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A technology very similar to this plays a plot point in Vernor Vinge's 1992 novel A Fire Upon the Deep. In his universe, both the interstellar net and combat

by etcet 6y ago

A technology very similar to this plays a plot point in Vernor Vinge's 1992 novel A Fire Upon the Deep. In his universe, both the interstellar net and combat links between ships are low bandwidth. Hence, video is interpolated between sync frames or recreated from old footage. Vinge calls the resulting video "evocations".

WookieRushing 6y ago
I highly recommend A Fire Upon the Deep. Its a rare mix of really interesting hard scifi with an actually good story and characters. Hard scifi often has very flat characters but this is not a book which suffers from it. It has a very very cool twist to explain the Fermi Paradox and is a really good example of a universe with one modified rule.
nickcw 6y ago
I was thinking of exactly this when I read the article. The plot point being that when the bandwidth gets too low, the interpolation AI has to make lots of stuff up, you are not quite sure exactly what was said. I seem to remember the bandwidth in the book was very tiny, small number of bits per second (?) so the AI was taking the speech and compressing it into something more compressed than text then decompressing it at the other end into something that was more or less the same.
- nyxtom 6y ago
  Wow, that’s a fascinating concept. Effectively a bitmap index of possible terms said and synthesized speech back on the other end based on old footage of how that person talks.
3ch0 6y ago
There is also a similar technoligy in Rob Reids After On book. The AI has the ability in thet book to "refocus" the person so that they are looking into the camera. I believe this is huge and would create higher engagement if everybody was acutally looking into the camera instead of to the side or up all the time. Creating a more human an emotional relation with the people you are talking to.
- karthikb 6y ago
  Kind of like this? https://techxplore.com/news/2019-06-intel-eye-contact-video-chats.html https://techxplore.com/news/2019-06-intel-eye-contact-video-...

by etcet 6y ago

WookieRushing 6y ago

I highly recommend A Fire Upon the Deep. Its a rare mix of really interesting hard scifi with an actually good story and characters. Hard scifi often has very flat characters but this is not a book which suffers from it. It has a very very cool twist to explain the Fermi Paradox and is a really good example of a universe with one modified rule.

nickcw 6y ago

I was thinking of exactly this when I read the article. The plot point being that when the bandwidth gets too low, the interpolation AI has to make lots of stuff up, you are not quite sure exactly what was said. I seem to remember the bandwidth in the book was very tiny, small number of bits per second (?) so the AI was taking the speech and compressing it into something more compressed than text then decompressing it at the other end into something that was more or less the same.

nyxtom 6y ago
Wow, that’s a fascinating concept. Effectively a bitmap index of possible terms said and synthesized speech back on the other end based on old footage of how that person talks.

3ch0 6y ago

There is also a similar technoligy in Rob Reids After On book. The AI has the ability in thet book to "refocus" the person so that they are looking into the camera. I believe this is huge and would create higher engagement if everybody was acutally looking into the camera instead of to the side or up all the time. Creating a more human an emotional relation with the people you are talking to.

karthikb 6y ago
Kind of like this? https://techxplore.com/news/2019-06-intel-eye-contact-video-chats.html https://techxplore.com/news/2019-06-intel-eye-contact-video-...