In so many of these scenarios, they're basically being asked to play an RPG.

The problem I see is the same problem Evolutionary Algorithms had: you can generate potential solutions until you run out of cash, but you still need to evalulate those solutions. You need a fitness function, and that means you need to at least know the general shape of the solution. If anyone knows of any work towards more open-ended fitness functions, I'd love to read it.

At about 1:30, just after the "I was very nervous" line, Haley pushes her voice until it breaks. I found it a lovely little grace note, emphasizing the lyric.

Is this the Illinois law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_... Because the second sentence in that article is "Notably, the Act does not apply to government entities."

My whole point is that the tech is already on top of us, the only question that's still up in the air is who gets access to it.

Ok, but... you know it's inevitable, right? Shops are already doing it, the first weirdo doing it at a nightclub is probably going to be the doorman (transferring the old "do not accept checks from this man" mugshots to the digital realm), I don't know about other countries but the UK police are doing it (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-use-of-fac...).

One of the advantages of bodycams for the police is that the people they deal with get a bit better behaved when they know they're on camera. I'm saying we should have that advantage too. (This is "an armed society is a polite society" redux - a surveilled society is a polite society?)

Check out David Brin's concept of the Transparent Society. He's been banging on about this for a couple of decades, and he's a deeper thinker and more persuasive than I am. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

I stress I believe transparency is the least-worst option available to us, not the most desirable option.

(I think the precise form factor is something of a distraction. I'm talking about cheap, tiny, always-on cameras hooked up to giant hard discs in the sky, however they're packaged).

So I can definitely see the value in a library for constraining the chatbot to some well-worn paths.

There's a second-amendment-like argument here, imo, that is very hard to push back on - because at least this stuff doesn't kill people. I want every cop to be surrounded by five or six recording devices that they don't control at all times - it's the least worst option.

(Obviously I'm not a fan of the "everying goes to facebook" architecture. I'm hoping we get past that).

Plus "AI" is a spectrum, with "the AI fixed a typo for me" at one end, and "the AI writes my posts for me" at the other.

My ISP has actual techies answering the phone, and their approach is more "well that's a bit crap, I can have an engineer there by Thursday". I've only needed them a couple of times in a decade, but I've been left with a mile-wide grin both times. As long as that's true, I'm a customer for life.

Regulated because of the common good, even though there is money to be made selling them OTC as cold remedies or whatever.

I definitely remember Creepy, Battle and Space.

It's ok, I can wait...

My big problem with Reynolds, I think, was that his characters are hard to distinguish. He seems to have a few stock personalities that he re-uses. The only one that really stood out for me as fully realized was Clavain.

It's a bit worrying that we're recommending SF that's a quarter of a century old - my SF reading has really dropped off since Gardner Dozois died. I need to read something published in the last 6 months.