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Category: AI

OpenAI connected to a rifle

OpenAI connected to a rifle

OpenAI has cut off a developer who built a device that could respond to ChatGPT queries to aim and fire an automated rifle. The device went viral after a video on Reddit showed its developer reading firing commands aloud, after which a rifle beside him quickly began aiming and firing at nearby walls.

This kind of robotic automation has been possible for some time – and it’s components are easily available to hobbyists around the world. The only novel thing is using voice control; which isn’t even that novel by chatGPT standards. The reality is – as we are seeing in Ukraine – that drones are being used for active warfare and it’s only a small stretch further to imagine soldiers building something like this to defend their positions.

This obviously brings up a lot ethical and philosophical questions. Are these weapons – or defenses like barbed wire/electric fences? Are they illegal? What makes them illegal? What makes them a war crime? These sorts of devices even have their own classification: lethal autonomous weapons – and many of them are not actually illegal in war.

In civil law, there is the famous Katko v. Briney case of a booby trapped shotgun. It isn’t the automated, unattended, or indiscriminate nature of such a device that makes it illegal. It’s the fact that deadly force can only be used to defend a human life imminently in peril. A robot, or even a homeowner, cannot use deadly force to defend property – even if the person is on the property illegally or performing other illegal acts (theft). But what if the autonomous system could determine when someone was about to kill? What if it’s a mob with weapons approaching you?

We’re entering a brave new world – one in which our ethics and laws are going to have to do a lot to catch up on.

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Browsing the internet on a Mac Plus

Browsing the internet on a Mac Plus

Hunter Irving picked up a 1986 Macintosh Plus and helped create MacProxy Plus, an open-source app that lets vintage Macs browse the modern web. 

He uses a BlueSCSI device to emulate a rare mac ethernet adapter (Daynaport SCSI/Link-T) and a Macproxy to convert modern web pages to something 90’s era html only browsers can display. He improved Macproxy to have modular components with custom handling for specific websites. Thus, MacProxy Plus. He used claude.ai to help write some of the proxy.

He then went on to handle images – and video – using dithering and generated ASCII art.

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AI runs 100m dash

AI runs 100m dash

AI Warehouse tasked a group of five AI agents to complete a 100-meter dash. Each was trained using Deep Reinforcement Learning and each agent has different physical characteristics. It’s kind of like watching AI play QWOP.

McDonald’s quits AI

McDonald’s quits AI

McDonald’s is ending a test run of AI drive-thrus. It paired with IBM and put it in more than 100 restaurants since 2021. The goal was to simplify voice-activated ordering. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with replacing workers with automation given the new $20/hour minimum wage for fast food restaurants (CA is considering another 3.5% increase in 2025).

Two sources familiar with the technology told CNBC that among its challenges, it had issues interpreting different accents and dialects, which affected order accuracy. McDonald’s will keep using IBM’s other solutions, but AI ordering seems to be on hold.

Reminds me of some issues iPhone has in Scotland.