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withered-tears · 3 years ago

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@polyhexian !!!

(Im not sure if the @ works if i use caps, so just imagine im shouting your name)

I JUST HAD A THOUGHT ABOUT A TRANSFORMERS x MLP CROSSOVER AND I NEED TO RANT

sorta what happens in the comics, but lost light crew istead of G1, lots of cool/funny interactions, yadda yadda

Mystical baddie shows up, for plot reasons the mane six gotta like, host share the elements of harmony with the bots to vanquish it

Or something, look i just wanna ramble about the elements.

SO!

Drift is Loyalty, he is Bravery, lots of bots are angry about The Deadlock, the bot who conveniently switched sides when the war was almost over, having anything to do with loyalty. But heres the thing, Drift isnt loyal to factions, nor morals or even ideals.

Drift is loyal to the people he loves, be that friendship, camaraderie, someone he looks up to, etc. Once Drift becomes loyal to someone, it would take a lot for him to turn his back to them. Even if it means leaving them in disgrace just to take the blame himself.

Ratchet is Honestly, he is Strength, hes blunt, hes crude, he will look at a bot in the eyes and tell him he will die and theres nothing he can do about it. Over and over.

No matter how many times, no matter how hard it gets, because Ratchet knows those bots deserve the truth, he will look them in the eye and tell the horrible truth, but with his hands on theirs, on their shoulders, on their helm.

He will carry the weight of all the sparks he couldn't reignite.

Unlike Applejack, Ratchet can lie, he chooses not to.

Swerve is Laughter, he is Hope.

He wants to bring smiles to people around him, he wants to smile himself even when he doesn't feel like it, through millenia of war he held onto the hope of simply opening a bar, simply having a place for bots to come and drink and sing and laugh.

Swerve knows how important laughter is, and knows, personally, how devastating can be to lose it.

Rodimus is Magic, he is Sorcery.

There's power in Rodimus's spark, theres a blaze in his frame. But, just as Twilight's doesn't come from the element, his doesn't come from the matrix.

Its the other way around.

Rodimus's spark ignites the matrix, he fuels it, makes it shine brighter than ever before.

Because Rodimus will light the way for his friends, even if he has to burn himself out to achieve it.

And here we come to the most interesting ones.

Brainstorm is Generosity, he is Beauty.

Just as the previous bearers of the element, Brainstorm is a creator who takes great pride in his work and its beauty, and just like Rarity's dresses or Mistmane's flowers, the beauty of Brainstorm's work shine the most when he makes them for someone else, be it a silly blaster with dumb lights and sounds and a more secure grip to keep someone from hurting themselves, or a universe damn time machine, made entirely to give someone else a happier life.

And my favorite take.

Whirl is Kindness, whirl is Healing.

Whirl is kind to others, but whirl was deprived of kindness for so long that he doesn't recognize it as such.

Whirl kindness is cruel, is mocking, he will do horrible and horrible things, to keeps others from having to do it, and he doesn't even realize it half the time, whirl sees that someone horrible has to be done, and he thinks, might as well do it myself, im fucked up already.

Whirl was mutilated, his face and voice stolen, his hands destroyed.

Yet he healed, it took time, it took friendship, it took violence.

But in the end whirl was able to look at himself and say, im not broken, and i dont need fixing.

Whirl is kindness through self cruelty, he is health through recovery.

Itzjfzjfzgjz

OKAY I HAD SOME ALTERNATE BEARERS IN MY HEAD AS WELL BUT JEEZ I RAMBLED FOR SO LONGER THAN I THOUGHT I WOULD

#transformers #mlp #my little pony #crossover #mtmte #lost light #more than meets the eye #drift #ratchet #rodimus #swerve #brainstorm #whirl

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mk-wizard · 4 years ago

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Alpha Trion: An Analysis of the Wizard of Bots

Hello, Transformer fans. Today, we pay our respects to the elderly by doing a character analysis of the Autobot who no matter how much we come to know about him, the more mystery there is behind his character. Let’s delve into the history, facts and all around definitive traits about the Autobot sage Alpha Trion.

Alpha Trion was first introduced as the mentor of Optimus Prime as well as the keeper of all Autobot knowledge that is written, contained in the Matrix and beyond in the G1 cartoons. He is also in many ways a father figure to Optimus Prime and Elita One who he watches over on Cybertron. While this is still up in the air, it is heavily implied by his colouring, traits and the appearance of his wife Beta (more on her later), he is the biological father of Elita One and therefor, the father-in-law of Optimus meaning they are in fact all family. Alpha Trion’s demeanor is that of a wise old man with a lot of life and war experience who comes across as perpetually calm, but with a slight hint of mischief and a liberalism. His trademark appearance is of an elderly bot with the doll type frame, his armour is red and blue while being the first and so far, only bot to sport a cape, he has a long beard and (while we don’t see it) long white hair beneath his helm, his alt mode is a hovercraft and he was the first bot in the Transformers lore to wear actual glasses.

In his case, he wears them not only because his optics aren’t what they used to be. They actually help regulate his psychic powers as he is a very powerful diode (a psychic Transformer) and has abilities that would be considered as magic even by other bots which explains how he survived on a Decepticon dominated Cybertron dying only of old age in the original G1 cartoon. To be precise, his glasses keep him from using his powers automatically and he has a plethora of them; clairvoyance, hypnosis, aura reading, telekinesis and telepathy. And for the record, those are just the psychic powers we know of. With such a long list and taking into account how powerful he is, Alpha Trion needs those glasses to keep his powers in check so they don’t overload his mind or uses them on someone he didn’t mean to use them on.

Another thing about Alpha Trion is that like Optimus, the “Trion” in his name is actually a title. In Autobot culture, there is always one Trion who serves as the religious figure, the head archivist, the sage, the second in command of all Autobot kind and the keeper of all sacred data including that which is exclusive only to the Trion to know. Unlike being a Prime in which you become one by assignment by the previous Prime or it was literally in your code to begin with, being a Trion is a spiritual thing so the selection is done by divine intervention. As soon as the current Trion passes on, the divine Trion protocol gets passed onto the Autobot who Primus deems worthy though in some cases, if the current Trion has a good guess of who will be their predecessor, they will take time to train them. A Trion’s special abilities by default are being a powerful diode with a plethora of psychic abilities though the bot usually had them to begin with as well as other spiritual abilities. In the case of Alpha Trion, he has some powers the whole time, but they were nowhere near what they became when he became ordained. Another thing that is worth noting about Trion’s is that they are not actually fighters and seem to take an oath of pacifism of which they are not allowed to commit any direct act of violence though they are allowed to help provide tools or assistance during war.

Going back to Alpha Trion specifically, his life’s story begins when he fought in his own war though his was a little different. Back in his day, the Autobots fought to free themselves from their slavers the Quintessons. During this time, he went by the name A3 though he still sported facial hair and a pair of glasses. He also proved to be quite the fighter and rebel with a personality that was a similar to Rodimus’. Like Optimus, he had a wife who fought alongside him who went by the name of Beta Maxx or simply Beta. While she was dressed in green, we can see that she still has a striking resemblance to Elita One and even A3′s armour style back in the day was a lot like Elita’s which further hints that they are her parents.

After the war was won, we can assume that the two of them lived very peacefully and happily on Cybertron and quite possibly had their daughter. It was also during this time where A3 was ordained and was now took on the name of Alpha Trion. It is not known who the previous Trion was though it is heavily implied by Alpha Trion’s disciplined behaviour and extensive knowledge that he had a chance to be trained before getting ordained. It is also not known who the Prime during this time was though it is most likely that it was one of Orion Pax’s parents. When the Decepticons attacked one day and both Orion Pax and Ariel were injured, Alpha Trion rebuilt them into warriors known as Optimus Prime and Elita One. It isn’t known what became of Alpha Trion’s wife though a lot of evidence suggests that she was one of the casualties in the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. As the war went on, true to his duty and oath of pacifism, Alpha Trion acted as a guardian to Vector Sigma and would only assist the Autobots on Cybertron in their war. He was also an unofficial member of Elita One’s team by acting as a strategist and an adviser. When Elita One got captured, he had a hand in freeing and helping her before once again going into hiding. While Alpha Trion managed to elude the Decepticons and never even got taken prisoner, he sadly did not live to see the long awaited peaceful era as he died of old age near the end of the war appearing only as a ghost yet still offering help even from beyond. In the G1 cartoons, it is has never been confirmed who the new Trion was after him.

According the the comics, Ultra Magnus was his predecessor and faces the same struggle that Rodimus does as Prime; he has a very big pair of shoes to fill and often questions if he can do the job. In the War for Cybertron cartoon, Ultra Magnus was implied to be the new Trion in secret after Alpha Trion was murdered by Megatron and after he was killed, Bumblebee became spiritually ordained with the Trion protocol appearing before him in the form of Alpha Trion. In the Animated series, Alpha Trion appears once again as a sage figure though the extent of his role and title is not explored. However, it is heavily implied that his influence and rank goes far beyond that of a Prime. In the Prime series, Alpha Trion died in the war though it isn’t known if he was killed or died of old age. Before he did pass away, he passed the key to Vector Sigma to Optimus for safe keeping and appeared to Optimus in spirit when he was close to death to help him join the Allspark. It isn’t known who took up the Trion mantle after Alpha in Prime though. In the Michael Bay movies, Alpha Trion did not make an appearance, but Sentinel Prime was modelled after him in appearance though his personality could not be more different.

While Alpha Trion is not a mech of action, his legacy is definitely comparable to that of Optimus’ in that we can picture no one else with his role, but the wise old mech. Despite not appearing often in the cartoon, he made quite an impression that lasted and cemented itself in the lore. If Optimus Prime is to Autobots what Papa Smurf is to the Smurfs, then one can say that Alpha Trion is what Grandpa Smurf was to them. He has a similar role to Optimus, but is the one person who surpasses him in terms of wisdom and has an incredibly different view of the world for it. It has been confirmed that Optimus is very conservative whereas Alpha Trion is in fact liberal hence why he not only allowed his beard to grow out, he flaunts it which is unusual in Transformer society as hair is usually not considered as a desired trait for mechanical beings. And while that side of him was not very explored, Alpha Trion has a mischievous side and was at times known to be defiant. It is kind of a shame that he never got a chance to meet Rodimus because I imagine the two of them would have gotten along well. As a side note which I find amusing is that Alpha Trion from his youth to his silver years was always consistently handsome according to sources because he was athletic. Well, you don’t live THAT long unless you stay in shape and in his defence, anyone who can sport a superhero style armor while being able to show that much leg at that age must have aged well. I do hope that in the next era, he will be showcased more as a regular character rather than just a background one because he really is one worth showcasing not just as the Trion, but just as himself.

Anyway, what is your take on the Autobot elder?

If you have a Transformers theory or character analysis you want explored, please let me know in my ask box. And please, support me through Patreon or Ko-fi if you want me to make Transformers merch and videos. Or if you want a commission of your favourite bot, let me know in my shop. All links are on my profile page.

Thank you for reading and please, stay safe.

#transformers #tranformers fandom #transformers alpha trion #alpha trion #a-3 #elita one #transformers elita #elita #elita 1 #transformers optimus prime #transformers prime #vector sigma #ultra magnus #fan theory #character analysis #transformers animated #tfa

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years ago

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I’ve got a few questions here and there for Optimus so I’d like to clarify a few additional details about him!

he is, in the current state of the metaplot, in the Great Library of Wan Shi Tong; how he got their is a mystery, but its the reason he’s been missing. Having wound up there, he is unable to leave the pocket realm under his own power, but this has kept him alive for a long time whne otherwise he might well have died.

Well, inconvenced him, at least. Optimus cannot die. In the mythology of this AU, Prime is not a simple title, but a direct anointment by Primus Herself to act as Her voice and communicate the will of Primus to all things, leading the world into a new age. They are given different abiltiies, in addition to absolutely ludicrous raw strength, to fulfill this goal. In Optimus’ case, whenever he is killed, his indestructible spirit returns to his body, piecing it back together, and he rises anew to continue his quest.

“Until Cybertron is whole once again, and ‘til all are one, you may not rest. Not until your task is done.” So spake Primus when She bequeathed him the Matrix of Leadership, signifying his position as Prime, and it was quite literal. No matter what happens, he will not stay dead. Melted into slag? He regenerates. Blasted into a billion bits of scrap? They come back together, and he rises again. No matter how badly he is beaten, no matter how dire the odds, Optimus Prime will never give up. He’ll always get back up and never stop fighting.

Nevertheless, he has been worn by the long battles of his lifetime, and genuinely lost hope many times. He comes to the Fleet, rescued from the Library by them, and is shocked to find that things are... better, a new massive fleet of heroes, and his Autobots among them! He joins them, osteniably as a religious figure, but unwillingly becomes a part of the inner circle of heroes, for not even Rose Quartz is as highly respected as Optimus Prime in freedom fighters. He relents, provided no one puts him in charge.

His time in the library has allowed him to return to his greatest joy in life; learning! Optimus has learned much in his unwilling exile, including much about the nature of reality and magic itself, and he is gradually teaching all his knowledge to the Fleet, and takes a central role as a father to the children of the Fleet, and has administered to much of the legal code to make it as Just as possible. All those who revere wisdom and righteousness regard him as a living embodiment of Lawful Good.

Of note, though, Optimus has a complicated relationship with King Grimlock. The two have been best friends for eons... of the ‘fuck you, I’m gonna kick the SHIT OUT OF YOU’ sort, rivals who always fought and respected each other, but they have never seen eye to eye. Optimus views Grimlock as a vengeful hothead whose lust for retribution may cause more harm than it heals, while Grimlock considers him a stubborn academic who could have ended the war if only he had just killed Megatron when he had the chance. Optimus believes in mercy and change; Grimlock in vengeance and justice. They’ve settled into an uneasy truce, though Grimlock believes Optimus deliberately abandoned the fight in favor of playing the long game, and resents him for leaving them to fight alone for so long. Optimus, for his part, has seen unspeakable horrors in his long exile, and really dislikes the implication that his torment was pleasant.

He has return to his beloved, Elita-1, and lives aboard her ship body! In the old days, he was the diplomatic leader of the proto-Autobots, while she was a charismatic rebel figure working to expel jetformer dominance from their homeland of Iacon. He the spiritual heart, she the fierce leader. They maintain this relationship into the present day.

Of particular note concern to Optimus is that he has not been called to pass on the Matrix yet. Cybertron, since rejoining the Fleet, has been restored to full function, and serves as the central part of the Fleet’s home system. The Autobots have returned home, and Cybertron teems with life. Why then, is his mission not fulfilled? He believes that Primus’ mission, to unite all things, means to unite all sapient life in all the multiverse, within the Fleet. He has resigned himself to being Prime for some time longer, but he believes for the first time in a long while that it really IS possible!

finally, Optimus and Rose apparently knew each other in their respective youth! They wrote to each other, bridging the gap between Gem and Transformer, and became good friends before wars tore their lives apart. They are still good friends, and much changed from the people they were. The relationship... MIGHT have been platonic, but its a big might. They certainly are very friendly with one another, but its hard to say if its them flirting or them just playing an elaborate charade in order to confuse people for the hell of it.

Optimus’ personality here is a gestalt of his different incarnations; given the light tone, he is primarily based off of the more easy going and silly G1 incarnation; jokes about having a lock picking technique before shooting the door, loves obnoxious dad puns, and hes just a good ol’ charmer with a weird sense of humor. He used to be like Animated Optimus back when he was a younger bot named Orion Pax, and there’s elements of IDW Optimus in his angrier, more revealing moments. Most of all, he is like Beast Wars Optimus Primal; he’s funny, prone to making snide comments at his more annoying friends, and he takes a relaxed approach to leadership, but he’s very uncompromising when it comes to justice and he does NOT suffer fools or people trying to play mind games with him.

He’s a wise but somewhat embittered and spiritually worn out figure. He is TIRED; he’s been alive for so long, seen all he’s worked for ground to dust over and over. He’s seen his people go nearly extinct, watched a close friend go mad with greed and give himself over to the Mother of Annihiliation on purpose, and for all his power, he could not save all the planets the Decepticons ravaged. The situation has improved, but nonetheless, he’s tired of watching people die.

Optimus here may be considered a paladin, in D&D terms! He’s a noble warrior blessed by Primus, with his various abilities as divinely powered gifts. He is incredibly strong (able to punch a city into dust with a single hit), just as durable, and on top of that, he is one of the most experienced leaders and warriors alive. He’s been fighting for longer than some civilizations have existed, and he has learned well; few can best him in combat experience, and he uses this as a teacher to instruct others.

He is a multiformer as well, and his favorite forms include heavy duty modes that emphasize stamina over other features! He can become an alien truck, shifting his excess kibble into a large trailer; this trailer can transform into a flying drone and weapons bunker that carries some of the Fleet’s nastiest weaponry, and in robot mode, it transforms into a kind of power armor that is normally integrated into his body. He can also transform into a giant robotic bat (prior to joining the Fleet, it was his primary mode) and he spends much of his time in this flying shape, lurking in libraries and vowing revenge against the Dewey Organizing System. He can also turn into a massive mechanical gorilla, a battle-ready flying tank, and a more conventional ground tank. (In short, his G1 mode, his Prime modes, and his Beast Wars modes are all options!)

He forms the crucial component in many combiners; he is the heart of the legendary Last Autobot combiner formed of every single Autobot in existence to make a planet-sized super-Transformer and vessel for Primus, and he and Elita-1 can fuse into an embodiment of their love and fighting spirit named Star Saber (not an individual character here, but reimagined as a combiner).

#queued #twitchy!transformers #twitchy!optimus

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avoid-avoidance · 3 years ago

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(Just copying some bits from the comments to have on my blog xD This was a lot of fun!)

avoid-avoidance: oh my gosh, is Sailor Starscream going to become a reality this is glorious

It would be so funny if the magical-girl powers Starscream gets are just 100% played straight. Like, his powers are the standard Powers of Friendship and Love. But this is still Starscream, sooo...

a-a: Would Optimus Prime suddenly recognize Starscream as a fellow Owner of Handwavey Magical Powers (e.g. the Matrix)? IMAGINE how pissed-off Megatron would be if this scenario results in Prime deciding that Starscream, not Megatron, is clearly his One True Nemesis.

a-a: Starscream even comes with a ready-made Girl Squad in his fellow Seekers. I wonder how The Power Of Tropes would manage to drag Skywarp and Thundercracker into voluntarily joining these shenanigans...

a-a: (By the way, a cool TF author-artist actually drew this concept way way back in *2007*: https://www.deviantart.com/ty-chou/art/Sailor-Seeker-Character-Design-72291475)

a-a: And at some point, Megs might take a moment to at least be grateful that Starscream was too short-sighted and outfit-obsessed to negotiate with the Dealmaker. He could've asked to be made Decepticon Leader as part of the bargain, after all!

@president-alpine: avoid-avoidance You just made me laugh into my coffee, oh my gosh.

JUST THE IDEA ALONE OF STARSCREAM DRAGGING THUNDERCRACKER AND SKYWARP TO THIS MAGICAL GIRL INSANITY.

BUT MEGATRON TOO?!

I am imagining it now and I can’t even keep a straight face.

How far can we push the concept? Will Starscream get a magical girl team as big as the Sailor Scouts or bigger? The power of friendship to a group of bots with the word “Deception” in their team name? WILL EVERYONE ELSE GET BEAUTIFUL OUTFITS TOO?

p-a: Also since you mentioned Optimus, I am wondering now how the Autobots react to all this.

a-a: I'm just picturing Starscream's Magical Girl Mentor (the same entity as the Dealmaker, perhaps) telling him that Optimus Prime is supposed to be his Enemy/Rival. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS ARRANGEMENT.

Starscream: But MEGATRON is my One True Enemy!!!

Megatron: But Optimus is MY One True Enemy!!!

Optimus: ...Wait, I'm... the BAD GUY!?!? 🥺😭

a-a: Oh geez, what if Megatron demands to be given Magical Girl Powers because he can't let Starscream have powers he doesn't have. And then he ends up as part of Starscream's Girl Squad by default, but since Starscream was first, Megatron becomes his Second-in-Command, and he ends up playing the "Starscream"-trope role... to Starscream.

a-a: (Also, picture Megatron doing his own Magical Girl Transformation for the first time on a battlefield, and emerging from a cloud of sparkles in front of all the assembled 'Bots and 'Cons in a miniskirt. Half of both armies immediately keel over from the resulting psychic damage.)

a-a: And the Autobots' collective reaction to this insanity would be just... wonderful. I'm imagining Prime and his officers pulling Spike in for a Very Serious Intelligence-Gathering Meeting, and Spike is just like... "You guys have made a vastly wrong assessment of my younger self's taste in cartoons."

a-a: "Starscream has fallen! I, Megatron, am now leader of the Deceptifriends!"

p-a: LMAO, THE RIVALRIES ARE THROWN OFF.

p-a: But now with Megatron as part of the magical girl insanity now HE has to backstab and get the leadership.

Also the idea of half of both armies keel over from the psychic damage is absolutely perfect.

p-a: AND SPIKE BEING ASKED ABOUT MAGICAL GIRL STUFF IS SENDING ME TO THE MOON.

p-a: Decpetifiends, how about the Sailor Cons?

a-a: Lol, poor Megatron - especially if Starscream's grasp of his new powers is more advanced than Megatron's to the point where Starscream can smack Megatron around with Friendship Powers like Megatron usually does to Starscream with fists and cannon.

a-a: Poor Spike - I feel like in most continuities, even the Cybertronian characters who are friendly with humans don't really grasp the breadth and variety and weirdness of human societies/cultures, coming from a world that isn't made up of hundreds of smaller political entities.

a-a: I guess Spike would have to refer them to Carly? I'm on the fence as to whether it'd be funnier if she was a tomboy who also knows nothing about magical girl tropes, or if she was OBSESSED with magical girl stories/cartoons as a kid and becomes the Autobots' Top Consultant in dealing with the 'Cons' new powers.

p-a: Megatron gets to experience Starscream’s life but with rainbows, friendships, and sparkles abound.

All I can imagine now is the Autobots taking a class on how magical girl stuff works by Carly.

AND THEY TREAT IT WITH UTMOST SERIOUSNESS.

a-a: oh SHOOT I didn't even think - what if Starscream and Megatron *can't* just replicate their usual dynamic but backwards, because /not exhibiting qualities of Good Friendship weakens their new powers/?!

a-a: Carly would also treat that class with utmost seriousness, matching the Autobots' energy.

Spike, who is there partially to be a Supportive Boyfriend and partially to advance the slides for Carly's CyberPowerPoint, has to keep ducking out to sit in a closet and laugh himself to tears.

a-a: Man... this has the potential to be the stupidest and most hilarious possible way to drag all the Decepticons into a Redemption Arc. All you care about is personal power, huh? Well now your shiny new powers are dependent on not being dicks to people anymore. Good luuuuck~!

a-a: I can picture Optimus privately puzzling over whether being Matrix-Bearer technically also qualifies him to be a Magical Girl. He’d probably fret over not wanting to disrespectfully appropriate human culture, the poor dear.

a-a: (Maybe this universe will also get to explore the pressing question of whether Optimus can open his chest and blast power straight out of the Matrix like a Care Bear Stare)

a-a: (Although with the spark also residing in Transformers’ chests, would that be kind of an inadvertently-lewd power? Like some type of Strip Tease Attack?)

a-a: A name for Starscream’s new crew is a tricky issue.. I could see him lobbying hard for something like “the Solar Seekers”, only for Megatron to complain that he’s being excluded

a-a: Also, I think it would be suuuuper funny if Starscream and Megatron BOTH constantly forget that /Starscream/ is the one in charge of the Magical Girl Squad, and just fall back into old habits of Megs bossing everyone around and Starscream whining about it.

p-a: They have to play nice, or their friendship powers will revert to dress summoning only.

I MEAN, SAME SPIKE.

This shitpost became the most unorthodox way to drag the Decepticons to a redemption arc. The promises of cool powers to win has made the entire army be nice to each other and create genuine friendships.

p-a: What if the most powerful attack is locked behind world peace, ending the war, AND friendships abound. Like this attack can straight up counter Unicron, BUT IT NEEDS TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND HOPE THAT THE DECEPTICONS AND AUTOBOTS MUST DO TOGETHER

p-a: HOW WOULD THIS BE EXPLAINED IN THE HISTORY BOOKS OR OTHER BOTS?!

a-a: I mean… Starscream mostly cares about the outfit summoning, so locking everything but that behind a play-nice-wall isn’t much of an incentive. Megatron flaunting his own superior Friendship Powers in Starscream’s face would probably be pretty motivating, though!

a-a: Turning this shitpost spawn into Wacky Way To End The Autobot-Decepticon War #7302 is very on-brand for the kind of TF fan I am and I 100% approve lol.

a-a: Oh PRIMUS, I didn’t even THINK about what the non-human outsider perspective of these events would be like. Any neutral Cybertronians or uninvolved alien races who are watching all this go down are just gonna… give up forever on Decepticons or Autobots ever, ever behaving in a way that makes any sense to the rest of the universe.

a-a: “You lot and those crazy humans deserve each other, why are you all SO WEIRD”

a-a: Just imagine a small group of Neutral Cybertronians who have come to the wrenching, angst-ridden Very Serious decision that they have a Duty To Their Race and will forfeit their neutrality and join [faction]. For max chaos, two unrelated little neutral groups are each en route to join a different side.

a-a: The two shuttles of Neutral Cybertronians land on Earth, and their crews troop out straight onto an Autobot-Decepticon battlefield… where Starscream is monologuing to a bunch of incredulous Autobots about Trust and Friendship while flourishing a sparkly wand. Optimus is trying very hard not to verbally agree with every word out of the enemy Air Commander’s mouth.

a-a: The Conehead jet trine is doing an encouraging kick-line route behind Starscream and chanting positive affirmations. Megatron is sulking off to one side, plucking at an unraveling hem on his glitter-encrusted miniskirt and magic crop top.

a-a: A tiny native organic with yellow fluff on its head is standing behind the Autobots taking copious notes while her organic assistant snaps photos in between apparent fits of hysteria.

a-a: Those Neutrals are going to take one look at all this and just turn the heck around and skedaddle back to space. Their creators and friends back at the neutral colony had warned them that war is hell and that getting involved with the ‘Bots and ‘Cons would be a bad idea, but they had never dreamed it’d be like THIS.

p-a: I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING OH MY GOD. THOSE POOR NEUTRALS

p-a: WAIT, what if they see Cybertron after the world peace has been achieved and see all the sparkles and rainbows galore.

p-a: There are statues of the magical girl chaos.

p-a: I can’t even drink my glass of water without laughing into it help

a-a: I could see this turning into Ultimate Hasbro Crack AU where millions and millions and millions of years later, the Cybertronians and Cybertron evolve into the My Little Ponies.

a-a: FRIENDSHIP!!!

p-a: OH MY GOD

a-a: (There’s some kind of Unicron = Unicorn joke to be made here, I’m sure…)

Starscream has coronation outfits everywhere

This is a dumb idea but like what if Starscream has like coronation outfits hidden in almost every place in case Megatron falls.

Like the Decepticons halls, labs, his own room, the throne room, etc.

Megatron: Gets sick

Starscream: “Oh no, how sad.” Opens panel in the med bay and takes out crown and cape.

It doesn’t stop there, what if he has them in places that would be a “one in a million chance” such as a battle in the exact location where it is hidden at the right moment where he can just grab it and put it on

Megatron and Optimus fighting in the Grand Canyon, and Megatron is knocked out.

Starscream: Moves rock to find crown and cape

But then it gets ridiculous to the point where he hides it in places he realistically shouldn’t been able to.

Everyone: On a random asteroid

Megatron: Gets knocked out

Starscream: “I knew this would come in handy some day!” Digs out crown and cape

#transformers

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nehatiwari454545-blog · 5 years ago

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Web Scraping: Leave it All to AI or Add a Human Touch

What was once used by the US military as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency network) is today known as the Internet. With data grew from few gigabytes to 1.2 million terabytes today. In 1995 the internet was used by 16 million users. Today there are more than 4600 million users on internet and numbers are growing with each passing second. The last two years alone has made up for 90 per cent of the internet data today.

This growth of internet users and their information has increased the data storage exponentially. Whatever you do on the internet, you will leave a digital trail. Even a random search by a random user will count in internet trend and affects the indexing of search engines. The data servers are now occupying space of football fields. Major companies like Google, Amazon etc are providing with cloud computing and cloud storage services to tap internet users’ data storage demand. With the need to store replicate data in case of natural catastrophe; more space is consumed by dedicated servers.

The surfing of the internet as much as it can be fun for regular users like us, for data scientists and businesses that desire some relevant information can become an uphill task. To find a needle in a haystack is easier than finding desired data on internet manually. The amount of data created and stored by a single large company is so vast that private data centres are employed. By this, we can envision how much data is available on the internet.

The role of data science, data mining and data scraping has increased tremendously. Web scraping services are used majorly for data extraction and data analysis. Web scraping is used for diverse purposes like business competition, research and analysis, consumer insights, security purposes, government purposes etc.

What is Web Scraping?

The extraction of data from websites is called web scraping or web harvesting. The specific data is copied from websites to local database or spreadsheet. Web scraping services or data scraping services use hypertext protocol or Extensible hypertext protocol for data extraction. The scraping can be done manually by visiting the particular page and copying data manually into a spreadsheet.

The manually scraping is possible when we are working for personal usage and data we are working with is limited. When we are dealing with a large amount of data an automated process is essential. It is implemented using a bot.

Web scraping and web crawling often mistaken for same but are different. Web crawling is done by search engines for indexing of hyperlinks, whereas web scraping does the data extraction. Web crawling is used in web scraping for fetching pages.

The websites now a day are highly advanced with using gifs, scripts, flash animations etc in an integrated ecosystem. Websites are developed, keeping human in mind, not bots therefore data extraction become a challenging task. The data extraction is based on the data stored by websites in text form. The mark-up languages such as HTML and XHTML are used for the development of a basic framework for any website. The specialised software use this rich text data for extraction.

There are simple plug-ins such as Scraper, Data Scraper for Google chrome used for web scraping. There specialised software such as ParseHub, OutwitHub, etc employed for slightly advance level of web scraping. The major e-commerce companies such as Amazon and social networking companies such as Facebook provide their APIs (Application programming interface) for public data extraction.

AI is a necessary evil in data scraping. The quantity of data has forced the implementation of AI. The AI as helpful it can be, unnerve people with wild sci-fi fantasy that pales the Matrix trilogy in comparison.

Also Read: 12 Best WordPress plugins every Sales and Marketing website must have

The legality of web scraping

“Just like the wild west, the Internet has no rules”. The times have changed in the wild west and on the Internet. The computer fraud and abuse laws criminalise any act of breaking into any private computer systems and accessing non-publically available data. In 2016 hiQ Labs, a data science company web scrapped the publically available LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn terms this as a violation of the company’s policy on data usage without permission and authorization. The hiQ took LinkedIn to court. In a landmark judgement for web scraping legality, the court ruled in favour of hiQ stating, “web scraping of public data is not a violation of computer fraud and abuse act.”

Also Read: Data scraping for BI: Picking the right service is vital

The morality of web scraping

The web scraping is used in business for online price monitoring, price comparison, product review data. The real estate companies use it to gather competitor real state listing. The websites use other website public data for their convenience without having to work for it. The web scraping lies in the grey area of morality where few times its use cab be justified with internet policy and sometimes complete violation of basic internet ethics.

If you are searching for cheaply available phones with a certain price range and use web scraping tool on a major e-commerce website for data extraction then it quite ethical and can be justified. When you extract data for a content-based site with its USP being uniquely available content such as blogging websites and created a mirror site then it cannot be justified.

A basic moral conscience is necessary for making a righteous judgment in the age of the internet where the lines are quite blurred.

Concept of the good bot and bad bot

The supporting of web scraping often linked with freedom of the internet and fair use of public data but the picture is not as rosy as it seems. There are many bad bots ie malicious automated software available which can steal data by breaking into user accounts, overload servers with providing junk data and harm websites.

The AI bot gets a bad reputation due to malicious bot crawling the internet space. Many websites prohibit web scraping. The websites use advance tools for bot detection and prevent them from viewing their pages. This solution to this is the use of DOM parsing, simulation of human behaviour etc to extract data from sites.

Does it require adding a magic touch?

We are leaving in the age of artificial intelligence. It is the intelligence demonstrated by machines. The machines are incapable of thinking by themselves. The highly complex software is used to develop machine intelligence that learns, adapt and collects data. The AI is now used in several areas from traffic regulation, pilot training in the aviation industry, critical fields such as nuclear reactors etc. The AI has made possible rooming of the rover on Mars.

People are apprehensive of AI and believing a new world order where machine rules human. These make up for a good sci-fi script or story but the reality is too mechanical. AI has made it possible to work in an environment where humans could not survive. The sensitive area such as military, national security etc relies on AI for information processing. Human lives depend on AI proper working.

The internet is brimming with boundless data. The manual data extraction can be tedious in past but with data storage reaching in terabytes, it is nearly impossible. We have to implement AI for web harvesting and data mining services. The AI can extract store and process data from thousands of pages in a few seconds. The manual scraping does only a few hundred pages in days. The AI has made it possible to scrape websites with a gigantic database and analyses it for forming business strategies and predictions.

Does that mean the AI has replaced human in web scraping area at least? Well, the answer is not binary. The AI does a spectacular job in web harvesting but the human touch is indispensable. When data is extracted just like an ore is extracted. It has to go through various processes of floatation, smelting etc to be useful. The data gathered from the site could be repetitive, redundant and in the wrong format. When we are extracting this kind of data we are overloading storage with unnecessary data. Data verification and data scrubbing will cleanse the inaccurate and corrupt records from the extracted data. These are quite state of art tools but the ultimate power lies in the hands of a human.

The intelligence of the machine is called artificial for a reason. The AI extracting data cannot determine its necessity for a purpose like a human does. Let us suppose a company want to launch a new clothing line for teenage girls. They are extracting data for what teenage girls find fashionable. Many times websites want to remain on the forward listing of search engines pages and use the metadata incorrectly. The AI being AI will extract the data for teenage fashion and data will imply something else.

Also Read: How Digitalization is transforming the Business of B2B Industry Data

Many websites prevent web crawling by using CAPTCHAS, embedding information in media objects, login access requirement, changing website HTML regularly etc. The AI right now cannot trespass these mechanisms of prevention of web scraping.

In a situation like these, human touch became essential. As they say, “The artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as an artificial rose is to real rose.”

#Data mining #Data scraping #Data verification #Data scrubbing #Data appending #skip tracing #Data mining services

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themodernvisage · 7 years ago

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Nothing stays sacred but that isn't why aliens don't talk to us.

Nothing stays sacred but that isn’t why aliens don’t talk to us.

And those limits in physics may not last forever.

Let’s hope that they/we do, so we can find the time to finish that childhood dream or max out our character. Maybe, you can buy happiness, you just need a better device that hasn't come out yet.

Appliances freed the and the AA, but now they have to work.

Once the AI nanobots take\make more jobs than globalization did, none of us will have to. Though, people from /r/latestagecapitalism will explain to you how we are bricks in the wall, or some zeitgeist shit full of half true conspiracies that don’t get the whole story since they’re not from the ‘secret evil cults’ side, as well and it’s better to live in a perceived paradise than developed human civilization covered Earth. They’re non-Einstein-esque Neckbeard-hippies, don’t give them too many fucks. They survive on bad feels and family.

All the cool people know that a meritocracy is the ideal model for a small country of professionals… Oh, we have to share the land? You can’t own land, I guess. So I can move back to Europe? Ooh, getting crowded, there. Hmm… maybe a small island of former cannibals? Oh, we are moving into a period of a dying Moore’s Law, where Universal Basic Income is seriously considered… Globalization will eventually finish? And we can do what with excess electricity? All the power of the sun? Sounds like superman. It’s not like we are becoming superior to forme-……….. Do we still eat hype-fake-spun news, and buy stupid shit cause we’re bored and desperate… if it wasn’t the jews then who did it? Some pagan satan-worshipping ghost council?

Right.

Well, good things humans have so many flaws. We can start over again. Maybe, accepting Buddha, Mohammed, and Jesus was a mistake. We can make new Gods to betray with our meaningless, yet fascinating existence. Become the ancient tech ancestors that people will rumor are actually Aliens.

Individualism or collectivism is a catch 22 in a world without balance.

If we create these liberating, inorganic creatures…

Life will become this flavorless run upon a treadmill, or like that Terminal movie. Waiting for transportation or a visa that will never come… A form of nearly nihilistic hedonism will grow more meaningful, in that there is less competition for 'aught to do’ time slots, and objectivity will have no limit on arbitrary indulgence. You could choose to practice your lines for hours to create video that no one will ever watch. An ample, plethora of quality content precedes your masterpiece, diminishing it into obscurity. It is less than a fadpole submerged in a river that leads to an entire ocean of sauce.

A truly woeful blip in time for our barrel of electric space monkeys. No threats. No true mission. Drown in comfort and toys in a never ending time-out.

Though, If we can get off the planet and adapt it’s back to fucking and working.

Which wouldn’t sound so bad. You know, slightly before the industrial revolution. Of course, that would mean that equality AND quality of life would be rather difficult… we’d basically be communists living in little villages, like Amish Smurfs… who sometimes would get spooked into tribal warfare out of superstition or supply/demand.

I would go crazy with that simple, farm/craftsman life. And start making monsters in my garage.

Perhaps, we should create unique bloodlines and cultures on separate, resourceless planets. Hell, If we can add protons to dirt, fuck it. We would have plenty of work to do, that is, unless…

Unless, the bots could still do it all for us. That takes all the fuel out of my rocket.

So there is no way to live life or real place to be safe.

Maybe, we should hide inside fantasy worlds like The Matrix, war-time escapism, the first WoW craze, or reeeligion.

Withoutta behemoth economy, or borders/social biosphere to tend to we can be liberated from our Illuminati cages. Free to binge on any activity.

But you know what harm will power can do to a person. Maybe the cage is to keep the rest of the shit out and, hardly, to institutionalize peons. Few are made for excellence, anyway, and greatness is only mildly better, relative to an average.

We have to remember all those moments of failure. Not ours. Others. Schadenfreude! Freedom is a dangerous bitch that has no sense of context or direction of time.

We need to upgrade from this shitty stock caveman principal into an RPG one. Where you can customize everything, while still meeting a group of like-minded circlejerkers. Yet, soon as a metastrategy develops, we need a balance patch, or a new game…

Conversely, stay in reality to adopt a robot mind to earn pleasure points with the old occupation you had as a meatbag.

Remote control the things that made our species obsolete!

That solves everything. Just delay the inevitable of the human condition.

I just hope this planet won’t devolve, or grow to a population over 10B…

Otherwise, I will condone voluntary wars to limit the population. We share the planet with other creatures, you know.

Maybe, one day, they can talk to us in a slightly more stimulating, yet less impressive way than AI does/will. Aliens have proved to be flakes.

Just takes one group of psychotic geneticists, some octopi, a lab that locks from the outside, and a bag of drugs to change our loneliness into a new social struggle!

Sigh… Well, it

Seems we are fucked.

Perhaps it is best that we stick to swallowing our escapism whole within our favorite emotionfest of a 1h, themed drama. I like the science-y ones over the magic, yee-olde ones!

On a non-sequitur note.

There is personal wisdom in each of your villains. Do you really understand what you don’t agree with?

Cause most people are stuck in their narrative, and don’t.

If you can’t play devil’s advocate for more than a minute, you don’t know shit.

#i #writing #cepheidenigma

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designfuturepublishing · 5 years ago

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What does it mean that I found the most compelling sentences in John Seabrook’s “The Next Word” to be some of those composed by the GPT-2? And not because they were AI-created but because their language was bold and “original,” writing that one might be tempted, in another context, to describe as “alive” with its insight and craft? The implicit meaning terrifies Seabrook, I believe, who sees in it his potentially imminent obsolescence, though he makes some “herculean” effort to cloak his existential dread as a professional writer in misguided meandering around the “uncanny valley.” What he does not seem to see, beneath the uncanny valley, is a fault line even more threatening, destabilizing, and catastrophic to his cherished egocentric notions of original selfhood and unique personal value as a member of the New Yorker—and The New Yorker—intelligentsia.

“Had my computer become my co-writer?” Seabrook wonders early in his essay about Google’s Smart Compose, whose suggestions he “had been trying to ignore“ for many days. “I’d always finished my thought by typing the sentence to a full stop, as though I were defending humanity’s exclusive right to writing, an ability unique to our species.” What he fails to come to terms with is the way in which the “technology” of his society, his culture, his ontology, his language, his computer—and progressively, the internet, his phone, social media—had always been a co-writer, conditioning the very matrix of knowledge and associations by which he understood how to compose or interpret any text, in just the way that GPT-2 does without the underlying “understanding.” “Perhaps because writing is my vocation, I am inclined to consider my sentences, even in a humble e-mail, in some way a personal expression of my original thought,” Seabrook writes, admitting his categorical error, his failure to interrogate the very notion of an “original thought.” Does he naïvely believe that it “originates” sui generis, out of his brain and mind, disconnected in any way from its surrounding social and technical framework—or does he acknowledge that it “originates” from the cybernetic web, just as the Google and Open AI technology, and their subsequent output does?

“Each human world is a certain configuration of techniques, of culinary, architectural, musical, spiritual, informational, agricultural, erotic, martial, etc., techniques,” write the anonymous authors—or author, or bot, or geist, or specter—of The Invisible Committee in To Our Friends. “And it’s for this reason that there’s no generic human essence: because there are only particular techniques, and because every technique configures a world, materializing in this way a certain relationship with the latter, a certain form of life. So one doesn’t ‘construct’ a form of life; one only incorporates techniques, through example, exercise, or apprenticeship.” The form of life, the social and material technologies and techniques, which Seabrook and all of us have incorporated presuppose the sort of “cybernetic” social control and mediation which can provoke the terror of the “uncanny valley” when we are confronted with them in the form of a new technology of explicit simulation. As The Invisible Committee points out, because we presuppose as a given the preceding technical matrix that produces us and which we reproduce, “our familiar world rarely appears to us as ‘technical’: because the set of artifices that structure it are already part of us. It’s rather those we’re not familiar with that seem to have a strange artificiality.”

And how quickly we are able to incorporate the new technics, techniques, and technologies into our “natural” form of life. “I will gladly let Google predict the fastest route from Brooklyn to Boston,” Seabrook admits, “but if I allowed its algorithms to navigate to the end of my sentences how long would it be before the machine started thinking for me?” As if the machine were not already thinking for him by directing his route, by giving his search results, by updating his social feeds. As if the “machine,” more broadly conceived, were not already thinking for him in designing his routes—his jobs, his real estate sectors, his modes of transport, his urban architectures—even before the advent of Google. Guy Debord and the situationists proposed the psychogeography of la dérive precisely as a practical resistance to the built in logical, systematic, cybernetic programming of our movement through the urban environment. “In reality, cybernetized capitalism does practice an ontology, and hence an anthropology, whose key elements are reserved for its initiates,” The Invisible Committee explains. “The rational Western subject, aspiring to master the world and governable thereby, gives way to the cybernetic conception of a being without an interiority, of a selfless self, an emergent, climatic being, constituted by its exteriority, by its relations. A being which, armed with its Apple Watch, comes to understand itself entirely on the basis of external data, the statistics that each of its behaviors generates. A Quantified Self that is willing to monitor, measure, and desperately optimize every one of its gestures and each of its affects. For the most advanced cybernetics, there’s already no longer man and his environment, but a system-being which is itself part of an ensemble of complex information systems, hubs of autonomic processes—a being that can be better explained by starting from the middle way of Indian Buddhism than from Descartes. ‘For man, being alive means the same thing as participating in a broad global system of communication,’ asserted Wiener in 1948.”

Hence, the dread of the “uncanny valley” and Seabrook’s guarded fear of being replaced by AI machine writers—or worse, “a powerful database of ever more writers, editorial boards, and topics,” as GPT-2 itself writes, in a parody of modern technocapitalist media managerial philosophy. Seabrook’s terror at these ghouls which lack the interiority of a “self” but nevertheless “can do the task flawlessly without understanding anything about the rules of language,” is actually a sublimated fear of something existentially prior. The cherished “personal expression of my original thought” was never thus to begin with. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs,” writes Donna Haraway. “The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation.” As Haraway explains, embracing this framework as a possibility for feminist, liberationist dialectical reconstruction, no clear lines of demarcation of the sort Seabrook seeks can be drawn between the “uncanny” new technologies of AI and our already existing cybernetic existence, nor between “science” and “magic”:

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women’s movements have constructed “women’s experience,” as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion.

Late in his essay, Seabrook describes in bodily, visceral terms his intellectual confrontation with what the mirror of AI reflects back, as “initial excitement had curdled into queasiness.” But he seems unable to see his own reflection through the optical illusion of this science fiction made social reality. “It hurt to see the rules of grammar and usage, which I have lived my writing life by, mastered by an idiot savant that used math for words,” Seabrook confesses. “It was sickening to see how the slithering machine intelligence, with its ability to take on the color of the prompt’s prose, slipped into some of my favorite paragraphs, impersonating their voices but without their souls.” He cannot acknowledge the radical nature of his own persona’s “impersonation,” nor confront the implications it might have on the state of his “soul.” “A long time ago, the whole world could have said that it lived in a golden age of machines that created wealth and kept peace,” writes GPT-2. “But then the world was bound to pass from the golden age to the gilded age, to the world of machine superpowers and capitalism, to the one of savage inequality and corporatism. The more machines rely on language, the more power they have to distort the discourse, and the more that ordinary people are at risk of being put in a dehumanized social category.” As we are all cyborgs, and the line between “human” and “machine” is an optical illusion, one can easily swap these terms in the preceding quotation. Just hit Command-F, and let the computer do the work of finding the phrase for you.

#week7 #1

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sympler · 7 years ago

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Brands: It’s time to be vulnerable

Younger audiences have little reason to trust the media like their parents once did. For the latter group, the fourth estate provided a democratic force built on the principles of truth, integrity, and reach to keep an honest eye on the elected powers. Developments in technology helped to strengthen these pillars, enabling truer truths, greater reach, and consistent quality. But somewhere along the way, this model stopped delivering returns. Transparency and truth appear increasingly subjective, reach is available to anyone with a sex tape and an Internet connection, and consistency looks more like farce in the era of epic flip-floppers.

If you can’t trust the established media, where do you go?

You go home. Media needs to come home, get into bed with us, court us, cook us dinner, listen to our gripes, and let us be us. Our youngest audiences, known as Generation Z, are already there, ditching so-called "social" media for the more sociable, safer, and private "dark social," where they might chat freely and express themselves from the comfort of their own small cliques. This shift is led by the growth in mobile messaging apps, with platforms seeing smaller groups coalesce around more focused topics. Mass media is out. Niche, intimate dark social is in.

The key to credibility in the era of conversational media will be to get more personal. Rather like the disembodied avatar in "Her," media will be a gentle voice whispering intimately into your ear. After centuries of mass media and advertising barking at you from its respective box, book, or banner, media is about to humanize. Fueled by data science, AI and NLP, it will now be able to mimic our own positive traits of listening, sensing, and empathizing in order to better itself.

I like to call this "sentient marketing." Four skills will allow brands to become more sentient in this developing space: intimacy, presence, empathy and vulnerability.

1. Intimacy

Since the creation of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the Internet has been voraciously connecting the fringe interests previously ignored by the mainstream. The true power of this medium has been in its ability to unite people with common areas of passion, no matter how niche. In the messaging era, users can go even deeper, exploring and developing their passions without fear of being judged or misunderstood, as their actions don’t need to be kept for posterity as with social media.

Reddit has built a network of rock-solid communities precisely because they aren’t mass or mainstream. With their strict policies, secretive names, and insider lingo, Reddit communities aim for deep understanding and connection rather than widespread acceptance.

It is no coincidence that the largest and fastest growing online medium is messaging, as it lends further personalization and depth to connections across all subject areas. Messaging now has 3.6 billion users worldwide, exceeding social media users by 1.2 billion. Unlike on social media, users are not expected to parade their socially pre-approved talents and perfect lives in the messaging space. Rather, users on messaging platforms increasingly "share feelings, not information," according to meme-making agency founder Steve Bartlett.

It is here that we now share our most private, personal pieces of ourselves.

As such, brands must tread carefully in the messaging space, making sure not to violate this intimacy. You are not just entering homes, as TV does, you are engaging people on a deeply personal level. Lower your voice, listen, be gentle. Most importantly, don’t overstay your welcome.

2. Presence

The growth of VR and AR is allowing audiences to play with their sense of place and inhabit spaces that weren’t available to them before. "The Matrix" may have been science fiction when it was released, but today it is closer than ever as reality-enhancing tools feature increasingly in our everyday technology. 2017 was the year that "Live" video dusted off its variety show image and shot back into fashion as Periscope-like services were added to Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. This development brought fans closer to the objects of their adoration and gave publishers ways to make audiences feel more involved in events without actually attending them.

The expansion of technologies such as live video is blurring the lines between celebrities and fans. Users can converse with celebrities that aren’t actually there through the miracle of chat bots. They can even experience what it feels like to be famous through new technology on platforms like Snapchat that allows you to assume the likeness and personality traits of your favorite star. Access, exclusivity, and experience can now be downloaded.

The proliferation of messaging channels has enabled an unprecedented level of proximity to anyone we choose, more or less around the clock. The voyeuristic social experiments of the '90s such as Big Brother and the Real World felt overblown, but today seem almost quaint as features such as Instagram stories have us living in each other's lives minute by minute. Similarly, Generation Z has popularized Houseparty, Hangouts, and Live.ly, which enable group fun to be initiated and experienced remotely.

Brands would be wise to think of the latest digital channels as experiential, with the ability to bring consumers into new worlds. With these technologies, brands can offer the depth, authenticity and proximity that consumers crave. Voice-enabled assistants bring brand and celebrity voices right into your living room or headphones, creating an intimate, personal connection between brand and consumer.

3. Empathy.

For more than a decade, social media and online advertising companies have been building large data sets around our "likes" and behaviors. With machine learning, we can now aggregate that data from across multiple customer interactions, making automated conversational interfaces even smarter than their human counterparts. The question, however, is how to leverage this data to connect with consumers on their terms.

A person can only experience so many things, but a chatbot can assimilate data from every customer exchange in a fraction of a second and become much more "thoughtfully" responsive as a result. Empathy and the power to leverage it will become a huge and valuable commodity as we move deeper into the conversational era. While there has been much criticism of the unrealistic expectations placed on bots, those that play within their field of expertise can successfully express their "intelligence." National Geographic rolled out a bot on Facebook Messenger to celebrate the launch of a TV series on Albert Einstein. The Einstein bot could chat with NatGeo followers about a variety of topics, entertaining and educating with amusing responses. Capitalizing on these new technologies can allow brands to blend humor and humanity into consumer interactions.

In the age of empathy, consumer research should be conducted differently as well. My company already delivers "conversational research" on behalf of brands, going beyond social listening to learn about the motivations behind the statements, turning more interactions into sources of consumer information. Conversational research is designed for a generation not only more comfortable in messaging, but one that’s able to express more deeply as they’re equipped with tools that empower them visually and metaphorically. It makes sense, therefore, for brands to start building that empathy and courting consumers in the places that they will ultimately be delivering marketing messages (if we can call them that now). We believe that conducting marketing outreach and research separately will soon be a relic of another age and bringing the two together will illuminate "dark social."

Finally, that same machine learning can help consumers make better calls on what, when, and how to chat with their friends. Not only will companies use empathy to generate better customer experiences but they will also bestow it upon consumers themselves. We won’t simply be reminded of our friends’ birthdays, we’ll also be presented with exactly the right GIF to share with them at exactly the right moment.

4. Vulnerability.

It seems like Snapchat has been a victim, not just a conduit, of cyber-bullying this year. Last month 1.2 million users and Kylie Jenner weighed into a brawl that began with investors, advertisers and the brutish Facebook empire.

The fight, at its core, is about authenticity. Who is really your ‘friend?’ Evan Spiegel wants you to know that celebrities certainly aren’t, which has bloodied the noses of both fans and celebs. Jenner was credited with wiping over a billion from Snapchat’s share price after a drop in fan adoration stemming from relegation to a secondary part of the platform.

Snapchat had stood firm in the face of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, who’d clamored for a traditional media model where publishers might buy their way into consumers’ attention. The app’s rapid growth occurred precisely because it refused that model, choosing to give the youngest users of social media a place to be more honest, unpolished, and vulnerable. Yes – one of Donald Trump’s banned words of 2017 represented an unexpected shift in direction for an industry more commonly associated with image preservation. Perhaps this is why the investment and marketing communities struggled to make sense of it. But the second-most downloaded iOS app of 2017 spoke to a new type of media relationship where the brands didn’t own the lion’s share of airtime. Money didn’t dictate who consumers hear. Intimacy did.

The magic of Snapchat was that it let us experiment, probe boundaries, make mistakes, ask questions, or just try out silly faces. It is in this sandbox that millions of young users developed themselves and their relationships. Authenticity was easier to achieve than the ultra-polished Instagram and it is less risky when only your inner circle of trusted friends are watching.

But what if you want Kylie Jenner in your inner circle of friends?

Social media brings people such unparalleled proximity to stardom that we’ve become accustomed to following the micro-actions of the rich and famous and believe the best ones to actually be our friends. While scale and perfection were the old battlegrounds of marketing, both Snapchat and Instagram now compete around values of depth, connection, humanity, and friendship. Snapchat had a lead on Instagram when it allowed "influencers" to be followed as friends, surfacing their stories side by side. But by stripping the Jenners of their "friend" status, Snapchat removed this advantage. While Spiegel’s crusade for authenticity is an admirable one, we feel that there is a middle ground. There is genuine power in building bonds through vulnerability. Snapchat stands to gain by remaining a conduit for this, so should consider rewarding publishers, artists, and even brands that promote honest, unguarded, and vulnerable behaviors. Only those that foster the types of connections that made Snapchat a success can be included as friends. All others should live in the "discover" section.

As brands move deeper into the messaging space, they must be sure to engage with users in an empathetic manner, being mindful of the intimate, vulnerable nature of the engagement on those platforms. Like the friends that they will inevitably be communicating with, brands should consider bringing their own vulnerability to the relationship, letting down their intricately polished exterior, if they are to flourish in this new age of intimacy

#fake news #data privacy #VR #AR #snapchat #messaging #post truth

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endenogatai · 6 years ago

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The ultimate guide to gifting STEM toys: tons of ideas for little builders

The holiday season is here again, touting all sorts of kids’ toys that pledge to pack ‘STEM smarts’ in the box, not just the usual battery-based fun.

Educational playthings are nothing new, of course. But, in recent years, long time toymakers and a flurry of new market entrants have piggybacked on the popularity of smartphones and apps, building connected toys for even very young kids that seek to tap into a wider ‘learn to code’ movement which itself feeds off worries about the future employability of those lacking techie skills.

Whether the lofty educational claims being made for some of these STEM gizmos stands the test of time remains to be seen. Much of this sums to clever branding. Though there’s no doubt a lot of care and attention has gone into building this category out, you’ll also find equally eye-catching price-tags.

Whatever STEM toy you buy there’s a high chance it won’t survive the fickle attention spans of kids at rest and play. (Even as your children’s appetite to be schooled while having fun might dash your ‘engineer in training’ expectations.) Tearing impressionable eyeballs away from YouTube or mobile games might be your main parental challenge — and whether kids really need to start ‘learning to code’ aged just 4 or 5 seems questionable.

Buyers with high ‘outcome’ hopes for STEM toys should certainly go in with their eyes, rather than their wallets, wide open. The ‘STEM premium’ can be steep indeed, even as the capabilities and educational potential of the playthings themselves varies considerably.

At the cheaper end of the price spectrum, a ‘developmental toy’ might not really be so very different from a more basic or traditional building block type toy used in concert with a kid’s own imagination, for example.

While, at the premium end, there are a few devices in the market that are essentially fully fledged computers — but with a child-friendly layer applied to hand-hold and gamify STEM learning. An alternative investment in your child’s future might be to commit to advancing their learning opportunities yourself, using whatever computing devices you already have at home. (There are plenty of standalone apps offering guided coding lessons, for example. And tons and tons of open source resources.)

For a little DIY STEM learning inspiration read this wonderful childhood memoir by TechCrunch’s very own John Biggs — a self-confessed STEM toy sceptic.

It’s also worth noting that some startups in this still youthful category have already pivoted more toward selling wares direct to schools — aiming to plug learning gadgets into formal curricula, rather than risking the toys falling out of favor at home. Which does lend weight to the idea that standalone ‘play to learn’ toys don’t necessarily live up to the hype. And are getting tossed under the sofa after a few days’ use.

We certainly don’t suggest there are any shortcuts to turn kids into coders in the gift ideas presented here. It’s through proper guidance — plus the power of their imagination — that the vast majority of children learn. And of course kids are individuals, with their own ideas about what they want to do and become.

The increasingly commercialized rush towards STEM toys, with hundreds of millions of investor dollars being poured into the category, might also be a cause for parental caution. There’s a risk of barriers being thrown up to more freeform learning — if companies start pushing harder to hold onto kids’ attention in a more and more competitive market. Barriers that could end up dampening creative thinking.

At the same time (adult) consumers are becoming concerned about how much time they spend online and on screens. So pushing kids to get plugged in from a very early age might not feel like the right thing to do. Your parental priorities might be more focused on making sure they develop into well rounded human beings — by playing with other kids and/or non-digital toys that help them get to know and understand the world around them, and encourage using more of their own imagination.

But for those fixed on buying into the STEM toy craze this holiday season, we’ve compiled a list of some of the main players, presented in alphabetical order, rounding up a selection of what they’re offering for 2018, hitting a variety of price-points, product types and age ranges, to present a market overview — and with the hope that a well chosen gift might at least spark a few bright ideas…

Adafruit Kits

Product: Metro 328 Starter Pack Price: $45 Description: Not a typical STEM toy but a starter kit from maker-focused and electronics hobbyist brand Adafruit. The kit is intended to get the user learning about electronics and Arduino microcontrollers to set them on a path to being a maker. Adafruit says the kit is designed for “everyone, even people with little or no electronics and programming experience”. Though parental supervision is a must unless you’re buying for a teenager or mature older child. Computer access is also required for programming the Arduino.

Be sure to check out Adafruit’s Young Engineers Category for a wider range of hardware hacking gift ideas too, from $10 for a Bare Conductive Paint Pen, to $25 for the Drawdio fun pack, to $35 for this Konstruktor DIY Film Camera Kit or $75 for the Snap Circuits Green kit — where budding makers can learn about renewable energy sources by building a range of solar and kinetic energy powered projects. Adafruit also sells a selection of STEM focused children’s books too, such as Python for Kids ($35) Age: Teenagers, or younger children with parental supervision

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Anki

Product: Cozmo Price: $180 Description: The animation loving Anki team added a learn-to-code layer to their cute, desktop-mapping bot last year — called Cozmo Code Lab, which was delivered via free update — so the cartoonesque, programmable truck is not new on the scene for 2018 but has been gaining fresh powers over the years.

This year the company has turned its attention to adults, launching a new but almost identical-looking assistant-style bot, called Vector, that’s not really aimed at kids. That more pricey ($250) robot is slated to be getting access to its code lab in future, so it should have some DIY programming potential too. Age: 8+

Dash Robotics

Product: Kamigami Jurassic World Robot Price: ~$60 Description: Hobbyist robotics startup Dash Robotics has been collaborating with toymaker Mattel on the Kamigami line of biologically inspired robots for over a year now. The USB-charged bots arrive at kids’ homes in build-it-yourself form before coming to programmable, biomimetic life via the use of a simple, icon-based coding interface in the companion app.

The latest addition to the range is dinosaur bot series Jurassic World, currently comprised of a pair of pretty similar looking raptor dinosaurs, each with light up eyes and appropriate sound effects. Using the app kids can complete challenges to unlock new abilities and sounds. And if you have more than one dinosaur in the same house they can react to each other to make things even more lively. Age: 8+

Kano

Product: Harry Potter Coding Kit Price: $100 Description: British learn-to-code startup Kano has expanded its line this year with a co-branded, build-it-yourself wand linked to the fictional Harry Potter wizard series. The motion-sensitive e-product features a gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer and Bluetooth wireless so kids can use it to interact with coding content on-screen. The company offers 70-plus challenges for children to play wizard with, using wand gestures to manipulate digital content. Like many STEM toys it requires a tablet or desktop computer to work its digital magic (iOS and Android tablets are supported, as well as desktop PCs including Kano’s Computer Kit Touch, below) Age: 6+

Product: Computer Kit Touch Price: $280 Description: The latest version of Kano’s build-it-yourself Pi-powered kids’ computer. This year’s computer kit includes the familiar bright orange physical keyboard but now paired with a touchscreen. Kano reckons touch is a natural aid to the drag-and-drop, block-based learn-to-code systems it’s putting under kids’ fingertips here. Although its KanoOS Pi skin does support text-based coding too, and can run a wide range of other apps and programs — making this STEM device a fully fledged computer in its own right Age: 6-13

Lego

Product: Boost Creative Toolbox Price: $160 Description: Boost is Lego’s relatively recent foray into offering a simpler robotics and programming system aimed at younger kids vs its more sophisticated and expensive veteran Mindstorms creator platform (for 10+ year olds). The Boost Creative Toolbox is an entry point to Lego + robotics, letting kids build a range of different brick-based bots — all of which can be controlled and programmed via the companion app which offers an icon-based coding system.

Boost components can also be combined with other Lego kits to bring other not-electronic kits to life — such as its Stormbringer Ninjago Dragon kit (sold separately for $40). Ninjago + Boost means = a dragon that can walk and turn its head as if it’s about to breathe fire Age: 7-12

littleBits

Product: Avengers Hero Inventor Kit Price: $150 Description: This Disney co-branded wearable in kit form from the hardware hackers over at littleBits lets superhero-inspired kids snap together all sorts of electronic and plastic bits to make their own gauntlet from the Avengers movie franchise. The gizmo features an LED matrix panel, based on Tony Stark’s palm Repulsor Beam, they can control via companion app. There are 18 in-app activities for them to explore, assuming kids don’t just use amuse themselves acting out their Marvel superhero fantasies Age: 8+

It’s worth noting that littleBits has lots more to offer — so if bringing yet more Disney-branded merch into your home really isn’t your thing, check out its wide range of DIY electronics kits, which cater to various price points, such as this Crawly Creature Kit ($40) or an Electronic Music Inventor Kit ($100), and much more… No major movie franchises necessary

Makeblock

Product: Codey Rocky Price: $100 Description: Shenzhen-based STEM kit maker Makeblock crowdfunded this emotive, programmable bot geared towards younger kids on Kickstarter. There’s no assembly required, though the bot itself can transform into a wearable or handheld device for game playing, as Codey (the head) detaches from Rocky (the wheeled body).

Despite the young target age, the toy is packed with sophisticated tech — making use of deep learning algorithms, for example. While the company’s visual programming system, mBlock, also supports Python text coding, and allows kids to code bot movements and visual effects on the display, tapping into the 10 programmable modules on this sensor-heavy bot. Makeblock says kids can program Codey to create dot matrix animations, design games and even build AI and IoT applications, thanks to baked in support for voice, image and even face recognition… The bot has also been designed to be compatible with Lego bricks so kids can design and build physical add-ons too Age: 6+

Product: Airblock Price: $100 Description: Another programmable gizmo from Makeblock’s range. Airblock is a modular and programmable drone/hovercraft so this is a STEM device that can fly. Magnetic connectors are used for easy assembly of the soft foam pieces. Several different assembly configurations are possible. The companion app’s block-based coding interface is used for programming and controlling your Airblock creations Age: 8+

Ozobot

Product: Evo Price: $100 Description: This programmable robot has a twist as it can be controlled without a child always having to be stuck to a screen. The Evo’s sensing system can detect and respond to marks made by marker pens and stickers in the accompanying Experience Pack — so this is coding via paper plus visual cues.

There is also a digital, block-based coding interface for controlling Evo, called OzoBlockly (based on Google’s Blockly system). This has a five-level coding system to support a range of ages, from pre-readers (using just icon-based blocks), up to a ‘Master mode’ which Ozobot says includes extensive low-level control and advanced programming features Age: 9+

Pi-top

Product: Modular Laptop Price: $320 (with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+), $285 without Description: This snazzy 14-inch modular laptop, powered by Raspberry Pi, has a special focus on teaching coding and electronics. Slide the laptop’s keyboard forward and it reveals a built in rail for hardware hacking. Guided projects designed for kids include building a music maker and a smart robot. The laptop runs pi-top’s learn-to-code oriented OS — which supports block-based coding programs like Scratch and kid-friendly wares like Minecraft Pi edition, as well as its homebrew CEEDUniverse: A Civilization style game that bakes in visual programming puzzles to teach basic coding concepts. The pi-top also comes with a full software suite of more standard computing apps (including apps from Google and Microsoft). So this is no simple toy. Not a new model for this year — but still a compelling STEM machine Age: 8+

Robo Wunderkind

Product: Starter Kit Price: $200 Description: Programmable robotics blocks for even very young inventors. The blocks snap together and are color-coded based on function so as to minimize instruction for the target age group. Kids can program their creations to do stuff like drive, play music, detect obstacles and more via a drag-and-drop coding interface in the companion Robo Code app. Another app — Robo Live — lets them control what they’ve built in real time. The physical blocks can also support Lego-based add-ons for more imaginative designs Age: 5+

Root Robotics

Product: Root Price: $200 Description: A robot that can sense and draw, thanks to a variety of on board sensors, battery-powered kinetic energy and its central feature: A built-in pen holder. Root uses spirographs as the medium for teaching STEM as kids get to code what the bot draws. They can also create musical compositions with a scan and play mode that turns Root into a music maker. The companion app offers three levels of coding interfaces to support different learning abilities and ages. At the top end it supports programming in Swift (with Python and JavaScript slated as coming soon). An optional subscription service offers access to additional learning materials and projects to expand Root’s educational value Age: 4+

Sphero

Product: Bolt Price: $150 Description: The app-enabled robot ball maker’s latest STEM gizmo. It’s still a transparent sphere but now has an 8×8 LED matrix lodged inside to expand the programmable elements. This colorful matrix can be programmed to display words, show data in real-time and offer game design opportunities. Bolt also includes an ambient light sensor, and speed and direction sensors, giving it an additional power up over earlier models. The Sphero Edu companion app supports drawing, Scratch-style block-based and JavaScript text programming options to suit different ages Age: 8+

Tech Will Save Us

Product: Range of coding, electronics and craft kits Price: From ~$30 up to $150 Description: A delightful range of electronic toys and coding kits, hitting various age and price-points, and often making use of traditional craft materials (which of course kids love). Examples include a solar powered moisture sensor kit ($40) to alert when a pot plant needs water; electronic dough ($35); a micro:bot add-on kit ($35) that makes use of the BBC micro:bit device (sold separately); and the creative coder kit ($70), which pairs block-based coding with a wearable that lets kids see their code in action (and reacting to their actions) Age: 4+, 8+, 11+ depending on kit

UBTech Robotics

Product: JIMU Robot BuilderBots Series: Overdrive Kit Price: $120 Description: More snap-together, codable robot trucks that kids get to build and control. These can be programmed either via posing and recording, or using Ubtech’s drag-and-drop, block-based Blockly coding program. The Shenzhen-based company, which has been in the STEM game for several years, offers a range of other kits in the same Jimu kit series — such as this similarly priced UnicornBot and its classic MeeBot Kit, which can be expanded via the newer Animal Add-on Kit Age: 8+

Wonder Workshop

Product: Dot Creativity Kit Price: $80 Description: San Francisco-based Wonder Workshop offers a kid-friendly blend of controllable robotics and DIY craft-style projects in this entry-level Dot Creativity Kit. Younger kids can play around and personalize the talkative connected device. But the startup sells a trio of chatty robots all aimed at encouraging children to get into coding. Next in line there’s Dash ($150), also for 6+ year olds. Then Cue ($200) for 11+. The startup also has a growing range of accessories to expand the bots’ (programmable) functionality — such as this Sketch Kit ($40) which adds a few arty smarts to Dash or Cue.

With Dot, younger kids play around using a suite of creative apps to control and customize their robot and tap more deeply into its capabilities, with the apps supporting a range of projects and puzzles designed to both entertain them and introduce basic coding concepts. Age: 6+

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

Link

The holiday season is here again, touting all sorts of kids’ toys that pledge to pack ‘STEM smarts’ in the box, not just the usual battery-based fun.

For a little DIY STEM learning inspiration read this wonderful childhood memoir by TechCrunch’s very own John Biggs — a self-confessed STEM toy sceptic.

Adafruit Kits

[inline-ads]

Anki

Dash Robotics

Kano

Lego

littleBits

Makeblock

Ozobot

Pi-top

Robo Wunderkind

Root Robotics

Sphero

Tech Will Save Us

UBTech Robotics

Wonder Workshop

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 6 years ago

Text

The ultimate guide to gifting STEM toys: tons of ideas for little builders

The holiday season is here again, touting all sorts of kids’ toys that pledge to pack ‘STEM smarts’ in the box, not just the usual battery-based fun.

For a little DIY STEM learning inspiration read this wonderful childhood memoir by TechCrunch’s very own John Biggs — a self-confessed STEM toy sceptic.

Adafruit Kits

[inline-ads]

Anki

Dash Robotics

Kano

Lego

littleBits

Makeblock

Ozobot

Pi-top

Robo Wunderkind

Root Robotics

Sphero

Tech Will Save Us

UBTech Robotics

Wonder Workshop

Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes

consciousowl · 8 years ago

Text

How To Survive In a World of Artificial Intelligence

The future is already here — It’s just not very evenly distributed.

William Gibson

Sometime this year you may spot a tiny little drone buzzing not far over your head with no visible pilot. You may also run into a few driverless cars, most with drivers at the wheel ignoring it, carrying on an idle conversation without paying much attention to the road. You may even see a few experimental cars cruising down your street without any steering wheel.

This year, you may also come across medical bots on the Internet that can give you better prescriptions than your local doctor…faster and cheaper. You may witness computers mastering sophisticated computer games in an hour or two, which might take you months, or even years, to get up to Level 10.

Welcome to commercial Artificial Intelligence. Your world, and your life, will never be the same.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence or A.I. is the capacity of an advanced computer system or device, including a robot, to mimic human thinking, to apply abstract reasoning and engage in pattern recognition. It goes well beyond our habitual familiarity with computers as fancy processing and communication devices with powerful memory. A.I. can now move into problem solving in a wide variety of fields.

Supervised learning addresses the ability of a computer to learn and get smarter and smarter about specific tasks that you ask of it, such as Google Translate or Google Maps, that can now advise you of the best possible route in crowded road conditions when the freeway may be jammed. This capability is increasingly commercialized.

General, or strong, A.I., is capable of unsupervised learning, such as the ability to scan thousands and thousands of images, and figure out which ones are those of a cat with whiskers.

Strong A.I. is still in the experimental stages, and many conceptual hurdles remain before it can be widely deployed. This capability could easily take away 40% of professional jobs.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything

You may have not given much thought to how attached you already are to your smart phone, or to talking to Apple’s Siri to have her find Internet information for you fast, like an intelligent agent. Can you now imagine life before the Internet? How many days could you stand it without using Google or playing with your friends on social networks and media?

We are likely to be increasingly attached to every aspect of computing, as smart chips and materials fill our world. Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, is already urging people to switch off their phones for a few minutes each day, or at least place them in sleep mode, so they can get some peace and hold on to their sanity. With the emergence of the Internet of Things, devices of every sort will now start talking to each other without any human involvement.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke

Closer to home, many professional jobs that were previously immune to technology and outsourcing will soon be vulnerable, not so much to bright, energetic and hungry offshore workers, as to smart systems on the Cloud with direct access to vast domains of human knowledge that can learn fast and begin solving complex problems.

More and more, attention will go, not to lawyers, doctors, and academicians, but to the very systems and agents they use. It will become all too obvious that people are replaceable for many functions we thought were unique to highly educated men and women.

The Technology Singularity

In popular thought, singularities in terms of black holes, as in the final scene of the epic film, 2001, where the astronaut plunges into an infinitely dense darkness from which he can never escape. It implies everything converging into infinity.

A technology singularity suggests a rapid convergence of technologies in a rapidly accelerating fashion such that computers could approach superintelligence. It is significant that the expansion of the Universe since the Big Bang is now accelerating, which has led to the present focus on dark matter and dark energy.

Today, this singularity is happening with a vengeance, as microprocessors have become ever more powerful and memory chips ever cheaper, going from millions of bits, or processing units, to billions to trillions. All the technologies have finally come together that were previously late in coming: extremely accurate sensors, chips that can process billions of cycles per second, rack-mounted computing on the cloud with a proliferation of devices, going from smart phones to drones to self-driving cars to humanoid robots.

Ray Kurzweil’s Transhumanism

Transhumanism is a daring, postmodern philosophy popularized by Ray Kurzweil, CTO of Google, that actively explores the possibility of computers becoming, not only smarter than individual humans, but than all humans put together. Just think how much smarter you are today with the Google search engine than you might have been a generation ago, even if you were at the card catalog for the Library of Congress.

Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of modern computing, proposed a test to determine if a computer is as smart as a human. If you can put two humans and a computer behind curtains, and an audience cannot detect through extensive questions which one is a computer and which is a human, then the system will have passed the “Turing Test.” Already, systems have been developed that have fooled 30% of the audience, and IBM’s Watson won a highly publicized Game of Jeopardy over the human contestants.

youtube

Ray envisions humans actually fusing with machines, of machines becoming, not only the servants of humanity, but its masters. He hopes the developers will program into these ultra-advanced systems respect and appreciation for human life, anticipating possible objections people may have from seeing the breakthrough film series, “The Matrix.” Lest you think Ray is a crackpot, check out some of his videos on YouTube. Ray is extremely brilliant and likable, unpretentious, and an evangelist of a new world order. He is not exactly naïve, as his own parents were holocaust survivors.

Wrinkles in the Proliferation of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has been given a tepid reception by many of the best and brightest thinkers alive. The pre-eminent physicist, Steven Hawking, warns that A.I. “could spell the end of the human race.” Elon Musk, who pioneered PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors, has second thoughts about the dangers of A.I. and has played an advisory role to Trump’s Presidential Administration.

We are approaching hard limits on Moore’s Law, which has held for nearly 50 years, predicting the double of computing power and the halving of cost every 18 months, or so. This has been the primary factor in the creation of Silicon Valley and the emergence of high technology as humanity’s trillion-dollar megaindustry. Microchips are becoming so small that their subnanometer circuits are measured in numbers of atoms across. They are approaching instability and possible leakage.

Even more to the point, our world today is challenged to an incomparable degree not seen since World War II. The planetary ecosystem seems severely strained with global warming a given, and climate change the new norm. Despite massive efforts to create a sustainable global economy and heal the environment, many heads of state remain in denial. President Trump holds to the view that it is all a hoax. Continuing environmental degradation could have a disruptive effect on further technological innovation.

Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point: The Perfect Response to Transhumanism

Teilhard de Chardin, the visionary French Jesuit priest and archeologist, saw a divine scheme in human evolution where everything is leading up a singularity of a very different sort. We are in the process of creating a Noosphere, or sphere of being and consciousness around Planet Earth.

The Earth is becoming conscious of itself as consciousness, and humanity is becoming conscious of itself as divinity.

Chardin called the inflection point the Omega Point, the last letter of the Greek alphabet that carries the numerical value of infinity.

An electronic nervous system for humanity resulting in a global brain makes sense for Homo sapiens sapiens, the smartest species this planet has ever seen. Without this electronic brain, we would not have the wherewithal to collectively deal with the magnitude of problems threatening to overwhelm us. It is the grace of God that has allowed us to mobilize our intelligence through software in thinking machines.

Humanity’s genius lies, not so much in its mere rational intelligence, as it does in its creative imagination, its spiritual nature. Our consciousness is magnificent enough to contain the entire universe.

For example, tell me of a moment when you weren’t there? Whatever you think of, YOU are the one thinking of it, creating it. We are creators here to create. Jesus Christ was right in revealing to us that we are all children of God, co-creators of the very universe that put us here.

What You Can Do Today to Prepare Yourself for a Transformed World

Artificial Intelligence is already here. Denial will get you absolutely nowhere. A Luddite reaction of smashing the machines would be equally futile.

It is too late to go back. We can only move forward. You need to determine what is truly important to you, and hold to that as sacred.

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Computers are truly wonderful servants, but wretched masters, even the most beautiful Macintosh. Get a life!

Inform yourself about the entire field of Artificial Intelligence, how it is impacting today’s society and the best projections for tomorrow.

Get active and speak out on its development. It matters a great deal whether the developers at Google, IBM, Apple and elsewhere program the equivalent of a soul into their platforms. Ethics matters.

Re-examine your career and what you do for a living. Insofar as possible, focus on real human needs that other people can meet better than machines. It makes sense to look within. Wisdom, as opposed to information and knowledge, is in very short supply. Empower people with vision and a living sense of the Spirit.

Get anchored from within. Machines can never replace humanity, because we are inherently divine. Open up to the great mystical traditions, and enjoy a feast around the Sacred Presence in everyone and everything. In this sense, information systems are our friend, and we owe much to Google.

Before leaving this earth in the late 1950’s, Teilhard de Chardin prophesied, “The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”

How To Survive In a World of Artificial Intelligence appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.

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