#are that many people here for mike hatsune??

[gamebunny-advance]

I Shoulda Just Set that Poll for 24 Hours

Thanks for voting if you did~ That poll is still open if you missed it, but it's not that important, so don't worry about it too much if you did~

Anyway, I went to check on the interest check poll and the results are pretty even, all things considered. NSR is predictably first, followed by Original Content (y'all flatter me~), and Other Video Game. Everything else is kinda spread out.

(If you wanna calculate the exact numbers yourself, I voted for "other" just to check in, so be sure to subtract me from the results.)

I'm a bit curious about what "other video game" entails though, since I figured I listed everything I've ever majorly talked about (I guess I left out the Mii games, but is anyone really still here for that?). I just included it in case I forgot something, but I really don't know what I would've forgotten.

Unless, some people consider some of the Smash guys to be "other".

I had thought about adding a note that Smash included any characters that appear from that game that aren't otherwise mentioned. This included characters that are more known for their main series, i.e. Mario Bros. or Pac-Man, but that note didn't fit, and I figured y'all would know that on your own, but maybe not. I guess adding series that are represented in Smash (Animal Crossing, Pikmin, etc.) separately might have given the expectation that Smash represented Smash only content. My reasoning was that for the most part, I only talk about some characters in the context of Smash (like Red and Lucas) whereas I will talk about things like AC and Pikmin by themselves. So essentially, Smash was the "other games" option, but just for series that are in Smash.

Dunno. That's the only logic that makes sense to me for why that option came in third when I have a fairly narrow focus on the specific things I regularly talk about here. If it was something that I thought I talked about significantly, something that someone would follow me for, then I added it to the poll.

I'm also surprised that no one who voted is still here for Animal Crossing, even though that's arguably one of the big things I used to be known for. I guess I haven't really drawn it in a while, but I consider that game to be inseparable from my identity, but I guess on the outside it is.

#just interesting results. although i mention surprise at the low AC vote #i think it was low the last time i made a poll like this too #wait... 'other games' isn't for yo noid 2 is it? #are that many people here for mike hatsune?? #tbh i've been wanting to draw him again lately #but i've also been thinking about making my own version of him #because technically Mike is someone else's OC #so i'd feel bad if i ever wanted to do something 'serious' with him #so i've been thinking about designing my own hatsune mikuo who's just old #mikuo is (trans)formative and belongs to the people #but mike belongs to someone specific with a 'canon' backstory and lore #even if i use the same gimmick (miku but an old man) i figured it'd be more 'okay' for me to do whatever i wanted with him #at the very least it'd ease my conscience about it #the problem is that mike was already peak design #so i'm having trouble making my personal old man mikuo distinct from him while still having the elements that I like~

[welcometomy20s]

August 17, 2022

#641 - alternate (keeno) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 21-06-07, Upload Date: 15-09-15

Master of post-rock continues his streak with this song, which definitely fits the rock ballad style which keeno is known for. I feel like keeno is like the fall counterpart to n-buna’s summer-like songs. Another longing song, as most song of this type.

#642 - Ego Rock (Surii) [Kagamine Len]

Achievement Date: 21-06-19, Upload Date: 18-09-07

Short version. Will talk more about it in the long version, which also easily made it in the list. I do like the MV for this though, or least the drawing was nice. 

#643 - Game of Life (Yuzuhiko) [Hatsune Mike]

Achievement Date: 21-06-20, Upload Date: 11-02-02

I think this song is much more popular in the west than it is in the east. Many people in Japan and Korea have no idea what the song is, but I know the song pretty clearly. We go from 10 to 12 lives with a subtly hidden meaning? It’s a fine song, but definitely more in line with Western type of songs like GHOST than songs in here.

#644 - Puzzle Girl (toa) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 21-07-02, Upload Date: 15-03-25

Toa finally enters his second song, with another painful song sung in a cutesy way. Seriously, I mean you could say this is just pleading, but seriously this is just desperation. Why do you do this? But really, toa does write good songs. 

#645 - Shunran (john) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 21-07-02, Upload Date: 19-12-07

John has always eluded me. With an EZFG like tuning and a funky beat, it is certainly unique and yet familiar. We have a break up song here, like straight up, oh this has gone wrong let’s not meet again… which honestly pretty rare.

#646 - The Secret About That Girl (Eve) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 21-07-04, Upload Date: 17-07-13

I like this song, it’s a sweet song. Eve should write more sweet songs, or breezy songs. Honestly, I like this song so much that I want him to collaborate with HoneyWorks. That sounds so bizarre, but he does have that breezy feeling sometimes…

#647 - Traffic Jam (Niru Kajitsu) [flower]

Achievement Date: 21-07-07, Upload Date: 19-08-25

This is a part of a series, I think? It’s a story about a relationship. Niru Kajitsu just screams trendy, it feels like I’m reading a fashion magazine, you know? A battle of wits between an enemy/couple. A classic yet trendy story. 

#648 - Dream Eating Monochrome Baku (Nem) [Kagamine Len]

Achievement Date: 21-07-28, Upload Date: 11-07-04

Baku is a… well, it’s a dream eater. I don’t know what is interesting about eating quickly-made narratives of arbitrary signals, but it was interesting to many cultures. As with his other songs, Nem is great at painting a fantastical world.

#649 - 8.32 (*Luna) [flower]

Achievement Date: 21-07-30, Upload Date: 18-07-07

It’s a crime that *Luna took so long to be on this list, but I’m glad there is at least one song from them here. I think this song has one of my favorite intro… doesn’t it just open your chest into a big blue sky? Your typical Japanese summer song, let go of all your worries, follow me and let’s enjoy the summer. Perfect production.

#vocaloid #review #music

[reneeacaseyfl]

The DeanBeat: The inspiring possibilities and sobering realities of making virtual beings

I had the pleasure of attending the first-ever Virtual Beings Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, where I met real people talking about making virtual characters driven by artificial intelligence.

It felt like I was witnessing the dawn of a new industry. I know that the idea of making a virtual human or animal has been around for a long time, but Edward Saatchi, the CEO of AI-powered virtual being company Fable Studios, gathered a diverse group of people from across disciplines and international borders to speak at the conference, as if they all had the same mission. To be there at the beginning.

Who they are

Above: Edward Saatchi is cofounder of Fable Studios.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The whole day was full of inspiring talks from people who came from has far away as Japan and Australia. So many uses of the technology were built by a wide array of people. Saatchi curated a list of entrepreneurs, investors, artists, writers, engineers, designers, musicians, virtual reality creators, and machine-learning experts. They included people who built virtual influencers, artificial fashion models, AI music creators, virtual superhero chatbots, virtual reality game characters, and augmented reality assistants. The virtual beings will help us with medical issues, entertain us, and god knows what else.

This cross-disciplinary cast is what it will take to create virtual beings who are characters that you know aren’t real but with whom you can build a two-way emotional relationship, Saatchi said. And it won’t be machine learning and AI alone that can deliver this. It will take artists working alongside engineers and storytellers. These virtual beings will be works of art and engineering. And Saatchi announced that Virtual Beings grants totaling $1,000 to $25,000 will be awarded to those who create their own virtual beings.

Saatchi’s Fable Studios has shifted from being a VR company into a virtual beings company, and it has created the VR experience Wolves in the Walls, starring an eight-year-old girl, Lucy. Pete Billington and Jessica Shamash of Fable said the goal with Lucy was to create a companion that you could live with or speak to for decades. Lucy was just one of many virtual characters shown at the event. They ranged from Instagram influencer Little Miquela to MuseNet, which is an AI that creates its own music, like a new Mozart composition.

“We think about how we take care of her, and how she takes care of us,” Shamash said.

Amazing progress

Above: Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games, shows off A Boy and His Kite.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

In a brief talk, Kim Libreri, chief technology officer of Epic Games, showed how fast the effort to create digital humans has progressed. The Unreal Engine company and its partners 3Lateral and Cubic Motion have pushed the state of the art in virtual human demos, starting with A Boy and His Kite in 2015, 2016’s Hellblade, Mike in 2017, Siren in 2018, Troll and Andy Serkis in 2018.

But the summit made clear that this wasn’t just a matter of physically reproducing humans with digital animations. It was also about getting the story and the emotion right to make a believable human. Cyan Banister, a partner at Founders Fund and an investor in many Virtual Beings Projects, said she wanted to see if someone could reproduce her grandmother so that she could have conversations with her again. Banister said these characters could be so much more compelling if they remember who you are and converse with you in context.

She became interested in virtual beings when she heard about a Japanese virtual character — Hatsune Miku — who didn’t exist, but who threw successful music concerts singing songs that are created by fans. She has invested in Fable Studios as well as companies like Artie, which is bringing virtual superhero characters and other celebrities to life as a way get consumers more engaged with mobile apps.

“I saw Hatsune Miku in person, and that was magical, seeing how genuinely excited people were,” Banister said. “I wondered what is the American equivalent of it. We haven’t seen it yet, but I think it’s coming.”

Would you bring back your best friend?

Above: Eugenia Kuyda, creator of Replika, built a chatbot in memory of her best friend.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

My sense of wonder turned into an entirely different kind of emotion when I heard Eugenia Kuyda talk about why she cofounded Replika. Her company was born from a tragedy. Her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, was killed in a car accident. Months afterward, she gathered his old text messages in an effort to preserve his memory. She wanted one more text message from him.

She had her team in Russia build a chatbot using artificial intelligence, with the aim of reproducing the style and nature of Mazurenko’s personality in a text-based chatbot. It worked. Kuyda put it out on the market as Replika, and now it has more than 6 million users in the past couple of years. Many of those users write fan letters, saying that they are in love with their chatbot friends.

Above: Replika has 6 million users who text with chatbots.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

“It’s like a friend that is there for you 24/7,” Kuyda said. “Some of them went beyond friendships.”

There are so many lonely people in the world, Kuyda said. She has been told that Replika is creepy, but she has begun to figure out how to measure the happiness that it creates. If those lonely people have someone to talk to, they aren’t so lonely anymore, and they can function better in social situations. If Replika keeps making people happier and less lonely, then that is a good thing, she said.

Above: Replika’s conversations

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

I went up to Kuyda afterward and remarked to her how much it resembled the script of the Academy-Award-winning film Her, with Joaquin Phoenix, a lonely man who fell in love with his AI-driven computer companion. The worst thing that could happen here is similar to the plot of the movie, where one day the bot simply disappears. Kuyda wants to make sure that doesn’t happen, and she is investigating where to take this next. She wanted to make sure that everyone could have a best friend, as she had Roman.

Who we pretend to be

Above: Lucy from Wolves in the Walls shows what it takes to make a virtual being.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

If something was missing at the event, it was the sobering talk about how the technology needs some rules of the road. Several speakers hinted that virtual beings could be creepy, as we’ve seen a lot of science fiction horror stories about AI from to The Terminator to the latest Black Mirror episodes on Netflix.

Since nobody offered this warning, I jumped in myself. On the last panel, I noted how the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game will be disturbing because it combines the agency of an interactive video game with realistic combat situations and realistic humans. It puts you under intense pressure while deciding whether to shoot civilians — men or women — who may be harmless or running to detonate a bomb. That’s a disturbing level of realism, and I’m not sure that’s my idea of entertainment.

The potential risks of the wrong use of AI — virtual slaves, deep fakes, Frankenstein monsters, and killing machines — are plentiful.

And that, once again, made me think of the moral of the story of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night novel, where the anti-hero is an American spy who does better at his cover job, as a Nazi propagandist, than he performs as a spy. The moral is, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Above: Don’t fall in love. She’s not real.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

I said, “I think that’s a wise lesson, not only for users with the agency they have in an open world with virtual beings. You will be able to do things that are there for you to do. But it’s also a lesson for creators of this technology and the decisions they make about how much agency you can have” when you are in control of a virtual being or interacting with one. You have to decide how to best use your hard-earned talent for the good of society when you are thinking about creating a virtual being.

The temptations of the future world of virtual beings are many. But Peter Rojas, partner at Betaworks Ventures, said, “We shouldn’t be afraid to think about legislation and regulations for things that we want to happen.”

He said there are moral, ethical, and responsibility issues that we can discuss for another day. Rojas’ firm funded a company that is working on technology to identify deep fakes, so that journalists, social media firms, or law enforcement can identify attempts at deception when you put someone else’s believable head on a person’s body, making them do things that they didn’t do.

“There is incredible talent working on the different technical problems here on the storytelling side,” Rojas said. “As excited as I am about what’s happening in the field, I also share fears about how this could be used. And where I don’t see a lot of entrepreneurs is in working on new products around technology that will help against the deception.”

I agree with Rojas. Let’s all think this through before we do it.

Credit: Source link

The post The DeanBeat: The inspiring possibilities and sobering realities of making virtual beings appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-deanbeat-the-inspiring-possibilities-and-sobering-realities-of-making-virtual-beings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-deanbeat-the-inspiring-possibilities-and-sobering-realities-of-making-virtual-beings from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186580281927

[velmaemyers88]

The DeanBeat: The inspiring possibilities and sobering realities of making virtual beings

I had the pleasure of attending the first-ever Virtual Beings Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, where I met real people talking about making virtual characters driven by artificial intelligence.

It felt like I was witnessing the dawn of a new industry. I know that the idea of making a virtual human or animal has been around for a long time, but Edward Saatchi, the CEO of AI-powered virtual being company Fable Studios, gathered a diverse group of people from across disciplines and international borders to speak at the conference, as if they all had the same mission. To be there at the beginning.

Who they are

Above: Edward Saatchi is cofounder of Fable Studios.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The whole day was full of inspiring talks from people who came from has far away as Japan and Australia. So many uses of the technology were built by a wide array of people. Saatchi curated a list of entrepreneurs, investors, artists, writers, engineers, designers, musicians, virtual reality creators, and machine-learning experts. They included people who built virtual influencers, artificial fashion models, AI music creators, virtual superhero chatbots, virtual reality game characters, and augmented reality assistants. The virtual beings will help us with medical issues, entertain us, and god knows what else.

This cross-disciplinary cast is what it will take to create virtual beings who are characters that you know aren’t real but with whom you can build a two-way emotional relationship, Saatchi said. And it won’t be machine learning and AI alone that can deliver this. It will take artists working alongside engineers and storytellers. These virtual beings will be works of art and engineering. And Saatchi announced that Virtual Beings grants totaling $1,000 to $25,000 will be awarded to those who create their own virtual beings.

Saatchi’s Fable Studios has shifted from being a VR company into a virtual beings company, and it has created the VR experience Wolves in the Walls, starring an eight-year-old girl, Lucy. Pete Billington and Jessica Shamash of Fable said the goal with Lucy was to create a companion that you could live with or speak to for decades. Lucy was just one of many virtual characters shown at the event. They ranged from Instagram influencer Little Miquela to MuseNet, which is an AI that creates its own music, like a new Mozart composition.

“We think about how we take care of her, and how she takes care of us,” Shamash said.

Amazing progress

Above: Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games, shows off A Boy and His Kite.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

In a brief talk, Kim Libreri, chief technology officer of Epic Games, showed how fast the effort to create digital humans has progressed. The Unreal Engine company and its partners 3Lateral and Cubic Motion have pushed the state of the art in virtual human demos, starting with A Boy and His Kite in 2015, 2016’s Hellblade, Mike in 2017, Siren in 2018, Troll and Andy Serkis in 2018.

But the summit made clear that this wasn’t just a matter of physically reproducing humans with digital animations. It was also about getting the story and the emotion right to make a believable human. Cyan Banister, a partner at Founders Fund and an investor in many Virtual Beings Projects, said she wanted to see if someone could reproduce her grandmother so that she could have conversations with her again. Banister said these characters could be so much more compelling if they remember who you are and converse with you in context.

She became interested in virtual beings when she heard about a Japanese virtual character — Hatsune Miku — who didn’t exist, but who threw successful music concerts singing songs that are created by fans. She has invested in Fable Studios as well as companies like Artie, which is bringing virtual superhero characters and other celebrities to life as a way get consumers more engaged with mobile apps.

“I saw Hatsune Miku in person, and that was magical, seeing how genuinely excited people were,” Banister said. “I wondered what is the American equivalent of it. We haven’t seen it yet, but I think it’s coming.”

Would you bring back your best friend?

Above: Eugenia Kuyda, creator of Replika, built a chatbot in memory of her best friend.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

My sense of wonder turned into an entirely different kind of emotion when I heard Eugenia Kuyda talk about why she cofounded Replika. Her company was born from a tragedy. Her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, was killed in a car accident. Months afterward, she gathered his old text messages in an effort to preserve his memory. She wanted one more text message from him.

She had her team in Russia build a chatbot using artificial intelligence, with the aim of reproducing the style and nature of Mazurenko’s personality in a text-based chatbot. It worked. Kuyda put it out on the market as Replika, and now it has more than 6 million users in the past couple of years. Many of those users write fan letters, saying that they are in love with their chatbot friends.

Above: Replika has 6 million users who text with chatbots.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

“It’s like a friend that is there for you 24/7,” Kuyda said. “Some of them went beyond friendships.”

There are so many lonely people in the world, Kuyda said. She has been told that Replika is creepy, but she has begun to figure out how to measure the happiness that it creates. If those lonely people have someone to talk to, they aren’t so lonely anymore, and they can function better in social situations. If Replika keeps making people happier and less lonely, then that is a good thing, she said.

Above: Replika’s conversations

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

I went up to Kuyda afterward and remarked to her how much it resembled the script of the Academy-Award-winning film Her, with Joaquin Phoenix, a lonely man who fell in love with his AI-driven computer companion. The worst thing that could happen here is similar to the plot of the movie, where one day the bot simply disappears. Kuyda wants to make sure that doesn’t happen, and she is investigating where to take this next. She wanted to make sure that everyone could have a best friend, as she had Roman.

Who we pretend to be

Above: Lucy from Wolves in the Walls shows what it takes to make a virtual being.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

If something was missing at the event, it was the sobering talk about how the technology needs some rules of the road. Several speakers hinted that virtual beings could be creepy, as we’ve seen a lot of science fiction horror stories about AI from to The Terminator to the latest Black Mirror episodes on Netflix.

Since nobody offered this warning, I jumped in myself. On the last panel, I noted how the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game will be disturbing because it combines the agency of an interactive video game with realistic combat situations and realistic humans. It puts you under intense pressure while deciding whether to shoot civilians — men or women — who may be harmless or running to detonate a bomb. That’s a disturbing level of realism, and I’m not sure that’s my idea of entertainment.

The potential risks of the wrong use of AI — virtual slaves, deep fakes, Frankenstein monsters, and killing machines — are plentiful.

And that, once again, made me think of the moral of the story of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night novel, where the anti-hero is an American spy who does better at his cover job, as a Nazi propagandist, than he performs as a spy. The moral is, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Above: Don’t fall in love. She’s not real.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

I said, “I think that’s a wise lesson, not only for users with the agency they have in an open world with virtual beings. You will be able to do things that are there for you to do. But it’s also a lesson for creators of this technology and the decisions they make about how much agency you can have” when you are in control of a virtual being or interacting with one. You have to decide how to best use your hard-earned talent for the good of society when you are thinking about creating a virtual being.

The temptations of the future world of virtual beings are many. But Peter Rojas, partner at Betaworks Ventures, said, “We shouldn’t be afraid to think about legislation and regulations for things that we want to happen.”

He said there are moral, ethical, and responsibility issues that we can discuss for another day. Rojas’ firm funded a company that is working on technology to identify deep fakes, so that journalists, social media firms, or law enforcement can identify attempts at deception when you put someone else’s believable head on a person’s body, making them do things that they didn’t do.

“There is incredible talent working on the different technical problems here on the storytelling side,” Rojas said. “As excited as I am about what’s happening in the field, I also share fears about how this could be used. And where I don’t see a lot of entrepreneurs is in working on new products around technology that will help against the deception.”

I agree with Rojas. Let’s all think this through before we do it.

Credit: Source link

The post The DeanBeat: The inspiring possibilities and sobering realities of making virtual beings appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-deanbeat-the-inspiring-possibilities-and-sobering-realities-of-making-virtual-beings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-deanbeat-the-inspiring-possibilities-and-sobering-realities-of-making-virtual-beings from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186580281927

[weeklyreviewer]

The DeanBeat: The inspiring possibilities and sobering realities of making virtual beings

I had the pleasure of attending the first-ever Virtual Beings Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, where I met real people talking about making virtual characters driven by artificial intelligence.

It felt like I was witnessing the dawn of a new industry. I know that the idea of making a virtual human or animal has been around for a long time, but Edward Saatchi, the CEO of AI-powered virtual being company Fable Studios, gathered a diverse group of people from across disciplines and international borders to speak at the conference, as if they all had the same mission. To be there at the beginning.

Who they are

Above: Edward Saatchi is cofounder of Fable Studios.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The whole day was full of inspiring talks from people who came from has far away as Japan and Australia. So many uses of the technology were built by a wide array of people. Saatchi curated a list of entrepreneurs, investors, artists, writers, engineers, designers, musicians, virtual reality creators, and machine-learning experts. They included people who built virtual influencers, artificial fashion models, AI music creators, virtual superhero chatbots, virtual reality game characters, and augmented reality assistants. The virtual beings will help us with medical issues, entertain us, and god knows what else.

This cross-disciplinary cast is what it will take to create virtual beings who are characters that you know aren’t real but with whom you can build a two-way emotional relationship, Saatchi said. And it won’t be machine learning and AI alone that can deliver this. It will take artists working alongside engineers and storytellers. These virtual beings will be works of art and engineering. And Saatchi announced that Virtual Beings grants totaling $1,000 to $25,000 will be awarded to those who create their own virtual beings.

Saatchi’s Fable Studios has shifted from being a VR company into a virtual beings company, and it has created the VR experience Wolves in the Walls, starring an eight-year-old girl, Lucy. Pete Billington and Jessica Shamash of Fable said the goal with Lucy was to create a companion that you could live with or speak to for decades. Lucy was just one of many virtual characters shown at the event. They ranged from Instagram influencer Little Miquela to MuseNet, which is an AI that creates its own music, like a new Mozart composition.

“We think about how we take care of her, and how she takes care of us,” Shamash said.

Amazing progress

Above: Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games, shows off A Boy and His Kite.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

In a brief talk, Kim Libreri, chief technology officer of Epic Games, showed how fast the effort to create digital humans has progressed. The Unreal Engine company and its partners 3Lateral and Cubic Motion have pushed the state of the art in virtual human demos, starting with A Boy and His Kite in 2015, 2016’s Hellblade, Mike in 2017, Siren in 2018, Troll and Andy Serkis in 2018.

But the summit made clear that this wasn’t just a matter of physically reproducing humans with digital animations. It was also about getting the story and the emotion right to make a believable human. Cyan Banister, a partner at Founders Fund and an investor in many Virtual Beings Projects, said she wanted to see if someone could reproduce her grandmother so that she could have conversations with her again. Banister said these characters could be so much more compelling if they remember who you are and converse with you in context.

She became interested in virtual beings when she heard about a Japanese virtual character — Hatsune Miku — who didn’t exist, but who threw successful music concerts singing songs that are created by fans. She has invested in Fable Studios as well as companies like Artie, which is bringing virtual superhero characters and other celebrities to life as a way get consumers more engaged with mobile apps.

“I saw Hatsune Miku in person, and that was magical, seeing how genuinely excited people were,” Banister said. “I wondered what is the American equivalent of it. We haven’t seen it yet, but I think it’s coming.”

Would you bring back your best friend?

Above: Eugenia Kuyda, creator of Replika, built a chatbot in memory of her best friend.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

My sense of wonder turned into an entirely different kind of emotion when I heard Eugenia Kuyda talk about why she cofounded Replika. Her company was born from a tragedy. Her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, was killed in a car accident. Months afterward, she gathered his old text messages in an effort to preserve his memory. She wanted one more text message from him.

She had her team in Russia build a chatbot using artificial intelligence, with the aim of reproducing the style and nature of Mazurenko’s personality in a text-based chatbot. It worked. Kuyda put it out on the market as Replika, and now it has more than 6 million users in the past couple of years. Many of those users write fan letters, saying that they are in love with their chatbot friends.

Above: Replika has 6 million users who text with chatbots.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

“It’s like a friend that is there for you 24/7,” Kuyda said. “Some of them went beyond friendships.”

There are so many lonely people in the world, Kuyda said. She has been told that Replika is creepy, but she has begun to figure out how to measure the happiness that it creates. If those lonely people have someone to talk to, they aren’t so lonely anymore, and they can function better in social situations. If Replika keeps making people happier and less lonely, then that is a good thing, she said.

Above: Replika’s conversations

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

I went up to Kuyda afterward and remarked to her how much it resembled the script of the Academy-Award-winning film Her, with Joaquin Phoenix, a lonely man who fell in love with his AI-driven computer companion. The worst thing that could happen here is similar to the plot of the movie, where one day the bot simply disappears. Kuyda wants to make sure that doesn’t happen, and she is investigating where to take this next. She wanted to make sure that everyone could have a best friend, as she had Roman.

Who we pretend to be

Above: Lucy from Wolves in the Walls shows what it takes to make a virtual being.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

If something was missing at the event, it was the sobering talk about how the technology needs some rules of the road. Several speakers hinted that virtual beings could be creepy, as we’ve seen a lot of science fiction horror stories about AI from to The Terminator to the latest Black Mirror episodes on Netflix.

Since nobody offered this warning, I jumped in myself. On the last panel, I noted how the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game will be disturbing because it combines the agency of an interactive video game with realistic combat situations and realistic humans. It puts you under intense pressure while deciding whether to shoot civilians — men or women — who may be harmless or running to detonate a bomb. That’s a disturbing level of realism, and I’m not sure that’s my idea of entertainment.

The potential risks of the wrong use of AI — virtual slaves, deep fakes, Frankenstein monsters, and killing machines — are plentiful.

And that, once again, made me think of the moral of the story of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night novel, where the anti-hero is an American spy who does better at his cover job, as a Nazi propagandist, than he performs as a spy. The moral is, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Above: Don’t fall in love. She’s not real.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

I said, “I think that’s a wise lesson, not only for users with the agency they have in an open world with virtual beings. You will be able to do things that are there for you to do. But it’s also a lesson for creators of this technology and the decisions they make about how much agency you can have” when you are in control of a virtual being or interacting with one. You have to decide how to best use your hard-earned talent for the good of society when you are thinking about creating a virtual being.

The temptations of the future world of virtual beings are many. But Peter Rojas, partner at Betaworks Ventures, said, “We shouldn’t be afraid to think about legislation and regulations for things that we want to happen.”

He said there are moral, ethical, and responsibility issues that we can discuss for another day. Rojas’ firm funded a company that is working on technology to identify deep fakes, so that journalists, social media firms, or law enforcement can identify attempts at deception when you put someone else’s believable head on a person’s body, making them do things that they didn’t do.

“There is incredible talent working on the different technical problems here on the storytelling side,” Rojas said. “As excited as I am about what’s happening in the field, I also share fears about how this could be used. And where I don’t see a lot of entrepreneurs is in working on new products around technology that will help against the deception.”

I agree with Rojas. Let’s all think this through before we do it.

Credit: Source link

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[bill-the-baker]

Game review: Yo! Noid 2

Yeah. So I’ve decided to do something different this time around, especially since I’ve always had a soft spot for video games, and you may already be wondering “Yo! Noid 2? When the Hell did this come out?”. The correct answer is that, technically, it hasn’t. It’s a simple game created by a team of 19 people for a game jam over the course of a month. However, though this may sound like a simple, low-effort meme game, that was just pumped out as a joke (the main character even has the ability to dab), it manages to be so much more than what you’d expect.

In this game, you control the infamous former-mascot of Domino’s Pizza, The Noid, who was walking down the street to discover that his trusty yo-yo was stolen. In an effort to retrieve it, he stumbles into a mysterious dimension, known as the “Noid Void”, which is populated by various pizza toppings, which (spoiler alert) are under the threat of a man named Mike Hatsune, father of Miku Hatsune, who’s daughter is launching a Domino’s Pizza campaign in Japan in an attempt to sabotage the fame of The Noid, with the aftermath of the final boss leaving on a rather eerie note, saying how Mike’s invasion has already begun. Seems rather simple, whilst making humorous quips to many other things Domino’s related, including this utterly horrifying campaign by their Japanese branch. But this isn’t the main focus of the game. This is largely reserved for the gameplay (go figure).

The gameplay of Yo! Noid 2 involves four levels, followed by a final boss. These levels are largely expansive, and you’re encouraged to use your surroundings in order to complete a level. This technique mainly comes in the acrobatic gameplay-style of The Noid, with his ability to wall-jump and wall-run, whilst also using his yo-yo as a grappling hook. You will need to master these abilities in order to beat the game. From the very first level, this game reminds you that this game isn’t for the casual player. You need to know how to get past certain obstacles with pinpoint precision. Otherwise, The Noid’s heavily sensitive movement style would result in you hearing his annoying scream multiple times. This is mostly shown through the level “Domino Dungeon”. 

This level is recommended to be played after one has previously mastered the controls of The Noid, as was warned by an NPC at the beginning. Boy, is there a reason for that warning! If you are not familiar enough with the quirks of The Noid, then this level will take forever. It largely consists of platform-based puzzles that require a combination of wall-jumping, wall-running and yo-yo-ing(?) skills to complete, all while rotating a large crane-like structure to get from room-to-room. In one room, you’ll need to get to a door on the other end, using a structure to open said-door, that causes the door to close if you don’t get there in time. This challenge is simple enough, but it’s starts to get difficult once passing that door. Here, you’ll need to use your yo-yo to position various platforms and to travel to said-platforms. However, towards the end, you need to travel from the bottom of one platform to the top, using a precise combination of yo-yo and wall-jumping skills. There is also another room in which you need to get to the top of it by wall-running to an area needed to get to the areas needed to grapple your way to the top. The wall-running section requires a jump from one wall to another, which cannot be done unless, once again, you know exactly what you are doing. It took me about an hour to get past this point on my first playthrough. But then, it turned out that the device in one room opened a door in the other, meaning I had to get past that wall-running section again in under a minute. Still, completing that section of the game was extremely satisfying, as was finally completing that level as a whole. Still, whilst that stage was rather frustrating, the others, “Plizzanet” and “Swing Factory” offered a lot of fast-paced action, which took advantage of the game’s controls.

Another interesting part of the game is it’s graphics and music. One could argue that Yo! Noid 2 is a retro-revival style game. But unlike most which base themselves on the NES or Super Nintendo, Yo! Noid 2 is unique by offering a 3D platformer reminiscent of those you would find on the original PlayStation, all the way down to a 4:3 aspect ratio and texture-warping effects. So, whilst it’s also enjoyable and challenging, it’s also not too taxing to many computer processors. The music is also an absolute joy to listen to, with them fitting many of the areas they play in. My personal favourites are the themes for Plizzanet and the final boss, though this may be due to the fact that I’m largely interested in the 90s-esque electronic style of the songs. Still, Plizzanet offers a very feel-good vibe that will keep you going, whilst the final boss offers a more intense style to it that makes that challenging section all the more enjoyable.

Overall, whilst it’s difficulty can turn away some less-experienced players, Yo! Noid 2 is still a rather enjoyable experience, with it’s fast paced gameplay style, unique graphics, brilliant music, and ironic humour. I strongly recommend this to those looking for a challenging type of game, or just a kind of game that reminds of the days when there wasn’t just a billion battle royale games on the market! Speedrunners would also be happy to know that the new “Game of a Year” edition offers many new mechanics suited to speedrunning.

The game can be downloaded here.

#bill's game reviews #yo noid 2