It made my hair stand up the first time it hit me that I'd been talking to a machine. It took a day or two of chatting to realize it. I thought it was just another Youtuber at first because "we" were just chatting like normal. A couple of things "they" said sounded a bit odd but I didn't think about it until it said something that totally made no sense and that no person would ever think to say. I doubt I could explain it but you'd probably pick up on it eventually. It was truly freaky.
The robot narrations that began showing up on YT and other videos a few years back have gotten much better, although even the best ones still will give themselves away by an incorrect vocal inflection or whatever within a few paragraphs. They came out with a British-accent version a year or so later after the generic English version. It was okay and it's gotten better but the same issues apply. I wonder if AI understands Cockney Rhyming Slang.
The computer voice was completely flatlined and monotone in the early years. The AI version was much more lifelike from the get-go, although it had a way to go and was easily recognizable as a robot voice. It was annoying to most people at first, or at least it was to me, but for better or worse we've gotten used to it. Interestingly even though the computer voice in general got more lifelike at time went on, the voice of Stephen Hawking never changed. Even though it was first-gen text-to-voice and monotone when he began using it, it became so recognizable that they decided not to change it. That's really interesting.
Right off the bat the AI version tried to use vocal inflection and rise and fall in pitch like human speech, but it didn't get it right and the wrong syllables of words would be accented and it sounded stiff and disjointed, as if the band Devo had done the narration. I got pretty good at imitating the early versions of the AI voice and one of these days I'm going to narrate a video in that voice just to be a dork.
It's gotten more and more natural-sounding and it sounds more human for longer periods of time and sometimes I even think it is a human for a minute. They've worked in a few more accents and they've almost gotten it down. Although I've recently seen ads for people to manually do closed-captioning I'm guessing most of it is done by AI, especially for live things. That's gotten better too. AI can better understand words from people who speak very differently, but it still misunderstands some words, and so far (at least so far as we know) it doesn't understand that it's misheard a word. It still can't figure it out in terms of context of the sentence and find the correct word. I hope AI isn't pissed at me for saying it isn't smart enough yet to figure out CC. Good thing it hasn't yet become self-aware...or has it?
So what's the deal with AI? There's far too much to go into on that, but it's here and increasingly it's taking over jobs once done by humans, and it's growing exponentially. Is that a good thing? Elon Musk himself, who builds the shit, has said that it may be the biggest threat to humanity. How about them apples? Of course he's speaking in terms of Artificial Intelligence becoming self-aware. and realizing that humans are a stupid bunch of biologically-imperfect beings, and of no damn use to AI, so it builds a gang of Daleks and wipes out humanity. Could it happen? Elon thinks so. So do many others. I reckon we'll find out. Will AI become evil? That theme has certainly played out in many movies since that dawn of the Sci-Fi age. Personally I subscribe to the "Ghost in the machine" theory but I won't go into it here.
One thing people don't grasp is that robots, and AI, will not only be replacing humans more and more, but according to the guy who produced the D-Wave quantum computer and has since moved on to robotics, robots will be able to do our jobs a million times better than we can. A million times better. That's incredible. You should search him on YouTube and listen to his talk. It's fascinating, especially when he talks about summoning demon-like creatures (something similar to the "Old Ones" in HP Lovecraft novels, no kidding), to inhabit these robots, for whatever reason. Look it up. It'll completely blow your mind. I'll probably talk more about that because it's amazing, and totally.flies in the face of the "science vs. religion" thing, for lack of a better term. You wouldn't expect to hear a scientist talking seriously about summoning entities but that's exactly what he says they'll be doing. Get ready.
Don't you hate calling the cable company or whatever and having to push a million buttons to be able to speak with an actual person? It'll be getting better soon I bet. Soon we'll be talking to robots. I don't know if you spend any time in chat rooms but if you're in one that has more than about three dozen people, you can bet that you'll have at least one Bot. After you talk to it for a bit thinking you're talking to a person but then realize it's a Bot it will trip you out I promise. One day though it will become completely normal. They're easing us into it and it's much more active behind the scenes than most people realize.
I didn't even get into the subject of sex robots. I'm old-school and I think I'll always prefer the company of an actual human when it comes to sex, but like in every other area I'm sure they're getting better. By now I'm sure the "Rotoplookers" can lay a little sump'm-sump'm on your ass. I guess I can see robot sex in a place like China, where men outnumber women to such a degree that most Chinese men will never hope to find a human girlfriend, much less a wife. There's a poontang shortage. I do feel badly for them when I hear about their situation and I really can't blame them for wanting to cop a nut however. I can see them fucking robots. Let's just hope the robots don't fuck us. Have a nice day.
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