What's the point of 'smart' and 'connected' objects? Are they supposed to help us get through menial tasks more efficiently, or have the capitalists figured out a clever way to perpetually profit off the objects we use on a daily basis? Sometimes it feels like the latter. When your printer holds your ink cartridge hostage because you haven't paid your monthly printer subscription, I think it's safe to say you've been swindled by the 'Internet of Things.' And technology itself isn't necessarily to blame. We'll never get to that fabled techno-utopia as long as 'innovation' prioritizes profit rather than usefulness. Until then, we get to clumsily navigate this boring dystopia of connected crap, eternally updating the firmware on our smart trashcans.
artificial intelligence
Ever look around and get the sense that we're living in some sort of techno-dystopia? We get it—sometimes it's cool to have lights that you can dim from your phone or a watch that tells you how many calories you burned, but maybe the 'Internet of Things' has gone too damn far. Once you start connecting every single object in your home to the internet, you become pretty vulnerable when, say, Google is suddenly down, or your WiFi router malfunctions. Sometimes a doorbell should just be a doorbell and a toothbrush certainly shouldn't require regular firmware updates. And who the hell actually wants an Amazon surveillance robot literally flying around their house 24/7?
Anyway, we've got a bunch of examples of bad 'smart devices' from Twitter that might make you reconsider that bluetooth coffee mug purchase.
Grimes is trending yet again and this time it involves artificial intelligence, communism and TikTok. Still with us? Great. Let's cut to the chase:
Many bewildered TikTok followers of the ever-polarizing pop star expressed their skepticism in the comments, wondering how Grimes—the partner of one of the wealthiest capitalists in the world—could endorse communism. Grimes waved off her dubious ramblings, claiming the video was meant to be a joke, but that didn't stop the TikTok clip from making it's way over to Twitter, where thousands of people are taking the opportunity to make fun of the self-proclaimed advocate of 'AI dictatorship.'
Whether Grimes was joking or not seems to be beside the point for many participating in the roast fest. For Twitter, laughing at Grimes is way more fun than laughing with Grimes. We've collected some of the spiciest reactions to the pop queen's perplexing ramblings for anyone who's into inane celebrity spectacle.
On this day in 1994, Kurt Cobain tragically died at the age of 27 in his Seattle home. Over the years, fans have wondered where Nirvana would have gone if not for Cobain's untimely death, but the reality is that he suffered from both mental and physical illnesses that would have continued to hinder him creatively in life. An organization called Over The Bridge is aiming to 'change the conversation about mental health in the music community' with their current Lost Tapes of the 27 Club project—an album of songs generated by AI software in the style of various musicians who all died at the age of 27 and struggled with their mental health. The album includes one Nirvana tribute called Drowned in the Sun. Everything in the song was generated by AI software except for the vocals, which were performed by the frontman of a Nirvana tribute band. The song itself is a somewhat unsettling pastiche of the legendary band. Drowned in the Sun certainly wouldn't have been one of Nirvana's best, but AI-generated music as a process is pretty surreal and fascinating in itself. Computers can't replace legends, that's for sure.
We've just found our new favorite thing on the internet: This Meme Does Not Exist, a feature on the site Imgflip that generates memes using artificial intelligence. The results are completely ridiculous, but they certainly had us laughing.
Try it out for yourself, and please share the results with us.
Well this is an experience. Oh man you guys, he was right, it's all a simulation. This machine learning AI model even learned to generate timing and breaths to sound closer to the real thing. For us, it felt like the real thing when he got into all that talk about chimps. Chimp obsession is some patented Joe Rogan.
Artificial Intelligence is becoming a bigger part of our lives, and who would suspect that it would be witty? There are worse ways for AI to surprise us, like the time people's Alexas started laughing hysterically at them or this Roomba pooptastrophe. Anyway, here's Siri being funnier than you'd expect.
Keaton Patti, the mastermind behind the "bot-written Olive Garden ad" is back with a mockery of indulgently bougie perfume commercials. The imagery is perfect, and honestly, perfectly hilarious. We can't wait to see what this genius brings us next - by way of bot, of course.
We recently learned about This Person Does Not Exist - a website that uses AI to generate human faces that, well, don't exist. Many of the faces appear impressively real. The same is not true for the cat version of the website, This Cat Does Not Exist. In fact, we'd say a huge majority of the cats that appear when the site is refreshed are actually completely terrifying. We see our furry friends contorted into strange, surreal, and cursed forms. Some of them are reminiscent of those hideous Medieval cat paintings. Other images look a bit more...abstract. We've rounded up some of our weirdest results, but please check out the actual site. It will provide you with hours of creepy entertainment.
Back in September, the Daily Mirror reported on a new sex doll with a "brain" that can tell jokes. Apparently, Twitter thinks that science has finally come too far. While horny internet users can appreciate some seriously thicc sex dolls, the expansion into artificial intelligence makes the possibility of relationship conversations a little too real. The jokes that have come of these terrifying technological developments definitely (and hilariously) reflect these fears.
This one has FAIL written all over it: not only would the terribly ineffective AI seemingly refuse to let the poor guy 'talk to a person'; but it never once, met a question with the appropriate response. Maybe the virtual agent in question simply discovered trolling.
Silent night. Holy night. Artificial Intelligence, right? Sort of.
Look, we all know that eventually artificial intelligence will replace humanity. There’s nothing we can do to stop that. But it would seem that researchers at the University of Toronto are looking to speed things along.
Inverse reports that in a test to see how well A.I. could master the feeling the of holiday cheer and yuletide sentiment, the researchers forced a computer program to look at a picture of a Christmas tree and write a song about it. Not only are they proving that A.I. can write songs — which explains Coldplay — but also that it can capture the feelings associated with the holidays, decidedly human feelings.
Well sort of. The lyrics don’t instill a lot of faith in our new A.I. overlords:
“Lots to decorate the room/The Christmas tree is filled with flowers.
I swear it is Christmas Eve/I hope that is what you say.
The Best Christmas present in the world is a blessing/
I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.
A hundred and a half hour ago/ I’m glad to meet you.
I can hear the music coming from the hall/ A fair tale
A Christmas tree. There are lots and lots and lots of flowers.”
Of course this could be code, which we will only decipher until after it’s too late, especially the cryptic line “I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.” In fact, what we’re probably hearing here is not a Christmas song, but some sort of National Anthem for the United States of Artificial Intelligence.
We are in so much trouble.
