There are 2 different topics here:

1) Humans moving away from reading to listening

2) AI putting professional voice actors out of work

For topic 1 I love the idea that mankind enjoys story telling around the camp fire more than the written word. I will wait for the research and opinion folks to tell me how to think about that.:-)

The rise of AI readers is the more interesting topic to me though. I think we are six months away from being able to train a personal AI on my favorite voice actor and have that AI agent read any text for me. So ... have James Earl Jones read Hobbit for me. I remember the fun we had with Garmin's celebrity voices ... Darth Vader or Wallace of Wallace and Gromit providing driving directions. So, if I have a DRM free version of a book, then I can create an audiobook out if it for free. That is going to kill a lot of the Audiobook market as well. I know this article is panicking about the end of hardback books. In six months, we are going to either read about the return with a vengeance of DRM protection, or a similar article about the catastrophic drop in audiobook sales.

There was a great short story from Ralph Williams called "Business as Usual during Alterations" on how mankind is disrupted through the introduction of a "duplicator". The short story gives a great summary of how disruptive it becomes, and how humans need to change to adapt. I seriously recommend folks read it ...

Pretty much what's happening around us right now.

I am entering the "get off my lawn" stage in life and being ordered off the stage by many younger folks, so take some of what I say with that in mind.

Through my entire career the ACM and Computer Society are where I have gone to be amazed, challenged and forced to re-assess what I know. While 70% of research is crap, agreed, 30% is freaking brilliant, and can leave you stunned and excited considering the possibilities.

It really saddens me to see the way this kind of open ended research being discounted off hand as irrelevant and dated. It feels to me that we have become so enamored with echo chambers that original thought and ideas have become "irrelevant". AI is fantastic at taking what has happened before and repeating it. I find it taking away so much of the mindless grind that it is becoming truly liberating. I believe that that appropriate use of AI frees us up to do so much more of this kind of original thinking.

For folks in the IT industry, I would humbly request everyone to take advantage of the open access to these documents and find at least one idea that challenges you each week. It can only help :-).

Exactly first thought that came to me as well. Said this out aloud to friends around lunch table, and the comment was - in most places nature is integral to what humans consider as "acceptable living conditions"; and that if we factor that in, the % of nature is higher. I dont think I see it that way. I suggested that herds of Bison, Elephants or Wilderbeast shaped the land they live in. The fragile unearthly landscape of places like Bryce Canyon in the US or the wilds of China exist because humans stayed away for the thousands of years they took to form. What would it take for us to live in 30% or 40%, and leave the rest 100% to nature? Can we give up enough to support this?

Could not agree more. There are so many behaviors that we assume are human only - altruism, empathy both within and beyond own species, jealousy - that have been observed in other species. Understanding what "thought" means, how decisions are taken etc. are going to be incredibly important. To your point, there seems to have been some really messy evolution that ended up in what passes for intelligence in humans.

I love the "3 laws of robotics" as a framework for recognizing that some of these must be built into our future AI overlords so that they don't wipe us out just because it was statistically the best way to achieve peace and tranquility. Understanding the "mechanics" of decision making, reasoning, innovation, empathy, etc. something we can build into systems.

In "stranger in a strange land", Heinlein offers this very process definition of "love" - where the happiness of another being becomes important for yours. May be teaching AI to "love" humans is going to be critical for future systems. Today most drivers are biological and driven by the need to ensure success of the species. Abstract love as we see in our pets might be something we want to understand and build into the AI systems of the future.

I wish I had Karma points to upvote you. It's crazy how every post just seems to bring out more crazies . It's not just the death of social discourse; it's like the entire world has been taken over by sugar overdosed ADHD kids :-(

See: https://solidproject.org/

Sir Tim had proposed this a while back and it does work. A group of friends set this up overnight to share info between ourselves on things we could borrow from each other - board games, powertools, etc. Took a couple of hours to set up - mostly because we all love arguing about stupid stuff.

With this tech I could set up my own medical data server if I want,. For my less tech savvy mom I can get her set up on a commercial server. Granting permission can be scripted, and can use credentials managed on a trusted server, so access grants can be automated if I am unconscious; but only to people who have been vetted by an authority I trust. I and my family can always see who was granted access to what data, and we can withdraw access at any time.

Completely decentralized, no single repository. All of the upsides, very few down sides.So why not this? Might it be that no great oligarch (and lets be honest thats what Bezos, Musk and Tim are; and Trump is trying to become) gets to own it?

It would be awesome if smart folks like the ones on Slashdot could get behind a community movement like this, and arm twist the government that is supposed to represent our needs to force hospitals to accept this as an alternative to a centralized on that requires I give up all rights to my own data.

Quick search and the first decent article that came up: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/how-birds-sense-magnetic-field-earth-help-them-navigate

So, like silicon chips and transistors are high energy replacements for low energy neurons, we have created a complex high energy requiring alternative.

Humans could do with some kind of ethical & non "end of the world causing" way we can create completely new organic machines that can do some of these things. It's like Babbage trying to create a thinking machine with the technology he had then. The only difference is we know about the technology to do this now, but don't trust ourselves as a species to let ourselves use it. First use case will probably be an organic cruise missile with huge bird wings >.

Have been in the IT industry for 40 years, and have been involved in tons of major technology overhauls. Every migration starts out with the promise of clean, issue free migration, and every one of them has got bogged down in politics, resistance to change, un-brainwashing folks (convincing legacy system owners to change / convincing the incoming world changers that the world is a little more complicated than think it is). None of this is related to technology - it's just people being people. So ... why is this a surprise?

I think we went overboard a bit in my house. 3 people at home. Devices:

• 2 separate Wifi networks (one for visitors & low-risk stuff, one in "paranoid" mode for home security stuff and others)
• 6 laptops (personal + work)
• 5 smart phones (personal + work)
• 1 WIFI enabled home theatre
• 12 wifi enabled lights
• 2 game consoles
• 4 iPads (dont ask ... its a touchy subject)
• 3 Apple TVs (no smart TV's)
• 1 VR headset (not used in a while - waiting for a "killer app")
• 2 desktop PCs (one gaming, one media streaming)
• 12 home security devices & misc. cameras
• 2 smart thermostats
• garage opener

It is awesome to come to SlashDot and review the awesome, well reasoned arguments

Think you are burying your head in the sand if you think AI is like BlockChain. Treating it like that is going to help you go the way of Circuit City, Borders, Blockbuster and all of the other companies that thought the Internet is just a fad. Forget the ChatGPT and deep fake generators. There are really scary things happening across the board. Look closely at the recent layoffs in HiTech and “knowledge heavy” industries like banking, insurance, etc. In Manufacturing, look closely at the number of jobs being replaced by Robots instead of moving to China.

In the scenario that that is being discussed here, running genetic simulations of multiple generations of genetic manipulation, playing around with complex hydrocarbon chains and reactions - all are going to go much faster with AI rather than creating models by hand. Definitely some good use cases for AI here

As much as you might hate Apple, the ecosystem really sucks you in. 5 minutes after setting up (much easier than on Oculus), was able to bring up a 4K display for my laptop in mid air. I used multiple browser windows floating in mid air to add additional content. Side loading ARKit app into the device to test? A breeze. No convoluted install of a (flaky) device management software. Other things that blew me away:

1. - Extension of Laptop when working remotely or in a cramped office
2. - Interacting with models in 3d spaces with eye tracking; Wow.
3. - Watching movies in 3D on AppleTV and Disney+. Watched Avatar, Dune & The Marvels. Had to forcibly stop myself
4. - Taking a pano photo and viewing it immediately as a wrap around the space
5. - Collaborating with colleagues in the space without any additional setup. Avatars were definitely on the edge of the uncanny valley; but better than free floating expressionless torsos (Oculus again)
6. Developing enterprise apps with Swift's RealityKit and ARKit is WAY easier than the other SDK's. Unity and Unreal are great; but not for enterprise apps. Have developed for Hololens, Oculus, SteamVR and VisionPro. RealityKit + ARKit are definite the easiest for me.

Yes it's version 1 of the product; and future versions will definitely address problems like weight. The eye tracking can be very flaky at times, and using the floating keyboard can be a pain except for simple text. There are not enough apps; but so far have everything I already use available in the space. I might be a bit of an edge case, because

1. a) I have 30 years investment in the Apple ecosystem (before you ask - I started with NextStep, and moved to OS X)
2. b) I work with Vision Pro + laptop; and use Vision Pro standalone only for games and movies.
3. c) Nearly everyone I work with also has some Apple device, so interacting with them through FaceTime was easy

Between Oculus 3 and the Vision Pro - for me, no competition at all.

The US reputation for shooting from the hip and figuring out consequences later is not as popular in Europe as folks might think. Having worked across the EU, US and Asia, I find that US companies tend to have the least regard for the impact of business decisions on their own employees or customers.
In the area of tech, things like right to repair, open source mandates for government facing technology, enforcement of open standards etc. are considered important in the EU, because they are better for the people. They feel the US tolerates the monopolistic tendencies of companies because the government has been bought by the industry. When US firms use closed data formats, squishy wording on data privacy and a lack of care for sustainability / maintainability of a technology, EU folks tend to get upset. They will use it because the technology is interesting, but it feels like they are holding their nose while they do it.
Unions are much stronger, and force more attention to the workforce. I remember a statement from an EU colleague of mine - work pays for my life, work is NOT my life. Not something that US firms recognize. The 4 or even 3 day work week sounds crazy to a US person - but the real level of poverty in the US (which largely goes unreported in the US outside of complaints. of homelessness in blue states) or the insane cost of healthcare is unfathomable to the average EU citizen. This is not about conservative vs. liberal (or socialist). It's just an expectation that government works for the people, not for the companies.
On the whole, in the EU innovation is slower, but tends to last longer. You do not see folks demanding a new model every year - if something works, people are comfortable using it for longer. People change when something is truly innovative. The big US muscle cars were a minute niche in the US, but Tesla's are everywhere - because they represent a true innovative shift.
The question is.- what would it take for folks in the US to realize how much our government is owned and run by corporations and try to take control back

https://www.tomshardware.com/s...

The only real way to think of this is as a trolley problem (for the 1 person who does not know what that is: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). We are seeing the trade off happening in slow motion.

The financial impact of extreme weather events are increasing. Whether you believe in climate change or not - your insurance firm definitely does. In the US, try getting insurance in California fire zones, Jersey shore, parts of Florida or the tornado belt. The insurance firms have already decided that the risk is not manageable, and are bailing

In Europe, the situation is a little better now, but the effect of the melting arctic ice + fresh water entering the Gulf Stream are definitely causing concern. Many of the respected climate models are frankly fairly terrifying.

So what the choice the EU government has: Get a few people to suffer now, or have millions suffer through unpredictable changes for the foreseeable future

If you have a financial model that can counter the costs of these extreme weather events, or real scientific data that proves that climate change will not keep running at the current rate, please do get infront of the EU government. Am sure you will be heard; because they would love to not have to do this.