Tag Archives: Rambling

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Less Than Zero 7: John Interviews AI / A Little Henry Chat

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John Interviews AI
Inspired by covering text-chain generators and artificial intelligence in recent days, John has invited a guest, Cathy, onto the show in order to test her abilities and determine if it can pass for human. What he finds scares not only himself, but the very guest he’s interviewing. Will robots rise up and replace humanity? This interview holds none of the answers.

A Little Henry Chat
Henry is alone and dangerously anxious and sober. His ranting and rambling leads him to the path of the circular history – everything is repeating itself and there’s no way to stop it from happening. Might as well discuss some news items that he hasn’t a had a chance to cover on the show yet, just to get them out of his topic hole. All that, plus mild attempts at humor.

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Music Credits:
An Original Piece composed by MuseNet
Payne, Christine. “MuseNet.” OpenAI, 25 Apr. 2019, openai.com/blog/musenet

“Underclocked (underunderclocked mix)” by Eric Skiff

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Episode 108: A Ten-Pack of Pink Ping Pong Balls

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So this guy is walking into a bar. He’s been having kind of a rough week and thinks he deserves a drink. He’s not like an alcoholic or anything. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an alcoholic, it’s a disease after all. Anyway, this guy notices in the window of the bar a very short man playing the piano. Not like a normally short person, but like this guy barely comes up to your knee, figuratively and actually. You wouldn’t want to actually compare his height to your shin on account you, you know, probably that’s offensive. Anyway this guy disregards what he’s seen because hey, the world takes all sorts, and goes into the bar. Now, his first stop is the bathroom, because he just got off work and he hasn’t been home yet to take care of his biological business. Don’t judge. Anyway, when he opens the bathroom door, he’s bathed in a golden light brighter than anything he’s ever seen. You know what he sees? You guessed it: a dang old genie, all glowing and floating as genies have a tendency to do. Now this guy might lead a pretty exciting life, but he rarely has call to hold court with genies despite what you might expect, so he is understandably taken aback. He closes the door, shakes his head, and opens the door again just to check, like a solid second-beat of a classic comedy routine, and bang: still genie. So this guy walks back to the bartender and says: “hey man, I think you’ve got a genie in your bathroom. Is that normal?” The bartender, shaking his head and dutifully wiping a glass, replies: “Yessir. That genie in the bathroom is a wish-granting genie. Anything you ask, he delivers.” The man really doesn’t want for much in life, but figures this is a when-in-Rome scenario and heads back to the bathroom. He stand before the genie and asks: “now I know you genies can’t speak unless you’re granting wishes. Under this arrangement, would you grant me world peace?” The genie smiles, fills his belly with genie energy, and bellows real loud “a swirl of geese!” And suddenly, wouldn’t ya know it, the bathroom is filled with flying geese. Now this man’s no fool, and he sees the situation for what it is almost immediately. He leaves the now goosified bathroom, walks up to the bartender, and says: “barkeep, I think that genie has a hearing problem.” The bartender shoots back a world-weary glance. “Sure, I know that. Now what’ll you have?” The man slides his card across the bartop and orders a New York sour. He looks over his shoulder at the twelve-inch pianist, playing sublime uptempo jazz, and slowly sinks into the realization that there are some things he’ll never understand.

 

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