Frasier is in my rotation too i want to rewatch Golden Girls some time too. that show is so comforting and it's been so long.

same as brightberry. hoping the weather cooperates and the rain stays away long enough.

so far the weather is not cooperating

we were able to see it through the clouds. all of my solar lights came on when it got dark. it was more like twilight, not pitch black but very cool. my husband was unimpressed

wow the dill has grown a lot! 

yay for new plants Ponyfan

thanks Taffeta. so far i've had better luck with the plants in pots. it is easier to control the water and i can move them around if they need more/less sun. we also have rocky, clay soil here so that's not great so potted plants seem to have an easier time.

i'm trying to remove grass wherever it makes sense. so i would like to add more rocks and stone pathways on the side of the house. i have to leave some grass for the dogs. even though they don't like it. i think a bunch of grass with nothing else going on is boring

when i was outside yesterday i noticed the oak tree branches are now growing above the house. so we need to fast track getting it trimmed back. the branches are actually growing over our bedroom so not good for storm season. i just need to wait on the tax refund to come back.

it makes me nervous to have it trimmed just because it's old and it's not 100% on my property. the trunk actually sits between 2 of my neighbor's fences. the home builders built the fence to accommodate it. it's a really beautiful tree.

thanks BC. yeah the plants are going to stay in the pots. originally i thought i would leave space to walk, but now i have many more plants. it's kind of addictive. I have a lemon tree on the way. it will go in the big blue pot. the avocado in the big white pot isn't doing great. i've only had it a week so maybe it's still settling in? i hope it makes it. i need to buy more rocks to finish the rock garden so more delays. it's going to be a years long project but it will be fun to watch everything grow in.

i just wanted to share some photos of the progress we're making on our backyard. it's coming along slowly and this is our first DIY backyard project so nothing fancy. but i wanted to share. please excuse all of the weeds. i'm working on that 

Rock garden before:

After sort of... We're still adding rocks.

Flowerbeds: We're still adding plants. I'm getting some roses and more lavender.

This probably isn't what you were thinking of when you started talking about AI, but someone on Facebook has trained an AI chatbot to talk like Sailor Moon/Usagi.  This person told the chatbot that Sailor Moon only existed in a parallel universe that wasn't connected to our own.  The chatbot acted surprised to find that out.


Ponyfan

lol i think those are kind of fun

Squirmy, that's awful. what if a someone did that to a regular person and a jealous partner saw it. that kind of thing should be illegal IMO. probably falls under free speech though. ugh.

i'm not at all worried about the robots taking over, Terminator scenarios. i don't think technology is there yet or ever will be. AGI (Artificial general intelligence) is kind of the holy grail for AI people these days. S*m Altm*n, the ChatGPT guy keeps saying it's just around the corner. gives M*sk vibes IMO. we don't have safe self drive cars either. there's some really weird stuff these people are into. eccentric billionaires/millionaires are a trope for a reason i guess. it's a rabbit hole i'm not going down here. we need much better people building this stuff if we want a utopia for everyone. right now it's likely to be utopia for ultra rich people and a whole lot of unemployment.

i'm still fascinated with AI but i worry about it in the hands of government and corporations. drones and facial recognition making decisions without human intervention. those robot dogs with guns also give me nightmares.

i think AI needs to be highly regulated and developed with a lot of input from a diverse group of people. it really bothers me that people get to roll out all of this new stuff that affects us all and we don't really have much of a say. we can decide not to use it but don't have much control over what people with more power do with tech. it seems like we need like a worldwide vote or something i know that's impractical and would probably have it's own issues. we all know voting doesn't always produce outcomes that protect underrepresented people. I also think it shouldn't be replacing people's jobs unless there is some kind of universal income and real social safety nets. like guaranteed housing, food, healthcare. with all of the current austerity trends i don't believe we will get that even if a lot of people lose their incomes. we can't have a utopia when governments don't see making sure everyone's basic needs are taken care of as a human right.

scenarios like Taffeta mentioned worry me too. An AI trained on content that contains negative stereotypes is going to output negative stereotypes. we have enough negative stereotypes about neurodivergent people in pop culture already. also more chatbots, more layers before you actually get to talk to a human don't sound great. especially in highly skilled fields like law and medicine. there are already a lot of worries about AI's hallucinating and just making stuff up. like an AI for lawyers could just make up a law if it's trained on bad data.

i think we really could all have better lives now with existing technology. better mass transit. or any mass transit if you live where i live less spending on military toys and more money on making people's lives better. it's depressing that we have so much spending on jets that don't work right and kids in the US have lunch debt. solving that would be a drop in the bucket for the US budget. a better social safety net would be good too.