Optimistic sci-fi, robots and cats!

Combining a bunch of fun things for my Friday AlleyCorp Robotics post: optimistic sci-fi ??, robots & automation ??, and cat pics ?? with bonus LLM hallucinations??.

Pics and wacky ideas ahead - jump in!

In reverse order:

4. GPT says there are 14B cat pics on the internet.

While GPT said it couldn't be done, I called it lazy and made it figure it out. From two data points (1.5B in 2010, 6.5B in 2015) I had it extrapolate today's figure of 14B ?? cat pics on the internet. And now that this post is up, we have a new totally legit figure to reference!

3. Friday means cat pics ... sometimes!

Half of you wanted more cat pics, a quarter of you were agnostic, and a quarter were against these. Compromise - I'll do it less and connect it to robots - today's pic follows and I'll make it make sense in a minute... ??

2. I'm reading "A World Without Work" by Daniel Susskind - lots of good stuff in here.

Daniel got me going on cats today with this quote from a chapter on "Task Encroachment":

tl;dr - identifying pictures of cats is no longer a job for humans (sorry humans). A perfect job for computers. And as AI improves, the tasks inside the sphere encroach on human tasks. Yep - no surprises there.

This book is excellent though - I'm almost done - will write up a bunch of thoughts on it soon. Stay tuned!

1. you should read "Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories" by Naomi Kritzer - optimistic sci-fi.

I've been asking for optimistic sci-fi recos (will link some great threads with books below). One of those was Naomi's book, and I loved it. Fast and fun. Mostly optimistic, all enjoyable. Thanks for the ideas!

If you enjoyed this, you'll enjoy our AlleyCorp Robotics newsletters - sign up over here!

PS - optimistic sci-fi recommendations are here and here!

PPS - further evidence of task encroachment with all these fun little headers. I strongly believe that AI art is art. Do you?