I've become jaded about the extended family of chatbots and so-called "A.I." text generators. Not one of them has ever exhibited the slightest ability to generate context-aware content. I tested "Transformer" online just now and got pretty much the sort of gibberish I'd expected.

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Original text: "Reluctantly, the chipmunk ventured out from its den. A scent of roasted almonds wafted over the entrance."

Generated text: "It paused a moment, before taking to the air. It paused, and then took flight. It was very slow, but it was graceful. The chipmunk was a creature of elegance. The moment it left the ground, the smell of almonds and grass began to dissipate.

'Now then,' Kirito said, 'I suppose you two should head back for your lunch. We don't have the rest of the afternoon to work on this stuff.'

Silence reigned upon the room for a few seconds, but the silence did not stop the two. The chipmunk seemed lost in thought.

'Are you sure?' Yui asked, after several minutes of silence. 'I have a feeling there might be more to the chipmunk.'"

[--------]

Hoo-boy. Call me in another twenty years. -_-

My emergency-only cellphone has the ability to shut down altogether without any need to physically touch the battery, which results in extremely little power loss over weeks or months of sitting unused. I think virtually all lithium-ion cellphone batteries suffer from this sort of gradual power drain even if not connected to anything. Admittedly, restarting the cellphone takes about 80 seconds, but that's okay for a backup cellphone that I might use but once or twice a year..

Slack won't actually replace email but rather provide functionality somewhere in its software suite that's so close to classic email as makes no real difference. A longer-form textual communications format that sits quietly in a virtual box without bothering you unless and until you damn well feel like looking at it will always have its place in the sun. Integrating classic email functionality into a wider suite that offers easy search and indexing is still useful, though, provided that Slack doesn't unnecessarily clutter up the user experience for simply reading a block of text.

Honestly, I now feel like Captain Obvious. Did this really need to be said? Probably not. -_-

As a reasonably educated layman, the main value I see in this sort of research is with potentially bypassing the complexity of naturally evolved biological entities -- bacteria, fungi, and so forth -- in favor of a careful, step-by-step approach to building useful functionality from relative simplicity. Yes, the resultant artificially "evolved" biological entities almost certainly will lack the robustness and subtle adaptability of naturally evolved life forms, but presumably researchers can in time develop special-purpose, artificial pseudo-life forms that, for example, systematically crawl into every crack and corner of a defined space such as a residence or an office building and fill up those cracks and corners with a lightweight but durable matrix that prevents unwanted insect or rodent infestations as well as the kind of widespread fungal growths -- think black mold -- that can cause serious health problems. General contractors define the paths for these artificial pseudo-life forms by spraying special chemical trails and tailored microorganism food edible only to the artificial microorganisms. I suppose contractors also can lay down nutrient drips alongside ordinary wiring and piping to focal points for the long-term care and feeding of these pseudo-life microorganisms.

These future artificial microorganisms cannot -- out of simple scientific ignorance or otherwise by cautious design -- begin to compete in the wild with the ravenous, ever-evolving fungi and bacteria of the natural world, but they can thrive in limited environments useful to humans. I'm thinking in particular of the exciting possibility of artificial biofilms that block the growth of drug-resistant fungi like Candida auris and greatly reduce the persistence of deadly bacteria like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile across innumerable hospital surfaces that often are difficult to clean effectively.

It's not hard to think of other applications of persistent artificial biofilms such as anti-corrosion coatings for steel structural elements, wound dressings, and slick, self-renewing inner pipe coatings that help forestall the kind of destructive gunk buildups that inevitably require expensive remediation. More advanced artificial pseudo-life forms might, for example, actively destroy heavy termite infestations while simultaneously repairing the damaged lumber from the inside out, obviating the need to rip out sections of wall or to tear down entire rooms. Roofs become much more water-resistant with the aid of self-maintaining artificial biofilms that also have a limited ability to temporarily waterproof small roof sections blown away by high winds. Adventurous folks have their walls painted with color-shifting artificial biofilms, and ultra-low-cost pseudo-life biofilms provide amusing little animations on cereal boxes that jump into action upon detecting the light gradients of passersby in a supermarket. The sky's the limit for useful applications, I think.

What with the apparently relentless rise of right-wing parties across Europe, it's inevitable that a right-leaning prankster with "authority" as defined by the European Parliament decides to send out mass demands for removal of far-leftist content on the grounds that it inherently promotes terrorism. The resultant political hullabaloo will drive up popcorn sales and produce millions of liters of hot air, but I'm not sure whether European national agencies or lawmakers would learn anything about the law of unintended consequences.

Personally, I think I'll whip up a batch of Buffalo-style hot chicken wings when that happens and lean back into the couch to enjoy the show.

Seems to me a lot depends on what sort of clear rewards are consistently associated with using the name. If your cat responds otherwise to your body language, your tone of voice, its own inner beat, and other nonverbal cues such as smelling like tuna to come when you call, always or almost always hearing the same sound -- the kitty's name -- just before getting ear rubs, small nummies, and other fun stuff will naturally become linked over time to the clearly enunciated name. Given sufficient native feline intelligence and enough repetitions, the name alone will become enough. I actually did this with my own kitty many years ago when I last owned a cat, and it worked a treat. (I was careful though not to overuse the name -- "here, kitty-kitty" was enough for ordinary occasions.) This does take some work and patience, of course, but that's the root of all effective animal training -- patience and bribery.

I guess it's interesting in a nebbish researcher fashion to try to measure how much the overall social environment affects fuzz-butt psychology. Is a fairly noisy environment detrimental to this kind of training, such as a household with multiple kids or punk-rock musicians in development? A hammer factor with testing facilities? NASA's rocket launching facilities? An otherwise quiet campus with frat boys who love to belt out off-color songs every day at noon? What about dogs in the household -- does their constant nose-poking and butt-sniffing make learning names more difficult for cats? Just how terrible does a "terrible-twos" toddler have to be before the average kitty loses all ability to focus on anything but surviving from day to day? Just speculating on the possibilities.

I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback over the next couple of decades, when legions of low-skill but able-bodied people find themselves irresistibly replaced by software and robotics. Sure, there'll be crying and grumbling over having to take jobs that many folks today consider to be beneath them, but personal servants for the rich were the norm for much of human history after the rise of agriculture and cities. Social expectations shifted during the Industrial Revolution and will shift again with the Robotics Revolution.

It also seems likely that that skillfully created handmade items such as fine furniture will see wider adoption among the upper crust as their wealth relentlessly increases, leading to steady employment for craftsmen in hundreds of thousands of small boutique shops. This is a historical norm as well although the scale will be larger. The rapidly advancing state of the art in low-cost but capable computer-controlled home milling machines and 3D printers obviously will help fuel this trend. In a side note, I suppose that using automated tools kind of blurs the definition of "handmade," but c'est la vie.

Likewise, personal services should see a continuing rise in popularity -- in-home pedicures, manicures, massages, and haircuts as well as expert home cooking by visiting chefs and so forth. In particular, cooking well is a wildly popular skill, and most otherwise low-skilled folks undoubtedly could pick up the knack if motivated. Really, this all happening already, but the pace should pick up quite a bit once robot-driven mass unemployment becomes a thing. Technology leads to fun possibilities -- for example, it's easy to visualize a lumbering beast of a food truck that hosts expert chefs who prepare custom orders for delivery within a limited service area around the truck by small, speedy delivery robots. Needless to say, said food truck bristles with touch screens that display a steady stream of orders from cellphone apps that also provide continuously updated GPS coordinates for the delivery robots. "Hey, Bob -- looks like your Maine lobster with lemon butter is here. I see the food truck bot coming from that corner."

The basic idea is that wealth always, always seeks avenues for spending. Few people indeed gather paper riches merely for the sake of giggling behind closed curtains over their bank balances. Admittedly, a lopsided distribution of wealth will kind of suck for those at the bottom, but outside of the true unfortunates who live on the streets, the bottom class will still be richer than kings were a thousand years ago. Who among us in the developed world doesn't have a cellphone, a color television, and access to enough cheap food to grow mightily into a fat boy or "woman of considerable girth"? Moreover, depending on political winds, a future United States might indeed see a universal basic income that very effectively persuades the have-littles from ever seriously contemplating revolution. I don't imagine the upper-crust types will squawk too much about the huge cost of such social bribery as long as they can keep tootling around in their auto-piloted Rolls-Royces and sipping their top-shelf boutique wines with Beluga caviar while smiling servants buff their toenails. That's the beauty of the increasingly automated production of wealth -- buying off the peasants becomes more and more affordable for the have-alls, and unlike ancient Rome, there aren't any Visigoths hammering on the gates.

Can we not start a pressure group to push federal lawmakers into passing a law dictating that all publicly funded research automatically be made available freely with no paywalls whatsoever? Private publishing outfits can still hide their resources behind paywalls if they wish, but informed citizens will ignore them and go directly for the multiple open websites that offer the full text of such publicly funded research. Is that too much to ask?

A couple of small thoughts occur. When drone deliveries of lightweight items become routine between multiple points in any metropolitan area, inevitably expanding beyond hospitals and other limited applications, illegal drug dealers will naturally hop on that bandwagon. Why wouldn't they? One more drone zipping along inside a virtual cloud of them won't stand out. Increasing sophistication in autopilot capabilities over wider and wider areas will allow illicit dealers to decrease the risk of their runners or their own precious selves being arrested. Maybe criminal hackers will even bamboozle hospital computer systems into delivering hospital narcotics and other high-value pharmaceuticals to one-time pickup points.

Still, drones are cool. It'd be fun to accept a prescription drug delivery from a second-floor window. Such low-cost delivery methods might work well for bedridden or frail patients living alone. I can also see drones flying around a house, peering into the windows for signs of life if a home security system indicates that the inhabitant hasn't been anywhere near as active as usual. That service can be part of a commercial package that includes the usual medical alert devices. A severe heart attack or stroke might prevent a patient from using an alert device.

Anyways. Point-to-point interchanges between hospitals seem like a good application. I do wonder about liability issues as mentioned by others here, but then, liability issues arise with motor-vehicle deliveries. A car or truck is way more smashy than a ten-pound drone, plus I'm sure a well-designed drone will cut off the spinning blades and blare a loud alarm when it detects an imminent, uncontrolled approach to ground level. Insurance covers the rare serious accident. Everything in life is risky. It's a tradeoff.

I've always suspected that electronic voting systems, in order to be truly resistant to incessant and widespread hacking attacks, will have to accept the concept of issuing encrypted, printed paper receipts of cast votes to individual voters that then can be voluntarily passed on to independent, third-party tabulation organizations that act as a reality check on official election results. Purely online voting systems can conveniently produce both electronic receipts and downloadable PDF documents. Sure, this move might be problematic for the fundamental concept of the secret vote, but what the hell. What's worse, having to cope with that particular can of worms, which arguably already is open, or having to cope with the strong possibility of invisibly stolen elections? You makes your trade-offs, and you takes your chances.

That's my two cents worth of thought on the matter. No refunds! :^)

This minor news item reminds me of the classic phenomenon of eyelash mites. A great many of us are infested with tiny, arguably disgusting but really, really small buggy-wuggies that live on our eyelashes. Few of us are any the wiser for it. Unsurprisingly, "The Beeb" has a reasonable statement about the scuttling insects that probably live on your face and have regular mite-pizza parties:

http://bbc.com/earth/story/201...

When can we expect an episode of Black Mirror that features this machine dispensing absolutely scrumptious burgers made with some unusual meats? Or has that been done already? Either way, I fully expect life to imitate art in the near future ....

I realize some people will label this as uber-technological overoptimism, but I've always thought that the trash problem will ultimately be solved once and for all by a self-reproducing nanobot ecology that hunts down abandoned materials such as iron, copper, glass, and so forth for ultra-clean recycling. The notoriously appalling Great Pacific garbage patch -- gone. Active and closed landfills around the world -- emptied out, thoroughly sanitized, and turned into recreation parks. Centuries of trash dumped overboard onto the ocean floor by uncaring sailors and passengers -- poof. Sure, it'll probably take centuries to hunt down every last glass shard from broken bottles, every last rusty nail hiding a few feet under the soil in former construction sites, every last potsherd buried in the muck of the Marianas Trench alongside ancient sunken ships, and so on and on, but the trillions of future nanobots are relentless and powered by unending energy from fusion reactors and sunlight from orbital collectors.

In the meantime, I'm supportive of initiatives to burn combustible trash for energy and to seek even more efficient ways to extract as much reusable metal as possible from current trash streams. If they make economic sense, why not? Those trillions of nanobots might not arrive for decades yet, and every gram of metal saved today is a gram that needn't be freshly mined from gigantic holes in the ground.