Vocal Voices

Have a look at this and the reviewers fears of the use of this technology….

Just as we start to get truly usable computing power, people wake up and realise that technology can be used for BAD as well as Good deeds….

You can bet the CIA MI5/6 Military and government defence departments had this thought out a decade ago….

I wondered when this would happen!

Some years ago on another site I predicted that CGI would become so advanced that actors could be done away with completely or simply used to voice-over. It is almost analogue in its operation - fantastic, yet a bit scary.

It never occurred to me about the darker side. I magine an organisation manufacturing an 'event' as if in real time and then using it to justify some sort of action.

It did occur to me that governments might use this tech and whilst it was only within the purview of governments (has been for 3-4 years), it was not really available to companies smaller than medium sized states in revenue.

However this change in capability is almost overdue. Changes in CGI hardware are exponential. I bought my laptop with two of the fastest graphics cards (mobile), on the market at the time. Today the third fastest single mobile card is faster than the TWO I bought only 17 months ago. Certainly processors are not changing that fast, the next generation of processors in the line I bought are only 9% faster over the same time span.....

Certainly the big difference is "real time". This comes in several parts. To do real time, they not only need fast graphics, processors and memory, they need exceptionally fast disk and database access. This has been the preserve of huge monolithic infrastructures costing tens if not hundreds of millions to build. These last 3 years have changed the disk access even more dramatically than the CGI world. SSD (solid state drives or flash/memory drives), speeds have increased massively. Whilst the graphics card increase of 100% I saw was dramatic, hard drive access speeds have increased by up to 2000%. Also the ability to put these massively faster drives into large arrays has also grown. Literally, drive throughput has increased from tens of megabytes per second to tens of gigabytes per second.

This is incredibly important in impersonating someone. The software has to use a library of words, context and known mannerisms and expressions to fake authenticity. Until two years ago this was simply too much data to be available instantly for real time use.

I can't see an end to this curve. Within my lifetime it will be possible to render a person, in image, fully in life size 3d so that the image can hold a conversation with you and you will not be able to tell the difference between the image and the real person.

Add to the fact that this technology is shrinking daily and you wind up with the final part of the circle. Robotics and andorids. It is going to be a different world our Grandchildren live in. Hopefully it will also be a safe world. But I'm not too hopeful.

Advances in engineering in areas such as prosthetics and gravity sensors as used in tablets PCs/Smartphones are also keeping up.

Terminator/Blade Runner world might not be as far off as we once thought.

And if AI makes huge advances then what?

Well I think we've had enough lateral thinkers to keep even the most lazy and un-paranoid AI developer in control of their creations.

I'm not worried about how machines will deal with us. I'm more concerned about how humans will use machines for the detriment of other humans...... Machines, after all, will be unlikely to have the small minded, self conceited, malicious, natures of many humans.

Although if anyone was stupid enough to give them the kind of power of the Terminator "Skynet", could you blame them for trying to "cure" the world of the "Human Virus"??? It would be an eminently logical conclusion....