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Tag: ai

Bee Pioneer

Published June 4, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Artist and technologist the Rev Dan Catt had a spare Bee Pioneer unit and gifted it to me. it’s an AI listening device. I’ve lately gotten curious about the state of play in AI assistance – did a newsletter about it — with special interest in both intentional physical-operation devices like the Rabbit R1 and the things that melt into the background, which is what the Bee is. Wrist strap or, as I’m doing it, a clip that’ll attach to a shirt or belt.

On Dan’s recommendation, I’ve ordered a faraday pouch for it and I charge it in a silent room – because it will hear the tv as well as conversations when I wear it outside the office, and it will turn back on when it’s charging. It’s slow to catch up with work-account email – anything newer than a day or two, it can’t see — and it needs to be trained to look for the correct spelling of names in my work contacts.

You can change the voice on the associated iOS app, and the one I’m using sounds a little bit like Gildart Jackson pretending to be a 1940s BBC announcer, which amuses me.

I have no idea if this thing will have real utility or whether it’s just a nightmare ear in a box. But I’m going to play around with it, wait around and see what it can easily be connected to in the future, and see what it can do.

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The Nooscope manifested: AI as instrument of knowledge extractivism | AI & SOCIETY

Published December 4, 2024 by Warren Ellis

The Nooscope manifested: AI as instrument of knowledge extractivism | AI & SOCIETY

“The purpose of the Nooscope map is to secularize AI from the ideological status of ‘intelligent machine’ to one of knowledge instruments. Rather than evoking legends of alien cognition, it is more reasonable to consider machine learning as an instrument of knowledge magnification that helps to perceive features, patterns, and correlations through vast spaces of data beyond human reach. In the history of science and technology, this is no news; it has already been pursued by optical instruments throughout the histories of astronomy and medicine.Footnote3 In the tradition of science, machine learning is just a Nooscope, an instrument to see and navigate the space of knowledge (from the Greek skopein ‘to examine, look’ and noos ‘knowledge’).”

December 04, 2024 at 01:02PM

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Published December 3, 2024 by Warren Ellis

I’ve had a free subscription to Perplexity AI Pro for almost a year and have only just gotten around to adding its extension to Chrome. The subscription renews at full price next month, and I need to decide if it’s worth the hefty spend. My Rabbit R1 barely works in the office – wifi is terrible up here and its reception isn’t strong.

And, to be honest? “AI” hasn’t fully worked itself into my life yet. It’s an occasional tool for research, but I have too much muscle memory for “just typing shit into search bars on web browsers.”

Until relatively recently, I’ve considered AI to be basically a toy, one with significant ethical and social strikes against it. For me, it’s been a great occasional tool for research, or to confirm that was actually Christopher Walken in an episode of KOJAK. I may be missing something. Or I may not be and would be completely justified in going full Hojoki.

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Review: Buzzati’s ‘The Singularity’: The Sci-Fi Novella That Got AI (Mostly) Right

Published August 5, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Review: Buzzati’s ‘The Singularity’: The Sci-Fi Novella That Got AI (Mostly) Right

“A secret military project. A vast artificial mind. Questions of consciousness. These form the premise of Dino Buzzati’s The Singularity, originally published in 1960 at the dawn of the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The novella follows Italian scientist Ermanno Ismani, summoned by the Ministry of Defense to work on a top-secret project, as he ventures with his wife, Elisa, to a sprawling machine hidden in the mountains of the Italian countryside. The machine’s intelligence far surpasses that of humans—and its creators claim that the machine has come alive.”

August 05, 2024 at 11:57AM

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AI Voice Hallucination / Electronic Voice Phenomenon

Published July 26, 2024 by Warren Ellis

What grabbed me here was the accidental voice reconstruction.

The project group used machine learning voice changing software, off the shelf, made for streamers.

The scratches and taps on the metal were transformed by the proto-AI into fragments of voice: burbles and syllables that sound something like a person speaking, but not quite. You strain to hear.

(I didn’t ask but I got the impression that the group didn’t originally intend for this to be part of their project, even though it was part of their demo by the time I spoke with them. That’s what you get from working directly with material.)

And this is something new:

Where does the voice come from?

Novelty in the signal.

This is essentially Electronic Voice Phenomenon.

Within ghost hunting and parapsychology, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices. Parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive, who popularized the idea in the 1970s, described EVP as typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.[1]

Enthusiasts consider EVP to be a form of paranormal phenomenon often found in recordings with static or other background noise. Scientists regard EVP as a form of auditory pareidolia (interpreting random sounds as voices in one’s own language) and a pseudoscience promulgated by popular culture.[2][3] Prosaic explanations for EVP include apophenia (perceiving patterns in random information), equipment artifacts, and hoaxes

Those babbling voices from the sheet metal are not noise in the signal. They’re the point. Sources of creation are rare and here’s a new one!

What would happen if we listened to the voices?

Old radio in new graveyards.

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Published May 14, 2024 by Warren Ellis

I’m one of those people who ordered the Rabbit R1. It hasn’t arrived yet. The reviews of the first batch are out and are uniformly terrible. I’m not too worried. For one thing, by the time my device arrived, the OTA updates will have fixed a bunch of things that reviewers complained about. For another, many of the things the reviewers complained about don’t affect my use case for the Rabbit R1. The Rabbit can’t use Doordash or Uber properly? Well, Doordash and Uber don’t even operate in my location, so that was never an issue for me. Can’t play your Spotify playlists? I don’t use Spotify and seriously, what kind of sound experience do you expect off a plastic puck? Can’t save your bullshit Midjourney pictures? Tough shit. Go and look at art made by people or learn how to draw. The AI hallucinates? All AI hallucinates. I’ve been messing around with Perplexity AI, the system Rabbit uses, and I’ve only caught it hallucinating once.

I want to try a separate AI knowledge device. I have an iPhone. Siri is not very good. I can’t summon Perplexity from the lock screen. Siri may well get a big AI-related update, but I am betting 1) you’ll have to buy a new iPhone to get the full effect 2) it otherwise won’t be as frictionless as pressing a button and speaking to get the knowledge I want. At night I sit downstairs with a notebook on a lapboard, writing and researching, and a little puck on the board next to the notebook that I can thumb and talk into to get the information I may need does seem a hell of a lot easier than having to pick up the phone, clear the notification scroll, swipe and tap and tap and tap to get to the same point. The Rabbit R1 seems to me like a calm little box full of libraries, rather than a slab of screaming glass, and that’s what I paid for. Maybe next month I’ll see how wrong I was.

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Burned Books And Bad Robots

Published February 21, 2024 by Warren Ellis

When Vesuvius erupted in AD79—the same eruption that buried Pompeii—the papyrus rolls in the villa were carbonized. Without enough oxygen to combust and turn to ash, they became charcoal instead.

This meant the scrolls were fused solid and to get at the writing inside, they had to be opened. This process has been ongoing since the 1750s and researchers have just entered a new stage, thanks to AI. The lumps of carbonized scroll have been digitally scanned and, using 3D mapping and AI, researchers have been unable to “virtually unroll” the papyri and detect letters. This process has, for example, allowed them to read a previously unknown philosophical work discussing the senses and pleasure by the Epicurean philosopher and poet, Philodemus.

Matt Webb takes his first ride in a robotaxi:

It wasn’t a great first ride, on the way up.

We approached a school bus and blocked the road. The Waymo didn’t leave room. While we were waiting, the school bus drive waved at me to get out of the way. I sat in the front passenger seat. I gesticulated at the empty driver’s seat –

It’s empty! (I tried to say by waving my arms.) I’m in a haunted car! I can’t tell the ghost what to do!

Nicolás Kisic Aguirre builds rolling, gyrating, unruly machines that have been exhibited all over the world. Sometimes, however, they escape gallery spaces and take to the streets of Valparaíso or Boston where they amplify the voice of citizens protesting against racist deportations, inequality or the presence of a war criminal in town. Whether they are deployed in artistic performances or used as a tool to broadcast political messages, Kisic Aguirre’s works challenge the boundaries of our common understanding of the city and the spaces we share in it.
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