I don’t know why those Boston Dynamics robots invaded the innanet last week, but yeah. It’s amazing.
The most absurd progress to me is energy: ten years ago, those robots had giant power cables attached to them. The fact that we achieved autonomy on what looks like heavy machines, while making them do 180 jumps and dance, is insane. My brain was like the Leonardo meme, pointing at the screen and screaming “CGI!!” from time to time. It’s real though.
The absolute creepiest accuracy to me is AI voices. I guess you’ve heard of Bourdain’s documentary using his voice without him being alive. I believe it’s worse than anything. It’s the T2 nightmare that we couldn’t possibly think would be doable like that and yet, here we are. Voices are ingrained in our souls like no picture ever will. A familiar, loved voice is the truest trust. It’s the most unfalsifiable thing ever. It was.
The voice of someone you adore is one of the most sacred thing ever. Knowing that technology can be abused —and will be— to sell us some stuff by puppeteering our emotions on a whole other level, I’m not feeling it at all. Leave us alone.
“but what about the people who could use this to mourn, having lost someone early or in an accident?” Sure, but we’re entering some ethical seas that we will have to manage on top of others. Mourning would never stop, you would listen to your dead folks and have conversation with them? It’s probably really not healthy at all.