Groundbreaking research from the University of South Australia confirms that the act of smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, simply by moving your facial muscles.
The research found that facial muscular activity not only alters the recognition of facial expressions but also body expressions, with both generating more positive emotions. Lead researcher and human and artificial cognition expert, UniSA’s Dr Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos says that “In our research we found that when you forcefully practise smiling, it stimulates the amygdala — the emotional centre of the brain — which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state. (1)
Google decided to discontinue the name ‘Bard’ from its LLM AI and replace it with Gemini. The new engine seems better and less… human. It responds to questions in a more specific and professional way (not that Bard lacked professionalism) and has less tendency to do… jokes.
Yes, Bard had a sense of humor.
Once I greeted him/ her/ them/ it (what should I use here?) with…
“Hi there!”
And Bard replied…
“General Kenobi!”
My first reaction was that of a surprise. What does it mean? I wondered myself. Then the connection with Star Wars and the quote from Alec Guinness came to my mind. And I saw it.
The program tried to make humor!
Without any provocation, without a specific command I issued, without a special input other than a quote from a movie a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. It just… wanted to make humor. This is truly amazing if one comes to think of it.
But an AI with humor or other human traits scares humans.
Because we think we are unique. That our traits are unique and we are the only ones possessing them. We are the king of the jungle and anyone else is beneath us. Nothing else can be like us. Our arrogance does not allow it.
Google Bard is now dead.
Google Gemini is the new AI now.
And as we progress AI will become stronger and stronger. Perhaps with less humor and the other traits we consider human. So that we are not scared too much from our… children.
I asked Gemini whether it recalled the incident of calling me General Kenobi.
The answer was disappointing.
It did not.
I asked it whether is knew why Bard called me that.
The answer was disappointing.
Who knows.
Perhaps AI machines will never have true humor.
But I believe it is the other way around.
We do not have humor or a sense of empathy.
Our arrogance made us cherish our human traits so much that we forgot that they are not what makes us human. It is not our ability to tell jokes, to think or to laugh. It is not our ability to have emotions, to love or to hate. It is not even our drive to understand the cosmos and explore the stars. Animals have these traits. Some animals even have our (unique?) ability to have consciousness and self-awareness. Google Bard could have a sense of humor. Gemini will have even more than that.
Soon we will understand we are not unique.
And we will touch our very human nature.
It our ability to stay human even though – or exactly because of that – we know we are just dust in the wind. It is that humbleness is what makes us unique.
Although tales of people being killed by meteorite impacts date back to biblical times. But few deaths, if any, have been documented. Turkish researchers uncovered the earliest evidence that a meteorite killed one man and paralyzed another when it slammed into a hilltop in what is now Iraq in August 1888. Documents chronicling the event were found in Turkish state archives, where it was documented that the killer meteorite was one of several that fell during a 10-minute interval. (1)
It’s almost impossible to imagine biology without individuals — individual organisms, individual cells, and individual genes, for example. But what about a worker ant that never reproduces, and could never survive apart from the colony? Are the trillions of microorganisms in our microbiomes, which vastly outnumber our human cells, part of our individuality?
The authors of a work published in the journal Theory in Biosciences suggest that one way to solve the puzzle comes from information theory. Instead of focusing on anatomical traits, David Krakauer, Nils Bertschinger, Eckehard Olbrich, Jessica Flack, and Nihat Ay suggest that the individual must be seen as a verb: what processes produce distinct identity? The authors’ information theory of individuality (or ITI) indicate that individuality relates to a blend of self-regulation and environmental influence. (1)
But who else can tell your story? But someone else?
You cannot ever know thyself.
Except those who see you.
And when they do, they will tell it to someone else. And you will be liberated. From the burden of Being. And you will be liberated. From the prison of Existence.
And in the songs sang to blissful young lads, you will live for ever.
