Commercial Items Identified on my Commute

Image
I see a lot of interesting commercialitems on truck on I-75. When you make the commute many times you start to see the same items over and over again. Sometimes it is huge equipment tires, sometimes heavy equipment of different types. I see these huge blocks of aluminum going North. I think about what the mill must look like and where it is going. And how much aluminum foil a block like this will make. Using the Tesla Full Self-Driving (supervised) allows me to look for these things on the highway. The FSD also helps me through the crazy stop and goes. Easily over 70MPH and then sudden traffic at dead stops, frequently. I see accidents every trip. It is amazing there aren't more. A side note- aluminum foil has a shiny side and a dull side. The reason why is that the foil is folded as it goes through massive rollers. The shiny side is the side that faces the steel roller. The dull side faces itself - aluminum.

We can do better than meeting spec

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/we-can-do-better-than-meeting-spec.html

Well, that's over. Google AI now sounds indistinguishable from a human. And it'll only get more nuanced and more flexible.

It can read aloud better than you can.

Which means that anything that's ever been written can be perfectly read to you. Which means that anything a computer figures out or computes can be delivered to you with audio quality that meets spec.

That's what AI keeps doing... things we said were impossible.

Most of us shrugged when computers could drill holes or assemble machines with more accuracy and speed than a person can.

And we avoided the topic when we discovered that computers could read x-rays with great skill as well.

But now, it ought to make you shudder to discover that something as basic as speech is now better than the typical human's. Any speed, fully customized, in clear tones with great pronunciation.

Once it's done a little, it will quickly become commonplace.

And as we all know, when you do something that's commonplace, it's not worth that much.

The goal can't be quality, not for people anyway. It needs to be humanity. The rough edges of caring, of improv and of connection.

If all you can do is meet spec, better be sure you can do that faster and cheaper than an AI can.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ditches, Vents and Drains

Knives and Septic Systems

The Electromagnetic Spectrum --DC to Daylight (and actually well beyond)