Sometime around 2006, I started writing an email to friends and colleagues about things I thought they should be paying attention to. From new tech - mind you, this is pre-Facebook - to cultural trends to a new book or film I had discovered. Stuff to get people out of their comfort zone, but that could maybe be helpful to know about. I did it once a week or so and it was quite the success, to the point that some people complained when I went too long without sharing anything.
I am not really sure when I stopped. I guess I got too busy, or I was not very good about making the time for it. Probably both.
I brought it back once. I want to say it was around 2013 or 2014, but I am not sure. By then I went full Mailchimp on people and tried to manage my subscriber list, the frequency with which I sent stuff and curate the content as well as I could. Again I had good feedback, and again life got the best of me and my calendar.
I have been thinking about bringing it back for quite some time. In the past two or three years I have come across so many wonderful newsletters, though, it’s been intimidating to consider writing. It may also be that I lost my muse for a beat.
It doesn’t help that I have been quite torn about whether I should write in English or Portuguese. I am a native Brasilian and I reckon it would likely make more sense to write in Portuguese, but I started this while living in NY and the (embarrassing) reality is I read more in English these days, hence my thinking ends up being better in my second language. Also, we should know that sounds better than a gente deveria saber que. In Portuguese I sound like a primary school teacher lecturing you about things you ought to pay attention to. Maybe the Brasilian in me is a bit like that?
I am not super worried because I believe a lot of the Brasilian friends I will invite to read my musings can read the language very easily anyway, and the fact is that most of my English speaking buddies would have very little or no reason to be able to read in Portuguese. And, let us not forget, A.I.. If I get feedback that people want to read in Portuguese, I can leverage tech and create some sort of translation-adaptation. Not to worry. At least, not now.
So, here I go again. I will try to keep it fun, stay nice to my muse and share something unexpected every time. I also vow to write this myself. While I am loving how powerful I feel with artificial intelligence at my service these days, writing is one of the few things I know I am not too bad at. And I love it. For my own fun, I will do the writing.
Welcome to my thoughts.
We should know that an Indian Med Student who dreams of immigrating to the US partnered with Google to make a lot of money from MAGA. She says - or writes - sarcastically. Just testing to see if you will read the whole thing or just go for the clickbait. ;-)
Sam - the guy’s nickname in the piece by ArsTechnica - needed to make some extra money while in college and, after trying to get views with sexy photos of an AI-generated girl, realized it wasn’t that simple. He asked none other than Gemini for help, and Gemini being wise as only Gemini can be, it told him to stop being so generic and go for the “MAGA/conservative niche”.
Turns out the people who are not very keen on immigrants, when properly stimulated, can find themselves helping them fundraise for Visas. Emily Hart, the AI-generated MAGA lover made Sam a few thousand dollars on Fanvue, though he says he is not working on her anymore.
We should know that because AI-generated people and cats, and dogs, or maybe (should we call it a character?) ballerinas are all around us and, once we climb over the mountain of slop, the other side will be deception and the world is fucked up a real complicated place right now. Wars, elections, polarization. Forget sex. Or don’t. Sam used Grok to create nudes of Emily Hart and if Sam can do that, so can anyone online. How will we tell if what we are watching, reading, commenting on is real? And, no, this is not a philosophical question.
We should know that researchers have discovered that AI-generated voice clones are significantly easier to understand than actual human speakers. A study published in the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America concluded that voice clones are easier to understand than their human originals. Especially in noisy environments.
Researchers Patti Adank and Han Wang specialize in studying human perception of unclear speech and were fascinated by the idea of machine-replicated speech. A key question they were looking to answer was just how easy voice clones are for the average person to understand.
They suspected that voice clones would simply be poor representations of actual human voices and that people would struggle to understand them. What they found could not be more different. The research found they were, in fact, up to 20% more intelligible.
We should know that because this technology doesn’t come without risks. Voice cloning and synthetic voice technology is not new. Indeed, it’s been minting billionaires left and right. The researchers were more interested in people’s ability to understand as well as like the sound of cloned voices than in the good voice-cloning can do. Regular humans, on the other hand, are more in the world of “what’s in it for me”. In their defense, some of the billionaires are trying to do some good with the tech. At least some of the time.
One of the risks is that a scammer can impersonate individuals for financial crimes, or to crash the world economy. What was quite concerning was that listeners were generally unable to distinguish reliably between cloned and human speech: error rates hovered around 25%–40% in some other studies. Because of these voice cloning scams— often called "vishing" (voice phishing) — some families and organizations are adopting verbal "family passwords" or "safe words" to verify the identity of a caller. Me and my sisters have chosen ours. I’ll let you guess.
If you do, email me so we can change it. Thanks.
We should know that a robot has humiliated top-tier table tennis players and this is not Marty Supreme goes to space. A research team led by Sony AI developed an artificial intelligence-based (had to be) robot capable of kicking Marty wannabes derrières.
The robot is named Ace and I have to congratulate the naming committee for that. Really, I do. It can handle spin-heavy shots as well as net-cord shots where a ball hits the net and lands on the opponent’s side.
Ace defeated three of five players who have competed in national tournaments or other major competitions. It would not have defeated our lovely Hugo Calderano, as it did lose to two professionals.
We should know that because we need to figure out what to do with all the free time we will have when we no longer have to do the dishes. Table tennis has long been considered a difficult sport for robots, with ball speeds exceeding 70 kph and heavy spin altering the ball’s trajectory and bounce. The robot’s “vision” system, and the racket arm’s motion training enabled the robot to employ a repertoire of 15 different serves and sustain rallies. Peter Stone, chief scientist at Sony AI, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corp., said the research results should lead to applications beyond table tennis. “(The findings show that) an AI system can perceive, reason and act effectively in complex, rapidly changing real-world environments that demand precision and speed,” he said.
There are tens of millions of robots out there and the the global robotics market was worth an estimated $94.54 billion in 2024. While it made me very sad that Neo was operated by humans, the fact is Rosie is around the corner and I don’t know about you, but I am on my way to the nearest bookstore after these news.
We should know that the most searched for thing about dogs is why they lick. The second is why they eat strange stuff.
We should know that because it’s fun to know. At least for the dog people in the room. And it’s even more fun to discover it here.
I do hope you liked this. If you did, send me a message. If you did not, also send me a message and tell me what you would have liked better. Thanks for reading. Until the next time.