During this time a staff of ten people, with conditions such as ALS or spinal cord injuries and working from home, are paid 1,000 yen (US$8.80) an hour (a standard wage for part-time work in Japan) to serve up coffee and interact with the clientele. But more importantly than money, these people are also given a newfound independence.
Re: reminders of encroaching dystopia
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 9:57 am
by featherboa
featherboa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 9:57 am
Cafe opens in Tokyo staffed by robots controlled by paralyzed people
a staff of ten people, with conditions such as ALS or spinal cord injuries and working from home, are paid 1,000 yen (US$8.80) an hour (a standard wage for part-time work in Japan) to serve up coffee and interact with the clientele. But more importantly than money, these people are also given a newfound independence.
in case anyone is momentarily underwhelmed - just keep refreshing
Re: reminders of encroaching dystopia
Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 3:36 pm
by featherboa
i don't get it
Re: reminders of encroaching dystopia
Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 3:43 pm
by FVBTVS
they're computer generated fakes
Re: reminders of encroaching dystopia
Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 3:44 pm
by FVBTVS
At a glance, the images featured on the website This Person Does Not Exist might seem like random high school portraits or vaguely inadvisable LinkedIn headshots. But every single photo on the site has been created by using a special kind of artificial intelligence algorithm called generative adversarial networks (GANs).
Every time the site is refreshed, a shockingly realistic — but totally fake —picture of a person’s face appears. Uber software engineer Phillip Wang created the page to demonstrate what GANs are capable of, and then posted it to the public Facebook group “Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning” on Tuesday.
The underlying code that made this possible, titled StyleGAN, was written by Nvidia and featured in a paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed. This exact type of neural network has the potential to revolutionize video game and 3D-modeling technology, but, as with almost any kind of technology, it could also be used for more sinister purposes. Deepfakes, or computer-generated images superimposed on existing pictures or videos, can be used to push fake news narratives or other hoaxes. That’s precisely why Wang chose to create the mesmerizing but also chilling website.
“I have decided to dig into my own pockets and raise some public awareness for this technology,” he wrote in his post. “Faces are most salient to our cognition, so I’ve decided to put that specific pre-trained model up. Each time you refresh the site, the network will generate a new facial image from scratch from a 512 dimensional vector.”