SaTML 2023 - Timnit Gebru - Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through AGI

Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence

studio notes 4-10-23

Having all sorts of long-term ideas go out the window. Up until now I’ve been using a solenoid lock to stop a ratchet wheel in one direction and another ratchet wheel and arm to keep the assembly only turning in one direction. I had a limit switch that would flip on a turn.

studio notes 4-7-23

Flailing. A few issues made me abandon my idea for a doorknob controller plinth in which the doorknob portion revolves to select a “door”, reorienting the player- first the reintroduction of a projection screen into the space, which would make variable player orientation weird, and 3 or four mistakes in laying out an mdf laser cut that made the complicated revolving encoder/slipring assembly off center or needing hand drilled holes over and over, resulting in a lot of wasted time. The alternative (keeping the doorknob controller) is an additional spinner knob control on the top of the plinth. I don’t love it. The idea here is there’s a projection of a circular array of the doors in the room, with the color of the room and doors, a spinner revolves them, the doorknob tests them to go through.

Feelies as metaphor and method

In the early days of computer gaming, developers and publishers used various creative physical copy protection systems to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of their games. These methods usually required the user to possess a specific physical item (“Feelie”) that came with the game in order to play it. Some notable examples include:

How We Ended Up in the Era of ‘Quantitative Aesthetics,’ Where Data Points Dictate Taste

Let us pause to recall how proud Sam Bankman-Fried was to say that he could prove, with mathematical certainty, that Shakespeare was overrated. I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. […] Link

Studio-notes 3-11-23

Big leap forward today- passing through a door in grotto gives it a color marking of its connecting room, letting you know what path you’ve taken. The maze is still disorienting, there are no cardinal directions in the map view, but you leave a breadcrumb trail as you traverse it.