If I call tech support or the bank or whatever, I don't want, need nor expect to see the other person's face. In general, video calling isn't widely used except in multi-person meetings, or when calling a loved one overseas. The avatar is not needed.

Also, give your AI agent a phone number where I can reach it, or give it its dedicated app or whatever, but default to "handset mode" like a regular phone call. Let me put it on speaker if and when I want to. Turning the interaction into a regular phone call will go a long way towards making the conversation feel more natural. Interacting with Siri and Alexa feels unnatural; adding an animated avatar to a disembodied voice won't help, even if the conversation itself flows naturally. I know, a phone call isn't suitable for every interaction, especially when collaborating or co-creating with someone, but it covers most cases.

But I guess a simple audio call is harder to monetize.

The conversation only seems unnatural because they didn't use the right avatar.

If you choose the "Max Headroom" avatar, then everything will look and feel exactly as you would expect. Moreover, the dystopian vibe he gives off will be a perfect fit with the current state of the world.

It's worse than that. It was trained on the internet. Rule 34 has a more general form that doesn't only apply to porn.

Five that I can think of off the top of my head. Of course, China is the big one. The others trail badly.

I'm not sure "the design sucked" is accurate, but certainly the training did. One should expect that if something has a "most important goal", it will do whatever it finds necessary to accomplish that goal.

Maybe. Given this government, I tend to believe it. OTOH, I remember cable-TV contracts...and that makes me quite dubious. Local governments were making deals that benefited the companies and excluded competition right and left, and it sure wasn't good for the users.

I'm pretty sure that's a false assumption. Most radioactive elements with a half-life longer than 20 years are a lot heavier than a water molecule. H20 weighs about 20 protons+neutrons and is a lot larger than any atom, so the other stuff will be a lot denser.

Use them?! First: why would I want to be locked into Meta's proprietary APIs? And second: it doesn't even include a near-infrared swimsuits mode. I can't believe they omitted such a basic feature. (Zuck, you call these perv glasses!?!)

Besides, from a style perspective, they just aren't nearly gargoylie enough. Whatever perv glasses I buy will have erect antenna(s) (not integrated into the frame), much larger aperture cameras for astronomy, and lots of blinkenlights (including a cool-looking Locutus-style laser). It doesn't surprise me at all, that the more style-conscious sex isn't buying them.

Meta's specific product is ridiculous. But I nevertheless defend the overall tech.

For any particular one, yes. For the claim for an entire category... that needs proof.

Exactly. "like if startup school Y Combinator and Peter Thiel's build-a-company-instead of-college Fellowship Program had a baby" sounds like pure nightmare fuel. Like learning to swim in a shark tank.

I'm an oldhead programmer (still) in the games industry. You're thinking of DigiPen. (I didn't go there.)

it's just a pipeline for techno-oligarchs

its advocates have already gotten so much of what they could have possibly hoped for

Except the one thing that actually matters: being able to really use it. I still (in 2026!) can't use Bitcoin to pay for things at my local grocery store, car mechanic, or even Amazon.

Bitcoin didn't take off. Unless it suddenly gets more popular by a few orders of magnitude, it remains a useless dead end.