This episode contains: Steven thinks Devon won’t watch the Emoji movie, but wait for the Wing-Dings movie instead. We chat about the terrible reviews of the Emoji movie and the terrible ad campaign that preceded it. While talking about The Handmaids Tale, we segue into a Henry Rollins review of our new presidency.
Robot Overlords: AI is inventing its own language and we keep shutting it down. Steven recaps neural networks (again) and how they affect AI. The Facebook AI decided that English wasn’t an efficient was to communicate and adjusted it to work “better”. We also talk about Google AI that wrote it own language to help in translating two separate languages. Neat! With machines creating their own languages, it’s becoming harder to translate what they’re doing. We parlay all of this into a conversation about AI and what a true sentient AI would be like, or want. Devon admits that he doesn’t rewatch Marvel movies.
Biological Imperative: Scientists successfully used CRISPR to fix a mutation that causes disease in a human embryo. Scientists were able to delete a gene for a heart disorder. We talk about how CRISPR works, what it can do now, and what it might be able to do in the future. We also dip into the debate about whether we should be editing our genes.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/2/16083300/crispr-heart-disease
Sci-fi TV: We’ve both watched two scif-fi TV shows. Devon first talks about Orphan Black. He is watching the fourth season on Amazon Prime. Devon explains the premise and finds that the fourth season is better than the last. Steven’s first show is Humans. The show starts of episodic and then becomes an awesome story arc. Devon then talks about the Handmaid’s Tale. It’s really well done show but also pretty dark so be prepared. Devon then mentions a recent study showing that the sperm count for the men of the world has dropped by 50%. We’re not sure about the validity of the study so we’re don’t go into details. We then discuss the show that the Game of Thrones show runners are going to do: Confederate. We discuss the backlash and how we (at least Devon) doesn’t really understand it. Steven then tells us about the show Colony. Also a pretty good show.