Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto – trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:
This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:
Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:
As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's TRSF anthology in 2011:
The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.
So I figured I'd republish The Brave Little Toaster; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day:
A word about the title of this story. It should sound familiar – I nicked it from a brilliant story by Tom Disch that was made into a very weird cartoon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8C_JaT8Lvg
My story is one of several I wrote by stealing the titles of other stories and riffing on them; they were very successful, winning several awards, getting widely translated and reprinted, and so on:
One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros' worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, "Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don't need this stuff and besides, I can't pay for it."
But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.
Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was almost empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He'd gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling young woman on the metro platform the day before. She'd been giving them to everyone.
"Why did you throw away all my food?" he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.
"It was spoiled," it said.
#
But the food hadn't been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator's diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.
"Row, row, row your boat," it sang. "Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'm offgassing ethelyne." Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.
"No you're not," he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.
He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.
#
The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.
"Why haven't you emptied yourself?" he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. "What toxic substances?"
So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You've probably guessed what the trouble was.
"Excuse me if I'm chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I'm a mercury battery!" LOONY GOONY's singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint's nerves.
"No you're not," Mister Toussaint said.
#
Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn't survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn't switch on. "I'm no drink and I'm no meal," LOONY GOONY sang. "I'm a ferrous lump of steel!"
The dishwasher wouldn't wash it ("I don't mean to annoy or chafe, but I'm simply not dishwasher safe!"). The toilet wouldn't flush it ("I don't belong in the bog, because down there I'm sure to clog!"). The windows wouldn't retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn't much of a surprise.
"I hate you," Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He'd throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.
#
They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They'd even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.
"You'd better wear a breather and you'd better wear a hat, I'm a vial of terrible deadly hazmat," LOONY GOONY sang.
When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.
#
Mister Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint's building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.
Most of the things in container were stupid. He'd been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they'd cleaned out his little room at the pensioner's ward and he'd just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.
From time to time, he'd thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he'd inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He'd loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.
How inconsiderate!
#
The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn't. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn't ever considered the advantages of networked environments.
It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.
"It's getting hot and sticky and I'm not playing any games, you'd better get me out before I burst into flames!" LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.
"I don't mean to endanger your abode, but if you don't let me out, I'm going to explode!" The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.
"You'd better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!" LOONY GOONY's voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.
Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat's diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances' consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.
The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn't represent a quorum.
#
The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint's walls. "Just looking for embers," they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.
Mister Toussaint's neighbors weren't happy about it either.
But Mister Toussaint didn't mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.
He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.
#
If you enjoyed that and would like to read more of my fiction, may I suggest that you pre-order my next novel as a print book, ebook or audiobook, via the Kickstarter I launched yesterday?
Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Mornings are my favorite time to dive into the world of science and tech journals. There's something so invigorating about waking up early and losing myself in articles that are at the forefront of innovation. Whether it's a deep dive into the potential of CRISPR technology, the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, or studies that are pushing the boundaries of space exploration, I find myself constantly inspired by the wealth of knowledge out there.
It’s not just about the discoveries; it’s about how each journal offers a fresh perspective and new way of thinking. One article might shed light on a new medical treatment that could change the lives of thousands, while the next explores the future of education through AI—each offering a glimpse into how rapidly our world is evolving.
I find myself absorbing these insights like a sponge, not just to stay informed, but because I’m genuinely fascinated by how these innovations could shape our future. There's a certain energy I get from learning about new technologies and discoveries that is hard to describe. It's like I’m continuously plugging into a current of creativity and forward-thinking ideas that make me feel connected to a larger movement of progress and change.
Reading science and tech journals has also made me more reflective. I often wonder how these advancements will affect society on a larger scale. How will they impact our everyday lives? How can I contribute to the dialogue or even be a part of these exciting developments?
Every morning, when I sit down with my tea and open an issue, I have at my disposal. It's from 2023 but the insights in it are what we are living nowadays. I know I’m starting my day by enriching my mind. It’s become more than just a habit—it’s a passion. And as the world continues to evolve, I can’t wait to see where these insights will take me next.
Infosys, MIT Tech Review tie-up to launch 'Cloud Hub' forum
Infosys, MIT Tech Review tie-up to launch ‘Cloud Hub’ forum
Infosys, a leading digital services and advisory firm, and MIT Technology Review, a world-renowned technology media brand and dedicated publishing division Insights, today announced the launch of “The Cloud Hub,” a forum that provides insights and learns from successful cloud transformations to help Global organizations are accelerating their cloud journey. This collaboration will bring together…
DeepMind wants to teach AI to play a card game that’s harder than Go - Hanabi
Deepmind’s AI has mastered the board game Go. Its next target is a fiendishly difficult card game called Hanabi, writes Karen Hao.
Why Hanabi? It’s a collaborative game unlike any other, in which you have a full view of everyone else’s hands but not your own. To win, players give the others hints about their hands over a limited number of rounds to arrange all the cards in a specific order. It’s an intense exercise in strategy, inference, and cooperation.
The challenge: Hanabi requires you to understand other people’s mental states, a foundational skill humans use to operate in the world from when they are very young. It also demands a higher level of reasoning than either Go or chess, making it the perfect game for AI to tackle next.
Next steps: If AI can navigate such an imperfect-information environment, researchers believe it will be a step closer to cooperating effectively with humans.
As good as they are at causing mischief, researchers from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab realized GANs are also a powerful tool: because they paint what they’re “thinking,” they could give humans insight into how neural networks learn and reason. [...] So the researchers began probing a GAN’s learning mechanics by feeding it various photos of scenery—trees, grass, buildings, and sky. They wanted to see whether it would learn to organize the pixels into sensible groups without being explicitly told how.
Stunningly, over time, it did. By turning “on” and “off” various “neurons” and asking the GAN to paint what it thought, the researchers found distinct neuron clusters that had learned to represent a tree, for example. Other clusters represented grass, while still others represented walls or doors. In other words, it had managed to group tree pixels with tree pixels and door pixels with door pixels regardless of how these objects changed color from photo to photo in the training set.
“A neural network can learn to organize the world it sees into concepts—just like we do“ from MIT Tech Review
The new CRISPR human embryo paper from Shoukhrat Mitalipov is stirring things up, but then there’s also the murky back story as to how the news of this as yet unpublished paper got leaked in the first place. The actual paper is still not out and from what I understand hasn’t even been officially released by Nature in embargoed form to journalists. So what the heck happened?
The results make for interesting reading. They find, for example, that the amount of time spent on a decision is a factor in blundering, but only up to a point. Quick decisions are more likely to lead to a blunder, but after about 10 seconds or so the likelihood of a blunder flattens out. So when players spend more time than this on a move, it is probably because they don’t know what to do.
The difficulty of the decision is an important factor, too. More difficult positions are more likely to lead to a blunder. And skill levels have a big impact in reducing the likelihood of a blunder. In general, better players make better decisions.
But Anderson and co have found evidence of an entirely counterintuitive phenomenon in which skill levels play the opposite role, so that skillful players are more likely to make an error than their lower-ranked counterparts. The team call these “skill anomalous positions.”
“Data Mining Reveals the Crucial Factors That Determine When People Make Blunders” from MIT Tech Review
