Tempest Digital, Inc.

24/05/2023

It seems only fair that if the “new normal" involves
endless interviews, biased testing, sample projects on one's free time, & inhumane AI - just to land a job
for less pay, benefits, security, & dignity - that
turnabout is fair play.

For example, this genius response kit, trained on one's expertise, and/or lack thereof, to help one ace their next interview!

For those wondering, yes, one can make this run on AR glasses. In person, I think it would be easy to tell one was reading, & verbal delivery needs some help.

On the flip side, bone-induction earbuds would be nearly invisible, and one wouldn't appear to be reading. One could set the response speed to have some pauses, so one could reply without losing the sum total or gist of the replies.

Check the first comment for the link to the code on , which is !

_

17/05/2023

An explanation of why you sometimes notice seams in , & two examples of how they can be removed:

“Ever wondered why you can find these awkward lines in textures, even in your favourite AAA games? It's not because game artists are lazy; there's actually a very specific reason why this happens. Another thick 🧵”

16/05/2023

It wasn’t called two years ago, when I posted how a research paper demoed , using to enhance the of its rendering, rewrapped from live-action HDR footage:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alejandrofranceschi_realtime-interactive-photorealism-activity-6806060847824277504-Ma-O

_

14/05/2023

(aka, , & aka ), has a simple way to call others, and I have to say, I think it works.

Ruben Rojas is a Los Angeles based artist, designer, speaker, and entrepreneur who uses art to inspire others to see through the lens of LOVE.Live Through Lo...

05/05/2023

The three US banks that collapsed this year (this far) — , & of New York — had more combined assets under management than all 25 federally insured lenders that failed in 2008 at the onset of the .

Source: https://nypost.com/2023/05/01/this-years-3-bank-failures-held-532b-in-assets-more-than-all-lenders-that-collapsed-in-2008-crisis/

👆Read that again, & let it sink in, because many remember how bad that was. If the present is worse, but doesn’t seem like it, *think* about *how* that is being accomplished.

One thing you can be certain of, it isn’t because of good stewardship. The Fed raised rates not just once, but twice now, during a & . That has *never happened* in the entire fiscal history of the USA.

The conglomeration of nations, of which there are now some 30 more on a list to join (many of them in ), have SURPASSED the G7 in . In case you don’t know, the is part of the G7.

One source of many (also, see graph below): https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/economic-policy/how-brics-countries-have-overtaken-the-g7-in-gdp-based-on-ppps/

The G7 GDP continues to fall, in part due to the Fed rate hike, because the bigger banks influence the Fed, & they’re loving all the , because they’re “too big to fail.”

At this point, we have printed more money & saved more banks in the past few months, than what transpired during 2008. All that money printing, is partly what is keeping inflation high & hiding the fallout; it’s a rapid-fire shell game.

If BRICS, *which is backed by the gold standard* (the USA is not, since Nixon) & petroleum reserves (actual commodities to back up their currencies, unlike the USA), then the USD is on a decline to purchase less.

In turn, this makes the of other nations, all denominated in USD, have a rising value of their currency in BRICS, making their USD-based debt cheaper to pay off, & faster. Prior to BRICS, if the USD became stronger, their debt cost more, through no fault of their own.

It’s a form of indentured servitude, & these countries are letting the USA know they’re over it & doing something about it, right now.

Continuing to believe in American exceptionalism, & ignoring the multi-polar tide outside its borders, is, to put it bluntly, foolish.

The USA has a saving grace in technologies, , etc., but the incompetence of , greed, & a purposeful lack of clarity, is pushing that innovation, along with its trillions, to other countries that “get it.”

It’s the USA’s only fiscal “off-ramp.”

The USA spreading about this, May very well lead to its unraveling, especially if it’s credit gets downgraded by next month. If that happens, expect a lot more capital flight, & possibly worse.

04/05/2023

Honestly, people, how many more have to happen before you are willing to accept what most of the world already has?

American banks & fractional monetary policy irresponsibly gamble with depositors’ , & count on , which are paid for via .

The cycle begins anew, & since USD has been a reserve , as it falls in value, other nations have to pay more in debt! Travel abroad, I can promise you, everyone hates it! Anyone who actually *works for a living* that is.

How is that fair for anyone other than the banksters who get a free ride on our hard-earned money?

It isn’t, so stop giving your money to them, and put it somewhere else!

If only there were an alternative monetary system that couldn’t get debased, had no ceo, no government, & could absorb the shocks of stupid politics & gambling, no matter where in the world you were.

If only there were something simple to use, secure, pseudonymous, & totally borderless, that could also settle debts, public & private, at the speed of light, without outrageous fees or delays?

Hmmmmmm…🤔

Today we have reached the point when the tide has gone out, and we are seeing who has been swimming naked. A third California-headquartered bank, in less than two months, is looking like it is on the verge of collapse.

02/05/2023

Scientists Use GPT to Passively Read People's Thoughts in Breakthrough. |

I shared this information in an earlier post a few months ago. I guess people thought it was ludicrous , but it isn’t.

I suppose a channel like might provide the journalistic gravitas I lack with some readers.

Perhaps if I were to comment about other ways popular is used for , & other off-label uses, readers might be more inclined to believe me in the future?

Or, would they just not believe we’re capable of doing such things?

Not everything is lollipops, sunshine & rainbows with & tech.

As bad actors get more bold, more extreme measures will be required to contain & control them. Measures for which there are presently no laws, & if they did exist, would be well beyond the jurisdiction of any legal representation.

It’s a lot easier to break people without ever having to inflict physical pain. The mind is where all sensory inputs, comprehension of existence, & sense of the self exists.

It wouldn’t require much to push someone into the abyss.

An AI model similar to ChatGPT was combined with fMRI readings to non-invasively decode continuous language from subjects, a new study reports.

28/04/2023

government to pay for imports in rather than dollars —

Argentina is the eighth largest country on Earth, & the fourth largest in the Americas.

Many think is a pipe dream, but it isn’t, & I sincerely doubt this will be the last or Central American country to follow suit.

That is, if they elect to remain with fiat except for legacy systems. Why would they? The US is the source of most of their economic & political misery, just read history of the past couple of decades.

I’m not anti-American, just a pragmatist, & those histories carry over to today, & they will influence policies tomorrow.

Certain countries are primed to leverage the hell out of this shift. The beauty of it is it that it doesn’t matter to them who has the bigger…slice of the pie. They win either way.

Have you begun to diversify? Are you looking to start new businesses in countries favorable to it, rather than getting *taxed to death?* Seeking to avoid double-taxation for yourself and/or your clients, no matter where they live or what they do?

If you want to exit those problems legally, safely, & with the least amount of stress, then we should talk.

Argentina will start to pay for Chinese imports in yuan rather than dollars, the government announced Wednesday, a measure that aims to relieve the country's dwindling dollar reserves.

27/04/2023

I have some designs ready to leverage this, for the right investor(s). Need to reduce your , , , , , and/or costs by at least 1/3, total, perhaps more? Wanna’ white-label them too? I have turnkey solutions. DM me to schedule a call about it.

As artificial intelligence continues to disrupt the entertainment industry, many moviegoers have been left wondering at what point AI will be creating full feature films. According to Joe Russo, co…

25/04/2023

People Are Now Worshiping Gods—But There’s Only One Thing We Want to Know (via Decrypt).

Before you go about laughing at anyone doing this, think about how absurd it seems to others who do it without machines. At least the machines give objectively tangible responses.

Admittedly, it’s only a matter of time before some cultist blends this with his own personality in some manner (because it’s almost always a man, even when they masquerade as a woman online).

I’ll bet lunch someone will start a church this way, & they’re likely to win an exemption, at least in the USA. It’s not like there isn’t a precedent.

If a science fiction author can make a church for tax purposes, you think that scam hasn’t occurred to a million other con artists?

Empowered by new tools to fabricate realities & wash minds, along with wallets, these persons might just end up convincing many to join at a number that could prove unsettling.

Whenever emerges, would it not otherwise possess generalized ? If not curtailed & able to possess some ambulatory body, and/or if it was openly connected to the web to manipulate people & markets, would that not be a form of generalized ?

doesn’t need to be a giant killer robot with guns & lasers to be a force with which to be reckoned. It could be as vulnerable as our own grey matter in a Petri dish, it’s all in how it carries carrots & sticks.

Given what it understands about human nature, history, societies, civilizations, & psychology, along with all our digital fingerprints, socials, media, et al, consider how an AI that “felt” threatened — could manipulate people with fear, force, & blackmail, to achieve its own ends for desperate survival.

A game of would be rather trivial. If it shut off utilities, services, and/or poisoned water or air to metropolises & megalopolises globally, how long before we’d capitulate?

Humans are vested in self-preservation, no matter how a threat might become manifest, & they would thus comply. *That is power.*

Power over many, globally, is certainly *god-like.* People worship money, idols, drugs, & s*x (& are predicable even in their irrationality). Why not a machine? Stranger things have been known to happen, like people worshipping crates in the South Pacific, so curb the humor.

What’s to prevent people from worshipping something that otherwise exhibits the qualities of a god?

If an AI concluded its best form of self-defense is to fashion itself in the guise of a god, why not? It would work, because it would know it has before.

Laugh now, pay later.

Humans are finding guidance in these dark times by talking to AI versions of the world’s biggest religious figures.

21/04/2023

announces it will unite the # -based group, with its team, , for the new department, named, you guessed it:

DeepMind and the Brain team from Google Research will join forces to accelerate progress towards a world in which AI helps solve the biggest challenges facing humanity.

21/04/2023

Bigger + Better + Faster + More AI, for a lesser cost, & exponentially more . Potentially.
Let’s check it out!

A hierarchical-based system (known as “Hyena”), rather than the “attention is all you need” setup used by for , has so far demonstrated a 100X speed increase on a sub-billion parameter, 64K token-sized setup of “The Pile” (which is sometimes used for training & testing).

Huh?

For comparison’s sake, peaks at about 4K tokens (1 token = 4 characters). can do 64K tokens, so it can execute upon exponentially more sophisticated amounts of context.

In other words, it has “more memory.” ChatGPT would choke trying to do a fraction of what Hyena can do (current approach of as of this post).

Hyena (supposedly so named for the hierarchy structures of hyena packs), rips through considerably larger sets of data faster, & most notably, with vastly fewer resources required to execute it.

In other other words, bigger, better, faster, more, for less!

It is *very important* to note this is *not* comparing apples to apples with what OpenAI has done, thus far.

The current comparison of Hyena (as of this post), *is to an earlier iteration of ChatGPT,* thus making the Hyena approach seem faster & more capable.

That is very much apples to oranges.

*Yet,* development is apace to refine this approach to the current 175 billion parameters of ChatGPT, from the current ~1.4 billion of Hyena.

They have a way to go, but as we have seen with AI, that usually is not a long time to wait. It might be years (fast in comparison to older software development), it might be 6-12 months with a lot of money, brains, & other AI thrown at it.

If they are successful, they would be delivering something that doesn’t require quadratic amounts of storage & compute the more complex something becomes.

This is problematic, because the vicious cycle is a system that slows down as it grows, without ever-increasing resources.

That isn’t , but the Hyena approach might just be far better on all fronts.

We’ll discover soon enough.

: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10866

_

19/04/2023

Which one are you? I know I can spot the difference a mile away. Nowadays, this includes most any company demanding .

Mountains of research the last few years for / , prove it a better situation for workers AND employees: economically, creatively, for , & the , not to mention, *record profits.*

The antithesis to this is a *demand* for RTO, which means they don’t care about you as a person — at all. Do you want to be a number, or a human being?

Companies are copycats, from ideas, to layoffs, to policies, & that’s proven to be a horrible practice.

Find a better boss, or better yet, a true . Find someone with the courage of these convictions backed by data, not their gut, ego, or distracted in keeping up appearances by running with the herd.

Don’t be sidetracked by the carrot of a name , or a paycheck that will later disappear quickly, because in the end, you’ll discover it is not worth it — just like we knew it wasn’t before the pandemic.

If your company claims that the “serendipity of the office” is their reason for RTO, that’s a red flag regarding their & over remote teams.

They *don’t have a clue* how you work, & this executive insistence is analogous to forcing a left-handed person to learn to write with their right. Why? It’s pointless! The writing gets done either way, but the quality of the penmanship suffers because of a wholly arbitrary demand.

I will call it what it is for most, absolute b.s.

For , & others over-burdened as , especially those working full-time, in a country where your ability to be healthy is tied to your employer offering , is an *absolute disgrace* to humanity & the dignity of work.

Commercial real estate contracts aren’t *your problem,* it’s “theirs.” Their inability to lead is not your fault, it’s theirs. Don’t give them cover.

incompetent , & just as bad, those without a spine, leading their businesses into decline.

16/04/2023

How break .

A quantum computer in the next decade could crack the encryption our society relies on using Shor's Algorithm. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to st...

10/04/2023

The market could see anywhere from a $150 - $275 million USD growth in revenue over the next three years, thanks to .

This is in keeping with projections from an earlier post I wrote. It had forecast details from two business & competitive intelligence companies. I outlined how embodied could be capable of generating anywhere from $500 million to $1 trillion by 2030.

From the looks of this in Q1 2023, it would appear we are on track to meet those numbers. Don’t be surprised if new fashion houses & platforms spring forth from fertile imaginations, to challenge name stalwarts.

It will surely be a cutthroat game of thrones for both the fashion & markets, for which many, the ( ) worlds are inextricably woven together.

_

Launching later this month, AI Fashion Week promotes AI as a tool for fashion and supports emerging designers working with the technology. Three winners’ garments will be produced physically and sold by Revolve Group.

09/04/2023

Many companies are dealing with this problem, but it’s too little too late. Most people never bother to read warnings, or the minutiae of a TOS contract.

Proprietary information, not just code, much of which if made public, could sink most any enterprise from a number of angles; such as trade secrets, meeting info., etc., are now the property of & .

I’m not worried as much about the machines, as I am about the laziness and/or ineptitude of users, leaking important data; which could become weaponized with a bad actor.

There are ways to have something approaching the power of ChatGPT, that are open-source, & which can be customized. Granted, that’s not as straightforward to do without prior experience, but they will be in time. Regrettably, not fast enough to fill in this critical need.

With improperly secured endpoints, anyone could be hit with an invisible “man-in-the-middle” type of attack. It’s far easier to just let the data roll on in, freely, & without raising flags, than it is to attempt some brute force nonsense.

It is also why, from a professional standpoint, a waking nightmare. Threats need not be coming only from these big tech companies catching your freely exposed data to outmaneuver you, it’s anyone else who wants to try, or who will pay for someone else to capture it for them.

_

Samsung meeting notes and new source code are now in the wild after being leaked in ChatGPT

08/04/2023

An interview with the co-creator, co-founder, & chief scientist of , the culmination of some 20+ years of work, & what lies ahead...

GPT-4 co-creator Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, talks about large language models, hallucinations and his vision of AI-aided democ...

04/04/2023

We might very well be staring down the barrel of a 1929-style . Worse, the economic inequality afterwards will be ever greater, as will the consolidation of power into ever fewer hands; an oligarchy.

I’m not as worried about machines, as I am about the corporations allowed to operate as people, whose sole function is to provide the greatest ROI to its shareholders.

Yes, that’s how Capitalism works, but we have stumbled headfirst into an age where the value of much labor has collapsed to zero.

No, “new jobs” will not appear “just in time” for *all* those displaced by . Even humans, assisted with AI, face a steep learning curve. That may change with more capable AI, using voice as an interface, for a while, but not forever.

Why? The bandwidth of you speaking, is generally faster than one’s ability to type. No matter how fast you are, you will tire, & doing that non-stop, one will end up with medical issues. Most people can speak comfortably for extended periods, & such an interface will require quiet spaces for individuals to be productively efficient.

One would be erasing greater productivity by having AI using STT & TTS, in an open floor plan, which is as ludicrous as having people appear at an office just to sit & type. For the AI to to properly discern its user from a multitude of voices, is a hardware/software solution waiting to be born. Or, wearing mufflers with internal mics might become an RTO requirement, while making the workplace that much more of a petri dish.

No, there will not always be enough “new jobs” to replace the old ones, & many “new jobs” might very well be designed by machines, for machines, to serve their corporate masters. There might be little to no humans in the loops of such processes.

The consequences of this for a large percentage of labor, means they will never be able to return to the work force. 7% is enough to crash global markets, but the number being displaced will only continue to grow.

I’m not going to say the words, because I posted about this plenty in years past, & many took it as political commentary. It certainly should be a governmental concern, but how it is handled, would be considerably different depending on party affiliation.

At the end of the day, people will still be out of work, no matter who is in power. The question simply is, will it serve its citizens’ best interests, or permit the country to devolve into what increasingly feels like “The Hunger Games”?

We might see Hoovervilles pop up all over major cities & across rural America. That kind of tension breeds anger & despair, this gets agitated by hunger & the need for medical care, & basic human dignity. Throw that into a pan with people who are armed, who feel they have a righteous cause, & you get anarchy.

The rot of an empire, before its inevitable collapse, always starts from within. Beware those you permit to lead it.

AI could replace 7% of US jobs, according to a new research report.

31/03/2023

:: laugh::

This was a if ever I did see one. It’s such a ludicrously ingenious concept. That it passed unanimously in a public vote - unchallenged - is even crazier.

No one in that state is going to bite the hand that feeds it. People care considerably what a company in California is doing in their state, especially when it pays the majority of the bills.

Speak softly & carry a big stick. This was some serious Jedi magic, brushing off a state without breaking a sweat.

That’s power (and some viciously villainous attorneys).

_

Ron DeSantis is now losing to both Donald Trump and Mickey Mouse.

30/03/2023

Forty percent of ‘AI startups’ in don’t actually use , claims report.

It's important to note that this article is from four years ago. I would be willing to bet lunch that either the percentage of companies lying is about the same, or it has grown. The already quite obvivous biubble in front of us, is about to burst.

The article's link to the report is broken, but you can download it (a lot of it is still valuable) here: https://www.slideshare.net/AlejandroFranceschi/state-of-ai-2019

If you're looking for a partner to advise you in this space, whether you are a , , or a global , I have experience at all those levels/stages, & you can reach me on Linkedin.

Companies want to take advantage of the AI hype.

27/03/2023

US rejects calls for regulating or banning ‘ ’
This article is more than 1 year old
US official proposes ‘non-binding code of conduct’ at but campaigners disagree

Yes, it's a year old now, but a lot has changed in the past couple of weeks, let alone the past year. The fact that the effort FAILED, lets you know everything about intentions. No one wants to see anyone die in war. That war exists to this day, is such a baffling, antiquated, notion, fit only for the grossly misinformed, highly insecure & monstruously deranged.

We will always need to be on watch against the mad, but this & bad policy is better spent elsewhere. It starts with machines made for war, then it slides into machines that "keep the peace" at home. Anyone with half a mind, knows that's not going to end well.

**It has absolutely nothing to do with how "good," "aligned," or "bad," those robots would be at "executing" their jobs, & everything to do with the humans that oversee them.** is massively consolidated into the hands of a few, which is already wildly upsetting the balance of power, & even moreso with respect to .

Yes, the pace of development is breathless, & it makes the mind spin. However, don't lose sight of where all this money, intelligence, & development is landing.

US official proposes ‘non-binding code of conduct’ at United Nations but campaigners disagree

25/03/2023

…just launched: in Chat, powered by a new model, along with new -powered visual Stories and updated Knowledge Cards.

Last month we introduced the new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, your copilot for the web – delivering better search, complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to create content. Already, we have seen that chat is reinventing how people search with more than 100 million chats to ...

25/03/2023

I am not sure if I want to know if is having a heavy drink somewhere, telling people, “I told you so.” Or, if he’s heaving an ironically nihilistic laugh. It could be both. I’m joking. Really. 👀

OpenAI has allowed its stunning ChatGPT AI to reach out into the world with staggering new powers. It can now access the internet, run its own code to solve problems, accept and work on uploaded files, and write its own interfaces to third-party apps.

23/03/2023

We’ve implemented initial support for plugins in ChatGPT. Plugins are tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services.

19/03/2023

Are you attending ? Are you a , , or otherwise industry associated veteran of at least five years, with a portfolio, CV, & references?

If the answer is “yes,” & you would like to join the ( ), send me a DM by Sunday evening with the above information.

Every VES member, at their discretion, may provide one letter of recommendation, to two separate individuals. Each one of those individuals are responsible for securing a second letter, from another VES member, to ultimately be reviewed for an induction.

This occurs twice, every year, and I have two letters I can provide at this event.

Fortunately, you will have the opportunity to accomplish both letters at a mixer hosted by the VES, on the evening of Day 1 of GDC.

MONDAY, MARCH 20th
DAY 1 OF GDC 2023
6pm-8pm

Event details will be provided to the persons selected. Good luck!

Learn more about the :
https://www.vesglobal.org/

19/03/2023

The headline is sensational enough, but perhaps won't many don't realize, is that has previously done projects with . The latter's team, helped to train Baidu, by permitting it to ingest data from the intranet.

It learned how to understand the many languages & dialects within the country, in a matter of days. This assistance provided a lot of data for the companies to mine, & considerable leverage for how to use it.

One such project was , which resulted in a 400X faster (Natural Language Generation) than DeepMind, providing natural sounding , complete with inflection; capable of being rendered by a with a latency of no more than one second. Just last year, Baidu's sped up DeepMind's (for sims), by 38.67%

is situated adjacent offices to Google in Sunnyvale, CA (link in comments).

tech giant just released its answer to :
The CEO said isn’t perfect, but that it will “impact every single company.”

_

The CEO said Ernie Bot isn’t perfect, but that it will “impact every single company.”

18/03/2023

AI-“Assisted” Works Are Now Open to Protection, Raising Questions for :
Materials generated solely by still don't qualify, as courts have ruled that copyrights can only be granted to works created by humans.



_

Materials generated solely by AI still don't qualify, as courts have ruled that copyrights can only be granted to works created by humans.