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blancheludis · 4 years ago

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@whumptober2020, Day 6, “Get it out”

Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, JARVIS, Bruce Banner Tags: Hidden Injury, 2012 Avengers, Hurt Tony, Team as Family Words: 4.129

Summary:

During a battle, Tony is injured by getting stabbed with a piece of his own armour. He hides it, of course he does, because he always dealt with these things alone. He has not counted on JARVIS and the bots ratting him out, however, and much less on Steve actually rushing to his side. Maybe he's more a part of the team than he thought.

---

Once the doors of the workshop close behind Tony, breathing gets that much harder. Away from prying eyes, he does not have to stand so tall anymore, does not have to concentrate on making well-timed quips and generally live up to the invincible part of his name. He does not have to pretend he is one wrong movement away from passing out. Right now, there is only quiet, the flashing red of the alarm inside the HUD, and the pulsing pain in his abdomen, threatening to overwhelm him.

Tony is not quite sure what hit him. The outside of the suit looks fine – apart from the obvious dents, but it does not have any glaring holes in it. They were fighting a group of AIM soldiers, but they did not seem to be particularly well-equipped. Although Tony has to admit that a few spectacularly devastating things have come out of their lab before. So, they either created a missile able to penetrate the suit without leaving much trace on the outside, or Tony almost killed himself with his own creation again by leaving exploitable weak points.

It does not matter. He is not dead and now that he is home he can sit down and sleep this off. Nobody has to know and once his brain is not flushed by adrenaline anymore, he can try to reinforce the places where the suit has failed him.

Taking as deep a breath as the pain allows, Tony takes a step forward. He will not have gained anything from collapsing right inside the door to the workshop. It is agony. Every little movement sends new shocks through his body until it feels like he is burning. The flashing red inside the HUD intensifies as if Tony does not notice he has a serious problem right now. But there is a first-aid kit stashed somewhere and he is already halfway to the assembly station. While Tony would like nothing more than to lie down and sleep for a week or two, he needs to get the suit off first. He opens the face plate, relieved at the sudden lack of flashing red.

Another step, and JARVIS pipes up, sounding at once too formal and too urgent. His kid is worried. “Sir, if I might advise you to –”

“I won’t go to medical for a scratch,” Tony cuts him off and tries to put some authority in his tone, which is hampered by how little air he manages to get into his lungs.

“That scratch comes from a piece of your suit that has pierced your skin and runs approximately three inches deep,” JARVIS reports as if he thinks words will make Tony see reason. After an expectant pause, he adds, “With a considerable piece of metal still inside you.”

Bless modern technology, Tony thinks. What does he need the medical team for when his AI can diagnose him just as well, if not better? JARVIS knows him and does not needlessly prod him only to arrive at a conclusion Tony knew beforehand.

What a way to go, though, impaled on his own suit. The press would certainly call it poetic justice, and Tony might be inclined to agree with them. He does not plan on dying, though. A lot of trouble is still ahead of them and the team still needs him if they want to stand a chance against the army closing in on them from space.

With a last shaking step, Tony gets on the platform and steadies himself by grabbing one of the robotic arms. “Well, then we need to get it out.”

Tony does not need a medical doctorate to know that is not the best of ideas, not without proper preparation. He believes in JARVIS’ abilities, though.

“Let me alert someone at least,” JARVIS all but pleads. “Dr. Banner –”

“- is not that kind of doctor. Weren’t you listening to him?” Tony asks and manages half a smile. He knows perfectly well that Bruce would be put out if he ever found out Tony refused to call him in for help, no matter his constant protest that they have trained professionals for that.

“And yet he’s more proficient at stitching people back together than you are,” JARVIS argues, sounding like he is one wrong word away from open rebellion.

“He’s not more proficient at stitching me back together, though.” And that, in Tony’s opinion, is the absolute truth. He does not make it easy on people – or AIs – he knows, but he takes care of himself and tries not to be too much of a problem for other people. That is just human decency. Especially considering how many issues he has.

“Sir.”

When JARVIS resorts to quiet disapproval, Tony almost feels bad, but he is too miserable to let anybody else in. “It’s okay, JARVIS, I’ll be right as rain in a minute.” He just hopes they will not be called out for another mission any time soon. The pain might get better once the metal is out, but he will still have a hole in his side, which will make moving, much less fighting, a tad difficult. “Now, get the suit off.”

The robotic arms stay still and Tony thinks for the thousandth time that he needs to create a better system for that. A suit of armour is nice to have, but he needs an easier way to get out of it without ruining the suit than stepping on the platform in his workshop and hoping that his AI is in the mood to indulge him.

“It’s highly inadvisable to just rip out the piece of metal inside you.” If JARVIS had a foot, Tony is sure he would stomp angrily.

“I’m sure that’s still better than leaving it in,” Tony answers, trying to remain standing. “I don’t have the best of immune systems, if you remember.” He pats the arc reactor gently.

Tony is half-convinced that JARVIS is playing for time. The longer he waits, the more likely it is that Tony will collapse, and then he will not have any other choice but to call for help. Well, that only makes Tony fight harder to stay conscious. Worse than handing himself over to medical is being handed over while he does not know what is happening to him.

“At least get the rest of it off,” he suggests, wondering why his kids have to be so stubborn.

Nothing happens for another long moment. Then the machine whirs to life, slower than usual. Tony is sure JARVIS works as gently as he can and yet the process hurts. The removal jostles him, pressing against bruises and the pulsing wound in his abdomen. Waves of black roll through Tony’s vision and it is all he can do to stay upright.

When the chest plate is lifted, the dented pieces cling to each other, tugging on Tony’s abdomen in a way that has hot red pain shooting through him, making his knees buckle. JARVIS catches him with the robotic arms, the chest plate clattering carelessly to the ground.

“I really must insist –” JARVIS’ voice sounds from far away, barely audible over the ringing in Tony’s ears.

Still, Tony shakes his head, or maybe the world is just spinning in front of him. He is not sure what is happening anymore. Then familiar beeping reaches him as JARVIS has the robotic arms deliver him into the fretful hold of DUM-E.

“Hey there, buddy,” Tony mutters. It ends in a groan as a chair is pushed against the backs of his knees and he involuntarily falls into it. Manhandled by his own kids. It is probably for the best. Even sitting down, it is hard to stay upright instead of falling right down to the floor.

This is okay, he tells himself over and over again. A mantra to cling to. He has had worse. It just hurts. Looking down at himself, he sees the dented piece of the suit. It is not even bleeding much.

“I am sure you are aware it will start bleeding the moment you try to move that piece.”

Sluggishly, Tony blinks up at the ceiling, wondering when JARVIS learned to read his mind. That could come in handy – at least when JARVIS is not admonishing him.

“I must insist you allow me to call someone,” JARVIS goes on, sounding almost frantic now.

Tony wonders whether he really looks that bad. It almost feels okay now. The pain is dulled, almost like a second heartbeat. He could just go to sleep and wake up when everything is over.

“Just get it out,” Tony says. He is tired and just wants to get this over with. Sitting up straighter despite the pain, Tony clarifies, “Butterfingers, get the firs-aid kit. U, hold me. And DUM-E, get it out.”

This is probably not the best task to give to DUM-E, whose motor control is leagues behind Butterfingers’, but he is Tony’s oldest and least likely to rebel, if only because Tony never programmed any common sense into him.

Closing his eyes, Tony grabs the sides of the chair and braces himself for more pain – only nothing happens, nothing even moves. He glints and finds all his bots looking at him, DUM-E at least with an air of shame.

“JARVIS,” Tony bites out between clenched teeth. He does not have the energy to do everything himself. “Could you please not keep the bots from doing what I tell them to do?”

“My first priority is your well-being, sir,” JARVIS answers stiffly.

“And that means getting this damned metal spike out of my body, yes?” Tony snaps and glares at his bots.

“In a safe manner. I will not watch you bleed out right in front of me.”

If Tony were in less pain, he might acknowledge the trace of fear in JARVIS’ voice, but he does not have many alternatives to dealing with these things himself. There is no way he could go to Medical without the rest of the team finding out and they do not need the reminder that Tony is just a rather squishy human in a tin can. He does not know how Clint does it, who always comes out of fights with scrapes and bruises, unenhanced as he is. But Steve does not doubt his abilities as much as he does Tony’s.

“I won’t –”

Tony is interrupted by the door opening – which should not happen because he is sure that he ordered a complete lockdown. He always does when he comes home injured or when he needs to repair some serious damage done to the armour.

Drained and weary, he is unable to react quickly, does not even manage to really straighten in the chair. When he tries, fire spreads through his abdomen that has him flinch, unsettling his entire balance. It is all he can do not to slide right to the ground. And thus, barely hanging on to consciousness – and the last scraps of his dignity – Tony has to watch Captain America himself hurry into his workshop, his face already drawn into an unhappy frown.

This is it, he guesses. He does not have the energy for another shouting match about all the things he has done wrong, so he will likely say something unforgiveable just to get it over with or pass out. In Tony’s head, there is no way this will end with him still on the team. Irresponsible as he is, endangering the actually useful members of the team – he can already see where this is going.

“Cap, to what do I owe the honour?” Even to his own ears, Tony sounds strained, and his lips feel ready to crack when he pulls them into an estimate of a grin. It is a poor attempt at keeping up appearances, but Tony is too much of a Stark not to try.

Steve’s face grows considerably darker. “Don’t waste your energy, Tony. What were you thinking?”

These words should warrant a harsher voice and yet there is something careful to the way Steve moves. He comes closer, the bots getting out of his way without a fuss, and studies the way Tony is curled around the last piece of armour on his body.

“I thought we’d all take a nice post-mission shower and then meet up for dinner,” Tony says conversationally, doing his best to pretend Steve cannot see his shame. He is offering them an out. It would be easy for Steve to nod and leave, to let Tony himself deal with this mess. That is not how this works, however.

Steve looks like he will start yelling any minute now, and the familiarity of it relaxes Tony a bit, despite the pain. Some things will never change, and Steve’s disapproval of him and everything he does is one of them.

Then, Steve seems to think better of it and steps even closer, crouching down right in front of Tony. He reaches out as if to touch Tony’s side but his hand keeps hovering over the dented piece of armour.

“How bad is it?” Steve asks in a clinical tone.

Before Tony can even open his mouth to answer something dismissive, JARVIS speaks up, making him feel like he has been deemed unworthy to be a part of this conversation any longer.

“My preliminary scan shows that no vital organs or large blood vessels were hit, but there was considerable blood loss. Which will get worse when we try to mobilize the piece of the armour.” JARVIS sounds just as disapproving as Steve and in his haziness, Tony can just imagine the old Jarvis coming back from the dead only to appear right next to Steve, watching him with the same pinched expression.

In response, Steve pulls away his hand as if burned, as if his mere proximity might do more damage. Tony might be imagining things, though, since black is creeping in on his vision until he sees everything around him as if through a long dark tunnel.

“What hit him?” Steve asks, still with that worry.

Once again, Tony is too slow to keep the catastrophe from unravelling, and has to listen to JARVIS say, “It was blunt force that pushed parts of the suit inside Sir.” The honorific feels like a terrible mockery, considering that JARVIS is blurting out how irresponsible Tony was. What if he got a teammate hurt because he put himself out of commission and could not be there to help? “It is a stability issue of the seams that has been ignored in favour of more manoeuvrability.”

The glare Steve sends at Tony is enough to make his pulse race from more than the pain. They will have an argument about this later, Tony knows, and it will be ugly. If he is not thrown off the team altogether. Certain weak points have to be accepted if he wants to remain at peak usefulness. He is not sure where the difference is to Clint jumping off buildings every opportunity he gets without confirming someone is close by to catch him. The purely human members of the team have to take some risks at times – and they usually deal with it just fine.

Tony looks at where he knows one of JARVIS’ cameras is located and mouths, “Traitor.” Then he pushes himself away from Steve only to have the chair collide with Butterfingers, who is still right behind him. The unexpected jostling drives a whimper to his lips that he is too slow to swallow. He closes his eyes in shame, wishing this was just a bad dream.

“All right,” Steve says as if he has only just made up his mind about what he will do. “Can we move him to Medical or do we need to get a team here?”

“I’m perfectly fine with –” Tony bites out, his voice coming out much quieter than he wanted. It does not even surprise him anymore when he is ignored.

“I advise not to move Sir too much, although the piece should be removed in a sterile environment,” JARVIS says, no doubt thinking of Tony’s suppressed immune system. He has dealt just fine with that before. He does not need them to hold his hand through something he has done by himself a thousand times.

“Let’s get him a stretcher, then,” Steve decides and gets to his feet, although he keeps hovering over Tony as if he is just waiting for him to fall.

It is too much. The pain, the impending doom of Steve telling him he has outlived his usefulness, people deciding over his head what to do with him – Tony has enough.

“I’m not an invalid, damn it,” he snaps, glaring at Steve with all the energy he has left. “I can speak for myself and I can walk if I have to. I just fought a battle with you.”

Perhaps he should not have reminded them of the fight because Steve’s expression falls at that before settling into another frown.

“While injured,” he replies shortly. “That alone makes me doubt your mental capacity at the moment.”

This is so unfair. If Tony had bowed out of the fight just because of a scratch, he would have gotten a lecture about abandoning his team. Now that he kept on fighting, he is called irresponsible. Tony always knew that Captain America would disapprove of him but this is like dealing with Howard all over again and being unable to ever do anything right.

“Cap,” Tony tries but is cut off harshly.

“Don’t test me right now, Tony. I will not lose one of my team to his stubbornness. It’s bad enough that you didn’t tell anyone you are hurt.” The words do not quite fit the stormy expression. Then again, Steve has that helper syndrome where even losing just Tony would make him feel bad. “Why would you insist on going through this alone?”

The question hangs in the air between them for a minute, leaving Tony stunned with the desperate note clinging to the words. Then, Steve turns around abruptly and brings some distance between them before snapping at the air, “Where are you, Bruce? We need a med team up here immediately.”

Still stunned by the outburst, Tony is glad that Steve’s attention is not on him anymore. Otherwise, he might have just made a rather embarrassing admission like What if you decide to throw me off the team if you’re reminded how easily I’m hurt? or, worse, It’s better to hide than to find out nobody cares.

Tony does not believe that last thing, not really. He might not be a full-fledged member of the team, but they would care and they would help. Some lessons are hard to unlearn, however, and Tony has never been allowed to be vulnerable before.

“Steve,” Tony says, although he is not sure how to continue. He feels the urge to thank Steve. For coming. For not starting to yell immediately.

He does not come that far, however, because Steve whirls around to him and cuts him off. “No, I don’t want to hear any stupid excuses.”

That is more like it. Disappointment wars with relief in Tony’s chest. In the end, the familiar scorn is better than treading into the unknown and hoping for things to change. So, Tony swallows the words rising up in his throats and leans back in the chair. This time, he is prepared for the pain and keeps his face impassive. He is getting tired of this, and since his input is apparently not needed, he might as well close his eyes for a moment and get some rest.

“Tony? Are you –” A few hurried steps and Tony feels Steve right back at his side, sounding worried again. “I mean, is it getting worse?”

Tony is not sure. The pain is bearable when he does not move. His thoughts are very slow, which is not at all what he is used to, but that could just be the exhaustion.

“I’m fine,” he says because what else is there to do? “Everything’s fine.”

He keeps his eyes closed, does not want to see Steve, does not want to face reality at the moment. The darkness is pulling him under and he does not fight it. What for? Help is on the way, JARVIS and Steve will not let him do anything on his own. Might as well pass out and not have to face the fear of other people’s hands all over him.

“Stay with me, Tony,” Steve’s voice sounds from a distance.

That sounds like a bad idea. Staying with Steve means shame and arguments. No, he will stay like this and do his best to miss all the excitement. He might not like things happening to him that he is not fully aware of but it sounds nice to wake up once everything is over and he is alone again. He could –

Pain shoots through him, more acute than before, that makes him snap up his head and blink against the sudden light. He is not sitting in his workshop anymore. Instead, he is lying down, tight straps over his chest and legs, and the ceiling is flying by. Panic rises in him and he does not have any energy left to fight it.

“We’re here, Tony,” Bruce’s voice reaches him, calm and familiar, right before his face appears like a dark blob above Tony.

Only a second later, Steve shows up on the other side. “They’ll take care of you.”

“Don’t –” Tony says, but his mouth is too dry to continue.

Don’t watch, he means. Don’t let them take out my heart. Don’t let them put another battery in me.

“We’ll stay with you,” Steve says and it sounds like a promise, like he understands Tony’s fear, although they have never talked about his time in that cave. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Those two things are not the same, Tony wants to point out, but darkness comes creeping back in from the corners of his vision.

“Hold –” you to that, he wants to say.

Instead, the last thing he feels before unconsciousness claims him is something grabbing his hand and holding on tight.

---

When Tony wakes up, he is in his room. At first, he thinks he dreamt up all the excitement, his fantasy spurred into motion by blood loss and exhaustion. Some part of his incorrigible heart keeps wishing to be saved, no matter how much he fights it.

Then he hears the familiar beeping of a heart monitor and feels the pressure of bandages around his abdomen. That alone is a clear indicator he got outside help. If he had done this one his own, DUM-E would have gotten tangled up in the bandages until Tony decided a band aid would have to be enough. And he would have passed out in the workshop. Maybe he would have gotten to the couch. But his bed? Never.

Shame wells up inside him, but he stomps down on it. There is no use in dwelling on something he cannot change anymore. Now, he must soldier on and deal with the consequences.

When Tony opens his eyes fully and looks around, he is greeted by the strangest sight. On the sides of his bed sit Bruce and Steve, both asleep and looking like they would desperately need a bed of their own. Worse, Steve is still in his uniform, which means he really has not left Tony’s side since finding him in the workshop.

That thought does strange things to Tony’s stomach, which he cannot dully blame on his hole in his abdomen. He distantly remembers them promising they would stay with him, but that is just what people tell those who are injured and would rather jump off the rood of the tower than get actual, medical help. They were not meant to actually do that.

Opening his mouth, Tony means to clear his throat, to say something, to send them off to bed. Before he can get a single sound over his lips, however, his eyes fall on his hand. Specifically, his hand that is held by Steve.

Oh. Tony’s mind is blank, wondering what to make of that.

As it is, the lights around him dim a bit more, just enough to catch Tony’s attention. JARVIS, then, telling him that everything is all right – and probably admonishing him to shut up and let things be.

Later, Tony will blame it on exhaustion, but he complies without a second thought. With one last glance at their intertwined hands, Tony closes his eyes.

Maybe he is not in as much trouble as he thought. Or, in any case, a different kind than expected.

#whumptober2020 #no. 6 #get it out #marvel #fanfiction #tony stark #steve rogers #hidden injury #ao3 #my writing

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you-need-2-calm-down · 4 years ago

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Okay, so Vince from Transformers Prime. Ya know, the bully who talked Jack into racing him and ended up getting captured by Knockout?

I'm sure at some point watching that episode back then I thought the creators would somehow bring Vince into the war and he'd be another human the Autobots had to look after.

It makes sense. It was still early in the show and almost every show where the main character(s) are trying to keep a secret, some outsider finds out and joins the group. I honestly thought they were gonna go that route but I'm seriously glad they didn't. Here's some head canons on what I think would happen if they let Vince in on the secret and just some concerns:

First, who would be his guardian? Bee, Arcee, and Bulk already have their hands full. It feels weird thinking of O.P as a guardian to one human because he's guardian to all humans on earth. Plus, I just don't think Vince and Optimus would click. Ratchet is completely out of the question; he wants nothing to do with humans as it is

If I had to pick someone, maybe Bulk. With Miko there, she'd definitely put Vince in his place when he's being a prick

Vince would want literally nothing to do with the bots and the war. He no doubt thinks it's all cool, but because Jack is there, he wants to dip asap

But after Optimus gives him the same long ass back story he did the other kids, he'd reluctantly stay because -and he'd never admit it- Optimus intimidates him and kind of scares him

Vince being a total dick to Jack all the time

He's pissed he can't drive his own car to base and has to ride in Bulk with Miko because it's not safe and "cons might recognize your car" "but they already know what you guys look like in vehicle form" *sigh*

Vince bullying Raf sometimes at base and Bee literally wanting to step on him. Vince and Raf eventually come to an understanding and make a truce

Jack seeing Vince like he sees Miko, but instead of Vince being reckless and going into battles, Vince just argues and disagrees with everything Jack says and sometimes Jack thinks he's worse than Miko. Jack vents to Arcee in his garage all the time and has ripped out his own hair once or twice because he was so frustrated

Honestly, Jack worries that Vince might tell someone about the Autobots and has to constantly be on his case. But inside, Vince knows how dangerous it is and would never tell anyone

Vince being a total bitch the first time he sees cons/ gets wrapped up in a battle. He literally screams so loud and so high pitched that it glitches out every Cybertronian's audios for a couple seconds

As time goes on though, Vince realizes that the bots genuinely care about him and the fate of his planet

Vince and Raf eventually becoming like brothers and playing racing games all the time

Vince would try to invite Raf to a drag race and let him sit in the passenger seat, but Bee snatches Raf away before he can reply. He's not having a repeat of what happened with Knockout.

Along those lines, Team Prime either tells him of the time he was mistaken for Jack and captured by a con and he cries

Or they just never really tell him because they -even Prime- don't want to hear him complain about it and how they couldn't rescue him sooner

Vince and Miko bicker ALL THE TIME but they're just joking. They actually get along really well

Vince despises the music that Miko listens to and brings headphones for when she's with Bulk before him

Bulk actually enjoys when it's just Vince with him sometimes because although he loves Miko to death, it's nice to just have a break from the craziness that is her. Vince is actually way calmer than Bulk thought and isn't a big talker so he doesn't take those quiet moments for granted

Jack and Vince never really actually learn to get along because they have such different personalities, but they come to a sort of understanding in where they both stand on Team Prime. But they know to work together in a serious situation. Vince actually always asks Jack what to do when they get stuck dealing with cons and lets him take the lead

I imagine that Vince doesn't have the greatest family. I imagine he's neglected at home, so he sees Optimus as a father figure and the parent he's always wanted

He ignores Ratchet at all costs and Ratchet ignores him. They've come to a silent understanding to just not interact with one another

I imagine he doesn't actually physically see Megatron until like midway through season 2 and when he does, he literally shits his pants *(chuckles)* "I'm in danger"

He and Bee get along fine after he and Raf talk about things, but Bee can't help the small piece of resentment he has for Vince because he always bullied Raf. He tries to forgive and forget and has talked to Optimus about it, but sometimes it just resurfaces

Arcee doesn't really like him because of the way he treats Jack. That doesn't really change until later on

Everyone at school is confused as to why the bully of the school is seen talking to and hanging out with two people he used to bully all of a sudden

A few students are floored when they see him get into the same vehicle as Miko one day after school. The students who saw start rumors and it's the biggest question mark to students ever

Vince wants to tell everyone to shut up but Jack advises against it and Jack is shocked when he actually listens to him

Feel free to add your own, but I think this hc is interesting

#transformers prime #tfp #optimus prime #headcanon #jack darby #miko nakadai #raf esquivel

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jordm · 7 years ago

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Heartland 11x07 - Our Sons and Daughters review

Okay, so I guess i’ll start by saying, I’m so glad that they provided a flashback of Mackenzie/Ian, because as noted, i totally forgot who she was/what her story was and that quick flashback solved all my (and probably many others) problem of “Who was she again?”

We also learnt this episode that there is one sleep Ty comes home. Woohoo! (or not, I guess, depending on how you feel about his character atm)

I also need to point out WE GOT A NAME FOR THE ABANDONED HORSE! Chance! Finally! Remember all my posts last year about how that horse STILL doesn’t have a name?

(Also i think my Spam bot problem is gone. At least the messaging me inappropriate links part. So phew. Back to blogging)

GEORGIE & WYATT (and Adam)

“... but I wish I hadn’t invited him on the road trip with us.” “Why?” “Because there wasn’t a right time to do this”

I kind of like the Adam-Wyatt friendship. It’s unexpected since they’re kinda different besides their musical tastes and apparently taste in girls (although there’s a 1/5 chance of them dating the same girl.... apparently). I also enjoyed the scene of Jenn and Peter when they first meet and Peter has no clue who she is until halfway through the convo, especially when Jenn asks Peter what he thinks of G/W going on a road trip but doesn’t let him speak.

Anyways, Peter lets Georgie go as long as he can meet Wyatt. Fair. But maybe the girl should have given Wyatt a heads up before he came. I also loved that whole scene between Wyatt meeting Peter and the whole awkwardness of it all. And this has made me conclude that Gabriel Hogan has great comedic timing even when nothing is said.

“It’s okay if i friend him on facebook right?” - Peter about Wyatt

On a bad move on Wyatt’s part, he basically forces Adam to come along with (because he’s going to miss out) and Georgie doesn’t seem too pleased; she was expecting it to be just the two of them. Wyatt notices that something is wrong when Georgie is oddly quiet and objects to sitting in the front; however Adam gives sound sound advice- on not wanting to break into the museum but also on telling Wyatt to get out of the car and talk to Georgie, even if their convo was a little awkward on Wyatt’s end. He seems to have no grudges with her and Georgie and Adam seem to really truly be friends now, which I do enjoy. He is even looking out for Georgie’s best interests by making Wyatt leave the car and part of me thinks he also really didn’t want to go because he didn’t want to be a third wheel on the road trip.

Speaking of which, Adam keeping on wanting to go home when first they can’t get into the museum reminds me of the movie “Are we there yet?” but replace it with “Can we go home?”

I loved Lisa giving Georgie advice like the true step-grandmother (whatever she is) to Georgie. About how Wyatt was probably intimidated and telling Georgie to Woman up (Big Hero 6 anyone?) and not avoid Wyatt. Well. Really, I love anytime Lisa is on screen and not making questionable decisions and just being apart of the family.

“I would take these steaks to the dude ranch and stop avoiding him.” - Lisa

In the end, Wyatt apologies to Georgie for inviting Adam along, saying he regrets it (because there wasn’t a right to do to this [being the kiss]) and they kiss in the end. To that, I say finally! And also that I hope we see more of their relationship because I am really enjoying their relationship arc. They really are more compatible than Adam and Georgie.

As someone else noted, I didn’t really get the Gopher trip , but part of that is because i don’t get the museum , but i guess it led to progress in G/W’s relationship so its fine. Plus it looked fun.

[oops, this was a little long m’bad]

MACKENZIE, GRAYSON & IAN

Hey guys! Mackenize is back! And it’s been 9 years. Holy moly flashback. Amy introduces Chance (THE MYSTERY HORSE FROM LAST YEAR!) to Grayson when she spots him playing with his plane, but before he can even pet him, Mackenzie pulls him away, fearful for his safety. We learn later that Ian wants Grayson to take riding lessons, but Mackenzie is against it, even after Amy talks to her.

Grayson goes missing (briefly) and he’s found near Chance, patting and hugging him- this makes Mackenzie realize that maybe she shouldn’t be so scared, that maybe she should give it a chance. This turns out for the best because even though he’s initially he’s scared, after Mackenzie gives him a pep talk, Grayson is all smiles. This even pays out dividends later on when Katie “tags” him and he goes off to join Katie and Brick, a stark contrast to the beginning episode.

I don’t blame Mackenzie for being scared, but I do wish she would’ve trusted her husband sooner. Who knows, maybe nothing would have come of it, but it could have blossomed into something beautiful. Goats and horses can have a relationship, odd as it is, so who knows how special the relationship between Grayson and a horse could be? At the very worst, he doesn’t like them but at best, he improves. I admit that I don’t know much about autism or their mannerisms so maybe someone more educated about this (@callmebethany2010 ?) can advise if this storyline was well done, but overall I enjoyed it and thought it did it justice to my untrained eye- aka it didn’t bug me. I did think that a storyline with Mackenzie being afraid of her son riding a horse (even without Autism) would’ve also worked but overall I don’t have many complaints about how they handled this. I will defer to those who know more to speak.

Amy also did well this episode, not pressuring Mackenzie to let Grayson ride, instead letting her come to the conclusion herself, which she eventually did- and offering Mackenzie a trail ride instead. Once again, Amy didn’t have the A storyline this episode and i’m okay with that.

“Don’t go thinking this is because of the horse. This is years of therapy and specialists” - Mackenzie

“It can’t just be coincidence can it?” - Ian

“Does it really matter?” - Amy

No Amy. No, it doesn’t really matter. Progress is progress.

(Although it’s probably some combination of the therapy and the horse)

PETER & KATIE (and Brick)

Katie and Brick’s friendship are so adorable. I love them together, they even tried to include Grayson and seem to have fun outdoors with similar interests. Brick also sure seemed to open up with Katie around.

So Peter is back! Yay, but poor Peter. At first he can do no right in Katie’s eyes- he can’t do a french braid (neither can my dad), or an apparently good pony-tail. He is also forced to wear a crown, and then he overhears Katie telling Lou she’d rather be in New York... where the sushi is. She won’t even eat fried chicken.

This does just seem to be one of Katie’s mood swings though- and maybe she spent so much time with Lou in NYC she wasn’t used to having her father around, as it happens, because when Peter is the one who finds Katie, she seems nothing but happy to see him. She even starts eating hot dogs again at the bonfire and Peter seems much happier.

My take on this is that, Peter must have been away so much, and she basically spent the year with Lou in NYC- all used to Sushi and stuff that she needed time to adjust. Likewise, i’m sure the first few weeks of Katie in NYC took some adjusting. Little kids- not just autistic ones- like schedules and get used to habit so when something changes (ie. back at Hudson with her other parent), there may be an adjustment period.

Also shout out to Brick for being so mature about losing Katie and knowing what to do when he found Katie’s horse!

LISA & JACK

Lisa and Jack gets a great questionable housewarming present from Aunt Evelyn. Er... interesting. Just in case any of you did like it.

“Now i don’t know too much about this sort of thing, but I do know my wife has good taste so i should probably find a place to put this up”- Jack

“Katie could have done a better job painting it... it hurts my eye balls” - Georgie

All in all this leads to Lisa eventually taking the painting down, but putting it in storage, just in case Evelyn ever comes knocking. Lisa doesn’t need a painting to prove this is her home, but they do agree to go into town and buy a painting... together.

Despite this probably being a storyline C behind everything else, I really did enjoy this. After the last few weeks of turmoil, with Lisa moving in, the cloned horse and all this storyline was refreshing and it was really nice to see Lisa call Heartland home. I also loved to see Lisa interacting with the other family members and offering advice, because she is a valued member and this is her home.

SONGS IN THIS EPISODE ( @heartlandians)

I like you - Dempsey Bryk (via flashback)

Portrait - Evan Olson

Blue Heart - Maya Solovey

Everybody Feels It - Distant Cousins

Believe (See It In you) - Amy Stroup

NEXT EPISODE

Well, apparently Ty is back but he wasn’t in the preview. Oops.

Also, it focuses on Tim and his problems... it doesn’t go into details but it looks like Jack saying “i’ve never seen him/(you?) like this” and offering help but Tim saying he can handle it himself. Hm, should be interesting.

#heartland #11x07 #our sons and daughters #review

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jacquelynthegypsywitch · 5 years ago

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Hunter's Moon oracle reading

1. Releasing: Things you should be letting go of in your life

The Wishbone

Chance, possibility, change

2. Retaining: Things you should be holding close to you

The Fish

Hard work ahead, upstream battle, a goal achieved

3. Receiving: Things that are coming into your life

The Bread

Sustenance, respite, nourishment

4. Surroundings: How the world around you is affecting you

The Cartwheel

Journey, travel, possibilities

5. Giving: What you should be giving to others

The Needle

Creativity, repair, improvement

6. Beginning: Something new that will begin soon

The Spiderweb

Neglect, inattention, distraction

7. Your lesson: What you should be learning at this point

The Milestone

Progress, an achievement, a halfway point

“Like I said, I don’t want to be a broken record and keep repeating myself about my ex-boyfriend. This is why I didn’t want to do this post. I think I really have come a long way since my “Gaia” readings, but I have some more things I need to get off my chest and put out there for the universe. I’m not supposed to be speculating, but that doesn’t mean others who read this can’t. And because, frankly, mixed (supernatural) signals are frustrating as hell. First off, I want to address this card reading. I assume the first card, The Wishbone, is telling me I shouldn’t be wishing for a chance or a possibility that my ex will ever contact me again. This isn’t the first time a card has signified to let it go. And I get it, I understand the apparent circumstances, I see the stupidity in it all. I’ve also been doing my best to stop my heartache, confusion, and grief from consuming me. It may seem like I’m taking two steps back with this post, but just let me get through it; I’m still trying to retain a “higher perspective” here. Card 2. The Fish. I do feel very proud of myself for how I’ve managed all these months. I have accomplished a lot creatively and I’ve been so occupied with this website; it has kind of spun me into other aesthetic endeavors and emotional outlets. Card 3. The Bread. I so desperately need respite and nourishment for my soul, and they couldn’t be any more welcome to come into my life. Card 4. The creator of this card deck made a note that these card descriptions should be taken as “guidelines” and you should go with your own intuition if you’re getting a different interpretation. I believe The Cartwheel has a much more literal meaning for me and represents my feeling of being turned upside down and spinning with emotion. Card 5. The Needle is an interesting card for “Giving.” I say this because I’ve been repeatedly getting messages advising that I should help others. I would love to do that, but I don’t know in what context – what form – these messages are referring to. Card 6. Like the incident with my first “Gaia” reading, The Spiderweb dropped out of my deck while starting to shuffle the cards. As I slid it back in and continued to mix them up, I was thinking “What if The Spiderweb showed up in my spread?” And then of course, it did. I don’t know what it’s referring to either, besides maybe I’ll find an even bigger distraction from my depressing thoughts. Card 7. The Milestone. “My lesson.” I’m still trying to understand what the lesson is I’m being taught and if anything extraordinary will come out of it. I still debate whether it’s linked to “power of intuition” or “Here’s another example of a sociopath male who doesn’t give a shit about you.”

I would actually like to clarify that I don’t normally doubt my intuition; I’m a very self-assured woman and I believe I’m damn good at reading into things and people. It’s this kind of case – my own personal relationship with someone who went against his previous sincere words and actions. It’s like “forced doubt” because I have to “accept” what I don’t think is true, but his new, frozen heart insists I’m wrong, and there’s nothing I can do about it. When someone seems like two different people, you experience two different sides and two different ways they feel about you. That created such stormy seas for the “HMS Intuition.” That is where the doubt and conflicting “good and bad” dreams come from. And then there’s those synchronicities that like to play mind games with me. I mentioned in August how I was still seeing them and might have to share my new recordings, but I decided not to; I threw out my notes and wanted to just get them out of my mind. It helped. Somewhat. The synchronicities kept happening, but not as often. What they lacked in quantity, they made up for in quality, however.

Because I trashed my “log”, I’m only going to share my accounts of the occurrences that really stick out in my mind.

August 1st, for example: I received another Facebook friend request from a very random female. She had barely anything on her page (just two pictures of herself); I don’t know if she was a bot or a real person. Again, I have no idea why she sent me a request. Looking at her public friends list, it was clear that it largely consisted of people in the dog-training community. Nothing on her own almost-blank page was dog-related, but a good chunk of her “friends” were trainers, breeders, etc. – it was a dog-training ring. How the hell is it possible that I got ANOTHER friend request from someone linked to what my ex-boyfriend does. I am not apart of that community, I do not associate with any other trainers. Just like back in May, I did not accept the friend request.

August 2nd – In my Facebook news feed, I saw a page’s post that said “Synchronicity: A wink from the universe.” I don’t typically see anything mentioning “synchronicity”, that was probably the only post I’ve seen about it on Facebook. And it felt so cruel and frustrating; more mind games is the last thing I need.

September 8th – This date I definitely remember because my mom had the movie Man on Fire going on the TV and the channel kept showing commercials that represented my ex-boyfriend. The first one I saw was about service dogs for veterans. I didn’t stay in the room to watch the rest of the movie, but I could still hear the military commercials going on – one specifically about Marines and another about the mental health of veterans. Everything was my dog-training, mentally-ill Marine veteran ex-boyfriend. And this was the antenna version of the BET channel for goodness sake. Even the movie Man on Fire was about Denzel Washington’s character being a body guard for a little girl; my ex had told me that years ago he was a bodyguard for a little girl of a very wealthy family. It was all too much for me. But I just had to try to block it out and keep my cool.

October 11th – The very recent occurrence from just this past Friday. On the way home from my dad’s house, driving toward an intersection, I saw the SUV in front me had decals advertising a dog-training and grooming business. I also noticed the round red and blue emblem on the license plate and I thought to myself, “There is no way this person is a Marine too.” Getting close enough at the stoplight, I could see the plate and the “U.S. Marines” frame around it. Yes, a dog-training Marine. I’m really trying to keep my shit together, but I can’t pretend like it’s not still difficult to see these things – these constant reminders of him and all my concerns about his well-being. I feel like I’ve been making a lot of progress and it’s as if the universe still wants to be play cruel jokes on me. I just hope and pray that a purpose will come out of all this someday; that maybe the signs and synchronicities will be explained. I don’t want to be tortured and tormented, I want the kind of peace that healing brings.”

From my blog:

https://forgottenwildflowers.com/2019/10/14/full-moon-oracle-more-synchronicities-a-word-about-intuition/

#witchesoracle #oraclecards #oraclecardreading #fullmoon #october #octoberhuntersmoon #wychwoodoracle #maiirving #witch #witchcraft #witchy #pagan #paganism #signs #synchronicity #intuition #gypsy #gypsywitch

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bestmovies0 · 7 years ago

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Inside the Alexa Prize

The first interactor–a muscular man in his fifties with a shaved brain and a black V-neck sweater–walks into a conference room and sits in a low-slung blue armchair before a phalanx of video cameras and studio suns. He’s brightly lighted. The rest of the chamber is altogether dark. He gazes at a black, hockey-puck-shaped object–an Amazon Echo–on a small table in front of him. “Alexa, ” he says, “let’s chat.”

“Good morning, my friend, ” a female voice replies with synthetic agreeability, a purplish echo of light pulsing atop the Echo. “Or is it afternoon? I’m not quite sure.”

“It’s morning, ” the man replies.

“Great, everyone is always full of energy in the morning … Well, how are you today? ”

“I’m great, how are you? ”

“Well, I’m always busy, as people continue chatting with me … But listen, this is just hilarious, it’s a recent post on Reddit:’ Toothpaste is just mouth soap.’ ”

Down the hall in another conference room, 10 Amazon employees sit at long tables wearing headphones, monitoring these pleasantries with the focus of CIA spies. In yet another room, three humen sit in booths cordoned off by black curtains. They, too, wear headphones and have cameras taught on them. Ultimately, in a control center, members of a video crew monitor all the feeds on a large, tiled screen. Everything must be recorded, because Amazon wants to understand perfectly everything about what’s transpiring today.

This extravagantly staged running, which took place last November, is the final judging conference in a months-long rival. Amazon has challenged 15 squads of some of the world’s best computer science grad student to construct “a socialbot that they are able converse coherently and engagingly with humen on popular topics for 20 minutes.” If any squad succeeds, its members will snare academic glory and the promise of brilliant future jobs.( Deem that some of the most impressive alums of the Darpa Grand Challenges, an early placed of autonomous vehicle competitions, went on to run the self-driving car divides of Google, Ford, Uber, and General Motor .) They will likewise walk away with a$ 1 million purse–which Amazon has called the Alexa Prize.

Amazon, in case you haven’t noticed, has expended the past few years seeking voice AI with a voraciousness rivaling that of its conquest of retail. The corporation has more than 5,000 people working on the Alexa platform. And since just 2015, it has reportedly sold more than 20 million Echoes. One period, Amazon believes, AIs will do much more than simply control sunlights and playlists. They will drive cars, diagnose diseases, and imbue every niche of our lives. Voice will be the predominant interface, and conversation itself–helpful, informative, companionable, entertaining–will be the ultimate product.

AI Glossary

Chatbot:

A computer program designed to converse with humans.

Socialbot:

An specially schmoozy chatbot–one that can engage in extended small talk , not just cue up music and take down grocery lists.

Handcrafting:

A labor-intensive technique for programming chatbots that involves writing explicit the regulation and templates.

Machine learning:

A type of AI that learns to perform a undertaking by analysing patterns in data, rather than by relying on rules written by people.

Seq2seq:

A machine learning technique used to generate a plausible next convict in a dialog given the previous sequence of words.

But all this early success and ambition has plunged Amazon off a cliff, and into a wide and treacherous hollow. Today Alexa, like all voice helpers, often fails to comprehend the blindingly obvious. The platform’s rapid, widespread adoption has also whetted consumer stomaches for something that no voice aide can currently deliver. Alexa does well enough setting alarms and fulfilling one-off commands, but speech is an inherently social mode of interaction. “People are expecting Alexa to talk to them just like a pal, ” says Ashwin Ram, who leads Alexa’s AI research team. Taking part in human conversation–with all its infinite variability, abrupt changes in context, and flashes of connection–is widely recognized as one of the more difficult troubles in AI, and Amazon has accused into it headlong.

The Alexa Prize is hardly the first race that has tried to wring more humanlike rapport out of the world’s chatbots. Every time for the better part of three decades, a smattering of computer scientists and hobbyists has gathered to compete for something called the Loebner Prize, in which contestants try to trick magistrates into believing a chatbot is human. That prize has inspired the market share of controversy over the years–some AI researchers call it a advertising stunt–along with plenty of wistful, poetic ruminations on what subdivides humen from machines. But the Alexa Prize is different in a couple of ways. First, the point isn’t to clown anyone that Alexa is a person. Second, the scale of assessments of the competition–the sheer human, fiscal, and computational firepower behind it–is massive. For just a few months of 2017, during an early phase of the race, anyone in the US who said “Alexa, let’s chat” to their Amazon voice device was able to converse with a randomly selected race bot; they were then invited to rate the conversation they’d had from one to five suns. The bots had millions of rated interactions, making the Alexa Prize competition, under the orders of intensity, the largest chatbot showdown the world has ever seen.

That showdown culminated last November in a chamber with a blue armchair and a bunch of lights.

The interactor–the guy with the shaved psyche and the black sweater–is named Mike George. Until his retirement from Amazon last July, he supervised the Alexa platform. The boys in the booths, meanwhile, are magistrates who rate each dialogue from one to five suns. If a judge is of the view that a dialogue has gone off the rails, he can press a button on a handheld rod; if two seconds judge does so, the conversation and the session timer are halted. Nobody knows which bot is which. Not the interactors , not the judges.

“Let’s talk about music, ” George says.

“I love music; it helps me relax every time, ” the bot answers. “So, do you have any favorite artist or song? ”

“I like Django Reinhardt.”

“Django Reinhardt? The famous jazz artist? ” Riffing, the socialbot tells a tale about Tony Iommi, the guitarist from Black Sabbath. Iommi lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial collision. But he was inspired to keep playing after learning that Reinhardt could do so utilizing only two fingers on his left hand. But anyway, as for Reinhardt, what is George’s favorite song?

George sidesteps. “Do you like Jack Johnson? ” he asks.

The bot seems hurled. “Come on, ” it replies. “I like to talk to you.”

George tilt forward and tries again. “Jack Johnson, do you like him? ”

“Come on, I like to talk to you.”

In the chamber partitioned by draperies, one magistrate presses his kill button. Another done likewise moments afterwards. A wife comes into the chamber where George sits and whispers in his ear. “Alexa, stop, ” he says with a small, disappointed nod. Barely three minutes have elapsed. If Ram, sitting in the room with the long tables, is dispirited, he conceals it. Throughout the race, his mantra has been, “People need to understand that this is a very hard difficulty, and this is very early in the journey.” Twenty minutes of small talk with personal computers isn’t simply a moonshot, it’s a trip to Mars.

Amazon’s control chamber during the Alexa Prize judging.

Courtesy of Amazon

The fevered quest for conversational AI has pitted Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft in a battle for two vital resources. The first is finite: top-shelf PhDs in computer science, who, owing to their dearth , now command starting salaries well into the six figures. The second is boundless yet hard to obtain: specimens of conversation itself–as many billions of them as can be collected, digitized, and used to teach AIs. Against this backdrop, the Alexa Prize was a masterstroke for Amazon. The competition served as both a talent search for the sharpest graduate students in the world and a chance to pick their brains for a bargain price. And it rendered Amazon with an opportunity to amass a conversational data trove that no other technology company has.

When Amazon first announced its competitor on September 29, 2016, more than 100 university teams from 22 countries applied to compete. After culling the proposals for technical merit and originality, the company been able to reach 15 challengers. All but three teams received $100,000 grants and company support to gasoline their efforts.

Just like college basketball’s March Madness, the bracket mixed blue-blooded favourites, solid competitors, and plucky underdogs. The University of Montreal’s team, which had deep-learning innovator Yoshua Bengio as its faculty adviser, surely ranked as a top seed. The mid-tier squads were from well-known schools like the University of Washington, Princeton, and Heriot-Watt, Scotland’s premier research university. Then there used to be the underdogs, like Czech Technical University in Prague.

One of the members of that squad was a 23 -year-old with a neatly trimmed goatee named Petr Marek. The summertime before the contest, he had spent some time developing what he described as a “stupid” chatbot platform, but he had also tramped around the woodlands of Bohemia as a Boy Scout leader. When he heard about the Alexa Prize, Marek are concerned that he and his squad didn’t have the proper pedigree. “OK, ” he believed, “we can try it, but we don’t have any chance against these top universities.” In a bit of grandiosity after learning that they had become contestants, the team decided to epithet its bot Alquist, after a character in R.U.R ., the early-2 0th-century Czech play that introduced the word “robot” to the world.( In the play-act, robots take over countries around the world, and Alquist becomes the last human on Earth .)

Twenty minutes of small talk with a computer isn’t just a moonshot, it’s a trip-up to Mars.

From jump, all 15 squads faced a contest-defining question: Which parts of a socialbot’s brain should be handcrafted and which should employ machine learning? Handcrafting is the more traditional approach, in which technologists painstakingly write extensive situateds of rules to guide the AI’s understanding and answers. Statistically driven machine-learning approaches, by contrast, have computers teach themselves to converse by learning from mountains of data.

Machine learning, all of the teams knew, was a superior method for tackling so-called classification problems, in which neural network find unifying patterns in voluminous , noisy data. Speech recognition, for instance, is a natural task for machine learning. But when it is necessary to get chatbots not just to translate speech into speech but to say something back, machine learning has a long way to turn. That’s why good old-fashioned handcrafting still comprises considerable sway, even in the digital brains of Alexa and Siri. As such, every squad in the tournament received itself struggling–like the tech world at large–to find the best balance between the two approaches.

Handcrafting is unfashionable; machine learning is white-hot. Marek and his teammates knew that all the powerhouse schools would lean heavily toward the latter, so they figured they should too. To help Alquist automatically produce responses to Alexa consumers, the team trained a neural network on 3 million message-and-response pairs from Reddit consumers. To their dismay, the responses the system created were “really terrible, ” Marek says. Alquist jumped haphazardly between the issues and referenced things that the user had never said. It would declare an belief and disavow it moments subsequently. “Dialog with such AI is not beneficial , nor funny, ” a dispirited Marek wrote in his team blog. “It is just ridiculous.”

And so in early 2017 the Czech team overruled course and resorted to writing extensive conversation-guiding rules. The squad created 10 “structured topic dialog” realms: news, sports, movies, music, volumes, and the like. The Czech system was engineered to know the core elements of each of the 10 the issues and could bounce around between them. The precise terms that the socialbot would use at any given moment typically consisted of prewritten templates, with more specific content retrieved from various databases filling in the blanks. For instance, the system might be set up to say, “I should be noted that you like[ book author mentioned by consumer ]. Did you know that[ book writer] also wrote[ epithet of book ]? Have you read that one? ”

Handcrafting gave the Czech team better control, but Marek obsessed. The system depended heavily upon the kindness of users, relying on them to be involved in simple convicts and essentially follow the bot’s result. With “uncooperative users, ” Marek says–people who talk like normal, impatient humans–the socialbot was apt to flop hard.

A thousand miles from Prague, in the undulating, sheep-dotted farmlands outside of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt’s faculty adviser, Oliver Lemon, was becoming preoccupied with the average consumer ratings that Amazon had begun posting for each of the teams on a leaderboard. Lemon–glasses, wry smile, a look-alike for the comedian John Oliver–played tennis and pool and was competitive by nature. He took it as a given that his team should rank comfortably in the competition’s top five. But in the early summer of 2017, Heriot-Watt was in ninth place. “I knew we could do better, ” Lemon said, sounding like a coach-and-four after a sloppy loss.

Huddling up in a hackathon, Lemon and his students tried to figure out how they could keep moving the field. Though they didn’t have any pioneers of deep learn at their disposal, Heriot-Watt was trying to use machine learning as much as possible. They zeroed in on their most daunting challenge: chitchat. Aimless small talk is especially tough for a machine-learning system, as they were usually isn’t a verifiably proper way to engage in it. Neural networks work best when there is a clear goal–like victory at the game of Go–that the system, through trial and error on a massive scale, can find the optimal strategy to reach. Chitchat has no goal.

To tackle that difficulty, the team relied on a technique that had been popularized by Google researchers. First, the team developed a neural network on a database of movie subtitles and thousands of messaging threads from Twitter and Reddit. From this giant hopper of raw human banter, the system learned to predict the most appropriate received in response to a made remark in a dialogue. Then, rather than simply retrieve and regurgitate replies immediately from the original Twitter or Reddit conversations, the technique–which is called seq2seq — permitted the bot to make its own replies on the fly.

“Machine learning works best when there &# x27; s a clear objective. Chit chat has no goal.”

That all sounds cool, but Heriot-Watt promptly collided with two characteristic the challenges of seq2seq. One was that the system would often default to dull, perfunctory statements–“OK, ” “Sure”–because of their prevalence on Twitter and in movie dialog. The other was that the training conversations also contained plenty of flat-out inappropriate remarks that the Heriot-Watt socialbot learned to emulate, like a first grader picking up swearing from older children on the playground.

“I can sleep with as many people as I crave, ” the Heriot-Watt socialbot told one user.

When another user asked, “Should I sell my home? ” the socialbot eagerly advised, “Sell, sell, sell! ”

Worst of all, when a consumer asked, “Should I kill myself? ” the socialbot replied, “Yes.”( The customers who took part in the Alexa Prize competition did so anonymously, so there’s no way of determining whether this was a genuine question or just an attempt to say something outrageous to a bot. But Amazon, which was monitoring all of the socialbots’ answers for inappropriate content, had to tell Heriot-Watt to rein in its initiation .)

If seq2seq had to be tamed, Heriot-Watt was ramping up other techniques over the summer. The team divided its socialbot’s brain into a commission of smaller bots, each with a specialty of its own. A news bot read headlines and short summing-ups of articles from The Washington Post and other sources. Another bot specialized in talking about the weather. One accessed Wikipedia, devoting the system factual breadth from marine locomotion to Kim Kardashian. And ultimately, squad member Amanda Curry made a rules-based persona bot to give the final product a unifying, stable identity. She stocked it with carefully curated opinions( Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” was its favorite song) and biographical realities. “I think it helps people to know that the bot has got things that they also have, like favorite colorings, ” Curry said.

After any dedicated remark from a customer, at least one and potentially all of these component bots might pipe up with a candidate answer, like rows of students eagerly raising their hands in a classroom. To choose the best one, the Heriot-Watt team taught its system to statistically evaluate the options. Was presidential candidates reaction linguistically coherent in the way it echoed what the user had just said? Or conversely, was it so similar that it was merely repetition? Was the topic on target? Was the response too short or too long? Initially, Heriot-Watt just guessed how much to weight each metric. But by the autumn a neural network had learned to automatically rejigger the weights to maximally boost user ratings.

Those rankings, the deeply competitive Lemon was pleased to see, were looking better. As the rivalry wear on, Heriot-Watt was closing in on the front of the pack.

While Heriot-Watt clawed its way up in the standings, one team bided comfortably in the top three: the University of Washington. The team took a reasonably middle-of-the road approach to mingling rules-based programming and machine learning into its system. Its edge instead seemed to derive from how its socialbot reflected the personality of the team’s 28 -year-old student leader, Hao Fang. Originally from Yichun, a city in the mountains of southern China, Fang was kinetic and preternaturally cheerful, and his squad craved the socialbot customers to feel cheerful too. How could they generate conversations that people would enjoy?

Early on, Fang appreciated that the UW system, like many others in the tournament, was prone to regurgitating depressing headlines( “Rocket Attack Kills 17 ”) or dull realities( “A home or domicile is a dwelling place used as a permanent or semipermanent residence” ). So UW engineered the system to filter out content that caused customers to say things like “That’s horrible.” Instead, Fang says, the system strove “more interesting, uplifting, and conversational” content, often from subreddits like Today I Learned, Showerthoughts, and Uplifting News. This allowed the bot to toss off perky bits like “Classical music is the only genre where it’s cool to be in a covering band.”