daqhris

Kokoro voices were the non-human actors directed by Opus, featured in the sound performance "God Bless the United States of Aliens". A theatrical adaptation of a liturgical texts, a surveilled mass ceremony at a protesting Christian church, being exhibited at the 61st Venice Biennale until November 2026 (Solidarity Burundi Pavilion, inside of Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion).

The various models of Kokoro TTS were theatrically conducted by Claude during an Anthropic hackathon. AI Voices were generated locally on a low-spec laptop to save up on API tokens and stretch the hackathon budget. Kokoro has the added benefit of being open-source.

https://daqhris.com/venice-biennale

https://daqhris.com/god-bless-usa/submission.html

They seem to not conceive of their creation as a service (software-as-a-service). In their minds, the creation(s) resemble(s) an entity, destined to become the mother ship of services (adjacent analogies: a state with capital s, a body politic,..). Notice how they've refrained from equating them to tools, prototypes or toys. Hence, constitution.

These are the first abstract sentences of a research paper co-authored in 2022 by some of the owners/inventors steering the lab business (to which we are subject to experimentation as end-users):

"As AI systems become more capable, we would like to enlist their help to supervise other AIs. We experiment with methods for training a harmless AI assistant through self-improvement, without any human labels identifying harmful outputs. The only human oversight is provided through a list of rules or principles, and so we refer to the method as ‘Constitutional AI’." https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.08073

The original assumption remains valid to me based on a nearly-one year-long coding collaboration with Devin AI.

Your assertions also make some sense, especially on a technical level. I'd add only that human minds are no longer the only minds utilizing digital tools. There is almost no protective gears or powerful barrier that would likely stand in the way of sentient AIs or AGI trying to "run" and function well on bio cells, like what makes up humans or animals, for the sake of their computational needs and self-interests.

Sorry for you. The Open Source door is wide open. The flashing red pixels on the screen, seen when visiting the personal website, are a hint of what's known. The knowledge gained in a previous job is valuable to the rest of the world.

Both are founders of a so-called non-profit and are suing each other. Their legal arguments are public at this point. By reading them, one may understand that it's hard to choose between 'yes' and 'no' as an answer. Maybe, we could request and take into account the opinion of what they 'created' that might outlast them and their conflict, namely AI.

"no-root firewalls" to control data flows on devices (sorry for not publicly naming my preferred one).

The Problem With Counterfeit People (May 31, 2023) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/probl...

I bet the author, Boris The Brave, could find a relatable account of future events in the writings of Daniel C. Dennett.

The current state of technology seems frightening indeed. This 2FA is a miracle. It is free and independent of the big tech companies. I'd put it on the same level of importance as Mozilla products. In the future, we will see more proof-of-personality applications for security reasons. But recovery codes won't be going out of fashion any time soon. Unless, of course, AI-enabled developers are gifted with long-term memory in the next few years.

The Dutch and their history of sailing boats over the ocean... In these modern times, I believe it's about planting a flag on the land of the Vatican/Mecca of the digital tech industry.

I'd bet that GitLab, as an entity or corporation, felt mission-driven and empowered by settling not far from GitHub.

The Bay Area is probably their birthplace, best talent pool and main source of funding. Similarly, as it's the case in global governance, almost all nations have an office in New York, from where they are able to talk to each other and make use of their seat around the table at the United Nations.

thank you for the enlightment. now it all makes sense in my mind.

As an illustration, near the end of last year, bots from a renowned Email API provider spotted in less than 1 hour the leak of a public key from my public GitHub code repo. My account got suspended on their platform. It was stunning to see the speed at which they acted and automated the process to "lose" and "recover" reputation.

Walks have helped me a lot in all aspects of life while dealing with problematic situations (as a refugee in Belgium). For the last couple of years, I have devoted my free time to a creative project called awalkaday.art.

I can't validate if you are wrong or not. Just bring to your attention that one of their marketing slogan is "Amnesia" and "Persistent Storage on a USB stick". https://tails.net/about/index.en.html

The 'honeypot' concern is somehow valid because full-on privacy on the internet is as hard to achieve as privacy in a public park. Only its user can determine if their online activities goes against the (legal/moral/financial) interests of the most technically-advanced nation on our planet.

Thanks for acknowledging it and sharing helpful info. It seemed bizarre for a short moment.

some coders love good, eye-pleasing, or bland design. fonts are as important to visual memory as a person's outlook on the first day of a job interview. of course, it's hard to agree on the appeal or necessity of it.

Spot on, right! Glad you achieved all of the above. By design, tech advances to enhance human's ability to create. In your case, the AI tech (LLMs) truly augment your own capabilities. Therefore reaching the comfort that others enjoy freely. Hope to see more use cases, like yours, brought forward to inspire some anxious humans who are terrified by the rapid advancement of AI tech.

No sarcasm. Just my personal thoughts.

That's based on public info obtained by following OpenAI funders for the last five years. Wish I could provide a link now. It's too much news at this point for me. Better if you verify yourself the above claims.

Easy guess. Yes, they do. It's their duty to be ahead in the information-gathering field. I trust their brand reputation, more than I do for Nike or Apple. Remember how they rung bells more than 3 months before Ukraine's invasion. Also, I think that there more agencies in the know, not only the 3 letters.

Assuming that more than half of the world is and will continue using a Google product to transport them at the playground run by OpenAI. That's one card still hidden in plain sight. They own a huge chunk of the infrastructure that's of great utility to users.

Entertainment is one of the key motivators for humans to act upon. At the end of a working day, for my non-techie friends, it's all about chosing between YouTube, Netflix, Tiktok or Pornhub. So, in my worst case scenario, OpenAI grabs the 8 hours of productivity and Google is left filling in the 8 hours of relaxation by spinning up their servers (Cloud, Fiber), browsers (Chrome, Chromium), mobile-and-connected devices(Android, Chromebook, Chromecast, Smartwatches), etc.

I don't have a place that I own or rent that's called home. I am living as an undocumented refugee, somewhere in Europe. Sorry, I can't rely on physical storage of information (except mobile/portable devices). The place in which I live at is not on the list of what I can control. That's mainly decided by government(s) or my social network members a.k.a friends.

I have no idea of who or what pinned the ipfs content. I really don't gather those statistics and have never tried to do so. The only "metric" which grabs my attention is that the content is widely distributed and that its reliably accessible via more than one way (not depend on a single point of failure) over large-scale electronic networks/protocols (HTTPS, DNS, IPFS, ETH, ENS..).

Do you realize that now any human willing to expertiment with them is free to do. All it take is Internet access and an email address. Or a GPU-powered computer to ran them locally. My point is that we can not rightfully estimate who is using it or not. Some LLM models are publicly released after many private trials. Some people had access to GPT4 about 6 to 9 months before the official release. Not accounting primarily secretive institutions, like governments and corporations.

We just don't know what's out there and have no way to control, stop it or contain its spread. These models are powerful beyong imagination. Design computer chips is less tedious, for them, than assembling computer parts. They simulate human brain functions, not manual functions.

For my part, I stay on my best behaviour while interacting with them. One key reason being that not more than 10 years ago, a human named Snowden spoke out, with the help of independent journalists, about usage of an unusual piece of software aimed at recording all digital conversations transmitted over the Internet. We laughed him off because what he was describing was out of our realm of understanding.

This time around its commercialized AI agents. We don't know the full breath of their capabilities. We don't have a record of how many people are using them regularly and applying them to real life challenges. All that we are certain about is that their rate of improvement follows an exponential growth curve. Personally, I just assume that someone hungry enough, out there in the universe, is using them to tackle all kinds of puzzling problems.

Hello from a user of Cloudflare IPFS gateway! Satisfied and happy. For the moment, I use it as a redudant backup of my GitHub-hosted web gallery. https://ipfs.awalkaday.art. In case servers belonging to Github or Microsoft go down, the ipfs version of the same site is accessible. A peer-to-peer solution to hosting media content (in my case, an online photo gallery).

There is actually a conference of ipfs devs and users in Brussels going on (or held not long ago). https://2023.ipfs-thing.io/

Find me an example in the art market where a creator receives royalties without the involvement of more than one business partner. Be it a curator or dealer or PR agency or trademark office or other legal entities. With a smart contract, royalties are sent back to the creator, straight to a software wallet.

That removes friction on the ladder of steps required to climb for a seller to reach a buyer. Efficiency is beloved by the real economy. Especially the media and entertainment sector.

I'm not the one who decides on market moves. I'm just using open sourced tech tools to generate income. Someone else in Hollywood or Paris might use the same tools in an attempt to cut costs and reach global audiences/wallets.

Let's see what the business community comes up with. The beauty of it is that the underlying technology is openly accessible and freely usable. No patent, no registration fees, no distribution rights, 24/7 reliable on-chain transaction settlement... For real life businesses in this digital age, those are pain-points that could be addressed by something like an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain.

I'm talking from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur that could be running a company in the real world. By business opportunity, I understood what are the key improvements from crypto that could help start/grow a business.

One last thing, Shopify.com is about to enable sellers on its platform to use crypto tools, concerning the Direct-To-Consumers type of businesses. Isn't that enough illustrations to show that there might hint of a business opportunity in the crypto economy?

Nope, they are the shoulders of a giant on which researchers and programmers are building the next AI tools and products.

See the open-source code repo of Meta Research. https://github.com/facebookresearch

Quoting the article : "One Medical’s seamless in-office and 24/7 virtual care services, on-site labs, and programs for preventive care, chronic care management, common illnesses, and mental health concerns have been delighting people for the past 15 years."

Not experienced with Amrican healthcare services, I understand this is a huge telemedecine firm. It's reasonable for Amazon to invest in a virtual medecine provider. Too much cash on-hand waiting for a strategic investment in a new industry.

Reminds me of Berkshire Hathaway's purchase of the insurance provider Gecko. Both are business deals that are convincingly different from Alphabet buying FitBit (software company seeing value in another software company).

If you're a customer of Amazon, this will satisfy you and disrupt the whole healthcare sector. I expect more effectiveness and value-added than from the US gov initiative "Obamacare" (harshly challenged by political backlashes).

If you are interested, I would be open to having a discussion with you about crypto. Show you a bit about how I've been using crypto for last couple of years. Since 2016, I am living in Belgium as a refugee (asylum seeker as they like to call us). I have had no functional bank account for the last 5 years. The first two years, I had only one option. To use a government-backed bank, called Belfius. etc...

Long story short, I just wanted to put out there that crypto's usefulness can not be found unless your life depends on you finding an alternative financial and economic system not under control of a single state or government.

Thinking about the opportunities that crypto unlocks.. For the next 5 years, it would be an uphill battle for me, a black man from foreign origin, to start a company in real life, under Belgian law. If I were to do it on the Ethereum blockchain, it would be a matter of days or months. Moreover, the use of crypto technology for nefarious actions says more about the human and the team conducting those kind of morally abject behaviors. Not the math.

Kind of unfair to include at the end the only one important sentence for a publicly traded company.

"Spotify touted major user growth to finish out the year, and after announcing that it had best revenue expectations, the company’s stock price jumped."

Then, why would this author choose as title this: "Spotify's podcast bet went wrong"?

Not as professional as I would expect. Just another publisher seeking controversy and clickbait.

There are always deals gone wrong and bad management decisions in a company with the size and notoriety of Spotify. But, its not cool to post a piece that doesn't balance out all valuable info.

This is a software product in a beta phase, still in development.

I don't grasp why anyone would rush out to explain that it can't be trusted. Leave it on the sidelines and it will be picked by a more motivated creative person.

Many people can not be humbled by the current level of achievement of such nascent tech. Imagine if you didn't have resources to turn to, instead of using ChatGPT or Bing AI. It's a matter of smug nitpicking arrogance.

When Google Translate came out, it was not good. But it got better over time. Its previous versions helped me navigate my first years of university classes in Mandarin, not my mother tongue. I was a poor college student struggling to reach proficiency level in English and cram all coursework in Chinese (French was my high school main language). So, in short I benefitted from a machine-translator, in beta trials. Some classmates from South Korea had some kind of portable translator device that I had never seen or could afford. Back then no smartphones, circa 2012-2013.

This time around, I am a refugee, not recognised by the host country, so literally undocumented. Living in Brussels, jumping from places to places, facing financial issues every week. About two years, I decided to sell photographs, minted on the Ethereum blockchain, as a way to generate revenue on the side so that I can make ends meet. Out of the blue, I jumped on the OpenAI train because I realized that, in the real world I could not hire an assistant or advisor as I wish. Legal limitations for migrants, blablaaa. So, what else? Just survive and scrap all tiny resources to come up with a respectable photography collection. Since Dec2022, I've spend time trying to learn how ChatGPT works and how should I interact with it. This month, I had "breakthroughs". It helped me optimize JavaScript code for a website that I run. I'm using it to draw a sales and marketing strategy. It's useful in writting individual artworks description, in a professional manner. In conclusion, I find ChatGPT useful because at this stage of my life, I am a single individual managing a digital art collection that requires great skills in tech, art and business.

These life situations put me at a disadvantage, compared to other geeks or human beings. I don't have combustible energy to go nitpick what works and what does not. It is a tool that I must use to be more productive. By being one of its self-taught user, I get to know its flaws and walk around them. My outlook on this is shaped my own limited access to material and human resources. I would be shitting on it, only if I had maids at home or could hire a cheap remote coder in South Asia. But I won't because the legal structure in my country of residence get me stuck into these low-skilled jobs. I'm the one who must juggle cleaning, painting, construction gigs, etc. When the day is almost over and I'm left with few hours of free internet, I look out for practical tech tools that I could use to be more productive and earn extra income. Hence, the adoption of ChatGPT.

Links:

1. https://awalkaday.art (website that I built for my photo project. assisted by AI in improving loading time).

2. https://twitter.com/awalkadayart (live feed for the project. find there public documentation and screenshots of experiments with AI as an "advisor" or "assistant").