back to article Musk's popstar girlfriend Grimes croons about next-gen AI, plus more machine-learning news

Hello, welcome back to The Register's weekly AI roundup. There is news who is funding who for AI projects, but things have also got a little weird as popstars start making AI-inspired hits. Listen below! AI and law: The University of Oxford has received £1.2m to study the different ways that AI might revamp the legal industry …

  1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Better Beta AIdDevils You Might Know.

    and we will work together with a number of private sector partners who are also engaging with these issues,

    The Straight and Narrow Path Choice there is Binary ..... Be Ye Rooting and Routeing for the Saint or the Sinner? Do you Reveal Heavenly Paths or do you Cast Hellish Journeys?

    Autonomous Media Machine Operations for Instant Spontaneity in Live Operational Virtual Environments is Certainly a Crazy Vessel to Command for Control of Perfectly Commandeered Immaculate Control ...... and is arraigned before you and ready for Speedy Boarding/Flash Jumping.

    Real Mega Big Meta Data Base Pictures are Painted Safely and Securely in there ...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AI representation

    Why do so many pictures of supposed AI humanoids have (totally nonfunctional, obvs.) boobs?

    I can guess some of the answers but they have little to do with intelligence.

    1. colinb

      Re: AI representation

      Batteries?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: AI representation

        Anime!

    2. cookieMonster Silver badge

      Re: AI representation

      Airbags?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: AI representation - Airbags?

        I guess robots driving cars might be driven into by meatsack controlled vehicles so you might have a point.

        We would need to check some pictures of Bulgarian AIs to verify the hypothesis.

    3. Schultz
      Go

      Why do so many AI humanoids have (totally nonfunctional, obvs.) boobs?

      Obvious answer in Austin Powers.

    4. Dan Wilkie

      Re: AI representation

      I'm going to be kind and say it's to humanise them. The more it looks like a human being, the more likely people are to accept it.

      The more it looks like a giant robotic spider, the more houses are going to get burnt to the ground to make sure it's dead.

      We're funny old sorts.

  3. SVV

    Grimes against humanity

    That music video and abysmal song explain more about Elon Musk than 100 articles featuring his conceptual ideas.

    1. JLV

      Re: Grimes against humanity

      eh, better than an Ariana Grande vid, IMHO.

      1. VinceH

        Re: Grimes against humanity

        I've never heard of Grimes before - and TBH I quite liked it on first listen.

  4. Adam Foxton

    Why not instead

    Create a legal system that makes sense, one that can be flowcharted and is based on a few founding principles.

    You know, rather than having a legal system so complex it needs an artificially intelligent supercomputer to figure out if your actions were or were not criminal.

    You're solving the wrong problem, people!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      Re: Why not instead

      You mean a legal system like the one that was set up for Germany after WW2 and that on the whole works very well?

      A case of "Do as I say, not do as I do" which actually worked.

      Mine's the one with a copy of Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in the pocket (it is not a big book.)

    2. Kane
      Joke

      Re: Why not instead

      "Create a legal system that makes sense, one that can be flowcharted and is based on a few founding principles.

      You know, rather than having a legal system so complex it needs an artificially intelligent supercomputer to figure out if your actions were or were not criminal."

      Don't be daft old chap, then anyone could do it!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why not instead

      Create a legal system that makes sense, one that can be flowcharted and is based on a few founding principles.

      English civil law is founded on a few principles and makes sense. It's the edge cases that make for complexity, and (more so) the complexity of the problems that is asked to resolve. There's a very good reason why a vastly disproportionate volume of world trade is conducted by contracts that deem any disputes to be settled in English courts. Unfortunately, many of the things that a court has to decide on involve (as one example) tests of what is reasonable, fair, proportionate. You can write a flow chart for that, it doesn't make the decision any simpler and better suited to AI.

      But I wonder what problem AI lawyers are intended to solve, and for whom? I've no love to for lawyers, but the last thing the UK needs is its highly profitable, skilled, foreign exchange earning legal sector to be replaced by CortanaLaw, which being realistic will be 99% US IP, and priced (as with meatsack lawyers) right up to the point of maximum returns to the owner.

      Given that its the bunglers of the research councils doling out cash, I'd suggest maybe they should have funded a study "Unlocking the potential for unlocking of AI in designing and running effective, reliable low cost, user-fridenly shared services"

      1. Eddy Ito

        Re: Why not instead

        But I wonder what problem AI lawyers are intended to solve, and for whom?

        Simple, upwards of 90% of lawyer work is simply filling out and filing forms because the entire legal code was written by lawyers and every attempt was made to intentionally obscure it from the typical person. Having AI lawyers means the real lawyers can release the paralegals in the office and save a few bucks.

        Have no fear, there won't be any AIs blustering away at juries any time soon because they still haven't mastered the art of tear jerking. I'm sure they're working on it though.

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Windows

    “Neanderthal to human being. Evolution, kill the gene. Biology is superficial. Intelligence is artificial. Submit, submit, submit, submit, submit, submit, submit.”

    Looks like someone tries to get insurance against Roko's basilisk in early.

    It looks like this might be becoming a trend in pop music, as another pop star Poppy, also released an equally disturbing tune about an intelligent robot girl waking up and poisoning humans after they have destroyed nature and pillaged its natural resources.

    Misanthropic stuff. Robot girl wouldn't care, then go for some natural resources "herself" (more like "itself", right?).

    Meanwhile, I hear that Rethink Robotics has closed its door. Ex-chairman, CTO and feasible-AI-guru Rodney Brooks has an article in IEEE on Innovation: The Rodney Brooks Rules for Predicting a Technology’s Commercial Success: A few key questions will help you distinguish winners from losers

  6. Jonathan Richards 1
    Go

    GAN images

    Interesting... In just a few steps one can get a whole H.R. Giger vibe going on: jellyfish+cheetah+manhole cover+unicycle+espresso

  7. Mark 85
    Facepalm

    ...training lawyers to have technical expertise and working out the best ways AI can be applied ethically and morally.

    They used "lawyers' in the same sentence with "ethically" and "morally"..... We need a belly laugh icon.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "They used "lawyers' in the same sentence with "ethically" and "morally"..... We need a belly laugh icon."

      We don't. Some lawyers (including some of my own former students, I am biased) are very ethical and moral. But they tend to work with people like refugees and people failed by the system rather than milking yet another dysfunctional corporate for another yacht.

      The problem is not lawyers, but their employers.

  8. earplugs

    Nice leather

    All the world to see

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AI in the legal system? US is trying it, not working out so well

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2166207-discriminating-algorithms-5-times-ai-showed-prejudice/

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a code word

    If you replace 'AI' with 'capitalism' or 'the rich elite' then the admonition to 'submit, submit, submit' is very appropriate. Most people are so dazed and confused that they don't even recognize the real enemy any more. No, it's not technology itself but rather those who control (own) the technology and what they choose to do with it (control and dominate most of the world's population).

  11. ILLQO

    amanfromMars 1

    Every time I feel like I am beginning to understand what you are saying then I have to remind myself its only designed that way.

    I don't think its a basilisk move, it appears that way but its just meant to grab the edgy crowd with a slightly nihilistic viewpoint.

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