there isn’t 1 factory that makes all the paper towels in the world. If economies of scale were an absolute rule, that single factory would be the standard, but it’s not. There are certain economic advantages to having multiple smaller factories rather than 1 giant factory (transportation, distribution, etc.).

There are economic reasons for a company to scale up production, but there are also economic reasons for a company to scale down or split production. When companies are at an equilibrium between economies of scale and diseconomies of scale, they are operating at their maximum market efficiency.

So, how does this apply to streaming companies?

Well, I mentioned before my theory that streaming companies are consolidating due to economies of scale from a distributor perspective, but these companies aren’t just acting as content distributors, they’re also acting as content producers.

Ye Old Media Wisdom Having a single company as a distributor and a producer is a bad idea. -me just now :)

Here’s why:

One of the aspects of diseconomies of scale is the problems with large organization. As a company gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult for people to communicate up and down the ladder and to communicate with different departments across the company. If your company is making something easily measured, like paper towels, your company can be both large and successful (like P&G) because the measurements of what makes a paper towel valuable for the consumer and for the company are easily communicated between teams. If a team is able to make a paper towel 10% more absorbent with a 2% increase in weight, it’s easy to communicate that possible change to a higher up - and their decision, whether to proceed with that change or not, will be made with most of the important details needed for that decision, primarily because those details are easy to communicate.

Making entertainment, especially animated entertainment, is something that is much more complex, subjective, and harder to communicate than paper towels. Different series appeal to different people, different shows have different voices, and being able to communicate the benefits of a series to a friend is challenging, let alone an executive 3 organization levels up. Additionally, making an impactful and amazing series takes risks! All great storytelling is communicating a perspective that is unique and engaging, but to make something unique is by definition to make something new, which requires risk. Larger companies are more risk averse than smaller companies: they have more to lose, are harder to change, and adapt less quickly. For a company whose primary purpose is to make stories that people engage with, being larger is, unfortunately, antithetical to that goal. People who want to make something different deal with more red tape, more bureaucracy, and more people their story has to please. It becomes harder and harder to make something that is new and impactful - to put it another way, it becomes harder to make something successful.

In my opinion, many of the recent releases of Disney feel… generic. Lightyear, Strange World, Wish - these films are by no means made by people without skill or character, but if those people are not allowed to take risks, if they’re not allowed to make anything outside the lowest common denominator of opinions, then the perspective these films convey is destined to be bland and uninteresting.

In my opinion, this is why companies like Riot / Fortiche and Sony Pictures Animation have been kicking ass recently. Spider-Verse, Mitchells and Arcane are amazing and seem to have the support and space they need. Since Riot and Sony Pictures Animation aren’t distributors, they don’t have the same pressure to become a larger company themselves. They can stay the size they want and continue to produce animation at a quality and risk level they are comfortable with.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on inside these companies, there might be other factors that contribute to their success - but I do know that making TV is hard. Making anything at a studio level is hard. Many people have to spend months of their lives working, communicating, and trying to discover what this thing they’re working on is. When people working on these series not only make something, but make something incredible - and after all that, are not be supported?

well, that’s just bad business

Epilogue

So where do we go from here?

Well if I were in charge of the largest media corporations on the planet, I’d say: spin off your animation production companies into their own entities and act, primarily, as the best distributor on the market. This will allow for you to remain as the larger corporate entity you want to be but remove the bureaucratic restrictions on production companies. Additionally, it gives the distributor more choices! Now they don’t only stream your own content, they can stream anyone else’s if they want! If another, better player comes into town, making more popular media, they can stream their shows instead. Production companies get the freedom to make great things, distributors get the structure and size that they need, and consumers, because of the competition between the two, get the best deal for their money.

This is what cable TV was in my opinion: one or 2 big distributors offering the same service, and many smaller production companies making the things we love.

Ideal market structure for media distributors, I think, is 1 or 2 big companies.

Ideal market structure for media producers, however, is many smaller companies.

It will take time, but I think we’ll get to this market structure eventually – or something new might come along, who can say (ᵔ ⩊ ᵔ)

In the meantime, I wish a tremendous amount of support to the artists and individuals who make the animation and series that we all love.

Y’all are why any of this exists in the first place – don’t forget that.

-Claire

#animation #business #media

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topazadine · 9 months ago

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How to Use Chomolungma for Writing Adventure Stories; Or, the Plot Mountain Method

Estimated Reading Time: 13 Minutes

I've become a little obsessed with stories of Chomolungma lately. You probably know this sacred Nepalese mountain by its Westernized name, Mount Everest.

Anyway, I'm never going to scale the world's highest peak because I have no interest in losing any of my toes to frostbite or dying of pulmonary edema. Don't think I'm about to go dashing off into the wilderness.

BUT I think we writers can derive a lot of lessons from mountain climbers when plotting for grand adventure novels.

And why the hell is that? Why Chomolungma specifically? Well, I'll explain.

Just a head's up that my advice probably won't apply to romances, mysteries, or anything other than your typical "we're going on an adventure to slay a dragon or whatever." I don't have much experience in those genres and am not going to step on any toes.

As usual, this is just my opinion. There are thousands of different plotting tools out there, and this is only one of them. If you don't like it, then no need to use it. I'm simply giving you a different option. Alright, let's go!

I am sure you have seen this diagram a million billion times and are very tired of it.

It's not wrong, per se; in fact, it looks much like a mountain. Most stories do indeed have these same parts, and so will yours if you use the Plot Mountain method.

However, there's some things that this simplified version doesn't explain:

It acts as if you're just constantly ramping up pressure. There's no breathers to let readers catch up.

There are no differential tensions to keep interest.

There are no "mini-climaxes" that impress upon the reader a sense of danger.

We are not provided with an understanding of how to create different stages of the plot within the rising action.

There is no discussion of how characterization changes during the course of the plot.

It's not explained how to organize the falling action in order to provide continued tension and character development.

I also have some problems with other common plotting methods, specifically Save the Cat and the Hero's Journey. Mostly, I think that they get really tiring and formulaic because they're just so rigid. There's little room to add your own flare; you're plugging all the shit in as intended.

Save the Cat especially irks me because it basically demands that you divide up your story into little percentages so everything happens right according to this algorithm.

If I start to get a hint that your story was designed by adhering to these standards, then I can just predict what's going to happen and I don't care anymore. "Oh ... there's the B Story. I guess the Fun and Games is coming next. Yippee."

One time, I had someone beta read one of my manuscripts, and she complained that my story didn't exactly match this structure.

"I couldn't figure out where Act 1 ends and Act 2 begins!" she wailed. Well, given that I didn't design my story according to strict acts, it's no wonder you couldn't find them.

Also, I hate math. Don't infest my passion with my nemesis, please.

So, I challenge you to think a bit differently using my method instead. It combines characterization with plot and momentum to offer you a natural setup for a great story. Thinking of your story this way forces you to focus on how all elements come together, and it discourages you from piling on dumb shit that won't help.

My option is also more flexible; I'm not telling you exactly when and where the stuff needs to happen. That's up to you, babe. You're the boss.

Key elements of Plot Mountain

Your plot must be desirable for some reason.

Whatever goal your characters have should feel worthwhile. People spend their life's savings and a good portion of their lives to get to Chomolungma, facing down all the frustrations and disappointments to do it.

While your character may not necessarily know what is in store for them, they should nevertheless have a reason for wanting to achieve whatever you've got going on.

You need to "equip" your characters by giving them the skills and purpose necessary to tackle this challenge.

Mountain-madness-morons who think themselves "Chosen Ones" are generally the ones that fuck up and die. That's why you have all these rich tourists falling into crevasses, where their bodies are trapped forever.

Similarly, you must demonstrate to your readers that your character is somehow worthy of the challenge you're giving them.

Sometimes, this means they have the natural passion and inclination but need some training. At Chomolungma Base Camp, the native Sherpas give their charges some lessons in high-altitude mountaineering before they head off onto the mountain, even if they have experience. This is your "orientation session" for the characters that shows why they, specifically, can handle what you are throwing at them.

Every character has a reason for being there.

This is a good reminder for people who have a tendency to cram a million characters into their stories.

A Chomolungma expedition is not composed of random passersby who feel like going up a mountain today. Everyone there brings something unique to the table and must work in concert to achieve their goal.

This offers you many options for main characters and support characters. For example, an expedition team can have mountain climbers, Sherpa guides, porters, and a camera crew, and you can give your main cast similar roles.

Your characters have agency and make choices.

No one just kinda wanders up Chomolungma. They must consistently make the right decision, and it's rare for a deus ex machina to pop in.

Yes, things fit together to make things happen, and there are sometimes miracles, but for the most part, it is the preparation, experience, and some external circumstances (like weather) that decide whether someone lives or dies. No last-minute Hail Marys or interventions from on high.

There is a time crunch.

It's rare to summit Chomolungma in the winter because it's just too dangerous, so climbers need to head off during the spring and summer, before the weather turns nasty. There's a short window of opportunity.

Because the Nepalese government only issues a limited number of expedition passes each year, and they're so expensive, many people only get one shot in their entire lives. Everything has to go perfectly or they may never get to try again.

Additionally, being at altitude for any period of time is dangerous, which keeps people pushing for the summit even when they want to give up and go home.

You should show the pressure of your plot, explaining why it needs to be done right now rather than ten years in the future. We must feel that this is essential and that time could run out.

Every summit attempt is fraught with peril, and many have to turn back.

It is incredibly common for expeditions to hit bad weather and have to abandon the summit push; every climber knows and fears this.

Demonstrating that it's entirely possible not to hit your climax infuses the story with a sense of danger. It can also help you decide what might be more impactful and relevant to your story: having to turn back (which opens the door for a sequel) or getting to the summit and celebrating.

Not everyone makes it to the top.

You probably know that Chomolungma has at least 200 bodies littered across it, many of which have become signposts for other climbers attempting not to meet the same fate. There are likely dozens of others that have been blown away by the wind into crevasses or buried under snow.

Depending on your genre, you can and should show that others have failed, or even kill one of your characters during the "summit attempt" to highlight the peril.

Thinking of different plot points as camps reminds you that you need moments of downtime.

While you can't overstay your welcome on Chomolungma, you also can't be climbing 24/7; you'll straight up die. It's important to stop, take a break, and acclimate to the different altitudes as you keep going.

"ABC" stands for "Advanced Base Camp," basically right at the foot of the mountain. It's where you actually start your summit push. North Col is also known as Camp 1.

The camps, I think, are the key element of the Plot Mountain method, because they remind you that your story needs to "plateau" at a few different points to give your characters (and readers) time to breathe.

This doesn't mean that there's no tension at all, because things can still go bad at camp. It just means we're slowing down, recapping things, allowing for character development and maybe a bit of backstory.

You can also allow your characters to meet background characters at these camps, knowing that they will not be around forever. These background characters can offer helpful advice, sow doubt, or impress upon us the risks that will be up ahead.

Each "push" between camps is a little different, with unique dangers.

As you head up Chomolungma, there are different challenges to overcome between each camp; this may be steeper climbs or dangerous crevasses with only a tiny metal ladder to keep you from plunging to your death. Driving snow and fierce gusts can blow you off the mountain as you get higher and higher.

And, of course, there's the Death Zone at the top, where's there's practically no oxygen whatsoever and it's so freezing cold that you may lose your feet.

The danger rises with every push toward the summit, reminding you to build the tension and demonstrate the dangers in your story. After each camp, you'll show brand new risks that nevertheless fit into the plot.

A climax can't overstay its welcome.

After spending all this time preparing to reach the top of the world, climbers actually don't get that much time on the summit. It's freezing cold, the air is impossibly thin, and they need to head down before it gets dark.

Similarly, you need to let the climax linger just long enough to offer catharsis without boring everyone. This is the height of the tension, so keep it fast but thorough.

The summit isn't the end of the journey.

Many people rush to the climax and then spend almost no time wrapping things up, which makes the story feel incomplete. While the downclimb doesn't need to last as long as the summit push, you should still devote a chapter or two to the falling action, which may have its own dangers.

Characters must be changed by their time on Plot Mountain.

No one comes back from Chomolungma without changing. Maybe they have a renewed sense of purpose or a better appreciation for life. Maybe they have made friends, discovered themselves, gained better skills.

Or maybe they lost some toes while up there. Or lost a friend.

Whatever you choose, it must be clear that your characters have grown and evolved throughout the course of their story. They need to end up somewhere different internally, even if they are returning right back to base camp.

How to Use the Plot Mountain Method

Here's the major points you'll hit using Plot Mountain. This is a bit of a simplification, of course, because technically Camp 3 is in the Death Zone (above 26,247 feet), but look, we're fiction writers, not mountaineers.

Base Camp

This is the exposition, where you tell us a bit about the characters, the world, etc.

Base Camp -> ABC

We have a sense of momentum, that something is building up, but don't quite know what it is.

Advance Base Camp

The inciting event, where the character understands what is happening and must choose to accept or refuse. If they accept, they head up to North Col. If they refuse, well, you're going to push them up there.

ABC -> North Col

The first challenge (and the first chance to turn back). This is a sobering moment that impresses upon them that they are in peril, but it's not as risky as the next steps. If they came there against their will, this is when they start to get more committed and aren't refusing quite so much.

North Col

The first downtime. We learn more about the characters and get a better idea of the problem, but don't have all the details yet. Characters may still be a little delusional about what is happening. There may still be some resistance.

North Col -> Camp 2

The second challenge, which offers different dangers. The characters have faced difficulty now and have a better understanding of what is at stake. They are older, wiser, and less optimistic.

Camp 2

Characters may be questioning their ability, looking back down toward North Col and wondering if it would be cowardly to leave now. We have a better understanding of the potential dangers and the ramifications of failure.

Camp 2 -> Camp 3

The third challenge. The characters are fully committed and can't walk away. They know what they're going for and refuse to be deterred because they're so close to what they want. The dangers they face now give a taste of what the climax holds for them, impressing upon the readers that something enormous and risky will happen.

Camp 3

We are given a stronger understanding of this plot's full purpose and how it fits into the world. It's a time to stop and reflect on why this is important, what the characters have learned so far, and how their lives will change once they hit the climax.

The Death Zone

The dark before the dawn. Things are at their most difficult, but we're not quite there yet. The tension is extreme, and characters are truly fighting for their lives. They're scared, disoriented, and worn down by the challenges, but still willing to go on. There are no respites and no safe harbors. No one is going to save our characters but themselves.

Summit

Climax. It's fast, but not too fast: we get a chance to soak up what is happening, but we know that it won't last forever. There's a sense of pressure and the need to get out of the line of fire.

Death Zone Revisited

This is an opportunity to demonstrate how tired the characters are and the ramifications of their decisions. Things still feel fragile and dicey. We don't know whether the characters are out of danger just yet.

Camp 3

An opportunity to let the characters rest and reflect. We see the changes that have come about because of the climax and see them differently.

Camp 3 -> Base Camp

There's no need to linger all the way down the falling action; we don't require as much detail because we understand the world. Still, we should get a sense of how the characters navigate this new chapter of their lives and what they have learned.

Base Camp

The finale. It may be triumphant or heartbreaking, depending on what happened at the summit. Muted goodbyes, happy reunions, bittersweet reflection, and a sense that the characters are moving on with a better understanding of themselves.

And that's about it. You can add camps if you need to, or have little biovacs if your characters get stuck somewhere. You can find good places for description during those downtime moments. There's a lot to do!

I've created a masterlist of writing resources that you can peruse at your leisure, all for free.

The posts I write can sometimes take me hours - they're always intricate, always thoughtful. This one took me about 2.5 hours to complete.

I do this as a labor of love for the writing community, sharing what I have learned from almost 15 years of creative writing.

However, if you'd like to support me, maybe you'll consider buying my book? It's $0.99, which is about 7 cents for each minute you spent reading this post.

9 Years Yearning is a gay coming-of-age romance set in a fantasy world. It follows Uileac Korviridi, a young soldier training at the War Academy. His primary motivations are honoring the memory of his late parents, protecting his little sister Cerie, and becoming a top-notch soldier.

However, there's a problem: Orrinir Relickim, a rough and tough fellow pupil who just can't seem to leave Uileac alone.

The book features poetry, descriptions of a beautiful country inspired by Mongolia, and a whole lot of tsundere vibes.

You can also check it out on Goodreads for a list of expanded distribution.

If you do purchase my book, don't forget to leave a review!

Reviews are vital for visibility on Amazon and help to support indie authors like me. Whenever you love a book, be sure to let the author know! It's much appreciated.

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nunuslab24 · 1 year ago

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What are AI, AGI, and ASI? And the positive impact of AI

Understanding artificial intelligence (AI) involves more than just recognizing lines of code or scripts; it encompasses developing algorithms and models capable of learning from data and making predictions or decisions based on what they’ve learned. To truly grasp the distinctions between the different types of AI, we must look at their capabilities and potential impact on society.

To simplify, we can categorize these types of AI by assigning a power level from 1 to 3, with 1 being the least powerful and 3 being the most powerful. Let’s explore these categories:

1. Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

Also known as Narrow AI or Weak AI, ANI is the most common form of AI we encounter today. It is designed to perform a specific task or a narrow range of tasks. Examples include virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, recommendation systems on Netflix, and image recognition software. ANI operates under a limited set of constraints and can’t perform tasks outside its specific domain. Despite its limitations, ANI has proven to be incredibly useful in automating repetitive tasks, providing insights through data analysis, and enhancing user experiences across various applications.

2. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Referred to as Strong AI, AGI represents the next level of AI development. Unlike ANI, AGI can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, similar to human intelligence. It can reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, and learn from experiences. While AGI remains a theoretical concept as of now, achieving it would mean creating machines capable of performing any intellectual task that a human can. This breakthrough could revolutionize numerous fields, including healthcare, education, and science, by providing more adaptive and comprehensive solutions.

3. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)

ASI surpasses human intelligence and capabilities in all aspects. It represents a level of intelligence far beyond our current understanding, where machines could outthink, outperform, and outmaneuver humans. ASI could lead to unprecedented advancements in technology and society. However, it also raises significant ethical and safety concerns. Ensuring ASI is developed and used responsibly is crucial to preventing unintended consequences that could arise from such a powerful form of intelligence.

The Positive Impact of AI

When regulated and guided by ethical principles, AI has the potential to benefit humanity significantly. Here are a few ways AI can help us become better:

• Healthcare: AI can assist in diagnosing diseases, personalizing treatment plans, and even predicting health issues before they become severe. This can lead to improved patient outcomes and more efficient healthcare systems.

• Education: Personalized learning experiences powered by AI can cater to individual student needs, helping them learn at their own pace and in ways that suit their unique styles.

• Environment: AI can play a crucial role in monitoring and managing environmental changes, optimizing energy use, and developing sustainable practices to combat climate change.

• Economy: AI can drive innovation, create new industries, and enhance productivity by automating mundane tasks and providing data-driven insights for better decision-making.

In conclusion, while AI, AGI, and ASI represent different levels of technological advancement, their potential to transform our world is immense. By understanding their distinctions and ensuring proper regulation, we can harness the power of AI to create a brighter future for all.

#artificial intelligence #machine learning #ai #ai discourse #chat gpt #open ai #ai development #big tech

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unhonestlymirror · 4 months ago

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Okay, I have to say something.

One of the main problems of current medicine is not the amount of antivaxxers, but the division of society on pro-vaccines and anti-vaccines. And people like this scientist on the video are only expanding the abyss further and futher - in long run, causing more and more people losing faith in vaccinations and in medicine in general. Why, you ask me?

Because the problem of post-vaccinations' complications didn't disappear anywhere - moreover, it only became bigger.

For the last two decades, people went absolutely nuts, vaccinating everything regardless of time periods between shots, the age, the sex, the overall ability of a pathogen to mutate, etc. It was our absolute failure as of the worldwide medical community - and the best proof is the Covid vaccine and its effect.

But enough about Covid. Let's take another example - the MMR vaccine: live-attenuated, three doses, mostly applied to children at 12-15 months. My friend had one at 12 moths, too - however, back then, ~20 years ago, her parents noticed strange movements of her, after the first doze. She arched her back and did not respond to external stimuli. Her parents didn't attach much importance to it. After the second doze (she was already 4 year-old), she developed severe seizures. She was diagnosed with convulsive syndrome, and she had to take Convulsofin (Valproic acid) for 3 years. If you didn't know, Valproic acid is extremely hepatotoxic and can cause acute pancreatitis, thrombocytopenia, hyperammonemia, coma and death. It was also pretty expensive back then. My friend was prescribed of such medication because anything weaker just didn't improve her condition at all - and her neurologist assumed it would be easier for a child than for an adult to adapt and overcome such a dangerous drug. Luckily, she had survived, but she remained disabled for the rest of her life, even though her parents paid crazy amount of money on rehabilitation. Even nowadays, when we occasionally meet, she sometimes flinches and then complains of a headache. Obviously, her quality of life is pretty impaired and has lots of restrictions.

20 years ago, despite there were MANY of such cases, there were no public researches, publications, algorithms "what to do if" - in Ukraine, I mean. It looked as if there was an order from above to keep silent about everything that was happening. Nowadays, the World Health Organisation writes "febriles may occur but they are typically short-term and do not lead to long-term neurological issues" - I want to show them my friend and ask whether they can pay off her medications and rehabilitation costs for all these years. Because there are no long-term issues! There is no war in Ba Sing Se. Maybe it was just her parents' whim - to waste so much money!

The problem of modern medical system is that no one cares what will happen to you, to your child, after vaccination.

You are not listened to, you are labelled immediately as "antivaxxer" - and if you decide to vaccinate, and it gives you severe complications, and you manage to NOT die because of them, all the doctors around are like:

"Welp, it's your problem now. Who cares if you have to pay for rehabilitation from your own pocket - at least you are an acceptable member of society now!"

Is it really that surprising that between "possibly getting ill" and "assurely getting ill after vaccination", a parent usually chooses the first option for their child? Especially if they know that the risk for complications runs in the family? They do not vaccinate you with some random bacteria but with weak versions of the pathogen - the live-attenuated vaccines are the most heavy to deal with. The overload of immunity does exist and can happen after vaccination - and denying the problem because it is being spoken by the person you don't like is a very immature, very unprofessional behaviour, especially from a doctor/scientist.

There is no compensation for developing complications, there is no genetic screening for a vaccine's safety, there is no emergency help algorithm, there are no rehabilitation programs, hell, there is no education about post-vaccine complications treatment and prevention even. There are no safety guarantees. There is probably no improving of vaccines either.

And then they wonder why people vote for drug-addicted fashists like Trump and Elon Musk.

People are not lab mices. People should have a choice whether to apply medication or not. Just because complications are rare doesn't mean they must be ignored. People should not be ostracised for not wanting to vaccinate. There are people like my friend for whom ANY vaccination is strictly contraindicated for the high risk of complications' reccurance - to vaccinate them is the same as to execute them - but no one listens to them, although its our job as doctors, as scientists - not be indifferent. Indifferent doctors are called flayers, slaughterers, human experimentation perpetrators, sometimes even war criminals.

The guy on the video is indifferent. So is Elon Musk, however, he just simply broadcasts the thoughts and feelings of millions of people around the world, whose loved ones had to suffer from such medical indifference and ostracism. Because those farmaceutical oligarchs are interested in incitement of conflict and hatred between the two sides, in selling as much stuff as possible - regardless whether it's useful and safe - those guys are no different from Elon Musk at all, except for being more two-faced.

In conclusion:

We must not spread hatred. If a person doesn't want to vaccinate, listen to their arguments - maybe they have a good reason for that. Don't be blind, be kind.

We must develop safety guarantees and/or compensation for people who get complications after vaccination. Low risk doesn't mean your loved one won't be a victim of it.

We must educate people about what to do if you develop severe reaction on a vaccination. Ignorance breeds mistrust and ruins the belief in doctors. If the parents of my friend were educated, they wouldn't have ignored the first signs, they wouldn't have done the second shot - and my friend wouldn't have become a disabled for life.

We must not force people to vaccinate unless it's a 100% death-rate disease. We are not Auschwitz.

We must not spend so much time on Internet. We must not divide the society for likes, kudos, reblogs, views, whatever.

#medicine #vaccination #mmr vaccine

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