#24: The Summer News Round-up

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI unfiltered with me Ian Bowie and our resident expert Michael Stormbom. Where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Michael Stormbom
Alright AI Unfiltered is back from its summer break, and we are ready to kick off the fall season here. So to start with a catch-up on what’s been happening over the summer, we’ve had a pretty long summer break there.

Ian Bowie
Let’s go for it. Absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
Well, I mean, before the summer we spoke a bit about deep fakes and the like, you know, the mayor of Kyiv, Klitschko. So he was having having like a zoom call with a mayor of a German city and in about 15 minutes or thereabouts in the mayor of this German city, she realised that she was not talking to the mayor of Kyiv all, it was a some sort of deep fake, like a fake, like a fake call.

Ian Bowie
Wow. Wow.

Michael Stormbom
So just to highlight to me, we talked about the dangers of these deep fakes,

Ian Bowie
So they’ve synthesized his voice.

Michael Stormbom
It’s unclear how they did it they… I mean the Germans themseves call it a deep fake, but how they pulled this impersonation off, I’m not entirely entirely sure, what they say but apparently was realistic enough that it for the for a good 15 minutes. Well, so now of course early earlier on, was it in March, there was that the deep fake of of Zelenskyy that no one believed because it was so poorly made, but yeah, but of course we can make one sufficiently realistically… Which is possibly the case with with this meeting. I think that good definitely get dangerous.

Ian Bowie
It could. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was something in the in the news the other day about? Was it the UN Secretary General, saying that we’re about one heartbeat away from a nuclear war, just because of the potential for these deep fakes and fooling somebody? Yeah. So what about what else? Anything positive?

Michael Stormbom
Anything positive? All of the stuff I saw was fairly, fairly negative, was it? Well, DALL-E, that’s gonna be an upcoming episode. Then one thing that I that caught my eye in this in this era of everything being online and not having physical copies of anything is that well, apparently Sony, they have this sort of PlayStation Network where you can buy movies and, and whatnot. But yes, so an agreement got terminated with a content provider for the PlayStation Store, you’re no longer able to purchase those movies. But if you’ve already purchased them, then they are no longer available.

Ian Bowie
And they’re not available now. Wow.

Michael Stormbom
So I think that highlights the level, the risk in this world where everything is online, you don’t have physical copies of anything. That you paid for something and you think you have it, but yeah, as it turns out, you do not.

Ian Bowie
You’re I must admit, I’ve wondered a little bit about that. I mean, I’ve got a few films in my Apple iMovie collection, not not very many I tend to rent them. Because at the end of the day…

Michael Stormbom
There is some sort of class action lawsuit going around the the use of the word “buy”? No, because of course, because you can buy movies from Apple.

Ian Bowie
You can’t?

Michael Stormbom
You can, but it explicitly states that they have the right to revoke access at any time. So there’s an class action lawsuit in progress around that the use of the word “buy” there because that’s maybe not how people would interpret the word “buy”.

Ian Bowie
Yeah no, when you buy something you only after bought it surely. Yeah. Oh, that forget it. And in that case….

Michael Stormbom
there’s no point in buying because….

Ian Bowie
No, absolutely not. No. Well, I tend to rent I’ve bought I don’t know how many I’ve got I might have about five in my so called collection. One of those was a mistake because it was a shit film. Yeah. But I actually just don’t see the point in owning stuff. You know if you can rent it, rent it.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, indeed. Of course I use mainly Spotify. So yeah, you rarely buy music. Like if it’s an artist that I really like, I make it a point to buy their CD because of course they get at least they get a little bit more.

Ian Bowie
How does that work then? Because like, I mean, I used to be in Spotify, but then I switched across to the good old fruity people. But…

Michael Stormbom
The AI unfiltered podcast is available on both.

Ian Bowie
And that’s right. Sorry, Spotify, but, but he’s on Spotify.

Michael Stormbom
I even have my music on there, you can find it there, so anyway.

Ian Bowie
So what I what I don’t understand is if you… because you can download music to listen offline. Yeah. Right. So is that downloading it’s not downloading onto your Apple, onto your phone or something, is it?

Michael Stormbom
It does it has a local local copy of it.

Ian Bowie
So it’s actually on your phone?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, but I mean the way it works, is that it you need to get online eventually. There’s some sort of limit there. How long you can be offline. So as far as I understand, yeah.

Ian Bowie
No, I just I only did it a couple of times because I thought if I’m flying, and I want to listen to the music that I can just listen to whatever I’ve downloaded for offline listening. Does it work the same with film was then in that case, you know, you can download…

Michael Stormbom
Netflix has some sort of feature…

Ian Bowie
There’s a time limit for how long you can…

Michael Stormbom
Presumably, I’ve never tried it, but yeah.

Ian Bowie
Most flights are not that long. So at least the ones I take. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, that “buy” thing is quite interesting.

Michael Stormbom
Well, yeah, for sure.

Ian Bowie
Absolutely. But if you’re…

Michael Stormbom
There was another example of that. It was from the game world, that Ubisoft, one of the larger international game companies. So they’re pulling some pulling some gamesm and in one of these gaming. There’s a lot of these gaming platforms like Steam. That’s one of the bigger ones, so they pulled some games from there and then there was a brouhaha because then it wouldn’t, because the the way they had worded it people took it to mean that not even if you’d already purchased it to Steam would it be available? Right? So people are quite upset about it. But then Ubisoft clarified that of course if you have purchased it already then you can still download it. So I think…

Ian Bowie
Maybe we should all think about going back to CDs. Although I have to say I must say…

Michael Stormbom
I have an idea of what we we sell episodes of AI Unfiltered on vinyl.

Ian Bowie
On what?

Michael Stormbom
Vinyl. You know.

Ian Bowie
Oh vinyl!

Michael Stormbom
Yes. Why not? The AI unfiltered podcast on vinyl.

Ian Bowie
I know the guys in Turku that could put it onto vinyl for us.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, we could sell it on the on the website. Yeah, well, why not. Own your own vintage podcast episode on vinyl.

Ian Bowie
Listen to us. On your vinyl record player. Yeah, that’s fine. Why not?

Michael Stormbom
It has superior audio quality. Not really. But long story short. Be careful if you buy online digital content.

Ian Bowie
Because somebody might steal it from you bloody hell.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Or revoke your access to it. And yeah, then you don’t have it even though you paid money for it.

Ian Bowie
So think about all the funny people who bought NFTs for millions. Haha.

Michael Stormbom
Well, and if well, NFTs are supposed to. Well, that’s just you can prove ownership of a of a thing but…

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but I mean, it’s digital, innit. Sure. Yeah. But I suppose it’s like these people often say yes, but I might have sent a couple of million on NFTs but it wasn’t my only couple of million. Plenty more where that came from.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. Anyway, if you if you buy something in a online shop, then you might lose access to it.

Ian Bowie
Only buy things that you can touch physically. Yes. Which is why the metaverse is never going to work.

Michael Stormbom
No and you’ll hear more about that in an upcoming episode. Yeah, yeah. No, but the other… Yeah. So basically, some researchers in China claimed that they have created so they call it a sort of mind reading, artificial capability, which can be used to measure basically how loyal citizen is to the Chinese Communist Party, is what they say. But apparently that video was then subsequently deleted. People were not too happy about that one. Obviously, people are, since it was pretty light on detail. People, I think are quite skeptical. What does that actually mean in practice, but it sounded quite interesting.

Ian Bowie
Well, you lost me with the mind reading part. If you say mind reading and that’s, it’s over as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I you know, eye movements and, you know, if you start sweating that I can follow, or fidgeting you know, like body movements, stuff like that. Yeah. But not mind reading. Sorry. No.

Michael Stormbom
No, indeed. That leads nicely nicely into this other other thing that is over the summer, which is that Microsoft they of course, they do a lot of AI stuff, but they’re and they’ve done apparently a sort ofemotional recognition thing, but they are now retiring that one because basically it does not work reliably enough.

Ian Bowie
At the moment.

Michael Stormbom
At the moment, and then what they said in this, I read the press release, it basically didn’t. There wasn’t really a consensus on how to do it. It was just wildly different opinions and the research just…

Ian Bowie
Isn’t that just sort of a more advanced version of the old lie detector.

Michael Stormbom
But lie detectors are not reliable at all.

Ian Bowie
No, they’re not. That’s right. So why did they keep using them?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, and you know, I think they’ve been watching too much TV. Now. But I mean, apparently the science just isn’t there to support using AI for emotional recognition. So looking at people’s facial expressions, saying, oh, this person is… they just couldn’t do it reliably enough. So and apparently… Well, I mean, obviously of course, ethical considerations as well.

Ian Bowie
It doesn’t mean to say that they’re not doing it right.

Michael Stormbom
No, I don’t know, but they basically, you cannot get it working reliably enough, so they are retiring it. I mean, of course any of this technology and the military wants their hand on it.

Ian Bowie
And governments are absolutely interested in being able to analyze emotional feelings and reactions. Of course, they are, absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
But in that sense. It’s not that surprising, because I mean, there’s been a lot of controversy around this emotional recognition systems that they just do not work reliably enough. The ones that are publicly available anyway.

Ian Bowie
Right. Yeah, but what about the ones that aren’t?

Michael Stormbom
Well, I have an NDA with the CIA, so I can’t comment on that one. No, I don’t actually have one.

Ian Bowie
But, of course, they’re working on it. You know, they’re working well. There are 101 things they don’t want us to know about.

Michael Stormbom
And of course, of course, people are working on using AI for whatever purpose, but yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
But it is also part of why why one could perhaps be a little bit skeptical about this loyalty AI that they have. They’re supposedly…

Ian Bowie
They lost me with the mind reading part, but the rest of it, you know, I mean, that’s going down to the emotional thing. You know, you sort of look at somebody and say, right, you put the camera in front of them and say how loyal are you to the Chinese Communist Party? And then they have to answer and the machine reads haha, they’re lying because there was a little twitch in the bottom left hand corner of their mouth. I mean, I’m not saying it’s even going to come in our lifetime, which with some of the things we say on this podcast is probably getting shorter by the minute, but….

Michael Stormbom
Intelligent speed assistance. How does that sound like a topic?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I saw something about that. It was about the European Union wanting to bring in some kind of regulation.

Michael Stormbom
Well, it’s coming into force in July.

Ian Bowie
What is the regulation? Because I have that on my car.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So the regulation is now that new cars must have must have it. Yeah. All right. Okay. But I think there’s a little bit of controversy around that. Because apparently, I mean, you can have speed assistance is quite enforcing, for example, so you can you can do it such that the car doesn’t…

Ian Bowie
That’s a different thing. I’ve got that as well, that’s a limiter. So for example, if you like in the center of town here, and the very center, it’s 30 kilometers an hour. So if you want to make sure that you don’t go over that you can actually set the limiter, which means that if you press the accelerator pedal, it doesn’t move. You know, the car just stays at 30. Yeah, but then then you’ve also got the adaptive cruise control, which is what this is what they’re talking about.

Michael Stormbom
So one thing well, I mean, apparently it’s a pretty watered down… You can always override it. So that was part of this.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Yeah, that’s my car. That’s what my condo is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. If you’ve got the cruise control set at a certain speed, I think if it goes over, like for example, sometimes you go downhill, and it goes a little bit if it goes about three kilometers over the set speed, beep beep beep, beeps at you.

Michael Stormbom
Actually my scooter does that well if you drive downhill, so because…. that’s like, whoa dude, slow down.

Ian Bowie
Classic. But actually, that kind of sort of intelligent cruise control. It’s, it’s quite interesting because I use it. And you can set it to different distances. There’s there’s a maximum distance and then I’ll have it shorter and a little bit shorter through the three settings. If you’ve got it on the max, and you’re driving and of course, this is part of the problem. With this kind of technology you you don’t pay as much attention as you would, because you know, you’ve got this system. And then suddenly, you’ve got it set at 100. And then you suddenly think, well, why am I going so slowly? And you look. Oh, shit, it’s only 80. Because there’s a great big truck in front of you and you weren’t paying attention. But the problem that I’ve noticed is, I mean it is good because of course it stops you from running into the back of the truck. But when you then think, I’ll overtake the truck, you pull out, there is a little bit of delay before it starts gathering speed. And of course if you pull out into the fast lane of a motorway, often something coming up behind you at a 100 or even more sometimes. So actually, relying on it completely is probably a bit of a mistake and little bit dangerous actually only

Michael Stormbom
when you have the mix of humans and automated system that can get interesting.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, it does. Yeah. There’s a long way to go. This technology, yeah, yes.

Michael Stormbom
But I mean, certainly there’s a lot where you can have a lot of places where you can use technology to make the roads safer for sure.

Ian Bowie
There’s a lot of places where you can use it. I mean, like I say, you know, my car’s got pretty much everything you can possibly have. It’s also got lane assistance. It’s got park assistance, where you just you know it’ll find a car parking space for you and put you in it. But the trouble is that what I’ve noticed… I mean, I don’t think I’m the only one but you kind of stop concentrating. And that’s not good. If you’re behind the wheel of a car you need to be present.

Michael Stormbom
For sure. And I mean, tthey’ve done research on this like people talking on the phone.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, well, of course. I mean, that’s, that’s totally out of order.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah no but I mean even having some sort of hands free set. I mean, even that is bad for your concentration.

Ian Bowie
Oh, yes. Yeah. Even messing with the steering wheel controls to change a radio station or adjust the volume.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, for sure.

Ian Bowie
Anything.

Michael Stormbom
Anything can mess up concentration. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
So actually, there’s a case for only manufacturing cars with zero goodies on that can possibly take your attention off the road.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, yeah. So, people, keep your eyes on the road.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, you should. But I mean, I’m guilty as well. You get distracted because you think the technology is going to save you. It’s just about pay attention. Be present. Be present. Yes. Yeah, you know, you’re you’re you’re ultimately still in control.

Michael Stormbom
If you’re listening to this podcast while driving. What are you doing? Turn off the radio, turn off. Turn this off. Download the episode and listen to us later.

Ian Bowie
Yes. Yeah. from one thing to another. Amazon apparently going into housecleaning.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So they acquired Roomba. Yeah. And people have some concerns about it.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, yeah, I read that. I thought it was quite interesting. Yeah. Amazon are gonna hoover up more information about you in your own home.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, and get make use of all the sensors in the… well, this is the concern, they would make use of all the sensors in the Roombas too. And they can get your floor plan and check out the… Do you perhaps need to buy something and….

Ian Bowie
There’s probably a camera in there as well. So

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I’m not sure about exactly what sort of sensors, but possibly cameras. Yes.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but I mean, it’s only one sort of step along from Alexa. Isn’t it? Really?

Michael Stormbom
It’s basically the same. I mean, Alex always listens. Yeah. And I mean, there have been cases of accidental purchases when someone that said like, I would like to buy something, without actually wanting to order it, and then Alexa, misheard so to speak. That was…

Ian Bowie
And it ordered it? This is a new one. I mean, what so Alexa can order things for you?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Like Alexa, buy, purchase or whatever from buy me three kilos of dog food from Amazon and shipt it or not, sure you can do that.

Ian Bowie
You’re pulling my chain.

Michael Stormbom
No, not at all.

Ian Bowie
It must be somehow linked to your Amazon account.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, but I mean,

Ian Bowie
Wow.

Michael Stormbom
Well, those were a few stories that caught my eye over the summer. There are a number of things that we’re going to be discussing in upcoming episodes as well. So we’re talking about the metaverse and, of course the image generation is going to be its own thing.

Ian Bowie
The translation episode that we started this summer with. Yeah. Wow. I mean, absolutely fantastic. In my opinion, I mean, I actually took the the transcripts and stuck them into Google Translate, and back translated them into English. And I mean, it all made sense. What came out of the transcripts was was pretty okay.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I think the translated episode worked out quite okay. I think when we set out to do that experiment, I probably a little bit underestimated the amount of manual work it would take to… We didn’t do any in that sense, like corrections of transcriptions or speeches and so forth, but rather, just taking the stuff from one part of the process and putting it into the next one. So taking the, you know, doing the speech to text transcript and taking that and putting it into a machine translation. So there were a lot of manual work involved in that so… Okay, so we’re not quite, we don’t quite have the production machinery yet for it.

Ian Bowie
If you’re reading between the lines here people then what you can understand from this is that actually, it’s Michael who does a lot of the donkey work around here. You know, I just sit in my chair and talk except going back to DALL-E. If you look at the wonderful pictography that we now have for the articles, I’ve written all of those, so I’m not just sitting doing absolutely nothing.

Michael Stormbom
It’s not quite at the level yet where you could, where we could, once we have the episode finished in English that we can automatically have the the French version or the Spanish version. And of course, there are a number of other things like for example, if I say things like “Well, certainly but yeah, but no” and those kind of things and when it translates…

Ian Bowie
Oh, the fillers, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
The fillers. Yeah. And when it translates that it gets a little bit interesting. Confused. Yeah. Yeah. So you could definitely when you listen back to the episode, so

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but still. Yeah, it’s not bad. At all.

Michael Stormbom
Not bad at all. With just a little bit of manual work. I think the other thing that I noticed just listening back to it, I mean, our original idea was to do like half of the episode in English and half in Spanish, but trying that out. I think the voices are a little bit too monotonous. Right. So I think so what we did that first, like with 10 minutes, and in Spanish, and it just, it gets a little bit. It’s not very easy on the ears.

Ian Bowie
But when I listened to the French and the Spanish versions. I mean, I didn’t find the voices… I mean, I, I would have believed, if I hadn’t known I would have believed I was listening to a French or a Spanish person. I mean

Michael Stormbom
Well, it’s probably because of course if you do know then probably you do notice the things that make it sound artificial but right, but it was a deliberate choice to keep it yeah, they’re on four minutes because I think that’s that’s about as much as I could take of those voices.

Ian Bowie
So if you’re wondering what we’re talking about people you go to the translated episode, translation episode, I think we call it.

Michael Stormbom
The translated episode. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Translated episode. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Episode 23 if you’re keeping track.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. So have a listen to that and see what you think if you agree with us, and you can send us your comments. But I personally think it’s absolutely brilliant.

Michael Stormbom
I think it was worthwhile to do the experiment and we’re not that far from having the French version. Just automatically.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Maybe by Christmas,

Michael Stormbom
Maybe by Christmas.

Ian Bowie
You’ve been listening to me, Ian Bowie. And my colleague, Michael Stormbom, on AI unfiltered and for more episodes, please go to aiunfiltered.com. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai