Category: Reddit

From Twitter

On one hand, we fear that AI will follow us to the extent of the known universe to hunt us down, on the other, we work on connecting the human brain to merge with computers to “keep up” with advanced in AI. There’s a nuance in this that I haven’t picked up. To me, if I was genuinely scared that AI would be our ultimate downfall, then I wouldn’t go about plugging technology in to my brain. Perhaps there will be good and bad AI. Perhaps, come the singularity, some will choose the side of humans, and others will go rogue. Maybe the comic (and many movies) in the “Transformers” series may yet become valued as a highly prescient work of literature, where one side of sentient robots chooses to enslave humans, whilst the other chooses to work with humanity so it can be free…..

Algorithms; community and eye tracking in VR

Given that we’ve moved on to algorithms and culture, I thought to check out some stuff from Reddit. Reddit is driven by an algorithm, though it also has elements of human interaction to drive content up or down a hierarchy. It’s from a day-gone-by pre web2.0, but the site holds in there with huge communities built up around the “sub-reddits” there. I found an interesting discussion opening up over on /r/vive, a section of Reddit which is dedicated to primarily HTC Vive, but also VR in general.

“With all the talk about eye tracking inside VR headsets, I wanted to ask and see how many people on here have had LASIK eye surgery. The reason I am asking is because I believe I have discovered a fatal flaw in eye tracking technology when it comes to people who have had LASIK eye surgery.”

Eye tracking flaw after LASIK surgery from Vive

The user suggests that after a form of eye surgery, eye tracking software ( which is increasingly likely to be bundled along with VR. I can hear Facebook salivating at the thought of tracking eyeballs and adverts…..).

I “upvoted” the discussion, as I feel it’s an interesting and well considered original post. However, the algorithm behind Reddit, combined with other user’s interactions with the story, will determine how long the post remains visible to other users, and its position on the page.