Hi, y’all!

January is rushing. Welcome to the new subscribers!
It was nice to get updated on the progress of the graduation project of Lisa on an engaging neighbourhood hub. The role of these new city companions has been a topic of research for some years within Cities of Things, and it is great to have it further deepened in her Design for Interaction challenge in the assignment commissioned together with Springtime.

Triggered thought

Things as Citizens was and is an inspiring concept for the research on Cities of Things. The weak signals indicate more interest in the role of intelligent things, nowadays everyone can imagine more agency within the things. At the conference on Open and Agile Smart Cities last week in Rotterdam, there was a shift noticeable from pure (open) data movement to more wondering about new interactions in the city mediated through a digital twin. The Social-Physical-Reality triangle is developing into a more and more proactive behaving system. The Open Urban Platform is de goal for the City of Rotterdam, with serious steps in the legal framework; Reference framework for digital twins.

Smart spacial planning is not only about using smart tooling, planning the digital (public) space is a core focal point with more and more users (citizens) as dataproviders.

The type of conference is a great way to feel the directions and use it as a trigger for new ideas. For instance, it is key to focus not on the intelligent things, but think on the interactions. A behavioural layer to the service layer. How about non-human citizens here? Is there a Turing test for interactions with thing citizens? Or do they grow into their own species?

From another perspective the SIP research project from Japan showed how they approach the so-called interverse, an in-between space of the virtual and physical town. As the presenter rightly noticed, the approach towards non-human life differs in Japanese culture and opens up the thinking. The general notion of this mixed reality is done differently as space caters to this new wave of in-between action-based devices such as Humane and Rabbit.

Events to track

• 24 Jan - Amsterdam - State of UX in Amsterdam
• 24 Jan - Amsterdam - DDS showcase
• 25 Jan - SF - Ignite talks with some big names if you happen to be around
• 25 Jan - online - AIxDesign research rendezvous
• 26 Jan - Amsterdam - DRIFT AI en NFT
• 26 Jan - Rotterdam - Creative Mornings
• 26 Jan - 3 Feb - Rotterdam - v2 - Asunder at IFFR
• 27 Jan - London - Book launch and event of new book Georgina Voss on Systems Ultra
• 1 Feb - Rotterdam - From 1 to 100 Robots

Notions from the news

Issues in the news run around the official launch and pre-order option of the Apple Vision Pro. A sleek marketing campaign showed the first people (tech reporters) using the device for real. There is some discussion on the apps that are made, or better, are not made, like YouTube.

Disney is creating a floor for VR as a full-body experience.

Disney unveils ‘HoloTile’ floor technology for omnidirectional VR experiences

Walt Disney Imagineering has unveiled the ‘HoloTile’ floor for omnidirectional VR, created by Disney Research fellow Lanny Smoot.

BlooloopBea Mitchell

And the Rabbit R1 is also stirring up thoughts on the future of AI devices. Some hallucinate different form factors like a watch. And a breakdown of the companion tech in this YouTube.

This Rabbit R1 AI Smartwatch would have been a smash success at CES 2024… - Yanko Design

Smartphone technology has come a long way and most of us would consider there is no going back from the endless convenience of next-gen phones that keep dropping every other week. This notion may be on the verge of change, with a pocket-friendly Rabbit that paced through the hearts of CES attendees this year. Dubbed

Yanko DesignGaurav Sood

And WEF is happening, generating news and distraction.

refik anadol’s nature-focused open source AI model debuts at world economic forum

refik anadol introduces the large nature model, the world’s first-ever open-source generative ai model exclusively devoted to nature.

designboom | architecture & design magazinemyrto katsikopoulou I designboom

AI things

For those who missed earlier instructions on prompt engineering

The Ultimate Guide to Prompt Engineering

Prompting AI tools is a new form of management science

Michael Taylor

AI is far from matching human thoughts, according to this research

Can Artificial Intelligence Think Like a Human?

In a new perspective recently published in the journal PNAS Nexus, Athanassios S. Fokas explores a timely question: the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve and possibly exceed human cognitive capabilities. Historically, the focus has been on assessing computer models based on their

SciTechDailyColin Collins

This is a nice example of an AI enhanced product; a binocular that can recognise birds and capture a like

And judging gymnastics is a different form of enhanced working.

AX Visio

The AX Visio is the perfect symbiosis of digital intelligence and high-performance sport optics.

Swarovski Optik

How AI is changing gymnastics judging

Proponents say the AI-powered Judging Support System will promote fairness and transparency in the sport. But can it deliver?

MIT Technology ReviewJessica Taylor Price

The holy grail of consumer product development is to claim a verb for a specific new interface behaviour. Google is thinking that circle to search (or highlight, or modify) is a candidate. In short, you take a picture and circle around an object or area that needs to be adjusted by the hallucinating AI. It is part of the new wave of AI phones.

Circle (or highlight or scribble) to Search

Circle to Search is a new way to search what’s on your screen without switching apps, available on select premium Android smartphones.

GoogleCathy Edwards

The AI phones are coming

AI on our phones could actually be really useful.

The Verge

We used to have filter bubbles that you created yourself. Now, there will be filterworlds shaped by AI. With a downside: it flattens culture.

Filterworld by Kyle Chayka: 9780385548281 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine…

PenguinRandomhouse.comMore about Kyle Chayka

Neo-structuralism

This recent New York Times article about Netflix looks at the persistence of tagging as a profitable way for Netflix to organize its content, offering users the most expedient way to achieve a sense of algorithmic fulfillment. The two- or three-word tags, meant to convey the gestalt of a show or movie, regularly help viewers choose a show from the service’s nearly endless library, the company says. The words are selected by about 30 employees — so-called taggers.

Internal exileRob Horning

Google DeepMind has developed an AI system named AlphaGeometry that can solve complex geometry problems.

Google DeepMind’s new AI system can solve complex geometry problems

Its performance matches the smartest high school mathematicians and is much stronger than the previous state-of-the-art system.

MIT Technology ReviewJune Kim

At the World Economic Forum, DeepMind’s cofounder is predicting that AI will be more than an intern, more like an entrepreneur and inventor.

Google DeepMind cofounder says AI can act like an entrepreneur and inventor in the next five years

AI may be able to exhibit business-savvy capabilities like being an entrepreneur and inventor in the next five years, Google DeepMind cofounder said.

InsiderAaron Mok

A panel of generative AI og’s (in their words) on WEF.

OpenAI was not represented, and even a bit bashed on using open technology for not-so-open products. The next step is going for their own chips.

“What happens when it’s no longer seen as a specialist field with accompanying specialist training but has broad comprehension by many people? What happens when everyone can claim to be a designer?” Good questions by Tobias and the combination of co-design and AI-enhanced experts can deliver

BOX106: What happens when everyone is a designer? – The Bounding Box

The Bounding Box

Feral minds, feral intelligence.

Feral Minds | NOEMA

We still don’t understand the role language plays in consciousness. The future of AI may upend what little we know.

NOEMAJohn Last

Zuckerman is going for super intelligence or artificial general intelligence at the least. A big AI reorganisation is projected.

Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence

“We have built up the capacity to do this at a scale that may be larger than any other individual company.”

The Verge

Meta bets bigger on AI

The company plans to build best-in-class models and give them away for free. So how will it profit?

PlatformerCasey Newton

Are the AI and robots slaves to us or are we using the ‘slaves’; the helping robots of all kinds. Lidewij Edelkoort.

’People with money are using AI and robots like their new slaves” Li Edelkoort says

Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort discusses why she believes the use of robots and AI is a “new form of colonialism”, how Arts and Crafts might be our future, and her book celebrating the Global South in this interview.

DezeenCajsa Carlson

How to fight the misuse of creative work? Join forces.

Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin among thousands of British artists used to train AI software, Midjourney

US lawyers approached about a class action against Midjourney and other AI firms accused of ‘copyright laundering’

The GuardianJames Tapper

connected things

RFID was one of the drivers of the Internet of Things initiation - Rob van Kranenburg wrote an essay on it back in 2007, and now some think it will be back

RFID is the hot decades-old technology being touted by retailers and vendors

Retailers at NRF’s Big Show called RFID “essential” and “table stakes” for understanding how merchandise moves throughout stores.

Modern RetailJulia Waldow

Developments in graphene. Promises.

New graphene semiconductor could revolutionize electronics

The first working graphene semiconductor outperformed silicon, suggesting that the supermaterial could be the future of electronics.

Freethink MediaKristin Houser

The Impact on shaping the future as concluded from CES

autonomous things

BMW showed hallucination-free AI that can help for real.

BMW showed off hallucination-free AI at CES 2024

Limited options make for better conversations.

Ars TechnicaTim Stevens

other things

Interested in the backgrounds of Uber coming of age, in a new book

Uber and the Impoverished Public Expectations of the 2010s

A new book shows that Uber was a symbol of a neoliberal philosophy that neglected public funding and regulation in favor of rule by private corporations.

The American ProspectSandeep Vaheesan

There is tension in finding solutions to help reduce carbon dioxide and potential impacts. Do we need a kind of geo-engineering?

It is time to draw down carbon dioxide but shut down moves to play God with the climate

The global effort to keep climate change to safe levels—ideally within 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures—is moving far too slowly. And even if we stopped emitting CO2 today, the long-term impacts of the gas already in the air would continue for decades. For these reasons, we will soon have to focus not only on halting but on reversing global warming.

Phys.orgTim Flannery

On the reading list: OLLOS is an experiment that organizes everything in my personal computing environment on one unified timeline.

OLLOS

OLLOS is an experiment that organizes everything in my personal computing environment on one unified timeline.

New types of bureaucracy as we grow beyond the comfortable number of relations.

Protocols as Weberian Bureaucracy

Max Weber says there are three ways power gets organized at scale: rizz, rulers, and rules.

SubconsciousGordon Brander

Paper for the week

Humans are capable of strategically deceptive behavior: behaving helpfully in most situations, but then behaving very differently in order to pursue alternative objectives when given the opportunity. If an AI system learned such a deceptive strategy, could we detect it and remove it using current state-of-the-art safety training techniques?

Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training

We find that such backdoor behavior can be made persistent, so that it is not removed by standard safety training techniques, including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and adversarial training (eliciting unsafe behavior and then training to remove it).

Hubinger, E., Denison, C., Mu, J., Lambert, M., Tong, M., MacDiarmid, M., ... & Perez, E. (2024). Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training. arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.05566. https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05566

See you next week!

I will check out DDS projects if possible and look forward to seeing the final presentations of the master students Next Level Engineering building Wijkbots. I am also checking the Citydeal ‘Slim Maatwerk’, and we have an update on the research into sustainable hubs.