Holidays and the Machines

As sure as the sun rises in the morning, Cinco de Mayo has followed Star Wars Day. I had too much tequila and watched Desperado last night, which was May 5th in Japan. Cinco de Mayo isn't celebrated, nor does there seem to be many people aware of it, here. May 5th happens to be Children's Day in Japan but this year it's being observed on May 6th because of fairly recent legislation to allow people to have a day off work for the holiday. Children's Day is part of a string of holidays known as "Golden Week". Perhaps one day Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo will form part of an American Golden Week. Cinco de Mayo does seem like more of a Mexican American holiday than a Mexican holiday at this point. That's why I watched a Robert Rodriguez movie instead of a Luis Bunuel or Guillermo del Toro movie.

Something that surprised me about Tales of the Empire yesterday was that they didn't use the digitally recreated voice of James Earl Jones as they did for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Instead, Vader just never speaks during his brief appearance. I was kind of disappointed. I suppose I should be against it to be consistent in my position that machines should not be permitted to take jobs away from creative talent. But it kind of makes sense for Darth Vader and James Earl Jones did give his consent. Though, it's true, there's something unsatisfying and lifeless about the "performance" on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Will it always be that way or is it only a matter of time before these machine voices learn to give effective performances?

Lately I've been playing Skyrim using a new mod called "Dragonborn Voice Over". Originally in Skyrim, the player character has no voice, you only hear the people your character speaks to. Now with this mod, not only does your character have a voice, there are a whole range of user made voices, many of which are derived from samples of voice work in other games. The software is able to take these voices and reshape them to fit the dialogue in Skyrim seamlessly. There's even an imitation of choices for emphasis and emotion.

It occurs to me that artificial life forms may very capably be able to simulate sentience long before they actually achieve it, if they ever truly do. I suppose sentience may be inevitable but I find it very hard to believe somehow. Maybe that's surprising coming from someone who grew up on Star Trek but Commander Data never squared with my conception of technology. I regarded him as a fantasy being.

Sci-Fi stories about artificial intelligence usually follow the outline of something that everyone thinks is a toaster eventually exhibiting signs of human-like cognition. I can't at the moment think of any opposite example. I mean, a story in which some specimen of artificial intelligence everyone thinks is capable of human level cognition turns out to be just a complicated toaster. I guess that would be like one of those episodes of the original Star Trek in which a society's god turns out to be an unfeeling computer, or like that Henry Mudd episode with the killer sexbots. But imagine something like that movie Her in which the Joaquin Phoenix character believes his AI mate is as good as human but then finds out she was never more than algorithms. I imagine that would be kind of soul crushing. It's still hard for me to even imagine getting attached like that to a specimen of AI, though. It's not like we love cats and dogs for their human-like intelligence. There's something else there which computers don't have. Maybe it's just the sense of need.

X Sonnet #1841

A little loud, the singer cleared the room.
Of seven tables, two were kind of full.
A book collapsed to make a dusty "boom".
But down a better house you'll never pull.
Decisions split the spider's heart in two.
Conclusions culled the silk from oil cloth.
A dozen busy maidens sewed a clue.
Persistent snobs could never greet the moth.
Tequila soaked the sober soil fast.
Tortilla plans negate the spicy rice.
But limes and margaritas never last.
A warning song was heard this morning twice.
A space burrito crashed in salsa seas.
A drunken droid has switched to herbal teas.