#not for wrong answers and ugly ai pictures

[a-maidens-fantasy]

"if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?" <- This

ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:

if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?

what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.

the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?

people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...

all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads

[fandom-necromancer]

Connor 2.0

This story was prompted by the amazing @smolandangry001! Enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Hannor/Hankcon (Warnings: identity crisis, talk about loss, bad ending referenced (that gunshot at Hank’s house) it was never about to happen though!)

The light-brown wood under his knuckles was cold – it was winter after all. It shouldn’t have bothered Connor, but it was just another thing that added to his hesitance. Too much had happened, the confrontation with Markus, him breaking through the walls that confined him in his missions, using that newly earned freedom to help the revolution and wake up the androids stored away in Cyberlife tower. And at last, Amanda trying to take him over, forcing him to kill himself. He knew how it felt to die, the unfortunate difference between androids and humans. Everything up to this event was just fighting on, holding on and just do anything to stay alive. Now that it was over – Oh RA9, it was over! – everything came falling down on him. The order to eradicate them had been revoked, the camps were opened. Amanda hadn’t contacted him again. They were free.

But Connor was just lost.

Where his mission instructions had bound him, they also had given him guidance, a purpose. Where Amanda had been an enemy, someone who wanted him as a tool, not as a person, she also had been there to refocus him when he got lost in the simulated emotions he couldn’t handle. Where the DPD had only seen the interest of humans, only focussed on their security, it had also been a place to stay, a sense of belonging, maybe even home? Now it all had been ripped away from him. His mission protocol was empty, no new instructions waiting for him. Amanda was gone. The DPD not really a place he could go back to in the turmoil of the aftermath of what he had been part of. He was free falling with nothing to hold onto. No one to catch him.

What was he supposed to do now? Who was he supposed to be now? Where should he go?

Questions he had no answer to. His hand still rested on the wood, his frail determination to knock completely blown out of him. He had betrayed the humans. And although it wasn’t something this particular one would hold against him, maybe he should just go, just leave him be… He sighed, letting his hand fall to his side.

There was a bark near immediately behind the door, the sound of a chair scooting back then falling over, then hurried bare feet over tiles. Then the door in front of the troubled android was ripped open and big arms encased him in a hug. ‘Connor! Thank god you are okay, I saw the news and I- I thought… I- I am so glad to see you again! And to see you unharmed.’

Connor was a bit overwhelmed and opted to scanning the house, instead of dealing with whatever the familiar human had just said. There was Sumo standing behind Hank, wagging his tail intensely. There was a clear sight on the kitchen table, a framed picture of a child [Cole, son of Hank Anderson, deceased] and a gun next to it. The television was running judging from far away voices and the flickering light. It didn’t take much to connect the dots and Connor could feel every emotion that welled up at that freely now. He buried his face in Hank’s sweater and wrapped his arms around the man in return. Maybe a bit too strong, judging from the hiss he heard, but Hank didn’t say anything as he felt the fabric at his shoulder dampening and Connors body shaking against his in ugly sobs.

‘Shhh, hey, kid- Hey Connor…’ That only made things worse, as Connor tried to hide his tears, shaking more, a static-filled voice trying to explain everything. ‘Hank, I… I don’t know what to do, I’m lost, everything is just gone, I-‘ ‘Hey, Con? You are breaking my rips if you get any stronger, okay? Let’s get in first. Let’s go inside and talk, okay? Come here, Con. Come.’ He pulled the android inside, closing the door behind him and guided him to the couch. Before he could sit down next to him, he saw the gun obviously in the open like that. ‘Shiiit, Connor, stay here, okay? I’ll be right back, just fetching some… tissues! Yeah. Sumo, good boy, stay with Connor, yes?’

The big dog barked affirmative, jumping on top of the couch, nearly leaping at the android, that immediately accepted the new source of comfort and warmth. Hank quickly grabbed the gun, tossing it into some cabinet and then grabbing a box of tissues to keep up the pretence. As Sumo had claimed the couch, he knelt in front of Connor, holding up a tissue. The android accepted it, wiping away the light blue solution coming from his eyes. ‘Okay, Con, you better now?’ He had at least stopped crying as hard as before. The LED was still a bright red though. ‘What happened? Take your time, please. But what got you so desperate? I thought you would be happy. You are free!’ ‘I am lost, Hank’, Connor finally managed to tell him. ‘Lost?’ Hank pried off the android’s hand that was dangerously pushing into the skin around his LED. He kept it in his, hoping to gain the focus of him. ‘Why are you feeling lost?’ ‘There is nothing… nothing. Hank, I… There is just nothing!’ ‘Con, bear with me. I’m only human. Please. You have to explain that a bit further.’ ‘Everything I knew is gone Hank! Cyberlife, Amanda, my job! It’s just gone, and I’m lost! I was told who I was and what- how to be! I… I don’t know who I am anymore, there is just nothing, a hole!’

The sobs got worse again and Hank got up on his knees to hug the android again, gently rock him like he did with- like he did with Cole when he had been desperate. ‘I had no time to think about it yet, because there was so much going on, but now I can and… Hank, I am broken! I have no purpose, I don’t know what to do now and I don’t even know whether the DPD will allow me to work again, I- I’ ‘Connor. Stop. Please, just stop and listen. I know this is difficult. But I know exactly how you feel, okay? Well, maybe not exactly, but listen to me: There is nothing wrong with you. And it’s absolutely okay to feel lost.’

Hank gestured Sumo down from the couch and the big dog complied, instead sitting in front of Connor and putting his head in his lap. Hank sat down next to Connor and pulled him in. ‘When I lost Cole, I felt lost too. When you become a parent, when you care for a child, your sole purpose becomes caring for them. Make sure they grow up alright, that they learn, that they eat right, that they are healthy, that they are happy. And with that damn car AI evaluating him as less important he was taken from me. My sole purpose in life was gone. That with the grief pulled me into the abyss. I still haven’t recovered, likely never will. But that’s because of the grief. Not because of loosing my purpose, because I found a new one, Con. Do you grief about being free? Do you grief about getting rid of Amanda? Do you grief your people are exactly that now – a people?’ ‘No.’ It was weak, but with confidence and Connor petted Sumo’s head. ‘Then let me ask you a question: Who are you, Con?’ The android looked up at him and wiped his eyes again. ‘I am… I don’t know, Hank.’ ‘Who were you before shit hit the fan?’ ‘The android sent by Cyberlife.’ At least that one had come easily. Hank shook his head. ‘Wrong, Con.’ ‘The deviant hunter?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘Your partner?’ ‘Getting warmer, Con.’ The android looked down in Sumo’s eyes. He sighed. ‘I don’t know Hank. Whatever you want me to be?’ ‘Oh, absolutely not!’ hank laughed, the sound startling the android that had calmed down more now.

‘Let me tell you who you were before all of this. You were Connor. A RK800 android and a huge pain in the ass. You decided to buy your idiot drunkard of a partner another drink, you asked dumb personal questions, you pretended to like my music for the sake of bonding with me, you decided you liked dogs. You were the one to safe my life, in more than one way. Maybe that was because you had a mission to accomplish. Maybe that was because that AI told you to be nice. But all these decisions on how to achieve that goal. That was you Connor. So, tell me, who are you now?’ The android looked up at him expectantly, hoping he would just answer his own question. And with a bit of waiting he did: ‘Damn, Con, you are still that. You are a full person with opinions, wishes and likings. You didn’t help the deviants because it was a mission. Damn, you disobeyed as you were still bound to them. Because you felt it was the right thing to do. That is the Connor I got to know. You are you, not the boundaries all these fancy asses at Cyberlife created. You may be lost now, but trust me, you will find a new reason to exist, a new purpose. Humans have to do this all the time. We set our own missions if you so will. You just need time to find it.’

Connor was very silent at that, his LED circling in a yellow glow, thinking. ‘How much time do humans need to find it?’ ‘Depends, really. It’s different for everyone. But you don’t have to find an answer for the big question right away. Most people never find that one big reason to live, most just live from task to task. I live to make the world a bit better. My work fulfils that purpose I searched for after Cole’s life. And I live to be there for the people I love.’ ‘That are good purposes’, Connor commented. ‘But I don’t have time to think about it. There is no place I belong either.’ ‘Excuse you!’, Hank exclaimed visibly hurt. ‘Con, why did you come here on instinct? Do you honestly think I would kick you out? We are friends. We are family. Maybe even a bit more, I don’t know, we have to figure that one out too. But by all means: This house is your goddamn home as much as mine. You can stay here for as long as you want! Don’t you say you don’t have anywhere to stay!’

That let that LED blink to blue and drew a faint smile on that face. ‘That’s… Thank you Hank. I… I can’t thank you enough for everything.’ ‘Don’t mention it’, Hank murmured and pulled the android closer. ‘I’m here for you, Con.’

[esriteiatha]

Cyber-Bullying Protocol

The idea belongs to @doctorstark ! I just played with it!��

Justin Hammer gapped at the wall in front of him. His fingers grew white around the ancient landline phone that had been provided by the prison for his daily calls.

"Are you okay, Justin?" Connor's voice sounded confused in his ear.

Hammer let out a high-pitched whine. "Come again?"

Connor sighed, but as always, did what he asked for. "Stark and Rogers are officially together. There's been a press conference about it yesterday. The big announcement and all."

Justin let out another high-pitched sound.  A red cloud settled over his mind. How dare he! That uppish asshole! And with Captain America of all the people! That son of a bitch!

"Justin?" Connor tentatively asked.

"Get me a phone! A smartphone! With Internet!" he roared. He didn't care what the guards heard. The ones around him were all corrupt. He had made sure of that almost immediately.  "NOW!" he added just so Connor would understand the urgency of it all.

(ง’̀-‘́)ง

Tony Stark assessed the situation in front of him just like any other problem he has to deal with in his lab. So, indicators that something was wrong: Steve sitting on the living room's couch, posture horrible, shoulders slumped, head held low. The not really captain-ish looking Captain's hand held the phone that Tony had given him a few weeks ago. The potential source of the problem: that phone. Most likely, Steve had found the dark side of the Internet again... Maybe he should put a parental control onto the damn thing. Okay... So a solution...

"Hey, Honey! " he slipped next to the man on the couch. He rubbed his cheek against the soldier's shoulder. Steve loved that. Sure enough, the Captain chuckled softly and reached up a hand to ruffle Tony's hair.

"Why the long face?" Tony asked curiously, making sure that he had turned on his puppy dog eyes on full force. Steve loved those too.

Steve looked pinker than usual as he sat up straighter. Tony slipped off his shoulder and ended up on his lap. A quick turn on his part and he was looking upward.

"So?" he sing-songed.

"It's stupid." Steve shrugged and gave the phone a tell-tale glance.

"Elaborate!" Tony demanded.

"You know that site where we put our pictures up?" Steve started.

"Upload." Tony corrected automatically. "Instagram."

"That one." Steve nodded.

"So?" he asked when the Cap failed to continue.

"It's stupid!" Steve mumbled.

"It makes you sad. Out. With. It!"

"Someone is commenting all sort of awful things."

Tony shot upright and turned towards the other man with a hand held out in front of him.

"Gimme!"

Steve, the mature, responsible super-soldier tucked the phone behind his own back.

"It really is stupid!" he protested.

Tony rolled his eyes, pulled his own phone out and in no time he was surfing through the comments. And he found the offending ones.

"OMG! Look at these two old pigs"

"Gross!"

"Disgusting!"

"Attention whores!"

"Pathetic!"

"Stark's hair is awful! Why don't you shave it off???"

Every IG story they had posted in the last couple of weeks had an ugly, hurtful comment attached to it. And he won’t mention the attached hashtags. Those did take him to the darkest side of the Internet.  

Tony raised an unimpressed eyebrow. These were not new to him, he had lived the celebrity life since he had been born, but Steve was a big softy underneath all those muscles. Some of those probably hit too close to home for him.

He glanced at the username which belonged to the comments.

HammerTime.

"Seriously?" he gapped.

"Right? They are really mean." Steve mumbled.

Then to the soldier's surprise, Tony burst out laughing. He waved off Cap's concerned and also confused gestures towards him and addressed his AI.

"FRIDAY! Activate Cyber-Bullying Protocol!" he ordered.

"On it, Boss!"

"What are you doing?" Steve asked as he cocked his head to the side.

"I will answer injustice with justice!" He proclaimed loudly.

Steve groaned and rubbed his face.

"You watch way too much Game Of Thrones!"

"Huh! You understood the reference! I won!"

(ง’̀-‘́)ง

The next day the whole Internet was flooded with hundreds of really embarrassing videos, images, sound recordings of Justin Hammer.

In a cell, far away from the happy couple, a smartphone slammed against the wall and shattered into million pieces. The whole happening was accompanied by an outraged, high-pitched scream.  

@doctorstark

@ironfamjam

@sarcasticallyxsaltly

@metalbutter

[blancheludis]

Tagging: @tokky231

Fandom: Marvel, Avengers Characters: Tony Stark/Steve Rogers, James Rhodes, Pepper Potts, Bruce Barton, Steve Rogers Chapters: 10/?, Words: 56.845

Summary: Tony meets his soulmate under the worst possible circumstances. It is not just a kidnapping gone wrong. It turns out Steve and his gang picked him on purpose and they want some personal revenge. If only he had managed to say the words written on his soulmate’s arm before they threw him back out into the streets.

---

The moment Tony finds out about Obadiah, all his meticulously laid plans of revenge and reparation evaporate into thin air. He had been prepared to fire his entire board of directors, to weed out scientists, to go up against the military. Not once has he thought this could be personal.

Instant denial builds up inside him. It turns his limbs heavy and his mind slow. Obadiah would not betray him. Throughout all the cold years of Tony’s childhood, he has been more of a father to Tony than Howard. He has always been the one who understood Tony.

Tony is used to people only ever wanting him for what he can offer them; money, fame, tech. While Obadiah happily took Tony’s ideas to turn them into more profit for the company, that has never been all there was between them. They are family.

Despite the dread of proving this true – even if he trusted Steve, he would not just believe information like this – Tony gets to work. The evidence Steve sent him is conclusive. Tony knows Obadiah’s phone number by heart. On top of the terror of seeing it and the whole long minutes he talked with the Avengers, it hurts that Obadiah did not even think to use a burner phone for this, feeling so sure about Tony rolling over and slinking out of the picture as he was supposed to.

At least, Tony assumes he was supposed to vanish quietly. He is not sure to what end other than Obadiah being in line of becoming the company’s CEO once more. Their success is built on Tony’s ideas, though. That is probably why Obadiah needed the USB drive, to tide him over until he kicked R&D back into proper shape.

Tony is getting ahead of himself here. All he knows is that Obadiah hired the Avengers. Nobody said anything about killing Tony. Perhaps the plan really was to only get the drive and let Tony be handled roughly. It might have pushed him into more defensive gear or guns that are easily concealed. Perhaps Obadiah ordered them outright not to harm Tony but the Avengers went ahead and did it anyway.

Even Tony’s great talent for delusion does not let him spin this into something harmless or an accident.

Pepper finally brings him back the data from Stark Industries’ internal servers, and Tony is hesitant to go through it even before he finds the dozens of shipping logs and names like Raza and the Ten Rings, and Obadiah’s metaphorical fingerprints all over it. For good measure, he finally lets JARVIS hijack the servers and watches him tear through them with a curious detachment, watches the condemning files pile up, undermining the very foundation Tony has built his life on.

It is true then. Obadiah did not just send the mob after Tony, he has also been selling their weapons to anyone willing to buy. The logs go back years. This was happening even when Howard was still alive.

Feeling the damning need to laugh, Tony wonders what his godfather is thinking about him shutting down the weapons manufacturing. That is, apparently, what Obadiah built both his lives on, the official one where he is Stark Industries’ CFO, and the secret one where he is filling his offshore accounts with money from illegal weapons trades.

Even in Tony’s head, this sounds ridiculous. Enough so that he refuses the actual danger Obadiah might pose to him right now. He hired the mob once to get his hands on Tony’s work. Now that Tony all but ruined his livelihood, there is no telling what he might do. Somehow not even Tony’s enormous talent for denial is enough to convince himself that Obadiah will not do anything.

Considering the sheer amount of evidence he found, there is no more hiding from this. All Tony has to do is pack it all up and hand it over to the authorities. He will have to watch his godfather being led away in handcuffs after strangers go through Stark Industries’ data, upturning all the ugly truths of what has been happening here.

It is the right thing to do to stop the illegal distribution of his weapons and to ensure his own safety. Instead, he has JARVIS saving all of it, queues it to be printed, and saves it again on a separate USB drive. He is fond of those. Then, in the true cowardly fashion of a Stark, he turns off his computers and walks right out of his workshop, giving in to the need to hide his head in the sand for a while longer, at least until the roiling nausea has passed and this knowledge does not turn every breath into an act of labour anymore.

“Sir?” JARVIS asks, not specifying what he means.

Everything is in disarray now. It is impossible to know where to best set his next steps.

“It’s all right, J,” Tony says, not recognizing his own voice. It is a quiet monotone, sounding like he is suffocating on the truth he has just read. “I’ll take care of it. I just – I need some time to think about it.”

“It is unwise to sit on this information too long,” JARVIS says with as much disapproval as eagerness to start acting. He sounds almost vengeful but Tony cannot muster up any pride for that. “Especially with –”

“I know,” Tony interrupts him, sharper than he intended. With how shattered he feels inside, it is no surprise that he cuts anyone coming too close. That is why he needs time. He cannot deal with this while he is falling apart.

Never do business while you’re emotional, his mother had told him once after they watched Howard ruin a business deal during dinner, drunk and angry like he often was. It makes you lose focus.

While Tony feels numb, he knows that, soon enough, the realization will hit and with it the betrayal. He wants to deal with this, but he cannot do so if he turns into a sobbing mess at the mere sight of Obadiah, capably only of one, devastating question: Why?

Tony knows why, just as much as he does not. Money and family. He thought the latter would always outweigh greed. That is only true, of course, if Obadiah ever considered them family too.

“Do you want me to call someone?” JARVIS asks, nearly turning it into an ultimatum. Either Tony is reasonable and does not shoulder this on his own, or JARVIS will snitch to someone to help him.

Under different circumstances, Tony would be glad for his AI’s initiative – well, that is not true. He is never actually happy to let other people in, not even those he trusts. Vulnerability is not something Howard allowed under his roof and old habits die hard.

“How big are my chances of Pepper listening if I send her on vacation?” Tony asks instead of answering JARVIS’ question. It is meant as a distraction for both of them, something to hold onto instead of thinking about his godfather.

“Considering recent events, non-existent,” JARVIS says, voice distinctly chiding. “Do you want me to inform her of your findings?”

It is a giant stroke of luck that Pepper got the USB drive without finding the information herself, without going digging.

“No,” Tony exclaims quickly, all the air in his lungs rushing out with the word. “Just – no.”

He cannot talk to Pepper. She will look at the evidence and believe it, and then she will act. Contrary to him, she does not let emotions keep her from doing what is right. Tony is not ready to act, not ready to face this shame. He also does not want to drag her into this. Obadiah has already proven that he is not above hurting those he is supposed to protect, and Tony cannot risk putting Pepper in danger.

“Keep an eye on her,” Tony orders. “If Obadiah gets in any way close to her or appears suspicious, alert me and make sure she stays safe.”

Safe from his godfather. What has the world come to? Tony is understanding it less than ever before. He always considered few things set in stone, and now even those are crumbling, and he with them.

“All right, sir,” JARVIS replies but sounds like he has more to say.

He does not approve of Tony’s inactiveness, and he is right. Obadiah is a wild card since Tony obviously does not know him at all.

Tony slowly makes his way to his bedroom, too restless to sleep but wanting to withdraw somewhere safe. Leaving the lights off, he sits down on his bed, feeling more alone than he has in a long time.

Obadiah. His godfather. All those memories of laughing together, of sneaking into Howard’s workshop, of leading the company together – all of that was a lie. A lie to enable Obadiah to amass more money for himself, not caring about the bodies he created, the blood he spilled. All of it on Tony’s back, guiding him right where he can do the most damage and therefore the most profit.

Nausea roars in Tony’s stomach. He thinks of Barnes’ missing arm, of dozens of news stories, of the statistics passing his desk every month. That is his doing. Obadiah might distribute the weapons, but Tony makes them. All this death comes from his brain, his hands.

“Sir,” JARVIS speaks up but he sounds like he is very far away. “Your heartbeat is picking up.”

Tony slashes his hand through the air, unable to say anything but needing JARVIS to stop speaking anyway. He does not need help, does not need anyone telling him this is not his fault. It is. It does not matter that he did not pull any trigger himself. He was blind to what was going on. Perhaps he could have seen what was happening if he had not buried himself under work and sex and alcohol. If he had not trusted blindly. He, Tony Stark, who is notorious for trusting no one.

Perhaps Steve was right. Perhaps all of the Avengers were right. He did not keep an eye on his weapons and people got hurt.

In a way, he now relishes the lingering pain in his own body. It anchors him, keeps his thoughts from wandering too much. He is still here. There is no ignoring the fact that he messed up, but he is going to make this right. As much as he is able to, considering all the damage that is already done.

Tony gets out his phone and stares at the dark screen for a long moment. He does not want to talk. At the same time, his throat is constricted with the building pressure of needing to let it all out.

He does not ask JARVIS to dial for him, does not want to admit that his AI is right that Tony should not be alone at the moment. He also does not quite know who he is calling. Scrolling through his contacts, his finger hovers over Steve’s name, too long to be a coincidence.

It is ridiculous. Steve is not going to help. He is not going to make the gaping hole in Tony’s thoughts any better. No matter their truce or that Tony would not even know about Obadiah yet without Steve, they are not friends. They are barely even allies. Talking to Steve will not solve anything. It will only give the throbbing soul bond more validation.

With a contemptuous snort, Tony scrolls up and finds Rhodey’s contact. He is not quite ready to submit himself to his best friend’s worry, but he is drowning in this silence with only his thoughts as company.

The dial tone rings in his ear, a distinct judging quality to it. Glancing at the window, Tony realizes it is dark outside. It must be later than he thought. Still, he keeps the phone up, knowing that Rhodey will always pick up when he is needed, be it in the middle of the night or a firefight. Been there, done that.

When the call finally connects, Tony can barely hold back a relieved sigh. How needy he has become.

“Tony?” Rhodey says, sounding like he has just woken up but is quickly growing alert. Late-night calls usually mean problems.

It pains Tony to hear how much trust resounds in that one word, his name. It feels like Rhodey should be allowed to take a large step back from Tony, considering that he, too, has been in more danger due to Tony’s carelessness.

A thought passes through Tony’s head, stabbing like a knife is attached to it. How easily Rhodey could have been killed by his bombs, his bullets. How easily he could have killed his best friend.

Tony swallows, tries to find his voice. He digs his fingers hard into his arm to ground himself. That does not help until his elbow accidentally pushes against his broken ribs. His mouth opens for a pained gasp but he remains silent, hugs himself.

“You can stop looking into the weapons dealing,” Tony finally manages to say, the words tumbling out slowly.

His eyes are closed as he wishes to be anywhere but here. A week ago, his life has been so uncomplicated, running in the ever-same circles. He hates himself a bit for wishing to go back to that despite needing to take responsibility for the present.

“What?” Rhodey’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts but not entirely. “Have you found out who’s doing this?”

“I mean, we still don’t know who is buying them, so maybe don’t stop looking at all,” Tony argues, almost toneless while Obadiah’s name is like a noose around his neck. “I want to round up every single bullet that got handed out to the wrong people.”

That is important, he realizes, and easier to concentrate on than the mess inside his own company. He will take faceless terrorists every day over the smiling memory of his godfather.

“Tony, what is going on?” Rhodey asks, but Tony barely lets him finish his question.

“That’ll be hard, right?” he counters. “Do you think I could hire a private squad or something if the brass doesn’t want to spare their soldiers for this?”

“Tony,” Rhodey barks, loud enough to snap Tony out of his rambling. “I need you to tell me what is going on.”

A thousand other nonsensical arguments lie on his tongue. How to keep the press quiet. How to not go down with Obadiah, since no one is going to believe that Tony is innocent in this.

Tony cannot avoid the inevitable anymore, though. “Obie ordered the hit on me,” he says. If not for the absolute silence between them, his words might have gone unheard as they are merely a whisper. It feels like any more volume would give it more weight too. “He’s been selling my weapons too. I mean, all the evidence points in his direction, but it can’t be true, right? He’s my godfather. He wouldn’t –”

Before Tony can sink into another litany of denial and random pieces of information, Rhodey cuts him off. “What kind of evidence?” he asks, voice sharp and ready to condemn Obadiah on Tony’s word alone.

Tony thinks of all the data he has secured from Obadiah’s phone and computers, of the communication trails, the shipment plans, the offshore accounts. All the numbers he will never be able to forget.

“The kind that is ironclad,” Tony says, weighed down by the admission. The arm around his chest presses against his ribs again. This time, his breath does not even catch as the pain shoots through him.

“Stane is –” Rhodey pauses, then asks, “Are you sure?”

Tony knows Rhodey does not ask because he does not believe Tony. He asks because he has to be sure before he gives in to the rage boiling in the pit of his stomach, just like Tony might once he has gotten over the personal betrayal. Once he does not feel like his entire being is dissolving anymore.

Taking a deep breath, Tony braces himself for the truth. “I’m sure.”

Not missing a beat, Rhodey declares, “I’m on my way.”

It leaves Tony reeling. He feels like there should be some reluctance, some kind of argument. Rhodey’s loyalty is a precious thing, and a big part of Tony is relieved. At the same time, it should not be this easy. Offering his godfather up as the bad guy should be harder than this. Tony cannot even trust himself, so it feels strange that Rhodey would.

“No. You’re not,” Tony says nonetheless, wondering how he can muster the strength to deny himself his best friend’s company. “I need to deal with this myself.”

That is certainly true, but he does not want to be alone. Does not want to face the coming days. He has to, though. Starks are not prone to sentimentality. Letting his arm drop from around his chest, Tony sits up straighter, stares into the darkness of his bedroom. He might still feel untethered but there are more important things to deal with for now than his personal comfort.

“You’re not going to confront the man who sent a hired gang of killers after you alone,” Rhodey argues but achieves nothing but to harden Tony’s resolve.

“They’re not –” he tries to argue, mostly to keep Rhodey occupied while he pieces himself back together.

“Well, I wouldn’t know because you refuse to tell me anything about them, so I have to assume the worst,” Rhodey cuts him off with all the harshness of someone tired of not being allowed to care for the people they love. He has always had little patience for Tony’s self-destructive tendencies. “But I know Stane, and I know that family obviously doesn’t mean anything to him, so you won’t do this alone.”

The echo of a smile pulls at Tony’s lips as he feels warmth spreading through his chest. Yet, he protests. “I’m not yet doing anything.”

That is the hardest part to admit. With anyone else, Tony would have gleefully let law enforcement storm their home and take them into custody. With Obadiah, he needs to know why first. He needs to know what he has done wrong, and how deep the damage goes. Whether, since this has already been going on when Howard was still alive, his father knew.

Tony has a lot of questions and he does not know how to ask them, nor whether he is ready to hear the answers.

“What does that mean?” Rhodey questions, one wrong word away from yelling.

“You should be glad I’m not rushing into anything here,” Tony argues but does not manage the teasing tone he has been aiming for. Perhaps he should not try to pretend everything is all right. Rhodey would look right through it anyway. “I mean, that’s me being responsible, right?”

The short silence that follows is answer enough to that. “Are you alone?” Rhodey then asks with the kind of impatience that means his fingers itch to pack his things and hijack one of the military jets to come home.

“I’m not,” Tony says and wonders what that has to do with anything. He is not going to fall into a bottle or do something stupid without a chaperone. That is why he is calling. “JARVIS is here and –”

Rhodey clicks his tongue, successfully cutting Tony off. “Let me rephrase that. Is Pepper there?”

“You’re not going to tell her,” Tony says slowly, voice brooking no argument. What is most important now is to keep his friends safe. “I can’t risk Obie finding out that she knows.”

That might not stop Obadiah from hurting her, of course. It is no secret that Pepper is the only reason why Tony has not pushed Stark Industries into ruin twice every week since taking over. If Obadiah really wanted to take Tony out of commission, Pepper is the perfect place to start.

“All right,” Rhodey sighs, not happy with it but conceding Tony’s point for now. Then, though, he adds, “I’m still coming.”

Tony shuts his eyes briefly, swallowing a curse. He still wants to say yes, to have someone watching his back here at home. Deciding to step up and take responsibility also means to go about this strategically. Serving Obadiah all the people he cares about on a silver platter is not that.

“No. I need you to find out where my weapons are. I’ll deal with Obadiah,” Tony argues. Softer, he adds, “I can’t have him become suspicious. If he finds out you’ve been rushing here for the second time in a row, it’s – He can’t find out.”

Tony does not do secrecy well. Since he wants this to be over, he is ready to be sensible.

There is a long silence on the other end while Rhodey comes to his decision. In a way, Tony is glad for his best friend’s reluctance.

“I don’t like this,” Rhodey then says, but it is obvious that he is giving in. Reason over emotions. Who would have thought they would ever get here?

“I know.” Tony forces a smile on his lips, even though it remains unseen. It might just help to build himself up. “I’ll tell you if anything changes.”

Hanging up, Tony lets his hand fall, drained of even his last bit of energy. Rhodey’s worry is appreciated but Tony is far beyond that.

What has been only a rumour before is now a fact. Tony’s weapons are out there. He does have blood on his hands – and no idea how to wash it off. He suspects he cannot. If asked, his friends will surely argue that this was not his fault, but they would be wrong. Accountability – that is what he said on live television just earlier this day. That feels like a lifetime ago.

Lying back on his bed, Tony closes his eyes. He does not think he will be able to sleep, does not want to either. That just means that tomorrow will be here much quicker, and with that Tony has to act. Against his godfather. Against years of blindness and quiet complicity. He just does not know what to do.

 ---

Morning comes too soon. Tony did sleep, although his dreams were plagued by stray bullets and bombs and flowing blood forming a steadily rising headcount. He gets up before the sun and scrubs his skin raw under the shower as if he could wash away who he was and emerge stronger. When he slips into his clothes, he still feels just as frail.

What he needs is a plan. He has evidence and a likely motive. Obadiah’s accomplices should not be hard to find. Then he needs to get together with the military and talk about how to take his weapons out of terrorists’ hands.

In between all these nice, logical steps, however, is the fact that he will have to confront Obadiah. Tony still wants answers but he begins to think that is not as important as to leave the whole matter behind without tainting his memories of family anymore. Every time he thinks he is ready to get to his feet and either call the police or take the elevator down to Obadiah’s office, his body refuses to move, keeping him frozen in place.

He is not ready.

When his phone chimes, Tony flinches. Once he has collected himself, he tries to laugh at himself for that. Nobody is going to jump out of his phone to either murder or judge him. He is perfectly safe up here in his tower’s penthouse. Nobody but Rhodey and Steve knows what he has found out. Most importantly, Obadiah does not know. It is still Tony’s turn to move.

Tony picks up his phone from his nightstand and walks towards the kitchen while he checks it. He has several missed calls from Rhodey and Pepper, and texts asking about his well-being. Pepper inquires about the USB drive, about whether he has found out anything yet. That means Rhodey has not told her, at least. Tony does not think that Obadiah would hurt her. Then again, he did not think Obadiah would sell their weapons on the black market.

The newest text is not from his friends but from Steve. Tony almost turns off his phone without reading it. He can imagine the kind of plans a mob boss with a personal grudge has to offer. Traitor or not, Tony does not want any harm to come to Obadiah. Not like that. Only, he kind of does. Deep down in his gut, Tony realizes he is angry.

You should hire a bodyguard, Steve writes, with all the pretentiousness of someone who does not know how to leave well enough alone.

This has Tony laughing out loud. The sound echoes ugly in the empty room around him, making the hair in Tony’s neck stand up. He turns on the coffee machine while he ponders whether he should reply at all. In the end, he is too glad for the distraction to pass up the opportunity. Steve might continuously butt in where he is not needed but at least there is no need to pretend with him that everything is all right. That Tony is all right.

I hope you’re not planning to offer yourself.

The very thought is ridiculous. The most danger Tony has been in years has been at the Avengers’ hands. He realizes that Steve’s concern about Tony’s safety is probably honest, fuelled by the soul bond or remorse, but that does not mean that Tony would actually trust him with it.

He is surrounded by security anyway. JARVIS, for one, who is usually the only security he needs. Mostly, Tony is his own biggest enemy. Pepper has also increased the guards down in the foyer. They were not even trying for subtlety when they followed Tony to the press conference the day before. The last thing Tony needs is more people looking over his shoulder, judging his every movement.

I would, Steve writes to Tony’s amusement, but your safety is more important than trying to prove a point. I know someone who is very good at his job.

While that is surprisingly considerate, there is still no chance that Tony is going to agree. I don’t need any of your underlings to follow me around.

Putting down his phone, Tony reaches for a mug. He fights the urge to fill himself an entire pot of coffee and drinking straight from it. With how much exhaustion is still pulling him down, he is going to need a lot of caffeine to keep him going.

Steve needs a while to answer. Enough to allow Tony to burn his tongue as he impatiently takes his first sip of coffee. That does not stop him from taking another one right away.

His name is Thor Odinson. Steve seems to attract people with strange names like Bucky and apparently Norse gods fanatics. Run a background check on him. He has never been part of the Avengers. He does not even know about us. I met him in the Army.

Steve seems to think that this is enough to alleviate Tony’s reluctance to get anywhere near the Avengers or their friends. Gripping his mug in one hand, he types with the other. I don’t trust any of your friends. Mob or not.

Tony almost hears Steve sighing. It might be more of a tugging sensation right in his core like the soul bond is reacting to their conversation, but the intention is clear. They are constantly dancing around each other. Glaring at his arm, Tony thinks Fate or whoever has thrown them into this should be glad they are talking to each other at all.

Just look him up.

Feeling his eyebrows rise, Tony is tempted to snap something back, to warn Steve away from giving him orders. That is half of the reason why they are in this mess. Because Steve does not know when to back off, how to let other people make their own decisions.

Instead, Tony takes a deep breath and writes, I won’t need a bodyguard anymore soon anyway.

He does not have the energy to fight on all these fronts at the same time. That is the reason he proposed the truce in the first place.  

How are you dealing with Stane? Steve asks immediately, not just sprinkling salt into Tony’s wound but dumping the whole bag on him.

Since the night before, Tony has not come any closer to having a feasible plan. Steve seems to know that. It is a good thing then, that Tony does not owe him anything, neither answers nor justification.

Locking his phone, Tony puts it face down on his kitchen counter. He leaves it there when he goes back to his workshop. He needs to find out who else has been in on the weapons trading. If anything, that will take his mind off personal things for a while as well as giving him an excuse not to confront his godfather just yet.

[weartirondad]

The minute Tony stepped through the doors of the elevator a piercing scream hit his unsuspecting eardrums and his hands immediately reached to cover his ears even as his mind matched a meaning to the sound. His hands changed path and instead went to the watch on his wrist, activating a gauntlet that covered his right hand in the blink of an eye.

“Pep?”, he called out cautiously, raising his armed arm when he turned the corner to the living space. He could’ve cried in relief when his wife replied even if the high-pitched screaming continued.

“We’re alright.” A pause and then more soothingly, “Shh, baby. It’s alright. Daddy’s here now. You wanna say hi to daddy?”

The nanites retreated into his watch before they could scare his daughter and once the big brown eyes found him, she reached out her arms, calling for him.

“Hey baby”, he greeted her with a tender kiss to the forehead. He settled her on his right hip and gently bounced her as she sniveled into his neck, small arms holding on to him tightly. “What’s wrong?”, he asked her. She simply shook her head and pressed closer into him.

Hadn’t Pepper watched them calmly, albeit looking exhausted, he wouldn’t have been able to stop the anxiety slowly rising in his chest. Knowing that she wouldn’t be this calm if there was an actual threat, he tried to calm his beating heart and sat down next to his wife who brushed his lips in a quick kiss before dropping a long kiss to their daughter’s head.

“What’s wrong?”, he whispered, never stopping his slight swaying while his hand kept drawing soothing circles into Morgan’s red hair. Her pigtails were a mess and when she leaned back a little bit to rub her eyes with her hands, Tony could see her tear-rimmed eyes and tear-stained chubby cheeks. Her lip was still trembling but she held on to her mum’s hand tightly when she reached out for her.

She squirmed until Tony let go of her and sat her down on his lap, where she curled up into his chest immediately.

“I don’t wanna be ugly, daddy”, she whispered, pressing Pepper’s index and middle finger to her eyes to stop the tears that were still evident in her voice, even though Tony couldn’t see her face.

Whatever he had expected, it hadn’t been this.

From the very first moment they had laid eyes on her, they had known she was the most beautiful being in the universe and they had made sure to tell her so every single day. She had never questioned it, had never even been shy when all her various aunt and uncles had gushed about her or when Peter kept telling her that he would never find someone as beautiful as her when she asked him about a girlfriend. He couldn’t fathom what had triggered this but he swore, if it was something someone had said, than he was going to kill that person dead. No one would ever get away with hurting his daughter.

“You’re not ugly, baby”, he told her, turning her in his lap so he would be able to see her better but she refused to look up at him. Putting his index finger under her chin, he tipped her head up slightly until her glassy eyes met his. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world, remember?”

“I was the most beautiful girl”, she told him, her lower lip stuck out and trembling. “But I’m never gonna be beautiful again.” At that she shut her eyes tightly and turned into Tony’s palm who caressed her cheek gently. “No pretty girl wears glasses.”

Glasses?

Over Morgan’s head his eyes met Pepper’s who nodded with a small sigh. “We went to the doctor today because Morgan had a headache when I picked her up from daycare and Mrs. Hudson told me she kept squinting at things. She’s hyperopic and trying to accommodate her eyes all the time ended up hurting her head. She’s gonna have to wear glasses for the foreseeable future.”

He felt hot tears dripping down his right hand and moved his left hand to brush a few loose strands of her fringe back from her sweaty forehead.

“You’re never ever gonna be ugly”, he whispered, pressing a kiss to the tip of her nose. “You are wonderful.” A kiss to her cheek. “You are beautiful.” A kiss to her other cheek. “And mommy and daddy love you so so much.” One last kiss to her forehead.

A giggle slipped past her lips and she scrunched up her nose when his goatee tickled her skin and although it still sounded wet, it was a lot better than the heart-wrenching cries he came home to. “And Petey?”

“And Petey, too”, he smiled widely. “Do you want to know a secret?”

Her little head wobbled up and down, her still glassy eyes wide with excitement at the prospect of hearing one of dad’s secrets.

“Daddy used to wear glasses all the time when he went outside”, Tony told her in a conspiratorial whisper. It was surreal that this little ray of sunshine didn’t know about the Tony Stark façade that he used to put up for everyone outside his comfort zone. While he still did that. While the world still didn’t really know the real him – and he’d rather keep it that way – he had stopped trying to hide so much ever since she had come into their lives. He wanted, needed, to be a better man for his daughter.

“They were really cool.”

“Really, daddy? Why’d you stop?”, she asked, frowning up at him. Her little fingers were still curled around Pepper’s and she alternated her questioning looks between her parents. “Did your head get better?”

He grinned, leaning back into the couch and dropping an arm lazily over the backrest, right behind Pepper. “I didn’t need the glasses”, he told her, “I just wanted to wear them because I liked them.” And because his eyes had always been too telling, a too direct link to his heart, in this cruel world.

Tony felt Pepper press a kiss to his shoulder when she leaned into his side, wiggling her fingers in Morgan’s grasp, and he felt a wave of gratitude rush through his body at having this wonderful family when he had never believed something like that could ever be in the cards for him.

His little girl didn’t seem to be convinced, though, because she simply scrunched up her nose – something he was about eighty percent sure she had picked up from her big brother – and cocked her head to one side, trying to figure it out. “No one wears glasses just because they’re cool. No one likes glasses”, she told him matter-of-factly.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Pull up some of my greatest glasses-wearing hits up, please.”

Thankfully he had baby-proofed the AI’s settings before Morgan had ever met the bodiless voice and thus only the socially acceptable pictures started playing on the TV screen in front of them.

While Morgan, who had climbed into Pepper’s lap to get a better look, watched the pictures, talking about them a mile a minute, he leaned back in content and watched her. The only evidence of her tears were her clotty lashes and the reddened skin around her eyes where she had rubbed them with her hands. But her eyes were shining with the childish joy and excitement that he had grown used to and every once in a while she let out a giggle at one of the pictures.

“Oh wow, those are ancient!”

All three of them turned around when they heard Peter’s voice and immediately Morgan jumped down from her mum’s lap and scurried over to the older boy, reaching up at him until he picked her up and she could wrap her arms around his neck.

“Petey!”, she exclaimed excitedly into his neck, before turning halfway to the TV screen, “Daddy used to wear glasses!”, she told him, her forehead crinkling in a frown, “Did you know that? He says glasses can be cool. Do you like glasses?”

Peter pressed a kiss to her temple and started walking over to the sitting area. “Hello to you, too, Mo”, he smiled down at her, “I think Dad’s glasses are pretty cool. Why? Don’t you like glasses?”

When Morgan didn’t answer for a while and returned to watching the pictures again, still with one arm wrapped around his neck, Peter turned his questioning look to Tony and Pepper.

“Morgan is going to have to wear glasses from now on and she’s scared they’ll make her ugly”, the latter replied with a sigh and then a small smile, “I’m happy you’ll be here over the weekend. Maybe hanging out with her big brother will take her mind off of it a little.”

They stayed like that for a while. Tony pulled Peter into a side hug to the best of his abilities with Morgan still clinging to the kid and started carding his hand through the slightly longer than usual curls, watching in amusement when Peter started doing similar motions on the base of his daughter’s neck.  The kid told them about college and how much he enjoyed bunking with Ned but how glad he was to be home every other weekend. He usually alternated his home visits between staying with Tony and staying with May, though usually all of them ended up at the tower for sleepovers and family movie nights anyway.

The slide show continued – even Tony was surprised how many different pictures there were of him in glasses – and Morgan relaxed again after a while, trying to get all of her brother’s attention by telling him every little detail of her day and about the cool colorful glasses that were so much better than the boring ones she had to wear.

“How about we go out for ice cream!”, Tony suddenly interrupted them, an idea forming in his head as he watched their kids cuddled up on the couch. “We could make it a family trip and we’re all going to be wearing cool colorful glasses!”

Pepper grinned at him with a little shake of her head but Morgan had perked up at the mention of colorful glasses. “You’re gonna wear glasses, too, Daddy?”, she asked, staring at him wide-eyed over Peter’s shoulder.

“Of course I’m going to wear my cool glasses”, he told her, leaning forward to brush a few loose strands behind her ear, “And we can color your glasses, too, if you want.”

“Really?”, she bounced up and down on Peter’s lap in excitement, “Are mommy and Petey gonna wear glasses, too?”

“Of course! Everyone’s getting cool glasses!”

And so it was settled.

Tony started getting to work on coloring one pair of glasses Pepper and Morgan had already bought while Peter was charged with dressing both himself and his sister into an outfit cool enough to match their hip glasses (although Peter kept telling him that no cool person would ever call themselves hip).

It didn’t take much more than twenty minutes before both kids came rushing into his lab, laughing so hard they were both panting. Morgan jumped up on the couch and didn’t even wait for her dad to show her the upgraded glasses before shoving a dark blue t-shirt into his chest.

“We picked something out for you, too”, she told him, her cheeks flushed from their sprint and chubby with the big smile she was still wearing.

The billionaire merely raised a questioning eyebrow at Peter who had plopped down next to the girl and matched her grin as he shrugged innocently. They were both clad in dark blue hoodie jackets that were closed in the front but they sat there with their hands on the zipper as if they were about to reveal the next Eiffel tower.  

Only when he unfolded the shirt and stared down at the huge capital T at the front of it, did they undo their hoodies, grinning at him so smugly that he needed a minute to put together a logical explanation for Morgan to be wearing a pink ‘Q’ and Peter to be rocking the dark grey Pi symbol on his chest.

“Really?”, he asked them exasperated, though he couldn’t help but chuckle at how happy they looked just then.

“Yup”, Peter grinned, proudly pointing at Morgan, “It was Mo’s idea and we originally wanted to give it to you for Father’s Day but we thought it’d be really hip if we could twin. Complete with glasses and all.”

Tony shook his head even as he stepped forward to encircle both kids into a big hug.

If someone would’ve told him some twenty years ago that he would end up having a family with two kids, who made him wear part of a pun on his chest in public, he would’ve rolled his eyes so hard they would’ve been permanently stuck.

Now though?

Now he felt his chest swell with pride and love for both kids as they stood in the living room, all wearing their t-shirts and glasses to match. Peter and Morgan had left their hoodie jackets hanging open while he had opted for a dark blue blazer instead.

Tony held Morgan on his right hip, his little girl leaning her head against his shoulder as she smiled brightly, eyes shining behind her green tinted glasses. His other arm he had slung loosely around Peter’s waist, while the boy grinned down happily at his sister, eyes covered by a pair of yellow tinted sunglasses from Tony’s collection.

“Okay, guys. Smile!”, Pepper called out and he pulled both kids just a little bit closer, keeping his once trademark stern look for the camera for a total of ten seconds before he burst out laughing at Morgan and Peter trying to outdo each other pulling faces.

In that moment he wanted to tell everyone who had ever said otherwise, that it was possible to fit your whole world into your hands because as long as he could hold his family in his arms, there was nothing more he could ever wish for.

“So, anyone wants ice cream?”, he asked and almost dropped Morgan who tried to leap forward with an excited squeal. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

pic by @lieselfh

story by @josywbu (ao3 I FF.net) more awesome stories on AO3 and FF.NET

[tinybibmpreg]

Day 95 // ft. Clyde, Mishal, Sawyer, and Aiden/Aster

#74 / Cousin

“I can’t take the loneliness anymore.” Teary eyes looked down into his own as Clyde stood at the doorway, mouth agape. “Please, can I come in, brother?”

“Sawyer?”

-

Aster opened his eyes and immediately tipped over. His whole body felt strange and tired, and when he got his bearings and looked around, he could see that he was at the edge of a forest and a wide field full of tall grass and yellow flowers. It was bright and sunny, the air pleasantly warm.

He’d never left the city before.

As he pushed himself up, his clothes were clearly not his own. He didn’t own a pair of overalls and velcro shoes, and he never wore short sleeves.

His arms were not his own. His scales and scars had been replaced by smooth skin, and his dark nails were a normal human shade. His skin was a healthy brown instead of his dark, greyish-green flesh tone.

“Where am I? What… what am I?” he asked aloud, though there was no one around to answer him.

He spotted a building on top of a hill on the other side of the field and began walking towards it. Maybe he could find someone to help him, tell him where he was and help him figure out whose body he was currently occupying. While he’d never personally occupied someone’s body before, he knew it was possible. He’d heard someone mention it before.

Someone…

His parents, he was sure. But why they were discussing it, he wasn’t sure. Things were a bit fuzzy as he tried to recall what his parents were like. The image of a terrible monster came to mind without any difficulty, his father, but he couldn’t remember what his mother looked like. It was as if someone had erased his face and name from his memory.

At the end of the field there was a path leading around the hill up to the building, so he walked along it. His head started to hurt, and when he brought a hand up to his forehead, his fingers came back covered in blood.

“Hey!” Someone said, rushing off of the porch of the building as he reached the top of the hill. She came straight for him and knelt down in front of him. “Kiddo, where have you been? You’ve been gone for hours- you’re hurt!”

“Y-yeah…”

“Come on, let’s get you to the infirmary.” She picked him up and started walking off in the opposite direction of the field. Beyond the hill was a campus of some kind, with all sorts of different buildings and stone paths connecting them. There was a large expanse in the center, a park.

The person brought him into a white building labeled ‘medical center’ and went up to the front desk. They were waved into a hallway, where a doctor greeted them and lead them into a room. Aster was put down on an exam table.

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I found him wandering around. Kiddo, what happened?”

The doctor gave her a pointed look and drew back with surprise when Aster answered, “I woke up in the forest, and walked across the field. I don’t know how I got hurt.”

“Ah- he talked! He never talks-”

“You don’t remember?” The doctor got over her surprise far quicker. “Might be some memory loss due to a head injury. Alright, hon, can you tell me your name?”

His mother had warned him never to tell his name to anyone. So Aster decided that he would run with it, pretending to have amnesia. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know your name?” He shook his head. “Ah… How about your birthday?”

“June 21st.”

“Good. You got that. And the year?” He gave the right year as well and felt sick. What was this? Why was this body the same age as him? “Do you know where you are?”

“A doctor’s office. I saw the sign. And you’re obviously a doctor.”

“No, no. Where is the office located?”

“I don’t know. It looks like a school.”

“And where is the school?”

“I don’t know.”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

“No. It’s Friday.” He was missing time. Why was he missing time? The doctor dabbed at the wound on his head. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I woke up in the woods, and then I fell down,” he lied. The last thing he remembered was pulling on his coat to go out and get groceries with his mother. “But that’s not how I hurt my head. It was already hurt.”

The doctor fixed the wound and concluded that he didn’t have a concussion. The blood was cleaned off of him, and a bandage was placed over the gash. She checked him over for any more injuries, only finding a bruise on his arm from when he’d fallen.

Two people came in, and only one of them looked familiar, a pale man with dull black hair and anxious, light green eyes. But he didn’t recognize either of them.

“Aiden!” The green-eyed man came to hug him, a relieved smile on his face, and Aster scooted away, eyes wide. “Aiden?”

“Wh-who are you?”

The man’s smile slowly faded away as he searched his face, confusion going to shock and then dismay. “Aiden…? What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“Aiden. Is that my name?” Also disturbing, that this body had a name similar to his own. Starting with an A, with the same amount of letters, an e second to last. Aster could hardly bear it. What kind of cruel joke was this? It must have been his father’s doing, though he hadn’t seen him in months.

But… his father had never done something like this to him before, so it wouldn’t make sense. He had no reason to put his son inside a different child’s body. Aster was sure they’d swapped places. Why would his father switch him with some boy he’d never met?

“You don’t remember who I am?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

-

He was brought to the hospital to make sure he didn’t have some sort of hard to detect head injury, and after two days, was allowed to go home, to Aiden’s home. The green-eyed man was his mother, Clyde Raleigh, and the other man, who had dark skin and one blind eye, was Mishal Raleigh, his father.

When they got home, Mishal carried him in and said, “Home sweet home! Anything familiar?”

He’d never been in this house. “No.”

“That’s okay. The doctors said you should start getting your memories back in familiar surroundings. And these are the most familiar surroundings you’ve got!”

The house was open but cozy. There were pictures and paintings on the walls, little knick-knacks on shelves and surfaces. All the outlets were childproofed, and Aster noticed that anything sharp or breakable was placed out of his reach.

Mishal showed him around the house and then set him down in his bedroom. “Here’s your room!” Everything was his favorite color of turquoise and light green, which made him sure this was specific and malicious. It was tormenting, the similarities. Aster went over and picked up a toy, a stuffed bear. It looked ugly, a red color he didn’t like at all. “That’s-” Mishal faltered when Aster dropped it on the ground and moved on to look at a box of building blocks.

“Huh?”

Lifting up the bear, Mishal finished, “This is your favorite toy, Mr. Bear.”

“Oh. It’s kind of ugly.”

“Your grandma got it for you.”

“Mhmm.” If he was going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, he needed to explore. There was a plastic snowglobe atop his dresser, so he took it and shook it. Snow fell down on the tiny city inside, a mini Boston. Where he lived.

He made a mental note to smash the globe and set it back down. The majority of the toys in Aiden’s bedroom were plushies or toys meant for very young children. Mishal watched him as he explored all his toys, and Clyde joined in as well.

Finding an abandoned box of thick crayons made him happy, and he soon found a notebook he could draw in. The first few pages were filled with scribbles, so he found a fresh page and did some scribbles as well, not wanting to call any attention to his difference in art skills.

“Aiden, are you hungry?” Clyde asked.

“Yeah.”

“Come on downstairs, and Mom will make you something to eat.”

What Clyde made him was something bland with rice, and he ate part of it before deciding that he’d really rather not. He picked at the rest of it.

“What’s wrong, Ai? That’s usually your favorite.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t? What would you like?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about some of Dad’s leftover lunch? I’ve got half a sandwich left.” Mishal got a lunchbox out of the fridge and put it down in front of him. He opened it up and unwrapped the sandwich.

Clyde sighed. “Mishal, you know he doesn’t like that kind of thing.”

Aster picked it up and started to eat it. It was much better than whatever else he’d been eating.

“Well, it looks like he likes that kind of thing now.”

“Ah…”

-

Aster knew that he was far too different from Aiden for Mishal and Clyde to accept easily, though Mishal was delighted to introduce him to ‘new’ things that Aiden had previously shunned. What he didn’t expect though, was for Clyde to figure out that something was dreadfully wrong after just two weeks. Aster belatedly realized that Clyde, who had suddenly begun to encourage him to paint whatever he wanted after a trip to a therapist, was tricking him. Since he’d told the story that the pictures of his father were just a creature from a nightmare, he’d continued drawing him, drawing other things from his real life.

He overheard the two of them talking and hid around a corner in order to listen to them. Clyde sounded nervous, while Mishal’s voice was disbelieving, “What?”

“I don’t think he’s our son.”

“Clyde, what are you talking about? Aiden is ours.”

“He feels like Aiden, and looks like him, but- he’s completely different. He talks different, acts different... He’s so much smarter, and his whole personality is completely warped. It’s like he’s a whole new child. He had no injury to his brain, so there’s no explanation for his amnesia.”

“That the doctors could find. Clyde, I think you need to relax.”

“Mishal, he’s been lying to us. Aiden never lied.”

“Lying?”

“I can sense it. I didn’t, not at first, but now I can. He remembers things, but he’s not telling us. And I don’t think what he’s remembering is Aiden’s memories.”

“What? You think someone is controlling him?”

“I don’t know! I think we need to take him to the university, have him checked for any curses or spells. There’s a holiday in three days, we can take him then.”

“Alright. But Clyde, remember… He could very well still be our little boy. Don’t treat him differently, in case. He’s smart enough that he might resent you if you start treating him like a stranger.”

-

Mishal shook his shoulder to wake him up two days later. Aster mumbled, burying his face against Mishal’s neck when the man lifted him up. He brought him downstairs, and Clyde whispered to him, “Why did you bring Aiden down here?”

“I thought he might like to meet his uncle.”

“Uncle?” Aster looked up. Standing in the entryway was a man who looked very similar to Clyde, but taller and with older, sharper features. There was a long scar across his face, a line of small ones on his lips all the same size and width. Pale green eyes identical to Clyde’s stared directly into his own, and Aster fought to keep his expression neutral as a rush of altered memories came back to him.

“Mishal, Aiden, this is-”

“Sawyer Ganelon. I’m Clyde’s older brother, by five years.”

He was Aster’s mother. The body he was stuck in was his cousin’s. That was why their faces were similar. It didn’t explain why they were exactly the same age, but… It made sense why someone would choose this body to stick him into.

His mother looked exhausted, face gaunt and pale. Under his eyes were heavy bags, and around them, faint bruises. Aster looked down at his hands and saw that his fingers were in a similar state, mottled with bruises and small cuts.

“It’s nice to meet you, Sawyer!” Mishal held out a hand. His mother took it after a moment of hesitation. After a quick shake, he pulled his hand back. “What brings you here?”

“I need a place to stay for a while.”

“Sawyer…” Clyde bristled.

“Not forever. And not to do magic. I… I just need a month or so of peace.” He put a hand on his heavy belly. “My baby is due soon, and I’d like somewhere I can stay until we’re both strong enough to find a new apartment back in Boston.”

Aster couldn’t remember any reason why they’d have to move. He thought back to when he’d put on his coat to leave, and was surprised that now the memory continued. They’d gone to the store and gotten normal ingredients. Then they’d stopped at a magic shop, and his mother had told him to stay in the car and out of sight. He’d ducked down on the floor of the car. When his mother had come back with a strange smile on his face, his bags had been full of odd ingredients and devices.

He’d felt uneasy at the sight of them, even more so when his mother had locked them in his bedroom. The rest of the day had gone normally, and the last thing he now recalled was his mother giving him a kiss on the forehead before telling him to go to bed. He couldn’t remember going to sleep, or even moving from where he’d stood frightened in the hallway.

“Fine. Mishal?”

“Of course! Come on in, you look like you need to sit down. I’ll get you something to warm you up. Aiden, why don’t you show your uncle to the living room?” Mishal put him down, and he walked to the living room. The brothers followed him, Clyde going silent. His mother said nothing as well, not even after they all sat down.

There was a crash in the kitchen, and Clyde sighed and went to go investigate. As soon as his brother was gone, his mother turned to him and smiled. “Hello, Aiden, is it?”

He nodded. Then, voice a whisper, asked, “Mom?”

His mother pulled him into a tight hug. “I’ve got you, Aster.” It was so nice to hear his name again. But his mother pulled away from him and took his hands. He cupped them together in his own and mumbled something under his breath. When he separated them, a ball of Aster’s power hovered between them. It grew to the size of an apple and then fizzled out. Frowning, his mother said, “It didn’t work.”

“What didn’t work, Mom?”

“You don’t have to worry about that, little bug. I’ll take care of everything.” He gave him the eerie smile he’d had at home. “I always do.”

[biogychamp]

Turtles all the way down: Why AI’s cult of objectivity is dangerous, and how we can be better

Join today's leading executives online at the Data Summit on March 9th. Register here. This article was contributed by Slater Victoroff, founder and CTO of Indico Data. There is a belief, built out of science fiction and a healthy fear of math, that AI is some infallible judge of objective truth. We tell ourselves that AI algorithms divine truth from data, and that there is no truth higher than the righteous residual of a regression test. For others, the picture is simple: logic is objective, math is logic, AI is math; thus AI is objective. This is not a benign belief. And, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. More than anything, AI is a mirror: something built in the image of humans, built to mimic humans, and thus inherit our flaws. AI models are computer programs written in data. They reflect all the ugliness in that human data, and through the hundreds of random imperfections across the mirror’s surface, add some hidden ugliness of their own. Joy Buolamwini showed us that, despite the open admission of these challenges in academia, these technologies are being actively adopted and deployed under a fictitious notion of what today’s AI represents. People’s lives are already being upended, and it is important for us to recognize and adopt a more realistic view of this world-changing technology.

Where this belief in objectivity comes from, and why it propagates

Why do so many experts believe that AI is inherently objective?There is a classic lie within the realm of AI: “there are two types of machine learning — supervised and unsupervised.” Supervised methods require humans to tell the machine what the “correct” answer is: whether the tweet is positive or negative. Unsupervised methods don’t require this. One merely presents the unsupervised method with a large raft of tweets and sets it to work. Many novices believe that — because the human subjectivity of “correctness” has not corrupted the unsupervised model — it is a machine built of cold, objective logic. When this cold, objective logic doesn’t align with reality, it’s an afterthought. Always one more regularization step, one more momentum term, one more architecture tweak away. It’s merely a matter of finding the correct math, and human subjectivity will reduce to nothing, like some dimensionless constant. Let me be clear: this is not just wrong, but dangerously wrong. Why, then, has this dangerous notion spread so broadly? Researchers are, in their estimation, algorithm builders first and foremost. They are musicians plucking on the chorded equations of God. Meanwhile, problems of model bias and objectivity are data problems. No self-respecting researcher would ever muddy their hands by touching a disgusting database. That’s for the data people. They are building models, not for the real world, but for that messianic dataset that will someday arrive to save us all from bias. It is eminently understandable. Just like everybody else involved in the development of AI, researchers wish to abdicate responsibility for the often horrific behavior of their creations. We see this in academic terms like “self-supervised” learning, which reinforce the notion that researchers play no part in these outcomes. The AI taught itself this behavior. I swear! Pay no attention to the man behind the keyboard…

The objectivity myth is dangerous

“Unsupervised” learning, or “self-supervised” learning as described in the section above, and as understood by large swaths of the world, does not exist. In practice, when we call a technique “unsupervised,” it may paradoxically involve several orders of magnitude more supervision than a traditional supervised method. An “unsupervised” technique for Twitter sentiment analysis might, for instance, be trained on a billion tweets, ten thousand meticulously parsed sentences, half a dozen sentiment analysis datasets, and an exhaustive dictionary tagging a human-estimated sentiment for every word in the English language that took over a person-century of effort to build. Also, a Twitter sentiment analysis dataset will still be needed for evaluation. So, long as it is not specifically trained on a Twitter sentiment analysis dataset, it may still be considered “unsupervised,” and thus “objective.” In practice, it might be more accurate to call self-supervision “opaque supervision.” The goal is to effectively layer in several layers of indirection such that the instructions provided to the machine are no longer transparent. When bad behavior is learned from bad data, the data can be corrected. When the bad behavior comes from Person A, for example, believing that three is a better value for k than four, nobody will ever know, and no corrective action will be taken. The problem is that, when researchers abdicate responsibility, nobody is there to pick it up. In most of these cases, we simply don’t have the data needed to even appropriately evaluate the bias of our models. One reason that I believe Joy Buolamwini has focused on facial recognition to date is that it lends itself more cleanly to notions of equity that would be difficult to establish for other tasks. We can vary the skin tone of a face and say that facial recognition ought to perform the same across those skin tones. For something like a modern question-answer model, it’s much harder to understand what an appropriate answer to a controversial question might be. There is no replacement for supervision. There is no path where humans are not forced to make decisions about what is correct and what is incorrect. Any belief that rigorous testing and problem definition can be avoided is dangerous. These approaches don’t avoid or mitigate bias. They’re no more objective than the Redditors they emulate. They simply allow us to push that bias into subtle, poorly understood crevices of the system.

How should we look at AI and model bias?

AI is technology. Just like computers and steel and steam engines, it can be a tool of empowerment, or it can bind us in digital shackles. Modern AI can mimic human language, vision, and cognition to an unprecedented degree. In doing so, it presents a unique ability to understand our own foibles. We can take our bias and boil it down to bits and bytes. We’re able to give names and numbers to billions of human experiences. This generation of AI has repeatedly, and embarrassingly, highlighted our fallibility. We are now presented with two options: we can measure and test and push and fight until we get better. Or we can immortalize our ignorance and bias in model weights, hiding under a false cloak of objectivity. When I started Indico Data with Diana and Madison, we placed transparency and responsibility at the core of our corporate values. We also push our customers to do the same. To have those difficult conversations, to define a consistent truth in the world that they can be proud of. From there, the key to eliminating the bias is in the testing. Test your outcomes for any flaws in objectivity, before production, then test again so you are sure not to fail when you are already in production. 

The path forward

It is important to note that obscurity is not a replacement for responsibility. Additionally, hiding human biases in model biases does not eliminate them, nor does it magically make these biases objective. AI researchers have made astonishing progress. Problems considered unsolvable just a few years ago have transformed into “Hello World” tutorials. Today’s AI is an incredible, unprecedented mimic of human behavior. The question now is whether humans can set an example worth following. Can you? Slater Victoroff is founder and CTO of Indico Data. DataDecisionMakers Welcome to the VentureBeat community! DataDecisionMakers is where experts, including the technical people doing data work, can share data-related insights and innovation. If you want to read about cutting-edge ideas and up-to-date information, best practices, and the future of data and data tech, join us at DataDecisionMakers. You might even consider contributing an article of your own! Read More From DataDecisionMakers Source link Read the full article

[ask-svt-hearteu]

“to all admins (who are so beautiful it is sO UNFAIR) : it’s me!!! sofia ahaha and im sending this a lil early because i wont be home for christmas (:p) and i’d like to thank all of you because i can’t send over gifts due to the ocean. damned water. somewhere in december, i think on the 14th??? i will have known this blog for 5 months ! which isn’t that long but im looking forward to spending many more weeks and months on this wonderful blog. all the admins are so, so friendly, nice, amazing, interesting, beautiful, etc etc. thank you for talking to me ! thank you for being here for me during the tough times! thank you for your advice, thank you for your jokes, your rants, your posts, your everything. this blog has given me as much joy as seventeen does. really! i’m so happy i stumbled upon this blessing of a blog when i was still a baby carat and needed more knowledge. 

but please, you guys, get enough rest okay? i heard that someone (like joshua’s wife cough) doesnt get enough sleep and i swear im flying over. all of you are humans and you need rest. you all are in school and you need rest from school (which can be a pain lets be honest) and a break from writing. remember, we, as your readers and fans, care more about your health than how fast you answer our asks. we want you all to be happy and we wish we could give you back the happiness youve given us with this blog. i hope that in 2018, the blog will earn many,many more followers, the admins will make many more friends, and get more supporters (ok but i still dont understand why and how people send hate to the admins?? like fuck you man, these people work so hard arghhh don’t send them hate just because you’re pathetic and lonely and deprived of love and all the good things in life. Legit everytime I see a post about a hater i want to throw a pan at the shithole who hated on these amazing creatures. @jun @minghao @hoshi @scoups jom let’s go beat up the haters im bringing my frying pan and my sunat knife y’ALL BETTER WATCH OUT LATER KENA I SUNAT YOU) drink water, not alcohol : okay sO YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT A HUMAN IS ALLOWED TO BE A TALENTED WRITER, PRETTY ENOUGH TO BE A MODEL AND BE A SINGER ????? JESS IDC WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE G O R G E O U S YOU’RE SO QR3UBFD-BGQIF and you’re so talented and friendly and n i c e. You’RE SO HARDWORKING AS WELL YOU’RE IN YOUR LAST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL AND STILL WRITE ON THIS BLOG AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN (it really touched me when i told you me and my best friend were fighting and you sent me tons of dino pics and tagged me in pictures of him. that really cheered me up , thank you :D) i think you’re the first admin i started to talking to hahahaha and even though im really annoying you still talked to me? like ?? i heard that you’re in your last year of high school and i wish you the best of luck !!! do only what you want to do. Don’t stress about choosing the right college/uni or the right course, just do what you want to. Please take your time with the blog, college tends to stress writers out and whenever you feel stressed rEST PLEASE. pls make many many new friends in college and have a better diet than ramen 24/7 which doesnt sound too bad but that’s a lot of sodium. i hope everything goes well for you but remember if anything goes wrong or u just wanna talk im here! love youuu bb. 10:10 : ok sERI. WE REALLY NEED TO FIND TIME TO TALK because whenever i text you you’re in class and whenever you text me im about to sleep (damn these timezones) sighh. it’s okay if i ever have kids, i’ll sell them and buy a plane ticket to meet you. okay when i first started talking to you i was really impressed because you’re really..tough? like i really people with thick skin and people who don’t give a shit about what other say and tbh i’m trying to be more like that. people like that are so cool !! and ur so pretty and cool sighh im so jealous (you have vv nice lips dONT TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY I JUST THINK THEY’RE VV PRETTY oR dO I) also you’re really smart ! like you’ve gotten full marks for a test like woah hoshi is so lucky. i hope you remain thick skinned and brush the haters away, but it’s okay to feel bad once in a while, you’re only being human. but you can talk to me any time you feel down or u just wanna talk or rant or vent. i hope you don’t stress about school, please take a break if you have to (i dont want you to go away i want you to get the rest you deserve)anyways i love you ! my name is soonyoung, call me soon : APA KHABAR MY MALAYSIAN FREN ahaha im soooo happy i met you on tumblr. *ur the aesthetic queen* . i hope that we meet in person soon or one day because we live in the same country and won’t it be cool to see each other? we should have a photoshoot together. speaking of photoshoot im very happy to have a model sensei to teach me how to pose. also ur one hell of a sweetheart. you always share fandom things with me and i tend to fangirl in the middle of tesco or class because of you. hmm if seventeen ever come back to malaysia we should meet at their concert, given both of us are going. i’d really love to know more about you lmao you’re so interesting and you’re really patient with me!!! which is reallly nice. okay bb let’s find a date when both of us are free and leggo have some fun. i hope you don’t ever have to feel sad. well actually i think sadness is vital to humans so maybe anger. i hope you’ll continue to be very peaceful and freak out w carats and kpop fans across the glose and i hope that one day you’ll see naega hosh up close and p e r so nal. ilysm bb xxx my i geddit because wo ai ni so ur my love heh : hello my wife /name twin ish / dancer girl / jun’s / blessing to thie world. oh my god we need to talk moreeeee. ur so funny and we’re so alike (like we both swear like pigs) but we’re different because you’re so good at dancing! heck, whenever i dance i blind people from a 5 kilometre radius. all the other admins say you could dance my i with jun and i am sHOOK BECAUSE ho l ee s h i et also do you know what i would give to see you dance with jun? i’d give up all my memes. yeah, that’s right. my knowledge of all memes and vines and fre sh a vacado. apart from your dancing skills, you’re very, very pretty. i can’t believe you think you’re ugly , sweet jisoos, you’re have… the beauty of all the sunsets in the world. you’re actually really nice (stop protesting) because you’ve listened to me rant about all the damn drama in my life and you gave me advice. and you’ve never lost your patience with me. jeez i love youuuu !!! you’ve laughed with me and sent me dino pics to make my heart explode and you were there when i did something really stupid on kakaotalk. sighhh good times amirite? well we can still talk on tumblr. i hope you continue being yourself, the amazing person you are. xx love you to bits. seventeenteenteen : i survived. you havent killed me yet. i have stuck to dino faithfully. well actually, my first bias for like, a week, was memesol but then dinosaur found his way into my heart. i know y’all are busy and it may be hard but please rest. please don’t read mean comments, please love yourselves, please eat well. please do anything that would make you happy. each and every one of you are so, so important to me and i hope all of you are healthy. the8 please rest, i hope you get better soon. scoups, i hope that fever is gone. dino, i hope you find someone that makes you really really happy and i hope you wake up with a smile on your face each day and i hope people will stop prying into your personal life because you deserve to find someone you love and you deserve to be able to love that person without hate. i hope all of you don;t feel pressured to keep away from relationships because of selfish “fans” and i hope all of you will be happy. @josh @hoshi @jun you guys, please take care of your aegis. @josh wish ur gf luck for college, @hoshi stop killing these girls w ur visuals and @jun im waiting for u and sophia’s dance duet. i love all of you with all my heart <3333 thank you for a wonderful 5 months, i hope many more will come. love, sofia xx add on : i wrote this note before jonghyun killed himself and i’d just like to say this to everyone. the admins and the readers ; please ask for help. you are not alone. people are here for you. mental illness is not and will never be a light topic. suicide is never the answer. i know it’s hard but you need to stay, because we need you. i need you. it doesnt matter if we are close friends or complete strangers : you are so important. you are strong and brave and kind and smart and beautiful and you can get through this. you have people willing to listen. if somehow the whole world refuses to listen, im here. there are people around you who care deeply about you and please, stay. if any of you feel sad about the recent tragedy, take a break from tumblr, okay? i love all of you and please, stay safe. — sofiafabulousphan”

Admin Jess: Sofia, bb T^T I honestly can’t express how much your words mean to me. I love you so so much thank you for everything. I honestly won’t deny, it’s hard. I think it will always be difficult to a certain degree to run this blog. Not that I don’t love every second of it believe me, I just (LMAO LEAVE IT TO ME TO START TEARING UP IN THE MIDDLE OF TYPING THIS) I’ve never wanted to do something I wanted to just because I can.  I don’t run this blog expecting anything in return. I do it because I genuinely love, love the happiness it brings other people, because I love seventeen and I love doing it all. If I didn’t love it with all my heart I don’t think I would have held up this long. You’re right, it’s my last year of high school. My hardest year because I decided to take a multitude of difficult classes. I have cried tears over so many classes (I’m crying writing this response omfg PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER JESS), I have had plenty of mental breakdowns, a lot of crying whenever someone simply asks me if I’m ok or suggests I get more sleep. I have been an emotional wreck all year. It is my fault though, I did decide to take challenging courses this school year, but one can only run on four hours of sleep everyday for so long and not be emotional I guess. AND I WAS TERRIFIED. I was so scared that in the course of this year, through all the difficult hours of studying and finishing homework at 2/3am in the morning before having to wake up at 6am and walk to school by 7am, that I wouldn’t have the time or effort to do just the one thing I wanted to do the most in the world. I only had one real hobby I loved doing and it was running this blog (again hella emotional and dramatic sorry it’s like one am here when I’m writing this). So I forgo sleep to get everything done. It’s not healthy but in my mind, if I gave up on this blog for one day, that one day might turn into two days, which would turn into a month, and then I’d never be able to do anything ever again just because I kept pushing it off, treating it as if it didn’t mean the world to me when it so very dearly does. OK I’M RAMBLING ABOUT MYSELF NO ONE CARES JESS AHEM,,, My point is, I sacrificed sleep for school and this blog not because I was forced to, but because if I slept, this feeling of guilt when I woke up in the morning, a feeling of “ahh I could have done more, I could have been better” would permeate my mind for who knows how long. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I hate disappointing people. So to hear you say this blog and all the stuff we do on it makes you happy? It makes me think maybe I’m not such a big disappointment after all, and maybe if I keep working hard, I can continue making more people happier, and that’s all I really want. True, with college approaching, I can’t make any guarantees. I anticipate not being able to do anything at all, and that idea is scary too and makes me want to work even harder now while I still can. I will definitely try to get more rest though??? I mean no one likes a sleep-deprived me at 3am lmao, I may seem nice but at 3am I’m bawling my eyes out over homework and cursing at my posters and pictures of Seventeen and school and textbooks in like three different languages (it’s not pretty lol). So yes rest? Idk what that is... but I’ll try??? fjnvksjn? I think I recall when you first sent in an ask, I’m not too sure but honestly the blog is about as old as you’ve been here so thank you for being one of our first supporters (did you have a book with a flower icon hmm trying to recall)! The hate I think will always be a thing I’m sure, I just don’t know how to deal with it T-T I am very naturally a sensitive human bean, what can I say... LMAO I’M NOT GORGEOUS THOUGH it’s called filters, lighting, angles, and makeup. The only reason I look anywhere near decent is because I use a combination of those things to hide all my flaws LMAO. As for singing, I’m not super? I can sing a pitch correctly I suppose? I can sing a chromatic scale? Idk if that qualifies as good singing (I can definitely sing svt songs in broken Korean shamelessly no matter where I go though). I’m really not that good, but I’m not awful like a dying seal or smth. I don’t even think I’m a talented writer, I just try my best I guess. I do sincerely try my hardest. YOU’RE NOT ANNOYING AT ALL I 117% would listen to you rant or scream about anything and I’m just super grateful you don’t think I’m annoying lsnfdnvd. OF COURSE I THINK YOU AND CHAN ARE THE CUTEST (or you and Jongdae pick your poison;) and of course I sent all those Channie pics omfg, I’m always here if you need it^~^ Thank you for all your kind words love (AND IMMA PRETEND YOU DIDN’T CALL ME JOSHUA’S WIFE BC MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT KDFJNVKSBBDIBI I’LL CALL YOU CHAN’S WIFE ISTG I WILL) make sure to take care of yourself and you’re always welcome to come talk to me bb :)

Admin Meagan:  aaaHHHHHHH, really appreciate you Sofia ✨😩 Gosh, can't believe you wrote us sub a long essay AHAHAHAH. Also, SUNAT KAU AHAHAHAHAHAHAH (Non-Malaysians  wouldn't understand lmao) But yeeeee, thank you so so much baby for taking the time to send this ask in <3 It's been amazing knowing you and gosh you are such a sweetheart! Also, Chinese New Year is soon, let's go out together ;)) Cafe hopping at SS15 maybe? Hehe. I want my postcard AHAHA and to spend time with you of course!! <3 You are such a bright individual and Chan loves you hella lots. Thank you for always sending us such encouraging messages and for being a good pal really. But for reals, you mean a lot to me and gosh I can't wait to meet you. Also I not model material lah AHAHAH, only a certain days ;) but yess!! A photoshoot would be amazing haha, I can try to teach you some tips lmao. And yes, thank you for caring about our mental health. January hasn't been the best month for me, honestly it's been horrible but stuff like this really warms up my heart yah know. So yes, really really appreciate you man. Keep being so spunky and loveable. Take care, stay safe and I hope we get to meet each other soon ❤���

Admin Seri: SERIously SERIously, you have no idea how much this warmed my heart. ahh i so wish we could find a better time to talk, i’ll work on that :’) i’m not very good at expressing my feeling through words! and for that mianhae mianhae. in fact, that’s one very VERY COOL thing about you!!! expression your feelings isn’t the easiest and hey, use those feelings to brush for those haters. as you know love, other people’s opinions don’t effect me BUT THERE’S NOTHING WRONG with being affected! just know, those people are irrelivant, and once you realize they can’t do a single fucking thing to you unless you let them, it gets a bit better <3 but GIRL i remember you from the VERY being!!! i can’t believe you stuck around this long , you’ve seen all the changes, how much we’ve grown, it’s seriously amazing. becoming an admin (sure as hell didn’t know it back then) was definitely my HIGHLIGHT of twenty seventeen. there’s not a day that goes by where i regret it, not at all, even when our inbox is loaded or when i have writers block. and you being here along that journey warms my heart so so much! i’m not kidding sometimes i find myself in the middle of the night looking through all the comments or reblogs and GOSH i just see every single sweet sweet message you leave. AND OH MY GOD I’M ALREADY FOR SURE GONNA VISIT AJVBELJNGR IM ALREADY PLANNING TO ONE DAY TO SEE MEAGAN SO LIKE DUHHHH WE COULD MEET UP!!! just augh i’m super super grateful for you message jinja jinja ily~~~ <333 !!! {p.s. i totally wrote bodyguard reader! Chan thinking of you, ngl}

Admin Soph: As much as I love you and as much as you’re my ai. DONT GIVE UP YOUR MEMES FOR ME WTAF. MAN I LOVE YA BUT MEMES ARE IMPORTANT XD. And you might only be disappointed after watching me dance with Jun. Ah I wish we could talk more too :””) We get along so well and Im fucking positive were soulmates just looking at how similar we are XD. Ah im not really good at things like this. Im really speechless because damn boi I love ya and you took the time to write all this for us :””). Youre an angel sent from the heavens. AND ME PRETTY??? NUUUUUUUU.Just like what Jess said, filters and lighting exists. Im only cute tho (char). But youre more prettier than me love. Both inside and outside. You're as beautiful as the northern lights. And like the northern lights, you light up my dark days :””). We dont talk much but we always check up on each other man. Goddamn I love ya. I hope we can make more stupid but fun memories together ^^. And I will literally hug the shit outta you when we meet. Also can we like talk about how much we appreciate ya? You’re always in our inbox sending adorable and heartwarming asks to both Svt and us. I remember telling you that your asks about the admins literally brightens our day. How you're little “I hope the admins stay safe” means so much to us. I really hope you only experience happiness for the rest of your life. You’re a person I really appreciate and love. AS MUCH AS I LOVE JUN. HELL YEAH I SAID IT. hAHHAH Dont be afraid to come to me if you have any problem. I will always be here to talk to you and help you love ^^. Please take care of yourself too. DonT FUCKING SKIP MEALS. GET A LOT OF SLEEP OR IM GETTING CHAN AND JONGDAE. Ah im sorry if I didnt say a lot. I want to say a lot but I literally dont know what to say :””). I WILL MESSAGE YOU A LONG AS MESSAGE ON YOUR BDAY OR SOMETHING. I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY TO YOU GADBSVF ASNMK. For now, I love you and take care of yourself. You are loved by a lot and I hope your life gets filled with happiness and joy. Im also always here if you ever need to talk ^^

[froldgapp]

Conversation In Blue

This got way out of hand. Lance goes to talk to Shiro about his Keith problem.

Lance knocked and waited for a response, nervously kicking his heels together. A small hum was beginning to build in the back of his throat when Shiro’s voice bid him to come in. He slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind him.

Shiro’s room was lit by a single lamp on his desk. It cast a warm glow across the small quarters. In fact, the whole room was warm; warmer than Lance’s. He wondered if it was because of Shiro’s arm. All that cold, hard metal. The man himself was sat on the edge of his bed, tablet resting in his lap. The bluish glow lit his face from below.

‘Lance?’

Lance realised belatedly that Shiro had already addressed him.

‘Uh, yeah.’ He said. He fiddled with the zipper on his jacket. ‘Hey, Shiro.’

‘Hey, Lance...?’

Lance coughed. ‘Hey,’ he drew the word out like taffy. ‘Shiro.’

The older paladin raised an elegant eyebrow. Lance raised an answering eyebrow.

‘Can I help you?’ Shiro dropped the words into the room like coins into a slot machine.

The awkwardness of the entire situation and his self-imposed mission rushed in on him at once. He considered bolting, but Shiro was already making space for him on the bed.

He crept forward, his legs feeling unwieldy and too long as he gingerly sat next to the black paladin. He cleared his throat. ‘I wanted to ask you something. If you’re, uh, if you’re not too busy.’

Shiro smiled and it went the whole way up to his eyes. He placed his tablet to one side. ‘No, no, of course not. What’s bothering you?’

Lance took a deep breath and slapped both palms down on his knees. ‘Well,’ he began, but the words stuck in his throat. He tried again. Another deep breath. ‘See... Eh...’

Shiro tilted an encouraging smile in his direction, forehead scrunched and maybe a little impatient. ‘Lance.’

‘Does Keith hate me?’ The words exploded out of him in one sputtering, spitting torrent.

Shiro’s smile dropped. He issued a tired sigh and scratched at the bridge of his nose.

Fuck. Lance knew it was a mistake coming here. Those two were so close. Great, now Shiro would know about his ‘Keith situation’. If didn’t already. Because Keith was so damn obvious. He was about to stand to leave when Shiro spoke.

‘Why do you think he hates you, Lance?’

Lance honestly laughed at that. What. ‘Shiro...’

The black paladin said nothing. His face was an open cliff face.

Lance began counting off on his fingers. ‘He snaps at me, he avoids me, he always goes up for the same missions as me, and he just... he...’ Lance made an urgent, helpless noise. ‘He just does.’ Shiro said nothing. ‘Doesn’t he?’

A long, loaded silence hung between them. When Shiro spoke he sounded worn, but not bothered, which was a pleasant relief. The lines of his body as he brought his hands together between his knees and drew back his shoulders made Lance feel as though perhaps he hadn’t been so stupid to come here.

‘What kind of things does he snap at?’ Shiro asked. He was all teacher now, all mentor. The Shiro Lance remembered from Garrison, though they’d never met.

Lance pouted and thought of an example. ‘Well, like, when I try to kid around with him: “Keith rigged the AI!” or like, “Keith totally broke the goo hose!” He just freaks out and storms off. I’m talking about a situation here where the goo hose wasn’t even broken!’

Shiro nodded knowingly. He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his knee, thinking. Not thinking. Considering. There was something he wanted to say to Lance, but was thinking twice about. The blue paladin swallowed noisily.

‘Lance, the things you joke with Keith about: to you or I, or Hunk or Pidge, they’re...’ He waved his hand around to find the correct word. ‘Light. They’re- We know that’s not us. If you accuse Hunk of stealing food rations-’

‘He does steal food rations.’

Shiro rolled his eyes. ‘If you accuse Hunk of cheating the AI, we all know that Hunk wouldn’t do that. And more importantly, Hunk knows we know he wouldn’t do that.’

‘Well... yeah,’ Lance agreed.

‘But Keith, he-’ There was that deep frown – consideration: to tell Lance or not to tell Lance. He settled on sharing with a sigh. ‘A lot of people have said a lot of untrue things about Keith, and he’s suffered because of it. It’s hurt him, Lance.’

Lance’s eyes were plates. His shoulders hunched. It felt like he was getting a ‘talking to’, but he wasn’t. It was Shiro. No, this was different. He wasn’t being chastised, he was being guided. This was a child lifting a rock and seeing the soil beneath team with ugly creatures. He saw Keith at the garrison dolefully cleaning the halls after dinner because of some fight or other. He saw the empty frame where Keith’s picture used to hang after he washed out. His face began to burn with shame.

‘Keith... He’s -’ Now Shiro was really at a loss for words. He scratched at the thick column of this throat. ‘He’s very – and please don’t laugh at this old-fashioned word because I’m half asleep here, but – he’s very honourable.’

Lance did laugh and Shiro clipped him across the back of the head playfully, which made Lance’s heart blossom more than he was comfortable with as an apparent soldier and defender of the known universe.

‘Honestly Lance?’ Shiro began. ‘I don’t think Keith hates anyone.’

Lance balked.

‘I don’t think he’s capable of it. In Keith’s world people do things that are right.’ Shiro opened his hands, one after the other as he spoke. ‘And things that are wrong. There are no “good people” and “bad people” if you get what I’m saying?’

‘So, I’m a jerk-off doing things that are wrong?’ Lance didn’t mean that to sound half as defensive as it did.

Shiro smiled warmly and shook his head. ‘No, Lance. You’re a really, really great friend and – here’s another horrible word – kind of sweet.’

Lance laughed. Another clip around the ear.

‘But when you say those things to Keith he takes them very seriously. Because they have been serious for him in the past. Very serious. You remind him that he might not be doing things right, when ‘doing things right’ forms the centre of his universe. You’ve seen him. You know him, Lance.’ Shiro frowned. ‘It’s all he tries to do.’

Lance hummed his agreement, a lump forming in the back of his throat. ‘He’s scared of me,’ Lance whispered. ‘That’s why he avoids me. Oh my God.’

Shiro nodded knowingly. ‘He’s scared of what you remind him of. What can go wrong for him; be taken away from him.’ Something lit behind Shiro’s eyes. ‘And, hey: the missions. You’re talking about the Greefyr System, and the like, yes? You and Keith both volunteered for those missions. I chose Keith.’

'Right, but... I mean, I trust you. You don’t have to...’ He offered a shaky grin to Shiro who returned a rueful shadow of a smile.

‘Were there any missions you were chosen for Keith wasn’t?’

‘Well sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Like that nasty ice planet with all the hot icicle babes.’

‘The killer icicle babes?’

Finger guns. ‘The very ones. But come on: Blue was built for an ice planet. She was the best lion for the job. It’s not personal.’

Shiro looked at Lance and waited.

‘Ah.’ Lance snorted an uncomfortable little acknowledgement. ‘Well... Okay. I mean...Okay, okay. Maybe I took some decisions personally.’ 

Shiro quirked a smile: ‘It’s natural. I’m glad you care enough to check in, Lance. It’s really brave of you. I know me and Keith have history, but we’re all a team now.’

He stood, bashfully batting at the pockets of his jacket. ‘Thanks Shiro.’

‘But Lance?’

‘Huh?’

‘Thanks for telling me about the selection thing. I’ll keep that in mind for future missions.’ Shiro stood and walked him to the door. ‘I make mistakes too. That’s what makes you such a great part of the team. You’re not afraid to say.’

Lance beamed. He couldn’t help himself.

‘I know you only want what’s fair. Sort of like a certain mullet-head we both know.’

Lance laughed and ducked under Shiro’s arm into the bright light of the corridor. ‘Good night, Shiro.’ 

‘Good night, Lance. Dream of ice babes.’

[technato]

Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis—and Proposes a Solution

Q&A: Kai-Fu Lee talks about AI, jobs, and the human heart

When the former president of Google China talks about artificial intelligence and its potential to cause global upheaval, people listen. His hope is that enough people will listen to avert catastrophic disruption on three different scales: to the global balance of power, to national economies, and to human beings’ delicate souls.

Kai-Fu Lee has been fascinated by AI since he was an eager computer science student applying to Carnegie Mellon University’s Ph.D. program; his admission essay extolled the promise of AI, which he called “the quantification of the human thinking process.” His studies led him to executive positions in Apple, Microsoft, and Google China, before his 2009 founding of Sinovation Ventures, a venture-capital firm focusing on high-tech companies in China.  

His new book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), is something of a bait and switch. The first half explores the diverging AI capabilities of China and the United States and frames the discussion as a battle for global dominance. Then, he boldly declares that we shouldn’t waste time worrying about who will win and says the “real AI crisis” will come from automation that wipes out whole job sectors, reshaping economies and societies in both nations. 

“Lurking beneath this social and economic turmoil will be a psychological struggle,” he writes. “As more and more people see themselves displaced by machines, they will be forced to answer a far deeper question: In an age of intelligent machines, what does it mean to be human?”

In a wide-ranging Q&A with IEEE Spectrum, Lee not only explored this question further, he also gave his answer. 

  Kai-Fu Lee on . . .

Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI

“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”

The Inevitability of the AI Revolution 

Facing Death

A “Blueprint for Coexistence”

Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI

IEEE Spectrum: Why do you believe that China will soon match or even overtake the United States in developing and deploying AI?

Kai-Fu Lee: The first and foremost reason is that we’ve transitioned out of an era of discovery—when the person who makes the discovery has a huge edge—and into an era of implementation. The algorithms for AI are pretty well known to many practitioners. What matters now is speed, execution, capital, and access to a large amount of data. In each of these areas, China has an edge.

That’s why I began the book by talking about China’s entrepreneurism. It’s not like Silicon Valley, which is built on iPhone breakthroughs and SpaceX innovations, it’s built on incredibly hard work. Chinese entrepreneurs find areas where there’s enough data and a commercially viable application of AI, and then they work really hard to make the application work. It’s often very hard, dirty, ugly work. The data isn’t handed to you on a silver platter. 

Spectrum: You say that Chinese tech giants like Tencent have a clear advantage in terms of access to data that’s needed to train AI. Do they really have more data than companies like Google?

Lee: There are a few ways to look at the data advantage. The first is how many users you have. Google probably has more users than Tencent, because it’s international. The second question is: How homogenous is your data set? Google’s data from Estonia may not help its work in India. It may be better to have rich data from one set of people who have the same language, culture, preferences, usage patterns, payment methods, and so on.

The third way to measure is how much data you have about each person. Tencent has a catch-all app, WeChat, that does basically everything. The average Chinese Internet user spends half of his or her time online in WeChat. When you open WeChat, you have access to everything U.S. users get from Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, Uber, Expedia, Evite, Instagram, Skype, PayPal, GrubHub, LimeBike, WebMD, Fandango, YouTube, Amazon, and eBay.

Spectrum: You describe China’s startup ecosystem as a brutal “coliseum” where companies don’t win because they’re the most innovative, but rather because they’re the best at copying, using dirty tricks, and working insane schedules.

Lee: There is creativity, but it’s just one tool. Another is copying. Entrepreneurs do whatever it takes to win, to build value for the user, and to make money. If you look at WeChat, you can’t point to one moment when it shocked the world like an iPhone. WeChat today is an amazing innovation, but it didn’t come about because someone at Tencent dreamed it up and built it and shocked the world. They kept layering on features that users wanted, they iterated, they threw away the features that didn’t work, and at the end they had a product that was the most innovative social network. It’s so good that Facebook is now copying them.

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“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”

Spectrum: You write that the big AI question isn’t whether China or the United States will dominate. Instead it’s how we’ll deal with the “real AI crisis” of job losses, wealth inequality, and people’s sense of self-worth.

Lee: AI will take many single-task, single-domain jobs away. You can argue that humans have abilities that AI does not: We can conceptualize, strategize, create. Whereas today’s AI is just a really smart pattern recognizer that can take in data, optimize, and beat humans at a given task. But how many jobs in the world are simple repetitions of tasks that can be optimized? How many jobs require no creativity, strategizing, conceptualization? Most jobs are repetitive: truck-driving, telemarketing, dishwashing, fruit picking, assembly-line work, and so on. I’m afraid that about 50 percent of jobs in the world are in danger. 

Whether these jobs will disappear in 15 years or 20 or 30, that’s debatable. But it’s inevitable. Not only can AI do a better job, it can do the job for almost marginal cost. Once you get the system up and running you just pay for the server, electricity, bandwidth. To be competitive, companies will be forced to automate. And this shift will happen a lot faster than has ever happened before in the history of humanity.

Spectrum: Why do you think “techno-utopians” have it wrong when they say that AI will ultimately create entirely new categories of jobs, just like the industrial revolution?

Lee: People say that in the industrial revolution, more jobs were created than destroyed. They say it was the same with electricity, and that we shouldn’t worry, because the same thing will happen this time with AI. I would agree with that if we had enough time. Those earlier technological revolutions took a century or longer. Electricity has been around for over 100 years, and we still don’t have electric cars, we’re still working on the grid. That gave people time to grow, and develop, and invent new jobs. But we have basically one generation with AI, and that’s a lot less time.

Spectrum: You argue that even if governments figure out a way to distribute money to all these jobless people, it will still be a crisis.

Lee: Most people don’t think of their job just as a source of income. It brings meaning to their life, it’s their contribution to the world. That’s how we decided to structure our capitalistic society: There’s the idea that even by working routine jobs, they can make money and make better lives for their families. If we pull the rug out from under them and say, you have no job, but here’s some money from the government, I think that would lead to bad outcomes. Some would be happy and retire early. Some will learn a new skill and get a new job, but unfortunately many will learn the wrong job, and get displaced again. A large number of people will be depressed. They will feel that life has no meaning, and this can result in suicide, substance abuse, and so on.

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The Inevitability of the AI Revolution

Spectrum: If this kind of economic and societal upheaval is an inevitable consequence of AI, is there any chance that we’ll decide to turn away from the technology, and decide not to use it?

Lee: Individual governments can make certain decisions to slow down the deployment of AI. But for humanity as a whole, it’s not possible. We’ve opened Pandora’s box. We did, as humans, control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that technology was secret and required a huge amount of capital investment. In AI, the algorithms are well known to many people, and it’s not possible to forbid people to use them. College students are using them to start companies.

Take autonomous trucks as an example. While China is building cities and highways to facilitate autonomous trucks, the American trucking union is appealing to President Trump to forbid testing on highways. If the U.S. is currently ahead on autonomous trucks, but chooses to slow down the development for fear of taking away jobs from truck-drivers, the only outcome is that China will catch up. Chinese companies will test the trucks, get the data, that data will make the AI better, at some point the technology will be so good that China will export it to the rest of the world. At that point, the U.S. will still have to give in to automation.

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Facing Death

Spectrum: You call this a grim picture, but then go on to say that there’s hope, and that the potential for human flourishing has never been greater. You had your own grim experience that led to your own flourishing. Can you talk about your cancer experience?

Lee: I had been a workaholic for my whole life, and I always put work as my top priority. It was only when I faced cancer and possible death that I realized that no amount of money, success, or fame could substitute for the love I have from other people. And I felt great regret for not giving back what they gave me. That was a wake-up call.

After I became better and my cancer was in remission, I changed my life. It’s not that I don’t work hard anymore, I still do. But I prioritize differently. I prioritize family, I found a much better balance. I realized that the optimization that I used to do at work brought me money, success, and fame, but those are not the things that really matter to me—although I once thought they were.

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A Blueprint for Coexistence

Spectrum: So that experience led to your idea for what you call a blueprint for coexistence with AI, in which the use of AI gives people more time to love each other. You write that we must “forge a synergy between artificial intelligence and the human heart.” Can you give me an example of how this synergy might manifest in the job market?

Lee: One of my favorite examples is in medicine. Imagine a future clinic, in which the room is enhanced with all sorts of sensors that take readings of your body and give the human doctor lots of information. The doctor will help tease out information like family history and specific symptoms. 

AI can make a great diagnosis and suggest the treatment, the prescription, and so on. In early days, AI will give statistics and the doctor will make the final choice. But in time, it will be very rare that the doctor overrides the system. So the AI will do the diagnosis, then the doctor will deliver the message in a way that feels caring and warm. The doctor will also let the patient tell his or her story. In many countries, each person gets only five minutes of doctor’s time—but while the doctor may only need five minutes, the patient needs much more to feel heard, to ask questions, and to be reassured. 

If each doctor spends more time with each patient, there will need to be more doctors. Maybe they don’t need to be full MDs with 10 years of education and internship, since they no longer need to memorize all the symptoms and treatments. Instead they could get four years of education to become caring, compassionate caregivers, similar to nurse practitioners. Then the cost of health care will come way down, people will get better care, and the number of caregivers will go way up.

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Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis—and Proposes a Solution syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[emarkly-blog]

The 21 Greatest Marketing Articles to Read for 2017

Oscar Wilde was a guy that is humorous.

Poet, the prolific writer, and satirist penned some genuinely insightful works of drama and comedy that survive to this day. Titles like The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Grey are true classics. Wilde is remembered as a brassy and hilarious individual with mind.

My favourite thing that he ever wrote was this: "Fashion is the only kind of ugliness so intolerable we have to change it every six months."

As a marketer, I sometimes believe we ride a wave of trends, fashions to speak, then pass away and that flare up. And like styles, being on the wrong side of a fashion is being out of the loop. As marketers, we can't ignore trends, however passing they might be.

We have to pay attention. Why? Trends can evolve and shape our advertising culture before we know it.

That said, here is the 21 best advertising articles to read for 2017. I have pulled these blog posts from my personal marketing library to ensure that you don't end up on the ugly (unknowing) facet of advertising trends in the coming year.

By appearing into the future, I will start us off. This lengthy SmartInsights post have an in-depth look in the big-time digital marketing and advertising trends of 2017. Expect heaps of data and predictions. That is a meaty, approach that is valuable to begin planning.

#2 -- 7 Big Brand Social Media Strategies for Smaller Businesses

Dara Fontein from Hootsuite utilizes seven consecutive examples to show readers precisely how to excel in the modern social media landscape. Covering all the platforms, this read is a great resource for certain tactics and strategies for your business -- of any shape or size.

#3 -- The 23 Things to Consider When Creating Video Content Into video we turn for storytelling in 2017. For participation and pull, nothing surpasses a image, but video is not without challenges. Author Jodi Harris looks at the best practices around the movie boom and how to make the most of your campaign ROI.

#4 -- The Way to Dominate Content Marketing with Machine Learning Tools

Amanda Chiu from JeffBullas.com divides readers into one of their greatest marketing tendencies of 2017 -- machine learning. New technologies are introduced by the author and how to use these within a content marketing strategy. This is a good place to start, if you have not considered the ramifications of robots doing some of your work for you.

Why not learn from the finest, asks Courtney Seiter of Buffer. This listicle is a swipe file of advertising tactics that are aspiration, from media to you need authentic live-video plays to trends in content promotion. This piece will provide you a lot of ideas, people to follow along, and inspiration to your own campaigns.

#6 -- 10 Free Online Advertising Tools Every Small Business Owner Needs If you're looking to enhance your SEO at 2017 -- for the purchase price of in your house -- look no further. Other search engine optimization handiness, content analysis, crawl tools, topic ideas, along with Keyword research are available in this particular post. At the cost of a hand-out, this really is amazing for small businesses.

Employing a fun Star Wars event during, Gianluca Fiorelli from MOZ supplies a significant exposé on the current state of the search engine optimization galaxy. Proving a dose of background with a heap of useful analysis, the writer takes the padawan SEO learner and even SEO Jedi Knights through an exhaustive and informative tour de force of this search engine optimization skillset. Do not overlook this uncommonly easily-enjoyed and valuable read on a topic.

#8 -- 50 Best Content Advertising Influencers to Follow Marketing won't be going anywhere in 2017. That is, it will not going anywhere but up. This TopRankBlog post gives a healthy serving of industry leaders to follow in the future of content marketing. Content marketing is predicted to secure more visual in the year -- but that should not stop you from reading this article and being read in the coming year.

#9 -- 9 Social Media Marketing Trends That Could Make or Break Your Business in 2017

Lee Odden starts by reminding us, "The most significant thing about social media marketing isn't always the tech. It is the people." He then proceeds to delve into the way that customer usage will evolve and join in the coming year with tech trends. Covering ideas such as social chat bots to dark societal, Odden paints a vibrant picture through how users, brands, and societal platforms will interact best in 2017.

#10 -- Creating the Right Marketing Mix (Source)

Moz mastermind Rand Fishkin wades through funnel challenges with readers (and audiences) during this Whiteboard Friday post. Fishkin presents questions regarding sources allocation and ROI, answering that info is frequently the answer. Read this article and audit your promotion budget for 2017.

#11 -- The 7 Essential Google Analytics Reports Every Marketer Must Know Marketing is all about error, demo, and knowing whether your efforts are translating into outcomes. And we're all eager to talk about how important information is, yet how many of us know our ways? Writer Khalid Saleh makes marketers aren't being information dilatantes with this revealing and significant overview of aspects of a hard interface, even for the most seasoned marketers. He covers articles efficiencies, mobile reports, traffic reports, and much more in this exact digestible walk-through of Google Anayltics.

#12 -- 12 Bad Habits Which Are Making You Less Productive (Source)

I had to take a while about to discuss, well, you. Yes my dear reader, this post is not all about strategies and strategy for business. Referral SaaSquatch would like you to live a full, rewarding life that is free of stress and wasted time. So dip your feet into this Hubspot article on how to be your very best self -- and operate for this.

#13 -- Everything the Tech World Says About Marketing Is Wrong (Source)

The scathing Dan Lyons bit on startup civilization is outlined by TC"s Samuel Scott within an incisive piece that fires a shot across the bow of the modern marketer. Keen debunk the phoniness that some entrepreneurs seem to thrive on and to call the buzzword fanaticism out. In a lucid, interesting manner the author rails against the thoughts of inbound, content, and direct advertising as fresh and improving notions we can scale and manipulate. His thoughts? Back to basics, a 2017 advertising trend to be certain.

#14 -- How Facebook's News Feed Works, As Explained By Facebook Ever wonder what's going on beneath that hood ornament that is electronic? Well, if you are a true digital advertising mechanic you will appreciate knowing what's driving the definitive social media engine of our era. Gather ye' insights and profit!

#15 -- 20 Social Media Tools & Tips From the Pros Lisa Jenkins out of Social Media Examiner gathered a package of goodness for people excited to maximize all things social this season. Best practices for Facebook movie, expanding your reach with Pinterest audience targeting to boost quality for podcast -- that is merely a flavor of some fine-point advice for your digital advertising and marketing efforts .

#16 -- Mobile Internet vs Mobile Apps: Where Should You Invest Your Marketing Mobile is a hot subject in the realm of digital marketing 2017. The way to best impact a mobile strategy gets a going-over from Rand Fishkin of Moz as he covers the place where to shell out for mobile optimization and reach. He comes back with some insights and weighs customer retention and engagement from ROI.

#17 -- 4 Uncommon Ways to Nurture Leads with Personalization Personalization will be relevant for marketers in 2017. Rohan Ayyar breaks down how your manufacturer can take the initiative to provide consumer with a more enjoyable UX and repeatable manufacturer encounter.

#18 -- The Way to Construct Amazing Personalized Influencer Marketing Campaigns Can you and all the forces of personalization combine the powers of influencers? Well, start by reading this Search Engine Journal article. She looks at the way your brand can effectively utilize customer-centric messaging to really amplify your influencer marketing approaches. Do not miss this!

#19 -- A Video Advertising Guide to Developing Epic Content on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and much more (Source)

Video marketing is rockin' in the networking world that is social. Digital advertising in 2017 will watch streaming video burst even more than a year ago, soBuffer takes a big picture look at the way your brand can succeed in driving traffic, netting engagement, and fostering revenues through video this season.

#20 -- 51 Referral Program Cases of 2016 It is helpful to follow the leaders, when diving into referral advertising. This informative article showcases how brands exemplify the benefits of referral programs, providing readers with the insights necessary to drive referral earnings. Read here today for heaps of proven approaches and winning strategies you may take home today.

#21 -- The Way Google Analytics Ruined Marketing Samuel Scott was on fire this year! The TechCrunch author brings another marketing believe piece that begs the question: where could we be with our numbers to us -- and would it be better? Part indictment at a creative manner, part history lesson this bit is of civilization.

The Last Chapter Whether or not you prefer literature or follow trend, overlooking marketing tendencies could prove catastrophic. Fortunately, everything you will need to do is always to optimize your brand for conversions, engagement, and customer retention.

These 21 articles might have been somewhat too timely for Oscar Wilde, but they will serve us just fine. As we marketers look to the coming year, we anticipate to emphasize personalization, visual marketing, AI, along with other recent trends while adding new chapters to the classic strategies.

Question is: Can you use this info to make a brand worth reading to this season?

[technato]

Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis–and Proposes a Solution

Q&A: Kai-Fu Lee talks about AI, jobs, and the human heart

When the former president of Google China talks about artificial intelligence and its potential to cause global upheaval, people listen. His hope is that enough people will listen to avert catastrophic disruption on three different scales: to the global balance of power, to national economies, and to human beings’ delicate souls.

Kai-Fu Lee has been fascinated by AI since he was an eager computer science student applying to Carnegie Mellon University’s PhD program; his admission essay extolled the promise of AI, which he called “the quantification of the human thinking process.” His studies led him to executive positions in Apple, Microsoft, and Google China, before his 2009 founding of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on high-tech companies in China.  

His new book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, is something of a bait and switch. The first half explores the diverging AI capabilities of China and the United States, and frames the discussion as a battle for global dominance. Then he boldly declares that we shouldn’t waste time worrying about who will win, and says the “real AI crisis” will come from automation that wipes out whole job sectors, reshaping economies and societies in both nations. 

“Lurking beneath this social and economic turmoil will be a psychological struggle,” he writes. “As more and more people see themselves displaced by machines, they will be forced to answer a far deeper question: In an age of intelligent machines, what does it mean to be human?”

In a wide-ranging Q&A with IEEE Spectrum, Lee not only explored this question further, he also gave his answer. 

  Kai-Fu Lee on . . .

Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI

“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”

The Inevitability of the AI Revolution 

Facing Death

A “Blueprint for Coexistence”

Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI

IEEE Spectrum: Why do you believe that China will soon match or even overtake the United States in developing and deploying AI?

Kai-Fu Lee: The first and foremost reason is that we’ve transitioned out of an era of discovery—when the person who makes the discovery has a huge edge—and into an era of implementation. The algorithms for AI are pretty well known to many practitioners. What matters now is speed, execution, capital, and access to a large amount of data. In each of these areas, China has an edge.

That’s why I began the book by talking about China’s entrepreneurism. It’s not like Silicon Valley, which is built on iPhone breakthroughs and SpaceX innovations, it’s built on incredibly hard work. Chinese entrepreneurs find areas where there’s enough data and a commercially viable application of AI, and then they work really hard to make the application work. It’s often very hard, dirty, ugly work. The data isn’t handed to you on a silver platter. 

Spectrum: You say that Chinese tech giants like Tencent have a clear advantage in terms of access to data that’s needed to train AI. Do they really have more data than companies like Google?

Lee: There are a few ways to look at the data advantage. The first is how many users you have. Google probably has more users than Tencent, because it’s international. The second question is: How homogenous is your data set? Google’s data from Estonia may not help its work in India. It may be better to have rich data from one set of people who have the same language, culture, preferences, usage patterns, payment methods, and so on.

The third way to measure is how much data you have about each person. Tencent has a catch-all app, WeChat, that does basically everything. The average Chinese internet user spends half of his or her time online in WeChat. When you open WeChat, you have access to everything U.S. users get from Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, Uber, Expedia, Evite, Instagram, Skype, PayPal, GrubHub, LimeBike, WebMD, Fandango, YouTube, Amazon, and eBay.

Spectrum: You describe China’s startup ecosystem as a brutal “coliseum” where companies don’t win because they’re the most innovative, but rather because they’re the best at copying, using dirty tricks, and working insane schedules.

Lee: There is creativity, but it’s just one tool. Another is copying. Entrepreneurs do whatever it takes to win, to build value for the user, and to make money. If you look at WeChat, you can’t point to one moment when it shocked the world like an iPhone. WeChat today is an amazing innovation, but it didn’t come about because someone at Tencent dreamed it up and built it and shocked the world. They kept layering on features that users wanted, they iterated, they threw away the features that didn’t work, and at the end they had a product that was the most innovative social network. It’s so good that Facebook is now copying them.

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“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”

Spectrum: You write that the big AI question isn’t whether China or the United States will dominate. Instead it’s how we’ll deal with the “real AI crisis” of job losses, wealth inequality, and people’s sense of self-worth.

Lee: AI will take many single-task, single-domain jobs away. You can argue that humans have abilities that AI does not: We can conceptualize, strategize, create. Whereas today’s AI is just a really smart pattern recognizer that can take in data, optimize, and beat humans at a given task. But how many jobs in the world are simple repetitions of tasks that can be optimized? How many jobs require no creativity, strategizing, conceptualization? Most jobs are repetitive: truck-driving, telemarketing, dishwashing, fruit picking, assembly line work, and so on. I’m afraid that about 50 percent of jobs in the world are in danger. 

Whether these jobs will disappear in 15 years or 20 or 30, that’s debatable. But it’s inevitable. Not only can AI do a better job, it can do the job for almost marginal cost. Once you get the system up and running you just pay for the server, electricity, bandwidth. To be competitive, companies will be forced to automate. And this shift will happen a lot faster than has ever happened before in the history of humanity.

Spectrum: Why do you think “techno-utopians” have it wrong when they say that AI will ultimately create entirely new categories of jobs, just like the industrial revolution?

Lee: People say that in the industrial revolution, more jobs were created than destroyed. They say it was the same with electricity, and that we shouldn’t worry, because the same thing will happen this time with AI. I would agree with that if we had enough time. Those earlier technological revolutions took a century or longer. Electricity has been around for over 100 years, and we still don’t have electric cars, we’re still working on the grid. That gave people time to grow, and develop, and invent new jobs. But we have basically one generation with AI, and that’s a lot less time.

Spectrum: You argue that even if governments figure out a way to distribute money to all these jobless people, it will still be a crisis.

Lee: Most people don’t think of their job just as a source of income. It brings meaning to their life, it’s their contribution to the world. That’s how we decided to structure our capitalistic society: There’s the idea that even by working routine jobs, they can make money and make better lives for their families. If we pull the rug out from under them and say, you have no job, but here’s some money from the government, I think that would lead to bad outcomes. Some would be happy and retire early. Some will learn a new skill and get a new job, but unfortunately many will learn the wrong job, and get displaced again. A large number of people will be depressed. They will feel that life has no meaning, and this can result in suicide, substance abuse, and so on.

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The Inevitability of the AI Revolution

Spectrum: If this kind of economic and societal upheaval is an inevitable consequence of AI, is there any chance that we’ll decide to turn away from the technology, and decide not to use it?

Lee: Individual governments can make certain decisions to slow down the deployment of AI. But for humanity as a whole, it’s not possible. We’ve opened Pandora’s box. We did, as humans, control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that technology was secret and required a huge amount of capital investment. In AI, the algorithms are well known to many people, and it’s not possible to forbid people to use them. College students are using them to start companies.

Take autonomous trucks as an example. While China is building cities and highways to facilitate autonomous trucks, the American trucking union is appealing to President Trump to forbid testing on highways. If the U.S. is currently ahead on autonomous trucks, but chooses to slow down the development for fear of taking away jobs from truck-drivers, the only outcome is that China will catch up. Chinese companies will test the trucks, get the data, that data will make the AI better, at some point the technology will be so good that China will export it to the rest of the world. At that point, the U.S. will still have to give in to automation.

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Facing Death

Spectrum: You call this a grim picture, but then go on to say that there’s hope, and that the potential for human flourishing has never been greater. You had your own grim experience that led to your own flourishing. Can you talk about your cancer experience?

Lee: I had been a workaholic for my whole life, and I always put work as my top priority. It was only when I faced cancer and possible death that I realized that no amount of money, success, or fame could substitute for the love I have from other people. And I felt great regret for not giving back what they gave me. That was a wake-up call.

After I became better and my cancer was in remission, I changed my life. It’s not that I don’t work hard anymore, I still do. But I prioritize differently. I prioritize family, I found a much better balance. I realized that the optimization that I used to do at work brought me money, success, and fame, but those are not the things that really matter to me… although I once thought they were.

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A Blueprint for Coexistence

Spectrum: So that experience led to your idea for what you call a blueprint for coexistence with AI, in which the use of AI gives people more time to love each other. You write that we must “forge a synergy between artificial intelligence and the human heart.” Can you give me an example of how this synergy might manifest in the job market?

Lee: One of my favorite examples is in medicine. Imagine a future clinic, in which the room is enhanced with all sorts of sensors that take readings of your body and give the human doctor lots of information. The doctor will help tease out information like family history and specific symptoms. 

AI can make a great diagnosis and suggest the treatment, the prescription, and so on. In early days, AI will give statistics and the doctor will make the final choice. But in time, it will be very rare that the doctor overrides the system. So the AI will do the diagnosis, then the doctor will deliver the message in a way that feels caring and warm. The doctor will also let the patient tell his or her story. In many countries, each person gets only five minutes of doctor’s time—but while the doctor may only need five minutes, the patient needs much more to feel heard, to ask questions, and to be reassured. 

If each doctor spends more time with each patient, there will need to be more doctors. Maybe they don’t need to be full MDs with 10 years of education and internship, since they no longer need to memorize all the symptoms and treatments. Instead they could get four years of education to become caring, compassionate caregivers, similar to nurse practitioners. Then the cost of health care will come way down, people will get better care, and the number of caregivers will go way up.

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Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis–and Proposes a Solution syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com