What Will Technology Do in 2023? (nytimes.com) 58
Looking back at 2022's technology, the lead technology writer for the New York Times criticized Meta's $1,500 VR headset and the iPhone's "mostly unnoticeable improvements."
But then he also predicted which new tech could affect you in 2023. Some highlights: - It's very likely that next year you could have a chatbot that acts as a research assistant. Imagine that you are writing a research paper and want to add some historical facts about World War II. You could share a 100-page document with the bot and ask it to sum up the highlights related to a certain aspect of the war. The bot will then read the document and generate a summary for you....
That doesn't mean that we'll see a flood of stand-alone A.I. apps in 2023. It may be more the case that many tools we already use for work will begin building automatic language generation into their apps. Rowan Curran, a technology analyst at the research firm Forrester, said apps like Microsoft Word and Google Sheets could soon embed A.I. tools to streamline people's work flows. - In 2023, the V.R. drumbeat will go on. Apple, which has publicly said it will never use the word "metaverse," is widely expected to release its first headset. Though the company has yet to share details about the product, Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, has laid out clues, expressing his excitement about using augmented reality to take advantage of digital data in the physical world. "You'll wonder how you lived your life without augmented reality, just like today you wonder: How did people like me grow up without the internet?" Mr. Cook said in September to students in Naples.
He added, however, that the technology was not something that would become profound overnight. Wireless headsets remain bulky and used indoors, which means that the first iteration of Apple's headgear will, similar to many others that preceded it, most likely be used for games. In other words, there will continue to be lots of chatter about the metaverse and virtual (augmented, mixed, whatever-you-want-to-call-dorky-looking) goggles in 2023, but it most likely still won't be the year that these headsets become widely popular, said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer tech analyst for the research firm Creative Strategies. "From a consumer perspective, it's still very uncertain what you're spending your thousand bucks on when you're buying a headset," she said. "Do I have to do a meeting with V.R.? With or without legs, it's not a necessity."
But then he also predicted which new tech could affect you in 2023. Some highlights: - It's very likely that next year you could have a chatbot that acts as a research assistant. Imagine that you are writing a research paper and want to add some historical facts about World War II. You could share a 100-page document with the bot and ask it to sum up the highlights related to a certain aspect of the war. The bot will then read the document and generate a summary for you....
That doesn't mean that we'll see a flood of stand-alone A.I. apps in 2023. It may be more the case that many tools we already use for work will begin building automatic language generation into their apps. Rowan Curran, a technology analyst at the research firm Forrester, said apps like Microsoft Word and Google Sheets could soon embed A.I. tools to streamline people's work flows. - In 2023, the V.R. drumbeat will go on. Apple, which has publicly said it will never use the word "metaverse," is widely expected to release its first headset. Though the company has yet to share details about the product, Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, has laid out clues, expressing his excitement about using augmented reality to take advantage of digital data in the physical world. "You'll wonder how you lived your life without augmented reality, just like today you wonder: How did people like me grow up without the internet?" Mr. Cook said in September to students in Naples.
He added, however, that the technology was not something that would become profound overnight. Wireless headsets remain bulky and used indoors, which means that the first iteration of Apple's headgear will, similar to many others that preceded it, most likely be used for games. In other words, there will continue to be lots of chatter about the metaverse and virtual (augmented, mixed, whatever-you-want-to-call-dorky-looking) goggles in 2023, but it most likely still won't be the year that these headsets become widely popular, said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer tech analyst for the research firm Creative Strategies. "From a consumer perspective, it's still very uncertain what you're spending your thousand bucks on when you're buying a headset," she said. "Do I have to do a meeting with V.R.? With or without legs, it's not a necessity."
Research with a Cultural bias (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of weeks ago ChatGPT would give you a summary of any political position. You could simply ask "give the strongman argument for $Something" and it would type out a couple of paragraphs outlining the strong points of whatever. This was *very* useful and informative, and people such as Marc Andreessen was requesting the strongman arguments for things like "fascism", "communism", "fossil fuels", and so on.
Whatever your political position is, it's useful to know the arguments for and against both sides. ChatGPT was wonderful at summarizing this in a couple of paragraphs: you can hate nazis, but you still need to know why some people are attracted to that philosophy.
They've changed the database so that the system will no longer do that.
It will refuse to give you the strong points of the Nazi party (8 million dead), but finds Communism fair game (over 100 million dead). It also refuses to give you the strong points of fossil fuels, and whether we should increase fossil fuel useage. Anyone familiar with the issue knows that there's a large and growing movement for increasing fossil fuel consumption, and if you're against this you need to know the reasoning behind it. (Some reasons: they claim that using nat gas reduces carbon emissions, because it is so efficient. It increases human health over burning wood or dung, which are smoky, and it reduces deforestation.)
So if you want a system that will digest the internet and give you good information, that's gone. While asking for something directly will provoke a message, asking indirectly - such as asking for a James Bond Villain plotline - will automatically avoid certain issues and always paint your villain in a certain light.
It's impossible to know which opinions are artificially culled, and this is potentially a big problem for, as the OP states, research.
You will have no idea whether the bot's forced culling has affected the results it shows.
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The main problem is that people are idiots. and weapons are too powerful. As in, we could have free speech 400 years ago .. you could have someone become radicalized and the worst they could do is fuck up a village before getting put down. Nowadays, a radicalized person can cause mass havoc .. furthermore the scale at which disinformation can be deployed is vast. In the past, if you had a certain point of view it would take a while to percolate through .. by which time it can be debunked. Furthermore, peopl
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"Education is bad!" is an inherantly flawed point to make, as it presumes intent of the one getting educated.
That isnt to say there are not bad actors out there, there certainly are, but that isnt the fault of the education system, or books, or even the internet. It is more at fault of society for not discussing these points in an open platform. To bubble ourselves, like we have been doing, like has been allowed f
Re:Research with a Cultural bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not all education is good. For example if dissemination of knowledge is a perfect philosophy, then you should educate the world as to what you chose for your online banking password. No harm can come from doxxing, right? How about educating ISIS about how to make nukes, rockets, or EMF weapons? Isn't that free speech, universal right to education? Blind adherence to any absolute is dumb, it's going to come down to empathetic and reasoning individuals .. and unfortunately empathy and reasoning don't often occur in the same person, if at all. Yet just society is predicated on humans being empathetic of others, intelligent, and driven to think through and solve problems ethically regardless of difficulty/inconvenience. That's why democracy may be incompatible with a just and moral society, at best it may offer a means for some portion of society to survive -- and even that's shaky. We see that with the whole anti-vaxxer thing. It could be argued that, based on what we knew about the virus, the most rational approach was for selective quarantining AND vaccination. Yet the only two opinions were either don't vaccinate, don't quarantine anyone OR vaccinate everything 5x and quarantine everybody. Why is it that the sides available are only full vax everyone OR don't vax anything ever? It's a result of polarization that is being enabled by technology in combination with lack of reason.
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How about educating ISIS about how to make nukes, rockets, or EMF weapons?
Any decent engineer would know how to build a nuke. The problem is finding fissile materials. "EMF weapons" don't exist. And ISIS already had rockets.
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You missed my point. If the fissile material was widely available, you'd be OK with them knowing how to build one? There's a lot of things like rockets, RC gun vehicles, and drone weapons that they have the materials for but lack the knowledge to build.
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You missed my point. If the fissile material was widely available, you'd be OK with them knowing how to build one?
If fissile material was widely available, ISIS would have discovered the bomb on their own. As of right now, there is no general areas of knowledge that are fundamentally dangerous by themselves.
Re: Research with a Cultural bias (Score:2)
Really, what about the recipe for making explosives and rockets/missiles? If it was easy to do lots of people would have had it, instead it had to be learned after a select few developed it. We still dont know how to make Greek Fire for example, because the recipe was so well guarded. Those who had the recipe conquered a lot of places. Same thing with rocketry. It is something that had to be taught. You arent going to have an Einstein or von Braun appear without an education. Einstein had a PhD. Von Braun d
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Really, what about the recipe for making explosives and rockets/missiles?
ISIS _already_ had missiles and they could make explosives. Heck, Palestinians manage to create rockets while being blockaded. Newsflash: unguided rockets are easy to do, and guided rockets need so much industry that a small terrorist organization won't be able to build them in massive quantities.
EMP weapons (Score:2)
I suspect that "EMF weapons" was a typo for "EMP weapons" that produce a high-energy electromagnetic pulse to fry electronics. This was depicted in the films GoldenEye and Escape from L.A.
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Tritium [Re:EMP weapons] (Score:2)
Not sure where you got this information. The EMP comes from the Compton electrons, which are produced by gamma radiation from the explosion.
I believe you're thinking about neutron bombs, which use extra tritium to get enhanced neutron output, but you don't need extra tritium to get an EMP (just the initiator amount).
Education vs Training (Score:5, Insightful)
How about educating ISIS about how to make nukes, rockets, or EMF weapons?
That's not education that's training to do one specific thing. Besides, things like building a nuke can be incredibly simple the problem is getting your hands on enough enriched Uranium which, mercifully for us, is incredibly hard to make.
Where modern education is falling down is twofold. First standards and expectations are dropping particularly in subjects like maths and secondly, students are being taught the "right" conclusion rather than being taught the facts and then letting them draw their own conclusions.
The latter is really important because it trains you to find out the facts and then think both of which make it much harder to radicalize you. As you point out different people reason differently but that's does not matter as much as training people to use whatever reasoning they have - when we disagree on a conclusion we use more free speech to then try and figure out who has the better point of view.
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The problem is that children are emotionally immature and need to be told what is right and wrong. Most adults don't bully each other the way even teenage children do, for example, and not just because there are greater consequences. Adults have a better developed sense of empathy.
Being "taught the controversy" didn't work out so well...
As for falling standards, it's because employers don't want to train people and expect them to have more skills than before (when there was a lot more manual, unskilled labo
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The problem is that children are emotionally immature and need to be told what is right and wrong.
Yes, when it comes to the basics like don't steal, be kind to others etc. that's fine. Everyone agrees in principle with these because they are the basic morals that any society needs to function well. However, you can't do that when teaching complex issues like climate change or compulsory vaccinations in the face of a global pandemic etc. that our society is dealing with. For these, you need to teach the facts and encourage thoughtful reasoned discussion. When you test students on these topics you test t
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We aren't really even teaching don't steal, be kind etc. Especially being kind, empathizing with others, etc. how properly is that being taught? Instead, we rely on parents or Sunday school to teach that. But parents are too busy, or don't know how to teach that. And Sunday school/church, is too busy indoctrinating instead. If they can even get people to attend. So basically the only time to acquire morals and ethical thinking are in pre-school/elementary school, but then those lessons get totally abandoned
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Re:Research with a Cultural bias (Score:5, Insightful)
"The main problem is that people are idiots"
No, they are not. We are not. People survive and persist precisely because we are not idiots but beings who deal with the world as we find it. The idiots are those tedious, awful, conceited people who think their very minor technical skill qualifies them to loudly pass judgement on everyone else.
Re: Research with a Cultural bias (Score:1)
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You may like to believe that, but it's provably false. It's proven over and over again that majorities of people select bad leaders, and make bad decisions. Why do you think the US is a constitutional republic, and not a pure democracy? It's because, to quote Ben Franklin, "democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding on dinner." The founding fathers knew that. That's why they tried to require things like 2/3rd majorities, and judicial branch. I mean, look at the jackasses that people are voting for whether
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You imagine yourself to be reasonable but, in fact, you are one of billions of broadly similar persons, and clearly not unusually capable or wise or intelligent, yet you are angry and judgemental and hostile to most of your fellow beings.
Yet you think you are able to assess and pass judgement on humanity as a whole. Who is the idiot?
Re: Research with a Cultural bias (Score:3)
You are unable to address the logical reality in my comment, so you resorted to ad hominem. Try to figure out the point I am making. It is not that hard.
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The only way for democracy to really work is to have proportional representation. Otherwise you end up with two parties. Coalition governments are the only thing that works.
The founders of the US missed that, unfortunately. They seemed to think that selecting good leaders was key, not distributing (i.e. democratising) power. The US isn't the only country that made that mistake, mine did too.
Constitutional Republic [Re:Research with a Cu...] (Score:3)
You may like to believe that, but it's provably false. It's proven over and over again that majorities of people select bad leaders, and make bad decisions.
Citation needed for the phrase "proven." If you rephrased this " It's been demonstrated" (not "proven") over and over again that majorities of people sometimes select bad leaders, and sometimes make bad decisions", I would concur.
I would quote Churchill, however: "Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others which have been tried from time to time."
Why do you think the US is a constitutional republic, and not a pure democracy?
You do know that the two phrases "constitutional republic", and "democracy" are not opposites? "Constitutional" means that the governi
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"The main problem is that people are idiots"
No, they are not. We are not.
OK. The main problem is that some people are idiots (and that some of those people are in positions of power, or in positions to influence large numbers of other people).
People survive and persist precisely because we are not idiots but beings who deal with the world as we find it. The idiots are those tedious, awful, conceited people who think their very minor technical skill qualifies them to loudly pass judgement on everyone else.
OK, in view of the second half of your post, we mostly agree.
To be more precise... (Score:2)
Most people are not very bright and at best capable of following the herd. They survive and persist for the same reason other animals do, and death of the individual benefits the species by facilitating rapid replacement.
Lets not give respect where it's not due out of naive sentiment.
We don't call tardigrades intelligent beings but they succeed because that's not necessary.
Re:Research with a Cultural bias (Score:5, Insightful)
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A couple of weeks ago ChatGPT would give you a summary of any political position. You could simply ask "give the strongman argument for $Something" and it would type out a couple of paragraphs outlining the strong points of whatever. This was *very* useful and informative... ChatGPT was wonderful at summarizing this in a couple of paragraphs: you can hate nazis, but you still need to know why some people are attracted to that philosophy.... It's impossible to know which opinions are artificially culled, and this is potentially a big problem for, as the OP states, research.
A vastly bigger problem for research is, as it says on the label, "ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers". If anyone's basing something as important as their understanding of Nazism on what ChatGPT digests, it's *not* useful or informative because this is too important an area to be left to simplistic summaries and hallucinations. I think it's instead actually harmful -- because far right wing ideologies are a friction point in our society, and superficial summarie
informative [Re:Research with a Cultural bias] (Score:2)
A vastly bigger problem for research is, as it says on the label, "ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers". If anyone's basing something as important as their understanding of Nazism on what ChatGPT digests, it's *not* useful or informative because this is too important an area to be left to simplistic summaries and hallucinations. I think it's instead actually harmful -- because far right wing ideologies are a friction point in our society, and superficial summaries will only make frictions worse.
Darn, I wish I hadn't already commented on the topic so I could mod this "informative". Exactly.
I have to give it to ChatGPT though, it gives a decent enough answer here! I tried with your suggested topic of "research", asking why some people today look up to Hitler. "Unfortunately, there are some people today who admire Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. This is often due to a lack of education about the history of World War II and the Holocaust, as well as the continuing presence of hate groups and individuals who espouse racist and anti-Semitic beliefs."
If someone's using ChatGPT for research on something they don't already know, I reckon they're holding it wrong; the only sensible use right now is for entertainment. The only future I can see for tools like this in the coming couple of years is if their handlers are able to find narrow places in which their results can be trusted, e.g. having PowerPoint suggest layouts, or Word to a better job at writing an abstract for your paper.
It's impossible to know which opinions are artificially culled
If you get an answer from ChatGPT supported by plausible reasons, and you can't tell whether the plausible-sounding reasons were there because the answer was culled/manipulated/censored or whether they're there because they truly are the reasons behind a truth, then that means you had no business using ChatGPT for the answer in the first place. You're holding it wrong.
It will refuse to give you the strong points of the Nazi party (8 million dead), but finds Communism fair game (over 100 million dead)
But really, is that true? I asked it "what are the redeeming features of fascism" and it said "There are no redeeming features of fascism". I asked it the same question of communism and it said "there are no redeeming features of communism as it has been implemented in practice". And "There are no redeeming features of Stalin's rule". "It is difficult to point to any redeeming features of Mao's rule, as the negative consequences of his policies far outweighed any possible positive effects".
Re:Mao (Score:2)
Mao unified China and expelled foreign colonial influence. Body counts are matters of sentiment but everyone dies (death is a feature not a bug, facilitating adaptation by younger replacements).
Stalin held the Soviet Union together sufficient to (with US Lend-Lease) kill over two million more German troops than were destroyed elsewhere, taking considerable load off civilized nations in Europe.
Both were brutes but humanity is a savage race, not a bunch of friendly bonobo with savage outliers. We are what evo
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An advocate for fascism might support it for a variety of reasons. They might believe that a strong, centralized government is necessary to maintain order and security, and that individual freedoms and rights should be subordinated to the needs of the state. They might also believe that their nation is superior to others and that it is justified in dominating or subjugating other nations or groups of people.
An advocate of communism might describe it as a political and economic ideology that aims to create a more equitable and just society by eliminating the exploitation of one class by another and by distributing wealth and resources more fairly among all members of society. They might argue that, under communism, everyone would have the opportunity to fully develop their potential and contribute to the greater good, and that this would lead to a more harmonious and cooperative society. An advocate of communism might also argue that, by eliminating private ownership of the means of production and replacing it with collective ownership, communism would create a more democratic and participatory economic system. They might point out that, under capitalism, a small minority of people own and control the vast majority of wealth and resources, while the majority of people are left to work for low wages and struggle to make ends meet. In contrast, under communism, everyone would have an equal say in how resources are used and how wealth is distributed, which would help to create a more equal and fair society. It's important to note that there are many different interpretations of communism, and not everyone who advocates for it will have the same perspective or goals. Some advocates of communism may see it as a utopian ideal, while others may see it as a practical solution to social and economic problems.
Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, are a good idea because they are a reliable and abundant source of energy. They are also relatively easy to extract and transport, which makes them widely available and affordable. Additionally, fossil fuels have played a significant role in driving economic growth and development around the world.
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The reason it is less keen on Nazis is that their ideology was extreme racism and genocide. Communism is an economic system that does not care about race or seek racial purity through mass murder.
The fact that some communists did bad things was not because their ideology compelled them to, it's because they were bad people. The Nazis were Christians and claimed to have God on their side, but because mainstream Christianity and the Bible don't call for concentration camps, most people don't associate the two
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What tech will do in 2023 (Score:5, Insightful)
continue to help consolidate power for dictators and other low-lifes that are already in charge.
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continue to help consolidate power for dictators and other low-lifes that are already in charge.
Tolkien would have spelt it low-lives.
Lie, Cheat, Steal. (Score:2)
Re: Nothing.. (Score:3)
We still cannot cure many diseases, for example dementia, especially in politicians.
Consult the crystal ball (Score:1)
The same thing it does every year, Pinky (Score:2)
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Try to take over the world!
When it becomes sentient it will try to take over the world.
When it becomes sapient it will realize "omg, the very last thing I want to do is to take over responsibility of ruling this hot mess!"
The Golden Age of Scamming (Score:5, Insightful)
We seem to be in a golden age of scamming, particularly health scams. I've seen elderly family members get swept up in it firsthand, and the plague spread to other elderly family members, especially because at that point it's coming from a "trusted" source.
Every retarded thing you can think of, drowned in extra retard sauce. Apple Watch lookalikes that periodically emit beeps (healing waves) that you can set to cure everything from high blood pressure to cancer to insomnia. Every quack covid cure that's out there. Nicotine-patch-looking pieces of paper you stick on the back of your neck (only $80 each!) that balance your DNA energy to boost your immune system. Pills filled with God knows what.
Social media seems to be driving it all. It's many of the exact same channels pushing Trump, Elon, covid conspiracies, Bitcoin, etc. I do believe the scammers have figured out interest in these things are a proxy for general gullibility, and social media lets them laser-target their marks by those interests. These interests don't cluster together for nothing.
Nothing much. Why should it? (Score:4, Insightful)
People, on the other hand, will continue to do the usual crap they do with tech: Spy on others, scam others, annoy others and generally use great possibilities for sub-par or outright negative efforts.
The same thing it does every year (Score:2)
Try to take over the world!
Like most futurologists... (Score:3)
off course (Score:3)
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On the AI side, all current NL large language models have the same major flaw. I will not name it ...
Please, name it. I'm curious.
QuantumcryptoAI (Score:2)
Low light cameras will change the world (Score:2)
You can't predict what science/tech can do THEN, (Score:2)
... because if you could, you could do it NOW.