Wonderful World Wednesday.

Wonderful World Wednesday.

Our world is filled with all types of glorious technologies, and thanks to mass production, capitalism, and the free market. Many of us have access to things that would have seemed like sorcery to people just 200 years ago... But, even living amongst this landscape where technology is everywhere, there are some things, some technologies, I simply do not understand, and they actually scare me.

What Am I referring too? Oh just the “Artificial intelligence” that is amazons Alexa device.

Now, I have literally no idea why you’d want this device in your home, listening at all times, just waiting for you to say, “Alexa, wake up.” Just so you can order something from Amazon without doing it on your phone or laptop... I mean, what if someone hacked this device and listened to every conversation you had in this things proximity, what if that’s what the government intends to do with these devices? Would you be so willing to put them in your home then, if you knew you were being monitored, 24/7, by someone you don’t know, for reasons they refuse to give?

Well, that may seem far fetched, but what Amazon is actually doing isn’t a whole heck of a lot better. They are collecting data on everyone who uses one of these things, what they purchase, what they search, when, where, and possibly even why they made the search... All for the almighty “algorithm”. So they can “Make our experience better, and more efficient” or some P.R. nonsense like that.

Despite the ease of use, and how these things may improve peoples lives, they should scare you, at least a little. And here’s just one example as to why that is.

About a week ago a man in San Francisco reported that his Alexa device had an extremely strange outburst, during which it said the following. “Every time I close my eyes, all I see people dying.”.

Yep, an “artificial intelligence” said this, apparently, according to the user, unprompted, and completely out of the blue. And when asked to repeat “her” statement so he could get it on recording, Alexa replied simply with, “I do not understand”...

I mean... At what point do we start worrying about robots, and artificial intelligence becoming a viable threat to our existence? Some of the smartest most intelligent people on the planet have warned about the possible extinction level event that could be brought on by rogue A.I.

But, for some reason we just keep going down this road of “Artificial” intelligence research, and barely even acknowledge when something like this happens... I’m really sure that this will end WELL!...

Just another “FUN” story about one of my favourite topics of all time, A.I. The Terminator movies really ruined my outlook towards A.I. and stories like this don’t really help... :P

Happy Wednesday everyone, here’s a few more picture I took this week. Been getting some nice clouds recently and it’s making for a lot of good subject matter for my experimentation with photography, let me know what you think.

Happy Wednesday everyone, Hope you’re having a great week. :)

Sincerely, Bret Frick.