AI shite creeping into everyday life, example #1928748392:
I was out mattress shopping today. It was enjoyably ridiculous - the sales assistant measured my “pillow size” using a big contraption (apparently I’m a 2). However while testing a mattress I saw a video display advertising an “AI” widget to go with a specific “motion” mattress.
Baffled, I searched this up later.
AI voice control & Anti-snore box
Create your own spa-like oasis from the comfort of your own home by combining this Anti-snore Voice Control Box with our U210 and N700 motion bases. This range combines the very best and innovative technology with unbeatable comfort to give you the ultimate relaxation experience. Whether you want the optimal sleeping position or to spend your evenings unwinding with a good book, set offers luxurious comfort at the tip of your fingers.
I think this is un-enjoyably ridiculous. It’s not really clear what’s “AI” about it.
A close friend of Epstein told me he was an integral part of a group called Edge, a strange organization involved in what my source called “the TED Talk community” that would serve as his primary gateway to the scientific world.
Edge, which has called itself “the world’s smartest website” and claims to “redefine who we what and are,” would hold TED Talk afterparties in Monterey Bay called “The Billionaire’s Dinner,” where people like Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt of Google, Rupert Murdoch, Steve Pinker, Richard Thaler, Joichi Ito, Margaret Levi, Frank Wilczek, Richard Dawkins, and many of the world’s high-profile scientists (including Nobel prize winners), business executives, and intellectuals would show up. Edge’s website calls itself the online version of “The Reality Club” which, the site claims, was an “informal gathering of intellectuals who met from 1981 to 1996 in Chinese restaurants, artist lofts, investment banking firms, ballrooms, museums, living rooms and elsewhere,” the hallmark of which was a “rigorous and sometimes impolite (but not ad hominem) discourse.”
Epstein had close ties with Edge’s founder, John Brockman, a self-described cultural impresario who on his bio page introduces himself with an uncredited quote that reads, “If the creation of contemporary culture had a global hero, his name would coincide with that of John Brockman.” He claims to have invented the term “intermedia” as well as “intermedia kinetic environments.” Epstein bankrolled Edge’s events and financed the majority of the organization—from 2001 to 2017 Epstein provided $638,000 out of a total $857,000 received by Edge. He was photographed at Edge’s premiere annual event, The Billionaire’s Dinner, several times between 1999 and 2011. Multiple photos of him have been scrubbed from the website, such as one with Brockman’s son in 2003.
Media coverage of the Epstein case has given considerable attention to his absurd scientific pursuits, like the New York Times story about how he wanted to seed the human race with his DNA, or how he wanted to have his penis frozen and resuscitated in the future, and I myself heard from people in the black book that Epstein had told them he had a cloning lab down in Mexico and that he was very into “transhumanism.” Followers of the Epstein story have debated whether these were signs of a true mad-genius supervillain or whether they were elitist hot air. I’m here to tell you that all of this bullshit, every bit of it, came from Edge and its assemblage of chinstrokers. The transhumanism, the cloning, the “What is up? What is down?”—all of it is perfectly at home on the deranged pages of Edge.org.
From “I Called Everyone In Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book” by Leland Nally, Mother Jones, October 2020
Some good news for once: Dublin punk bar the Thomas House have had enough of AI slop.

When I read rationalist descriptions of other people’s psychology I sense a certain amount of contempt for them (because they are not Rational and of course cannot understand themselves as well as the rationalists can understand them). In this case, the silly woman who doesn’t understand why her expectations are being defied.
I dunno, it does read like fiction. Like one of those billionaire romance novels, actually.

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