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This is a minor plot point in Vernor Vinge's excellent SF novel A Fire Upon the Deep. One of the premises of the novel's universe is that computational power i

This is a minor plot point in Vernor Vinge's excellent SF novel A Fire Upon the Deep. One of the premises of the novel's universe is that computational power is generally absurdly plentiful, but communications bandwidth over interstellar distances is not. Most communications are in plain text (modeled after USENET) but in some cases, "evocations" are used to extrapolate video and audio from an ultra-compressed data stream. The trouble, of course, is that it's not very obvious what aspects of the image you're seeing are real, and what aspects were dreamed up by the system doing the extrapolating.

Aperocky 7y ago
> it's not very obvious what aspects of the image you're seeing are real, and what aspects were dreamed up by the system doing the extrapolating. It would be quite obvious unless the raw data before extrapolating is destroyed, for which there are no reason nor is it possible to stop others in the vincinity from receiving this raw data.
- teraflop 7y ago
  That assumes that the "raw data" is reasonably human-comprehensible (which neural network weights and activations are notoriously not) and/or that you have time to sit down and analyze the data at your leisure. But saying more would be spoilery...
- read_if_gay_ 7y ago
  For that to be true the compression algorithm mustn’t be very efficient.
cheez 7y ago
A main premise of the Fear the Sky trilogy as well but solved a different way. Machines representing various political factions from the home planet are uploaded with AI that mimics them emotionally and politically for all intents and purposes. I really enjoyed this book.
- lgl 7y ago
  +1 recommendation for this trilogy
- luhem7 7y ago
  Eh, I personally enjoyed the series, but I wouldn't recommend anything beyond book 1. Book 2 is ok. Book 3 really spoiled the series for me because of the inconsistent behavior if the main character. (Keeping it vague to avoid spoilers)
  - cheez 7y ago
    Same. Notice I said "the book" while mentioning the trilogy ;-)

Aperocky 7y ago

> it's not very obvious what aspects of the image you're seeing are real, and what aspects were dreamed up by the system doing the extrapolating. It would be quite obvious unless the raw data before extrapolating is destroyed, for which there are no reason nor is it possible to stop others in the vincinity from receiving this raw data.

teraflop 7y ago
That assumes that the "raw data" is reasonably human-comprehensible (which neural network weights and activations are notoriously not) and/or that you have time to sit down and analyze the data at your leisure. But saying more would be spoilery...
read_if_gay_ 7y ago
For that to be true the compression algorithm mustn’t be very efficient.

cheez 7y ago

A main premise of the Fear the Sky trilogy as well but solved a different way. Machines representing various political factions from the home planet are uploaded with AI that mimics them emotionally and politically for all intents and purposes. I really enjoyed this book.

lgl 7y ago
+1 recommendation for this trilogy
luhem7 7y ago
Eh, I personally enjoyed the series, but I wouldn't recommend anything beyond book 1. Book 2 is ok. Book 3 really spoiled the series for me because of the inconsistent behavior if the main character. (Keeping it vague to avoid spoilers)
- cheez 7y ago
  Same. Notice I said "the book" while mentioning the trilogy ;-)