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Illjwamh

Comic for Wednesday, February 2, 2022

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Given Ashley’s low power at the moment, I am expecting simple stuff like focusing exercises or     the classic “levitating a feather” or “basic color changing” type spells.

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"You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - the pace is influenced by frequent recap.

Sarah has a crush on Kevin. Didn't I read somewhere, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wand"? (Gotta love KJV, the English that no one spoke, ever.) ((Except when reading it.)) (((Which, "Why?")))

Can Tedd observe Kevin and clone him, making a 'Kevin' wand for Sarah? Sarah needs training, and Pandora is out of the picture for now.

If so, is the name arbitrary, or is it built in? (Room full of trainees, someone says "Kevin", hilarity ensues)

Arthur referred to Kevin as 'Life he had created'. In what sense is Kevin alive? (granting that the EGS universe is fantasy) Kevin is like AI, not like a biological organism. There is no eating, breathing, and elimination of waste involved. Nor is there what we would think of as a physical power source. He is powered by magic. Ambient magic? Parasitically drawing magic form the wielder? From anybody nearby? What happens if he is carried to where there is insufficient magic to sustain him? Does he go dormant? Does he die? If he revives later, is he then a different instance of Kevin?

He is basically a spell. This seems to imply that all spells are potentially alive. I wouldn't call "Hello, World" AI, so for a spell to be alive like Kevin, it would have to have Kevin-like persistence and ability to make independent assessments. So, if Tedd enchants an oven to bake delicious cakes, but the oven is self operating to do so, it's alive? 

Also, the lack of hearing and speaking paraphernalia is weird. Granted, sound impinges on Kevin, but he doesn't seem to need to vibrate to speak, so magic just moves the air? So the oven would not need sensors to monitor the cake, it would just know? (I believe this is where Grace cuts in and says, "It's best not to think about it.")

Since Sarah is keeping her ability on the down low, she won't have a government issued spell book. Does she have one at all? I'm guessing Pandora could have provided, and might have thought to do so. Or does Magic provide them?

Do government issued spell books report back, maybe to an echo copy that someone monitors?

I'm glad to see Sarah back as well. She's been left high and dry for a while.

Tedd has not, up to now, seen their self as a trainer, but now being thrust into the role with Ashley, I can see Tedd growing into it, becoming Professor Tedd.

 

 

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Sarah doesn't have a spell book because she's not currently awakened.  She is still "dreaming" with only her mark spell.

Aside from that, glad to see it's finally Friday again.

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Sarah doesn't have a spell book because she's not currently awakened.  She is still "dreaming" with only her mark spell.

Aside from that, glad to see it's finally Friday again.

Oh. Yeah, that might be. I had assumed with as much as she was using her spell, she had probably awakened.

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So instead of resting or doing some sort of useful prep in anticipation of the Griffin meeting, Grace is hanging out with Sarah & Tedd as they train Ashley?

Disclosure, I do not know what would necessarily be "useful prep" for Grace in anticipation of the Griffin meeting.

Perhaps an extremely rudimentary review of magical principles may be helpful to Grace

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Oh. Yeah, that might be. I had assumed with as much as she was using her spell, she had probably awakened.

I'm not sure about that.  Pandora didn't really say how long Sarah was away from awakening.

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22 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I'm not sure about that.  Pandora didn't really say how long Sarah was away from awakening.

True, it is all inference. Others have awakened using their spells occasionally, unaware that they had them. Sarah knew about hers, was encouraged to use it often, and did so for what seemed to be weeks.

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11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Arthur referred to Kevin as 'Life he had created'. In what sense is Kevin alive? (granting that the EGS universe is fantasy) Kevin is like AI, not like a biological organism.

You are getting into some SERIOUS philosophical discussion there, Fluff. Is a sapient inorganic being that has no discernible energy source or waste output alive for some purpose, just alive, just not alive, or...?

For that matter, what is sapience? (We have a very loose definition, and a test that is universally acknowledged to not be very good.)

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9 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

You are getting into some SERIOUS philosophical discussion there, Fluff. Is a sapient inorganic being that has no discernible energy source or waste output alive for some purpose, just alive, just not alive, or...?

For that matter, what is sapience? (We have a very loose definition, and a test that is universally acknowledged to not be very good.)

I'm still trying to figure out if there is intelligent life on Earth. So far, the smart money seems to be on "No" (If you grant trashing your homeworld as a fail).

I could be wrong. Perhaps intelligence invariably leads to self extinction, and thus that would be proof that there is intelligent life here.

Don't worry about it. Extinction is inevitable, eventually., through species termination or species advancement. There are no control natural nonparticipants. Maybe with advanced cryogenics, or a machine to assemble organisms to spec. Print yourself a Homo Sapiens 50,000,000 years from now. Better save that data while we have it.

 

7 hours ago, mlooney said:

Question I've got is "Does Kevin pass a Turing test?"

Pretty sure, "Not if you're holding him". Also, even if you just isolate the voice, he seems to have a one track persona, if it's not about magic training, he doesn't get it, although some self-preservation kicked in and motivated him to hide behind Ashley. Hmm, I forgot he can hover, I wonder what other physical feats he's capable of. Can he cast his own random spells? OK, if he could cast an illusion to appear human, that would obviously help. Not seeing the 'drawing on context to fabricate a believable personal.

To be fair, this is tough for AI that is designed to do it; limited success in constrained situations with limited variance. And you might mentally anthropomorphize Siri, but you don't think she's a human. Ultimately, that uncanny valley will be a tough hurdle, not just visually. 

I think Questionable Content gets it right. Advanced AIs are people, they have rights, but they have their own culture. They have enough quirks that they don't come off as human, even if they choose human-like bodies, which not all do. We aren't that far along, and it would appear that Kevin isn't either, but maybe he just hasn't has sufficient 'face' time, so to speak. Is Counting Guy tracking Kevin?

AI is currently going in a weird direction, more evolutionary. "We can get it to do what we want by training it with Deep Learning." "Yes, until you literally put the elephant in the room." You can train the snot out of a neural network and get amazing results, but throw in an anomaly, and not only do the immediate results go to hell, but so does the subsequent performance. Bleeding edge, probably reflecting how we work in some sense, but lacking some features.

So, let me ask you this, two decades ago, Google made a name for itself by returning an amazing page of results to your query. When was the last time you've seen that? Has AI augmented Google and its ilk, or is it making it basically suck? I am lucky if I get a few relevant links among a bunch of crap I didn't ask for, because everyone else did, and Google knows words that are close, but not what I put in the search, because statistically, I'm probably asking for things I'm not asking for. YouTube offers a link or two related to what I'm watching, half a dozen things I've already watched in the past week, and keeps trying to shove things at me that it thinks I care about, but will never watch. Amazon shows me some of what I ask for, maybe a related product, and tries to sell me more of what I've ordered in the past. No notion of "How long does it last" nor "How many does a person need" nor "A child grows up". In Web applications, the proper term is Artificial Stupidity at best, although at least some of Google's refactoring is kickbacks for placement, i.e. no longer actually just a search engine. There is one buried in there, but heavily filtered. 

Also, The Terminator? Every major power that can is working on battle robots. Ignoring the fictitious Skynet, might we acknowledge there are downsides to taking the dubious business of warfare and sanctioned bloodshed out of our direct control? Or is indiscriminate killing with plausible deniability the actual goal? Maybe I'm missing the point.

 

 

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6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

So, let me ask you this, two decades ago, Google made a name for itself by returning an amazing page of results to your query. When was the last time you've seen that? Has AI augmented Google and its ilk, or is it making it basically suck?

Google still does, assuming you know how to frame a query and if you have an ad blocker running.  Fail on ether of those and you have problems.

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29 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Google still does, assuming you know how to frame a query and if you have an ad blocker running.  Fail on ether of those and you have problems.

Mozilla with ABP, Ghostery, Flashblocker, and Facebook Container, plus my security software blocks stuff, and I opt out of social and tracking cookies.

I have been framing queries since the early 1980s; since mid 1990s on the Intertubes.

I do tend to search for some fairly obscure things. Still, I find it odd that you have not noticed that the results returned have degraded.

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49 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

 

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Google still does, assuming you know how to frame a query and if you have an ad blocker running.  Fail on ether of those and you have problems.

Mozilla with ABP, Ghostery, Flashblocker, and Facebook Container, plus my security software blocks stuff, and I opt out of social and tracking cookies.

I have been framing queries since the early 1980s; since mid 1990s on the Intertubes.

I do tend to search for some fairly obscure things. Still, I find it odd that you have not noticed that the results returned have degraded.

 

I normally find what I am searching for in the top 10 returns, often the top return.  Might have to do with what we are searching for.  I tend to be searching for Perl programming stuff and military stuff, with some random searches when some one really needs a "let me google that for you" reply, which I've stopped doing as it's rude most of the time.

 

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One issue with Google’s algorithms is that the emphasis on relevance-to-the-query has shifted to an emphasis on what-boosts-Google’s-revenue, i.e. placing advertisements and sponsors higher.

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21 minutes ago, ijuin said:

One issue with Google’s algorithms is that the emphasis on relevance-to-the-query has shifted to an emphasis on what-boosts-Google’s-revenue, i.e. placing advertisements and sponsors higher.

I don't see Google ads.  Of course I don't know if I'm going to a sponsored page or not.

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9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

AI is currently going in a weird direction, more evolutionary. "We can get it to do what we want by training it with Deep Learning." "Yes, until you literally put the elephant in the room." You can train the snot out of a neural network and get amazing results, but throw in an anomaly, and not only do the immediate results go to hell, but so does the subsequent performance. Bleeding edge, probably reflecting how we work in some sense, but lacking some features.

A sufficiently smart AI will recognize the anomaly as an anomaly, and develop an independent set of subroutines to deal with it - thus preserving the usual set. In [url=https://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewforum.php?f=47]this story[/url] the robot figured out that sapient bipedal wolves don't offer exactly the same cues to their mental state that humans do...

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2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

A sufficiently smart AI will recognize the anomaly as an anomaly, and develop an independent set of subroutines to deal with it - thus preserving the usual set. In [url=https://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewforum.php?f=47]this story[/url] the robot figured out that sapient bipedal wolves don't offer exactly the same cues to their mental state that humans do...

 

Sufficient, yes. Inevitable, seems likely, eventually. Are we there yet? No. The elephant in the room anomaly referred to this article.

One issue is that AI is a broad, poorly defined term; a moving target that keeps advancing as technology does. And it's no one thing. Expert systems are very different than neural networks, but they are both 'AI'.

 

5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Had not even stopped to think that for years now, if Google's first two responses are not what I want, I automatically rephrase my inquiry

Google will still usually return a few good links. There is still a search engine buried in there, it's just much muddier.

 

4 hours ago, mlooney said:

I normally find what I am searching for in the top 10 returns, often the top return.  Might have to do with what we are searching for.  I tend to be searching for Perl programming stuff and military stuff, with some random searches when some one really needs a "let me google that for you" reply, which I've stopped doing as it's rude most of the time.

I search for all kinds of crap. Definitions, bios, lyrics, specific questions about anything, reviews, shopping, ... I don't get ten good returns. I used to. I hope for a couple. Sometimes I get a few.

Also, sites and information are disappearing. Case in point, you said you like Dork Tower. Try to follow it from the beginning. Currently, pieces are missing. John is aware of the problem, and those pieces may be restored. Just one example, this is not at all uncommon.

 

3 hours ago, ijuin said:

One issue with Google’s algorithms is that the emphasis on relevance-to-the-query has shifted to an emphasis on what-boosts-Google’s-revenue, i.e. placing advertisements and sponsors higher.

Very much, and to a point, that is fair. We all want to eat, and have a place to sleep, so capitalizing your thing is OK. We also generally recognize that gouging is not. "I'm a search engine, everything is free and equal" may be expecting too much. "I'm a search engine, but I bias my results with links weighted to people that pay me" is paying the bills. "I'm called a search engine, but I mostly serve paid links and trickle in some nonparticipants" is no longer an honest trade. Now you're sleeping in Madison Avenue, not Silicon Valley. "I and my commercial partners have signed agreements with the IRS to offer the free version of tax software in return for the IRS not deploying their own, but we've chosen to abrogate that agreement and obscure the option to use free versions of tax return software" needs to be prosecuted. You know; tomaeto, tomahto.

 

 

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On 2/2/2022 at 5:25 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

Arthur referred to Kevin as 'Life he had created'. In what sense is Kevin alive?

Given that this is Arthur, I suspect two possibilities:

One, "Living" magical artifacts are a known thing that happens, and Arthur just had to perform a standard test to find out if Kevin qualified. (In this case I expect that Dan will eventually get into all the details about what it means to be a living artifact.)

Two, Arthur talked with Kevin, decided he sounded like a person, and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I'm still trying to figure out if there is intelligent life on Earth. So far, the smart money seems to be on "No" (If you grant trashing your homeworld as a fail).

[...]

So, let me ask you this, two decades ago, Google made a name for itself by returning an amazing page of results to your query. When was the last time you've seen that? Has AI augmented Google and its ilk, or is it making it basically suck? I am lucky if I get a few relevant links among a bunch of crap I didn't ask for, because everyone else did, and Google knows words that are close, but not what I put in the search, because statistically, I'm probably asking for things I'm not asking for. YouTube offers a link or two related to what I'm watching, half a dozen things I've already watched in the past week, and keeps trying to shove things at me that it thinks I care about, but will never watch. Amazon shows me some of what I ask for, maybe a related product, and tries to sell me more of what I've ordered in the past. No notion of "How long does it last" nor "How many does a person need" nor "A child grows up". In Web applications, the proper term is Artificial Stupidity at best, although at least some of Google's refactoring is kickbacks for placement, i.e. no longer actually just a search engine. There is one buried in there, but heavily filtered.

Intelligence isn't an either-or thing; there are many varieties and levels. Virtually all vertebrates (and some invertebrates, octopi being the most notable) show some form of intelligence. By most measures humans are probably the most intelligent animals on Earth (or the third most intelligent, if Douglas Adams is to be believed), the problem is they have insufficient wisdom (particularly collectively).

As for searches, I've never really used Google much. For a long time I jumped around between a bunch of different search engines; Google was one of them but once I learned how they like to track people and gather information about them I started avoiding Google (to the extent that's possible). My current search engine of choice is Duck Duck Go; it doesn't always provide great results but it's usually good enough (and a lot of the time when I can't find what I'm looking for, the search was a bit of a long-shot in the first place).

I have noticed a difference in YouTube suggestions over the years. A few years back the suggestions would be roughly half to two-thirds stuff similar to what I was watching, with the remainder related to previous things I'd watched recently. These days it's almost entirely stuff related to things I've watched in the past few months with the current video given no preference; there is often a lot of stuff I'd never watch in there but I can usually see the connection to stuff I have watched. I haven't really noticed a lot of videos I've already watched in my suggestions.

With Amazon I usually have pretty good results if I'm very specific about what I'm looking for, but more general searches often lead to frustration. They do occasionally offer me things I've bought before, but (unless I'm actually searching for it again), always in one of their "other things you might want" sections rather than in the primary search results.

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18 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

They do occasionally offer me things I've bought before, but (unless I'm actually searching for it again), always in one of their "other things you might want" sections rather than in the primary search results.

And they do that with major end items.  If I've bought a appliance or an electric bike I'm not likely to want to buy another of those for a while. Doesn't stop them from showing me them for several weeks after.

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3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Given that this is Arthur, I suspect two possibilities:

One, "Living" magical artifacts are a known thing that happens, and Arthur just had to perform a standard test to find out if Kevin qualified. (In this case I expect that Dan will eventually get into all the details about what it means to be a living artifact.)

Two, Arthur talked with Kevin, decided he sounded like a person, and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

We are nearly at the point of needing point one; including your next point (see below) I guess we've already needed it.

Point two is basically the Turing test, more or less.

 

3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Intelligence isn't an either-or thing; there are many varieties and levels. Virtually all vertebrates (and some invertebrates, octopi being the most notable) show some form of intelligence. By most measures humans are probably the most intelligent animals on Earth (or the third most intelligent, if Douglas Adams is to be believed), the problem is they have insufficient wisdom (particularly collectively).

True. Even the freaking trees talk to each other. It is a strange world indeed. The average bacteria knows way more about chemistry than you or I, but can't explain it. 

 

3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

As for searches, I've never really used Google much. For a long time I jumped around between a bunch of different search engines; Google was one of them but once I learned how they like to track people and gather information about them I started avoiding Google (to the extent that's possible). My current search engine of choice is Duck Duck Go; it doesn't always provide great results but it's usually good enough (and a lot of the time when I can't find what I'm looking for, the search was a bit of a long-shot in the first place).

I have noticed a difference in YouTube suggestions over the years. A few years back the suggestions would be roughly half to two-thirds stuff similar to what I was watching, with the remainder related to previous things I'd watched recently. These days it's almost entirely stuff related to things I've watched in the past few months with the current video given no preference; there is often a lot of stuff I'd never watch in there but I can usually see the connection to stuff I have watched. I haven't really noticed a lot of videos I've already watched in my suggestions.

With Amazon I usually have pretty good results if I'm very specific about what I'm looking for, but more general searches often lead to frustration. They do occasionally offer me things I've bought before, but (unless I'm actually searching for it again), always in one of their "other things you might want" sections rather than in the primary search results.

When it was a new thing, Google was in a class by itself, deeper searches and much better returns. Anymore, they are coasting.

I use Duck Duck Go. I think they use Google for you and anonymize your query. Don't really know. I also (still) like Dog Pile. They are a multi-search aggregator.

 

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

And they do that with major end items.  If I've bought a appliance or an electric bike I'm not likely to want to buy another of those for a while. Doesn't stop them from showing me them for several weeks after.

Exactly.

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4 hours ago, mlooney said:

And they do that with major end items.  If I've bought a appliance or an electric bike I'm not likely to want to buy another of those for a while. Doesn't stop them from showing me them for several weeks after.

If you ended up buying the bike anywhere other than Amazon (i.e. you were comparison shopping) then they’d have no idea that you had already made the purchase, but yes, other than that, it is less likely that a customer would want to purchase another during the same year for long-lived items like that.

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