Scylla Rhiadra

Excellent choices! The Garden would be particularly interesting (for me, anyway). I am trying to think if I've ever explicitly referenced PJ in a photo. I don't think so, but "The Dress" was in the back of my mind for one pic I did ages ago. AND I know that I've had White Chalk on my wish list of themes I'd like to tackle: I love the relationship between landscape, memory, and self -- and I WANT THAT DRESS.

OMG, Polly Jean is just about my favourite artist of all time! And yeah, she is really complicated and challenging. What a perfect recreation of room 509! LOVE LOVE LOVE! (Now do Angelene, my favourite song on that album!)

I am not really "anti-AI" or "anti-bot." I used to amuse myself on occasion by having conversations with Google's old chatbot -- whatever that was called, I can't remember now. And I can certainly see contexts in which AI-run bots or NPCs in SL would be useful and an enhancement. An AI "helper" for instance, or an AI bartender. It could be a real boon for some forms of RP? But I want to know that I'm talking to a bot NPC. And if I find them proliferating in places or contexts where I expect and want to engage with real humans, I'm going to start getting very busy with my Block/Ignore function.

Yeah, this -- or these -- is/are exactly what I foresee happening. In a best case scenario, everything will become homogenized. Presumably the software engineers are on it . . . but they're going to need to find a way to detect AI-generated art and chatter.

Rules that apply to code, Love! Not to you or I! But yes, I am of course a very well-known rebel, breaking ALL the rule EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME! Just look at me rebelliously not ending this sentence with a period

They can join the Hollywood actors and screenwriters on the picket lines!

Yes, this, exactly. I suspect that we're playing with fire a bit, here: the full implications of this, even if they have been explored in scientific literature and fiction, are by no means evident yet. And, personally, I don't think humanity is well served by being told how to live as humans by algorithms.

Absolutely, although we've begun to see instances of things like ChatGPT producing results that were not foreseen (or likely to be approved of) by its programmers. I think it's an incredibly complicated series of mechanisms operating this . . . and control over AI is unquestionably one, but only one, of the biggest issues.

Yes, of course they do -- although in reconstructing them, they produce new variations (like the woman with six fingers I mentioned above). They aren't just "sources of information" like an encyclopedia entry: they synthesize and rework, and they simulate analysis and logic. And the key word here is "simulate." Uh huh . . . 🙄 Does this anecdote have a point, Arielle? One of my best friends in SL is an ex-Texas cop who votes Republican (or did, until Trump). So what?

I've seen it suggested that AI bots -- built from ChatGPT, or using Midjourney or whatever -- are already starting to essentially reproduce themselves because they are harvesting their own "products." So, AI "art" based not on RL art, but on . . . other AI art. Opinions or information built from the opinions and information of other AI machines. I suppose it'll be a bit like a game of telephone, because AI now tends to introduce a degree of noise into anything it reproduces: subtle or not-so-subtle errors ("Why does that woman have six fingers!") and biases that will, I suppose, become hardened through reproduction and repetition. The ultimate echo chamber, but one empty of human witness, and that resounds with increasingly distorted screaming . . . If an AI-driven bot falls in a forest . . . does it matter?

i am implying no such thing. A perspective, whether left, right, or centrist, is not "real" if it's being delivered to us by an algorithm, because a bot is incapable of having a "perspective" at all. The issue isn't the particular ideological flavour: it's just as possible (and in fact, does of course happen) to have algorithms serve up left wing opinions as right wing ones. The issue is whether that opinion is derived from real lived experience and human thought, as opposed to constructed by a literally non-living, non-thinking bundle of code. This is not, I'd submit, a new phenomenon, per se. We just have a new means at our disposal to avoid real people.

Oh, I'm pretty sure that there will be bots designed to prefer sh*t-flavoured ice cream. Which, again, whatevs. And a whole lot of flavours that are probably illegal in some countries. O Brave New World!

Well I suppose arguably the entire notion of "consent" becomes rather moot in the context of a bot. Which is another interesting point. Until we reach the moment of The Singularity, of course -- at which point we're all probably dead anyway! 😏 I have known people in SL who treat others as though they were disposable NPCs. For that matter, in RL I've seen people treat cashiers as though they were vending machines, or someone holding a door open for them as though they were an electronic door-opener, so . . . Personally, yeah, I'd like to see a mechanism for consent built into a sex bot engaged in CNC -- not because it is necessary (the bot being in any case incapable of consenting) but simply to reinforce the point that consent is a vital component of human interactions -- which, of course, sex with a bot is simulating. But whatevs. So long as people are well-educated about and aware of the importance of consent, it probably doesn't matter too much.

Interesting! And maybe a little disquieting. To be clear, I have zero moral qualms about the use of AI to produce "realistic" partners for virtual sex. I mean, for me, sex is only meaningful -- and by that, I mean "a turn on" -- if I know that I'm engaged with a real person, but pornography has always been about fantasy, and doesn't involve real engagement either. One area of concern might be that sexbots are simply reproducing particular toxic social attitudes about sex and gender (for instance, reinforcing r*pe myths), but so long as the person using them knows that they are engaged with a programmed entity rather than a real person, that's not much different in effect than RP. What I find disquieting is the possibility that our engagement with AI bots is going to gradually displace our interactions with real people. That's disturbing on two counts: first, that we are no longer going to be exposed to the real perspectives, views, and experiences of actual people, and second, that such bots can be used (as they are now on platforms such as Twitter) to push particular ideologies or perspectives, whether through misinformation or not. I'll lay aside the second of these for the moment, as it's a larger issue relating to social media and online information in general. My first named concern is maybe more subtle, but in some ways more potentially worrisome. We learn from our interactions with others. It teaches us that there are other perspectives, it gives us access to new insights that might not otherwise be available to us, and it trains us in empathy and tolerance. And an AI can only provide a simulacrum of such an experience. We're all familiar with the idea of the "filter bubble": that algorithms tend to feed us more of what we already believe or like, rather than disrupting and questioning our biases and beliefs through exposure to difference. Someone here, a while ago, actually suggested that it would be a great thing if we could produce SL bots who reflected our own likes and dislikes -- who would, it was literally suggested, be exactly like ourselves. What a "perfect friend" that would be! Like talking to a mirror . . . And because AI harvests its "ideas" and "attitudes" and discourse from the most visible and popular existing online sources, it's always going to reflect the "status quo" in terms of perspective. This is a recipe for personal and social stagnation. My best friend in SL is someone who is, in most regards, entirely unlike me. I'm trained in the humanities, and she's an engineer. I'm straight; she's gay. I'm "vanilla," and she's a Domme. Her popular culture references tend to be from the 40s and 50s, while mine are more current. She has told me that no one sends her scurrying to Google Search more than I do, and the same is true on my side: I have learned so much from her. And the reason I have is because she is so very different than I am in many respects. Why would I want to exchange her, and her insights and perspectives (not to mention her very human warmth and personality) for a programmed entity that feeds me what I want to hear? Our bot overlords aren't going to rule over us in some sort of obviously authoritarian manner. They are going to be our best friends, our lovers, our "teachers" -- and they are going to oppress us by keeping us comfortably cocooned in unchallenged and unchallenging "truisms" that reflect the world, not as it is, but as we'd secretly like it to be.

OMG Randall. You've known me well over a decade, here. And you had to look at my PROFILE to figure that out? Anyway, I was only saying hi! I usually wait until at least the third wave before proposing marriage!

Is that why you've never responded when I've said hi to you at Fogbound? 😏 Depends on the club you go to! YMMV! I wonder if it might be fun going to an infohub as a noob and being harassed? I should try it, and report back!

Oh, addendum on "exploring" in boats, on horseback, etc. It's also a social activity. I usually go riding with three other friends. And I gifted another friend a couple of large working vehicles -- a transit bus and a hippy van -- that he often crams with friends for mishap-fraught but very funny adventures.

These are all great! This thread is a terrific idea! A somewhat odd omission, given how popular it is, is club-going and dancing. I spend about 4 hours or so a week doing this. It's partly about the music, of course, but even more about the social scene and the communities that have developed around particular clubs and/or DJs and live performers. I love my horses, and go exploring on one of them probably once a week. Just finding a nice nature sim with trails that you can gallop along is wonderful -- and there's at least one large group of regions (12, I think?) that is entirely devoted to horses, and includes stables, and vet's office, paddocks, and trails. So weird, but yes. I've never been but I have a friend who used to attend regularly. The sh*t-talking from the wrestlers on Twitter is hilarious. Related, sort of, is working out and body building. I have another friend who does this -- she goes to gyms, and there is, I think, a HUD system that makes it more "realistic" and quasi-competitive. (My friend is ripped AF.) I think again there is a sort of community build around this. Oh, and going to Linden-created regions to spot things wrong with them so that I can dis them here. MAJOR fun!

In fairness to him, he'd turn it into a self-deprecating joke. And probably find some way to make it a Dad Joke -- at which he excels.

This was one of the objections I've seen to the article. It's certainly not a very well-thought out profile of the community.

I think they're much more woke these days, no? But they probably still have a problem using their "outside voices" inside.

Just in case you thought I was joking . . . and there are some store names here too. I don't remember how much most of it cost. Some I probably got on sale? Black Sand regularly has weekend sales items that are closets with shoes, hats, and hung up clothing, including this week, so maybe that's a start? https://gyazo.com/149b233b575ee814027eb5dfb9cd1acf She does, and also a sort of polyglot dialect. He'd probably be interested, but not use it because I suggested it to him!

He's actually a comic book geek, rather than sci-fi, per se. Although I think he does like Star Trek a lot. The Klingon thing comes from a running joke he has with me: he greets me in a different language every time he says hello in-world. He's run through a LOT of RL languages. His decision to use Klingon on this occasion led to a long and almost coherent philosophical monologue on the subject of the language and its relationship to English. Fortunately, it was amusing -- otherwise my eyes would have glazed over at some point midway through the second sentence. He is an enthusiastic greeter, though!

I have a folder that is literally named "floor clothes," containing crumpled and strewn-about clothing. So that I can properly replicate the area surrounding my RL bed. It's all about being authentically MEEEE! /me kicks a pair of undies beneath the bed, hoping you didn't notice.

In other news, I've received the longest and strangest offline IM from my ex (with whom, for context, I am very good friends) about how weirded out he is that he has a new "friend" after having inadvertently left himself logged in for 8 hours and whom he can't recall ever meeting and has never spoken to, and Klingon grammar, and its translation into Standard English. No, I don't get it either, but it's pretty hilarious. Peeve: SL can be so weird. Non-peeve: But mostly in really funny ways.