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Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

martinruenz.de

41–50 of 345 posts

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skynet v. 0.1 didn't build itself. Clearly, though, once it becomes a minimum viable product, it will produce the next generations of itself. Or will it? If it's an AI intent on approximating human speech processing, why should it be any good at programming? See also https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-... .

I wonder what makes people think that an AI needs to be able to code to improve itself. I don't see infant brains "programming" themselves to get better. The next step in programming is probably not anything like programming. Machine learning certainly isn't. Creating a neural net that achieves superhuman image recognition takes 30 lines of code in keras. And terabytes of training data. But the programming doesn't lo…

Thinking about the way we learn, I'd say it is a LOT like programming ourselves. Study and Practice both have aspects of learning to do steps in a mechanism to achieve an outcome, and each of us has to build that mechanism from scratch. The difference is that not all of us need to be self aware for the process to continue working. However, the best of us seem to have very detailed systems worked out for "programming ourselves".

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#43
post #12

Or that just means that we still call the device in our pocket a "phone" for legacy reasons. If we are okay with having a third party handles our messages, VoIP etc, why not the phone app?

I don't carry a phone in my pocket, I carry a personal computer that also makes voices calls over cellular networks.

Obligatory link to Cory Doctorow's 'War on General Computing': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#44
post #2

I don't agree. It's simply that some vendors are untrustworthy. Frankly if the telephone app on my "phone" stopped working I wonder how long it would take me to notice.

I'd only notice when other people start complaining they can't get hold of me... which frankly I'd be okay with 99% of the time. The thing I hate about the phone is the expectation that I'll reply right away and participate in a phone call that's intrusive of my time. Frankly, I find a lot of people feel the same way about texting or emails. I have quite a lot of people that text me and if I haven't replied within a minute or two I get the "well?" or "can I get a response?"... "Yes, and I'll respond when I'm good and ready! Lest I need to remind you that my phone is for my benefit, not everyone else's!"

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skynet v. 0.1 didn't build itself. Clearly, though, once it becomes a minimum viable product, it will produce the next generations of itself. Or will it? If it's an AI intent on approximating human speech processing, why should it be any good at programming? See also https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-... .

I wonder what makes people think that an AI needs to be able to code to improve itself. I don't see infant brains "programming" themselves to get better. The next step in programming is probably not anything like programming. Machine learning certainly isn't. Creating a neural net that achieves superhuman image recognition takes 30 lines of code in keras. And terabytes of training data. But the programming doesn't lo…

The most obvious source of runaway (as opposed to incremental) improvement would be an AI written by humans that is better at writing AIs than humans are. It could then write an AI even better than itself recursively until diminishing returns are reached, causing a near instantaneous jump in its intelligence.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#46
post #25

This why we need [edit] GDPR. Next time someone tries to harvest my personal data using an "all-inclusive" EULA I'm going to sue his ass in EU-land.

GPDR is actually GDPR in case you are trying to read up on what that means and don't know already.

Thanks. I like GDPR anyway. Makes me think God Damn Privacy Rules, and we're increasingly lacking in effective ones.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#47
post #12

Or that just means that we still call the device in our pocket a "phone" for legacy reasons. If we are okay with having a third party handles our messages, VoIP etc, why not the phone app?

I don't carry a phone in my pocket, I carry a personal computer that also makes voices calls over cellular networks.

I've been joking lately that there is a new one syllable word for "personal computer": phone. At the current rate that's how the language will shift. I suppose we'll know if people start referring to things like "macOS deskphones" and think "laptop" always meant "laptop phone". :)

It's like those futurist ads from the 50s (and 80s/90s) AT&T that soon there will be phones capable of amazing things everywhere in our lives, except they aren't all AT&T branded and most of them started with the name "personal computer". (Though savor the irony that Ma Bell's legacy lives on in Linux by way of Bell Labs' contributions to Unix.)

Then again, I'm also strongly for renaming 3D Printers to facsimile machines because the word fax is too useful to lose to ancient toner-based modem printers.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#49
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So build your own. http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-Your-Own-Smartphone/ Manufacturers are under no obligation to provide you with a device to your particular specification, unless of course you are the one paying them under contract them to do so.

> Manufacturers are under no obligation to provide you with a device to your particular specification I don't think wishing that a niche was filled constitutes assuming that manufacturers have any obligation.

A niche that appeals to almost no one and alienates the telcos that manufacturers partner with.

So it looks like the free market is working in this case.

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