#virtual entity

[shrimplylildudes]

Finally gave him a solid ref, he had a little doodley thing before. And im not sure if I ever uploaded it here? Anyways. Splitpiss lives in a world where all humans, a very long time ago, were converted into digital data, as their world was dying. Citizens now, no longer even know about the 'meatspace' world outside of horror movies. It's made out of multiple servers, and its usually common to give yourself actual username-like names. People can change that on a whim, as well as their 'avatars', since everyone is a digital entity. Very, very rarely, can people actually die. As it requires their code to break down. Splitpiss was one of the unfortunate individuals, as he didn't want to die, he willingly infected himself with parasitic viruses that replaced chunks of missing code that decayed. The downside to those viruses is they did affect his behavior. It's rather small. Acting more like a mental illness than anything obvious. Splitpiss will occasionally have intrusive thoughts, but rather than being able to ignore him the viruses will occasionally make him act out on them. This has lead him into a bunch of dangerous and rather fucked up situations, now he lives his life on shady servers. Not that he minds (or...not much. Maybe a little). He's always hung around more 'dangerous' people, he can be something of a chaotic little shithead himself sometimes. He can also be pretty chill and friendly, and sometimes a nervous wreck. He's just a weird little thing.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

China unveils world’s first AI child

Tong Tong, a girl who is the world’s first virtual artificial intelligence (AI) entity, developed by Chinese scientists. 📷: stdaily.com

By Dale Arasa

8 February 2024

They say a child learns quickly by observing parents and other adults, so Chinese scientists created one powered by artificial intelligence.

China unveiled their latest project at the Frontier of General Artificial Intelligence Technology Exhibition.

It was a virtual entity that looked like an obedient little girl who performed chores and interacted with humans.

This project and similar ones may seem silly until you realize they might be the building blocks of our technological future.

We’ve learned so much about how humans learn and develop that we’re applying those principles to the coming generation of robots.

Would we become good parents and raise a proper digital assistant or an electronic menace?

Why create an AI child?

The audacious project had the support of the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence or BIGAI.

“To advance towards general artificial intelligence, we must create entities that can comprehend the real world and possess a wide range of skills,” says its founder and leader Professor Zhu Songchun.

General Artificial Intelligence is an AI program that can think and act like humans.

Our modern tools are advanced, but they have not reached human-like levels of autonomy and critical thinking.

As its namesake, BIGAI is one of the scientific institutions vying to reach this AI “holy grail.”

A researcher told Malaysia’s The Star that general intelligence must have physical and social common sense akin to humans.

An AI entity must complete tasks while defining new ones by itself. They saw inspiration from human children who learn naturally from surrounding people.

Hence, Chinese researchers created Tong Tong, or “Little Girl,” the world’s first AI child.

The Star states the machine has emotions and intellect and is capable of autonomous learning.

Attendees of the Frontier of General Artificial Intelligence Technology Exhibition tested Tong Tong from January 28 to 29, 2024.

Little Girl fixed a crooked picture frame when programmed to like tidiness.

If the picture was too high, the bot would find a stool so it could straighten the frame without help.

Moreover, the machine would find a towel and clean spilled milk, showing Tong Tong’s ability to interpret human intentions.

“Little Girl possesses a mind and strives to understand the common sense taught by humans. She discerns right from wrong, expresses her attitudes in various situations, and has the power to shape the future,” stated a BIGAI video.

Little Girl would likely improve further with enough exploration and human interaction.

Nevertheless, it is not yet a general artificial intelligence.

From AI children to AI romantic partners

Experts may say high and low that artificial intelligence hasn’t reached human-level intellect yet, but it hasn’t stopped many from forming relationships with these bots.

These are AI chatbots programmed to simulate the behaviors and emotions of a user’s preferred partner.

You could create another half of you that has every characteristic you ever wanted.

Artificial intelligence can memorize and adapt to your previous conversations, hobbies, likes, and dislikes.

That means it could speak with you when you’re having a rough day or behave only according to how you like.

Also, Reuters says AI developers claim AI girlfriends can combat loneliness and improve your dating experience in a safe space.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to have someone during Valentine’s Day, they might be the solution you’ve always wanted.

They can keep you preoccupied and simulate a conversation with a special someone.

However, forming a relationship with a digital avatar has several downsides.

The most glaring problem is they’re too perfect. They could ruin your perspective of what a real relationship looks like.

Having a girlfriend means having an intimate relationship. Like any other human connection, it is prone to misunderstandings and arguments.

There will be times when you’ll have trouble with your partner’s behaviors.

Similarly, your other half may find things about you to be irritating or frustrating.

If you want it to last, it will involve lengthy and sometimes painful discussions regarding you and your partner’s flaws.

A real-life girlfriend will not always act according to what you want because she has a separate life she’s managing.

However, AI girlfriends disregard these real-life hassles to satisfy a user’s needs.

A deeper look into being human

Artificial intelligence is probably the fastest-growing technology in the world as we are developing AI children and partners.

However, a deeper look makes us question parts of humanity we often take for granted.

For example, the AI girlfriend trend causes some to reevaluate what it truly means to have a romantic partner.

Also, AI-generated art asks us to define the scope of human creativity.

These are questions we must answer as we adapt more and more of these technologies.

Source: Inquirer

World's First AI Child: Tong Tong

3 February 2024

[honeyforbees]

Athena.exe ━ Rogue AI

[pinkyjulien]

Valentin & Mitch | 605/?? | You're distracting me... 💚

[ophierian-vp]

[prettyflyshyguy]

Kicked, wet animal.

[iteration-anomaly]

-{{ Perhaps in another universe, it would have been up to me to cause this. In at least one, I would obey. }}-

[arlin-potato2]

Got a short call from “customer service” that’s sounds so perfect and calm and it felt weird only to find out at the end that it was a virtual/ai one and I never felt so disgusted ever since.

[eliskherr]

Power Purchase Agreements Market Trends & Growth Analysis

[shiawasekai]

Also, the Watcher being what they are because of an Echo makes me think that maybe that's the case for the Saint too. They're too much of an abnormal existence to quite make sense as a purposed lifeform made by Sliver of Straw (although I like the idea of SoS giving the Triple Affirmative being somehow related to Saint) + there has passed possibly way too much time since SoS's demise and Saint's appearance in the timeline for it to make sense.

But if an Echo, an entity already intrinsically tied to the Void and Ascension, had given power to the Saint? Now that makes a lot more sense to me... Especially with how the Watcher hops between worlds and how Saint is implied to do the same + be an Echo themselves with their ending.

[ophierian-vp]

[bhavanameti]

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Market Projected to Reach $19.87 Billion by 2031

According to the latest publication from Meticulous Research®, the virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC) market is projected to reach $19.87 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 19.3% from 2024 to 2031. This growth is driven by the significant increase in mobile data traffic volumes and the rising demand for high-speed data services. However, data security risks associated with vEPC infrastructure pose challenges to market growth.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The study itself is titled, “Long-Term Regret and Satisfaction With Decision Following Gender-Affirming Mastectomy,” and sought to study the rate of regret and satisfaction after 2 years or more following gender affirming top surgery. The study’s results were stunning - in 139 surgery patients, the median regret score was 0/100 and the median satisfaction score was 5/5 with similar means as well. In other words… regret was virtually nonexistent in the study among post-op transgender people. In fact, the regret was so low that many statistical techniques would not even work due to the uniformity of the numbers: In this cross-sectional survey study of participants who underwent gender-affirming mastectomy 2.0 to 23.6 years ago, respondents had a high level of satisfaction with their decision and low rates of decisional regret. The median Satisfaction With Decision score was 5 on a 5-point scale, and the median decisional regret score was 0 on a 100-point scale. This extremely low level of regret and dissatisfaction and lack of variance in scores impeded the ability to determine meaningful associations among these results, clinical outcomes, and demographic information. The numbers are in line with many other studies on satisfaction among transgender people. Detransition rates, for instance, have been pegged at somewhere between 1-3%, with transgender youth seeing very low detransition rates. Surgery regret is in line with at least 27 other studies that show a pooled regret rate of around 1% - compare this to regret rates from things like knee surgery, which can be as high as 30%. Gender affirming care appears to be extremely well tolerated with very low instances of regret when compared to other medically necessary care.

[...]

The intense conservative backlash, to the point of disputing reputable scientific journals, likely stems from the fact that reduced regret rates weaken a central narrative these figures have championed in legal and legislative spaces. Over the past three years, anti-trans entities have showcased political detransitioners, reminiscent of the ex-gay campaigns from the 1990s and 2000s, to argue that regrets over gender transition and detransition are widespread. Some have even asserted detransition rates of up to 80%, a claim that has been broadly debunked. Yet, research consistently struggles to find substantial evidence supporting this narrative. The rarity of detransition and regret is underscored by Florida's inability to enlist a single resident to bear witness against a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on gender-affirming care.

[essektheylyss]

I understand the impulse to clown on Essek for walking around in Vasselheim with his recognizable voice with the Bright Queen's spearhead commander, and of course we could turn to the metatextual elements (the necessity of signposting the world for players on the part of the GM, the ease of using a familiar ally to introduce a relevant NPC and new point of contact) to dismiss this if we wanted, but I think it's more interesting—and funnier, as you'll see—to imagine this as simply an extension of the laws and logic that dictate the Mighty Nein as a narrative entity.

Fundamentally, the Mighty Nein within their campaign pursue personal and collective agency, often at the expense or in denial of political power. Where they do interact with more political forms of power, they evade its grasp upon them, most notably in their interactions with the war, but also while they engage with the Cerberus Assembly, the Cobalt Soul, and even the Revelry. The way they pursue agency, on the other hand, has far more to do with their own support of one another and their own individual power, especially where there is magic involved, and manifests in having the freedom to move and act as they wish in the world.

The culmination of this, as we know, is the mechanical ability in their final battle against Lucien and the Somnovem to manipulate the terrain of the battle map to their advantage with only imagination. At the same time, Jester and Caduceus can both call in free favors from their gods, one of whom is unlimited by the Divine Gate and in fact is far more governed by fey logic. Fjord has made three different divine pacts and is virtually unrestricted by any of them. Caleb's hallmark is an almost infinitely malleable home that almost literally seems to operate as a hammerspace, with a pinnacle dedicated to the potentiality of the universe, the application of which is one of his signature spells—against all odds successful in his initial goal, no longer fueled by guilt and grief, of bending reality to his will. It's narratively and thematically cogent that this be the calling card of the party as a whole.

The Mighty Nein are, in effect, dictated by Looney Tunes logic, and nothing else. They have been so successful in their pursuit of their own freedom that they no longer abide by the cosmic laws of Exandria, let alone the laws of physics or sense. So yes, from an external point of view, it does look exceedingly foolish for Essek to be traipsing around in Vasselheim under the Bright Queen's nose, but it's far more entertaining to argue that being a member of the Mighty Nein in fact simply confers the capability of ignoring the laws of reality without consequence when it's narratively convenient, characteristically interesting—or just really fucking funny.