"Alexa… timer for fifteen minutes." The problem with the English language is that it is full of homophones, or semi-homophones. 15 and 50 sound basically the same. Humans have a hard time distinguishing them. So there's no wonder that voice assistants also have difficulty. Recently, I've noticed that my wife and I have adopted a very specific accent when talking to our Alexa. Certain constants a…
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There's been several long threads recently on Google's crappy info-box. Google doesn't want you to leave the Google page, so Google slurps information up and presents you an answer on the Google homepage. Here's what it typically looks like. OK, that's kinda useful. Search for a thing and get the info without clicking through. But there are times when it goes dreadfully wrong. Sometimes it…
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I've been experimenting with Amazon's Polly service. It's their fancy text-to-sort-of-human-style-speech system. Think "Alexa" but with a variety of voices, genders, and accents. Here's "Brian" - their English, male, received pronunciation voice - reading John Betjeman's poem "Slough": https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/slough.mp4 The pronunciation of all the words is…
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One of my favourite movie moments is in the 1998 movie Antz - when one of the ants turns to camera and says: It's the workers who control the means of production! Even though we're not in the age of the Hollywood Blacklist, it's still rare to see overt - and literal - Marxism on the big screen. "The Mitchells" might be the most insightful critique of Silicon Valley and the AI hype that I've…
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I have a cheap WiFi enabled vacuum cleaner. One morning, I barked "ALEXA! CLEAN THE HOUSE." The gynoid immediately responded with "Now playing songs by Crowded House." The future's ace, innit? So I opened the cleaner's app, hit a button, and heard the sound of a domestic-droid doing its thing. For two minutes. The app spat out this fabulously helpful warning. I trundled downstairs to see…
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From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even…
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We place a large premium on Human. Mostly because it is what we've always known. But, when given the choice, we often ditch humans for something better. Some random examples… Radio DJs Does anyone actually miss witless chatter between records? Use of Spotify suggests a large number of us don't need a Human to introduce the next record. Or hold a phone-in. Or read out dates of a gig. We m…
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For a domain based on Shakespeare - this blog doesn't talk about The Bard much. Sorry! I forced a bot to read 154 Shakespearean Sonnets. This is what it came up with... 47 Be where thou art, thou art the sea, Till all that belongs to it turn aside, And make another land into thy heart's plot. Let those elements that should guide thy march, Make thee…
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From internationally bestselling icon Jeanette Winterson comes her most highly anticipated new book since Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?, about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire Zeitgeist the novel! Trans issues combined with AI and politics. Interspersed with a fictionalised autobiography of Mary Shelley. It's a mixed bag of great ideas, high comedy, and beautiful…
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I hate creating Alexa skills. What should be a 3-click process inevitably ends up requiring trips to multiple websites, to set up weird parameters, and reading outdated tutorials for obsolete libraries. So this is how to create a self-hosted Skill, using PHP. It runs on your own server and doesn't require any interaction. The Skill At a basic level, all your website has to do is spit out a…
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You are accused of a crime. Who would you rather determined your fate – a human or an algorithm? An algorithm is more consistent and less prone to error of judgement. Yet a human can look you in the eye before passing sentence. Welcome to the age of the algorithm. An all-too-brief journey through the problems with modern AI. If you've been paying attention to the trade-press, many of the s…
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What happens when a robot begins to question its creators? What would be the consequences of creating a robot with a sense of humour? Or the ability to lie? How do we truly tell the difference between man and machine? In "I, Robot", Asimov sets out the Three Laws of Robotics – designed to protect humans from their robotic creations – and pushes them to their limits and beyond. After attending a…
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