AI versus Marshy #27: For Dead, For Leftovers, For Vision

Hello and welcome to another edition of AI versus Marshy!

The newsletter that keeps tabs on developments on artificial intelligence news and gives you 3 things worth knowing each week.

But first - how did your year finish?

Mine is finishing full - it’s been an incredible year personally and I’ve enjoyed things professionally too.

Feel free to reply and let me know - I love chats with my readers.

This week:

👻 Back from the grave - cloning dead loved ones

🛠️ An AI tool that gets better with butter

😎 Computer Ray-Bans - AI sees what you see

Let’s look like a river and flow!

-Marshy

AI for Dead People

Sourced from Big Think.

One thing that fascinates me about this trajectory we’re on is watching it spill over into everyday life.

Do you remember when your uncle talked to you about Bitcoin?

We’re almost there.

I’m part of a Slack community of dance music fans and we’re basically old nerds that share links and talk about funnies, tech, and games.

A comment was made that the transplanting “us” into a synthetic body happening “in our lifetimes” could be possible.

Enter AI.

“Yeah - you could probably upload an old loved one’s email, socials, online identity into a Language Learning Model and get a decent replica of them”

Oh shii—- that already exists.”

Thanabots are the digital representation of someone.

​Project December is a project that enables talking to a simulation of someone including someone who is no longer living.

(Italics is their words and added for effect).

From a marketing video? Or horror story.

I find this quite weird. But do I have a good reason why? My idea of someone passing has an element of finality that includes digital presence, but discussion in the community was mixed.

I rabbit-holed into the world of lucid dreaming once upon a time and believe it or not this problem comes up in that world.

Lucid dreaming is the art/science of controlling your dreams. With enough practice you can induce a lucid dream that’s limited only by your imagination.

There’s a book called “Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming” by Stephen LaBerge.

If you can create anything in your dream, you can also recall and interact with dead loved ones.

The author writes:

“When an important relationship ends, people often find that they are left with unresolved issues… In waking life, it is impossible to say those things you never said to your father before he died… In lucid dreams, however, it is possible to achieve resolution. Of course, the absent (person) is not really there, but the missing person’s representation in your own mind is present. This is enough, since it is your own inner conflicts that you need to settle.”

Reading about this again (but with AI instead of lucid dreaming) still feels not quite right.

What do you think?

AI for Leftovers

Keep an eye out for Clove.

Clove is a soon-to-arrive AI recipe building app for both everyday cooks (most adults on the planet) and recipe creators.

The goal of the platform is to provide food inspo with what you’ve already got.

I can get behind this problem.

I used to hate cooking, and now quite enjoy rustling things up working with what’s already in the kitchen.

Once you get a handle on basic food prep (how to chop vegetables, how much oil to use, combinations that work etc.) you can get a lot of healthy and functional meals done.

I owe a good amount of weight loss to this.

Clove will make that easier and is started by some ex-Canva employees.

I’m a big fan of everyday cooking.

Looks good!

AI for vision

​Sourced from CNET.

Wearable AI

Meta and Ray-Ban’s have had an ongoing technology partnership that seems to work well for both companies.

Initially you could take photos and upload them to your socials with one of their kits, and now it looks like you can start querying things around you.

You can use the sunglasses to ask about what it sees, take photos, and translate things on the fly.

It will imagine things (like saying a particular fruit in a fruitbowl exists when it doesn’t) but the tech will keep growing and improving in this direction.

Wearable AI is here to stay it seems and this follows in the footsteps of hu.ma.ne AI pin.

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My kind of tie.

Image prompt: Create a 16-bit image of a goofy man wearing a calculator tie - wearable technology that lets you make calculations and look stylish.

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And that’s the last newsletter before celebrating Christmas here.

I’ve got some down time booked so the newsletter will be lighter on content over the next few weeks.

I’ve got a marketing newsletter launching next year, a free coaching offer coming soon with no pitches involved, and a huge secret squirrel project on the horizon that I can’t talk about yet.

Have a wonderful time if you’re celebrating, and if this time of year is hard for you - I’m thinking of you too.

Sometimes all of the hype, family dysfunction, and weight of expectations can be debilitating so make sure you put yourself first ❤️

We’ve got this!

-Marshy

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