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Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

matthieulc.com

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Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#51

Post by tweetle_beetle »

floren wrote: post #32
rainingmonkey wrote: post #15

What a fascinating intersection of technology and human psychology! "One thing I noticed toward the end is that, even though the robot remained expressive, it started feeling less alive. Early on, its motions surprised me: I had to interpret them, infer intent. But as I internalized how it worked, the prediction error faded Expressiveness is about communicating internal state. But perceived aliveness depends on somet…

Furbies spring to mind... They were a similar shape and size and even had two goggling eyes, but with waggling ears instead of a tentacle. They'd impress you initially but after some experimentation you'd realize they had a basic set of behaviors that were triggered off a combination of simple external stimuli and internal state. (this is the part where somebody stumbles in to say "dOn'T hUmAnS dO ThE sAmE tHiNg????"…

This ground breaking research pushed the limit of human-Furby interactions and interfaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYLBjScgb7o

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#52

Post by ceejayoz »

mattigames wrote: post #35
ceejayoz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like using phones as babysitters, just 100x worse. I don't doubt someone's gonna invent it, but yikes. Imagine telling kiddo their beloved sentient toy is dead because mum and dad can't afford the ever-rising subscription fees anymore.

"Who was your best friend in your childhood?" "The AI teddy bear, definitely, I remember every single ad he would tell me, then I would nag my mom to buy me those toys, good times"

"But then my dad lost his job so we had to kill him to save money. Sometimes I still snuggle his corpse."

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#53

Post by Bluestein »

Sharlin wrote: post #37
rainingmonkey wrote: post #15

What a fascinating intersection of technology and human psychology! "One thing I noticed toward the end is that, even though the robot remained expressive, it started feeling less alive. Early on, its motions surprised me: I had to interpret them, infer intent. But as I internalized how it worked, the prediction error faded Expressiveness is about communicating internal state. But perceived aliveness depends on somet…

People have always been ascribing agency and sapience to things, from fire and flowing water in shamanistic religions, to early automatons that astonished people in the 18th century, to the original rudimentary chatbots, to ChatGPT, to – more or less literally – many other machines that may seem to have a "temperament" at times.

ChatGPT is the new golem.-

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#55

Post by dmonitor »

parpfish wrote: post #38
anotherjesse wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels similar to not finding a game fun once I understand the underly system that generates it. The magic is lessened (even if applying simple rules can generate complex outcomes, it feels determined)

Once you discover any minmaxxing strategy, games change from “explore this world and use your imagination to decide what to do” to “apply this rule or make peace with knowing that you are suboptimal”

a poorly designed game makes applying the rules boring. a fun game makes applying the rules interesting.

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#56

Post by moron4hire »

rainingmonkey wrote: post #15

What a fascinating intersection of technology and human psychology! "One thing I noticed toward the end is that, even though the robot remained expressive, it started feeling less alive. Early on, its motions surprised me: I had to interpret them, infer intent. But as I internalized how it worked, the prediction error faded Expressiveness is about communicating internal state. But perceived aliveness depends on somet…

I've noticed the same thing with voice assistants and constructed languages.

I always set voice assistants to a British accent. It gives enough of a "not from around here" change to the voice that it sounds much more believable to me. I'm sure it's not as believable to an actual British person. But it works for me.

As for conlangs: many years ago, I worked on a game where one of the goals was to have the NPCs dynamically generate dialog. I spent quite a bit of time trying to generate realistic English and despared that it was just never very believable (I was young, I didn't have a good understanding of what was and wasn't possible).

At some point, I don't remember exactly why, I switched to having the NPCs speak a fictional language. It became a puzzle in the game to have to learn this language. But once you did (and it wasn't hard, they couldn't say very many things), it made the characters feel much more believable. Obviously, the whole run-around was just an avoidance of the Uncanny Valley, where the effort of translation distracted you from the fact that it was all constructed. Though now I'm wondering if enough exposure to the game and its language would eventually make you very fluent in it and you would then start noticing it was a construct.

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#58

Post by ben_w »

floren wrote: post #32
rainingmonkey wrote: post #15

What a fascinating intersection of technology and human psychology! "One thing I noticed toward the end is that, even though the robot remained expressive, it started feeling less alive. Early on, its motions surprised me: I had to interpret them, infer intent. But as I internalized how it worked, the prediction error faded Expressiveness is about communicating internal state. But perceived aliveness depends on somet…

Furbies spring to mind... They were a similar shape and size and even had two goggling eyes, but with waggling ears instead of a tentacle. They'd impress you initially but after some experimentation you'd realize they had a basic set of behaviors that were triggered off a combination of simple external stimuli and internal state. (this is the part where somebody stumbles in to say "dOn'T hUmAnS dO ThE sAmE tHiNg????"…

To quote, "if the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t".

So…

> this is the part where somebody stumbles in to say "dOn'T hUmAnS dO ThE sAmE tHiNg????"

…yes, but also no.

Humans will always seem mysterious to other humans, because we're too complex to be modelled by each other. Basic set of behaviours or not.

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#59

Post by ben_w »

Bluestein wrote: post #53
Sharlin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have always been ascribing agency and sapience to things, from fire and flowing water in shamanistic religions, to early automatons that astonished people in the 18th century, to the original rudimentary chatbots, to ChatGPT, to – more or less literally – many other machines that may seem to have a "temperament" at times.

ChatGPT is the new golem.-

Robots put the "go" into "golem".

I'd say ChatGPT is more like the eponymous Sorcerer's Apprentice: just smart enough to cause problems.

Re: Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

#60

Post by lmz »

weikju wrote: post #48
accrual wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! I think the Pixar lamp is a great starting point. Having the robot be able to flex and bend, shake yes/no, look curious or upset, and perhaps even let it control LEDs to express itself.

I’ve seen this from some Apple research lab recently… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3jgCxnlbFY

That is the lamp being referenced in the article.
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