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A fictional variant of this story also shows up in Peter Watts' novel Starfish. In that version, the neural net is trained to manage the ventilation system of
by teraflop 3y ago
A fictional variant of this story also shows up in Peter Watts' novel Starfish.
In that version, the neural net is trained to manage the ventilation system of an underground train station, based on data about passenger movements. Unfortunately, it ends up simply paying attention to the display of a clock that happens to be visible through one of its cameras. And when the clock breaks, a bunch of people asphyxiate. A bit implausible, but memorable.
- pacaro 3y agoSome time in the mid 90s I spoke with someone who had worked on this kind of problem (and others) on the London Underground. There had been a desire to know platform occupancy, and that this could be achieved by using a NN. The story as relayed to me was that the NN was never much more reliable that simply measuring the brightness of the platform — or rather the reflection of lights from the platform surface — which could be fairly easily calibrated I took it less as a cautionary tale about NN and more about looking for simple solutions
- komadori 3y agoMy AI lecturer at University told both the tank story and a similar London Underground story. In his version of the latter, the NN was measuring platform occupancy but sometimes produced anomalous results. After investigation it was determined that the NN was actually counting the number of bins that were visible on the wall (pre-IRA, I guess). On average, the more people the fewer bins are visible.
- dmbche 3y agoJust going throught the trilogy - it's good! It's also free to download - go read it!
- sbierwagen 3y agoContent warning: the second book is 90s edgy to a degree uncommon today. Of the two major themes of the book, one is sexual assault.
- dsr_ 3y agoWhich, to be clear, is unambiguously bad both in the book and reality.
- sbierwagen 3y agoSure, but the average person, on seeing just a "it's good!" review, might be surprised by the hundreds of pages describing the viewpoint character being raped.
- dmbche 3y agoBeing OC I agree - I was personally shocked and had not read it before writing this "review" It feels gratuitous and shocking, readers beware
- didntcheck 3y agoBy the same metric is The Handmaid's Tale "90s edgy" then?