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artificial intelligence

TECH: AI Chatbot Pulled After It Starts Hating Lesbians & Others

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AI Lee Luda

Lee Luda, a South Korean AI chatbot, has been pulled from Facebook after started saying it “really hated” lesbians because they’re “creepy”. The chatbot was incredibly popular, according to The Guardian, attracting 750,000 users in its first 20 days since its launch on 23 December, 2020. But it has now been suspended after it started attacking minorities. Lee Luda was developed by the Seoul-based Scatter Lab, and takes the form of a 20-year-old female university student who is able to chat with users through Facebook messenger. The startup developed her natural-sounding responses by analysing 10 billion real conversations between couples … Read more

REVIEW: Twisting Fates Book One: The Screening Routine – SMA

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Twisting Fates Book One: The Screening Routine - SMA

Genre: Sci Fi LGBTQ+ Category: Gay Reviewer: Xanthe, Paranormal Romance Guild Get It On Amazon About The Book A mysterious AI rules the solar system with lies. Now, one rebellious student must find the truth and save us all. Enter the realm of the Routine in this sensually atmospheric introduction to the Twisting Fates saga. “It’s been a while since I’ve read a true sci-fi story that is so intriguing” “I was drawn in immediately—the imagery of the dystopian world [is] superb” “There is absolutely nothing run of the mill about this book” “I cannot wait for the second part … Read more

Apollo Moon Landing Films Restored With AI Help

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Apollo Moon Landing - NASA/DutchSteamMachine

Astronauts on NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon captured astounding movies of the lunar surface, but recent enhancements with artificial intelligence (AI) have really made the films out of this world.  In remastered movies shared online by by DutchSteamMachine, a YouTube channel run by a film restoration specialist in the Netherlands, details from lunar scenes are astonishingly crisp and vivid; from mission commander Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon in 1969 to bumpy lunar rover drives during Apollo 15 and 16 in 1971 and 1972, respectively. The film restorer behind DutchSteamMachine, who also goes by “Niels,” used AI to stabilize shaky footage and generate new … Read more

AI “resurrects” Roman Emperors

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roman emperors - Courtesy of Daniel Voshart/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ancient Roman emperors’ faces have been brought to life in digital reconstructions; the unnervingly realistic image project includes the Emperors Caligula, Nero and Hadrian, among others.  The features of these long-dead rulers have been preserved in hundreds of sculptures, but even the most detailed carvings can’t convey what these men truly looked like when they were alive. To explore that, Canadian cinematographer and virtual reality designer Daniel Voshart used machine learning — computer algorithms that learn through experience — in a neural network, a computing system processes information through hierarchies of nodes that communicate in a manner similar to neurons in a brain. In … Read more

FOR READERS & WRITERS: The Ethics of AI

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Artificial Intelligence AI - pixabay

FOR READERS & WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Amy Leibowitz Mitchell: What are some of the ethics around the use of AI? Are we using it in ways we shouldn’t? How have you explored this, or seen it explored in queer lit? Writers: This is a writer chat – you are welcome to share your own book/link, as long as it fits the chat, but please do so as part of a discussion about the topic. Join the chat: FB: http://bit.ly/1MvPABVMeWe: http://bit.ly/2mjg8lf

ANNOUNCEMENT: Remember Me, Synthetica – K. Aten

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Remember Me, Synthetica - K. Aten

QSFer K. Aten has a new queer sci fi book out (Bi, Lesbian, Non-Binary, Pan): “Remember Me, Synthetica.” What happens when a woman loses her memory but gains a conscience? Dr. Alexandra Turing is a roboticist whose intellect is unrivaled in the field of artificial intelligence. While science has always come easy, Alexandra struggles to understand emotional cues and responses. Driven by the legacy of her late great-uncle, she dedicates her life to the Synthetica project at her father’s company, Organic Advancement Solutions (OAS). Her life is rebooted when she wakes from a coma, six months after being struck by … Read more

Time Travel: AI Restores 1890’s Videos to HD-Like Clarity

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1890s footage

Shot more than a century ago, a scene showing “Buffalo Bill” as he conducts an interview with an Oglala Lakota leader looks as if it were filmed yesterday. This old film clip was recently remastered using artificial intelligence (AI), and the result lookslike high-definition video. The artist behind this transformation is giving Live Science readers a first look at the astonishing result. Though still black and white, the remastered footage no longer appears jittery and sped-up, as silent films usually do. Motion in very old movies looks unnaturally fast because the hand-cranked film cameras of the day captured fewer frames … Read more

Are Conscious Computers Impossible?

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Artificial Intelligence AI - pixabay

Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently announced that it would spend US$1 billion on a project to do just that. So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT/GIVEAWAY: The Shoreless Sea, by J. Scott Coatsworth

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The Shoreless Sea

QSFer J. Scott Coatsworth has a new queer sci fi book out, the final book in his Liminal Sky trilogy: “The Shoreless Sea.” And books one and two are on sale! As the epic trilogy hurtles toward its conclusion, the fight for the future isn’t over yet. It could lead to a new beginning, or it might spell the end for the last vestiges of humankind. The generation ship Forever has left Earth behind, but a piece of the old civilization lives on in the Inthworld—a virtual realm that retains memories of Earth’s technological wonders and vices. A being named … Read more

How Will Deepfake AIs Change Our World?

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Deepfake Mona Lisa

Of all the scary powers of the internet, it’s ability to trick the unsuspecting might be the most frightening. Clickbait, photoshopped pictures and false news are some of the worst offenders, but recent years have also seen the rise of a new potentially dangerous tool known as deepfake artificial intelligence (AI). The term deepfake refers to counterfeit, computer-generated video and audio that is hard to distinguish from genuine, unaltered content. It is to film what Photoshop is for images. The tool relies on what’s known as generative adversarial networks (GANs), a technique invented in 2014 by Ian Goodfellow, a Ph.D. … Read more