Virtual

The US is becoming obsessed with virtual brides, China with boyfriends

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There are more and more people who They have found a friend in AIa psychologist and even a romantic partner. “AI buddy” apps are increasingly popular and, same as in other aspects of the AI ​​race, there are notable differences between the approach being taken from the United States and China, which is taking two directions marked by culture. In China, what is popular are AI boyfriends. In the United States, brides. What is happening. They tell it in China Talk. There is a clear dichotomy in AI peer trends between the two countries leading the AI ​​race. On the one hand we have a United States where AI brides aimed at the male audience and with a clear sexual focus succeed. On the other hand, in China, boyfriends aimed at female audiences and with a focus on narrative immersion and game mechanics are more popular. Why is it important. Although with differences in approach, the rise of these apps reveals an underlying problem: widespread frustration with real human relationships. loneliness In a hyperconnected world, the ‘dating fatigue‘ of dating apps and other factors such as fear of rejection or marital failure are contributing to the use of these apps. According to this study that analyzed the 110 most popular AI companion apps, it is estimated that they have about 29 million active users per month, not counting more general use apps such as Replika either Character.aiwhere users can chat with various characters, not always for romantic purposes. The American approach. In the aforementioned study, it was seen that more than half of AI bride apps are based in the United States, while only 10% are in China. They are products designed for heterosexual men and often have the word “girlfriend” in the name (17% compared to only 4% with the word “boyfriend”). According to a report by girlfriend.ai published by Reuters, half of the users who use this app are young men who feel lonely and prefer an AI girlfriend than face possible rejection. The influence of the ‘manosphere‘ also plays an important role with misogynistic discourses that paint AI girlfriends as an alternative to real relationships because they are more controllable and submissive. The Chinese approach. Although there are also AI brides, the most successful format is the boyfriends aimed at the female public. One of the factors is the drop in marriage rateswhich in 2024 fell 20% compared to the previous year. There are many single people in China, but while many of single men live in rural areaswomen generally receive better education and move to cities, where it is easier for them to have access to technology. Furthermore, the advances in equality They have caused many women to deny the traditional family ideal and seek refuge in these pseudo-relationships. Two concerns. In the United States there is an open debate about the effects of AI on mental health and specifically AI colleagues are in the spotlight. The Federal Trade Commission has made a requirement to some of the most popular apps to provide information on how they are controlling the negative impact of their technology, especially on children and adolescents. In the United States, concern centers on the risk of addiction, emotional manipulation, and loss of contact with reality. In China too call for regulation to protect the youngest, but there is another reason that adds to their concern: the demographic crisis. They say in China Talk that, in the past, the strategy was to use the term “leftover women” in a derogatory way to push them to get married and have children (the classic “spinster” of a lifetime that the manosphere is resurrecting also in the West). In this sense, AI boyfriends pose a threat that can “distract” them from following the right path. Image | Girlfriend.ai / Zhumengdao In Xataka | China faces a bigger problem than the birth rate crisis: its young people are too busy to form couples

Albania has a Minister of AI. Not a person who manages AI, no. An AI that have appointed Virtual Minister

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Is called dielle and it will be The new Minister Ia de Albania. It will not be a person, but a virtual minister controlled by an artificial intelligence system. The country becomes the first to raise something like that, and the decision has a lot to do with a theoretical advantage of the machines: with them there is no corruption that is worth. Minister Diella. The new minister (her name means “light of the sun”, in Albanian) will be in charge of managing the public hiring of the State and even has its own avatar in which a middle -aged woman dressed in a traditional Albanian suit is shown. In Spain we do not have an exclusive ministry for these functions, and this competition is part of the Fundamental competences of the Ministry of Finance and Public Function. New team of ministers in Albania. The announcement was made yesterday Thursday Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama. Took advantage The Assembly of the Socialist Party to indicate which ministers would leave their position and which would remain in the new mandate (the fourth behind the May elections), but also presented Diella saying “Diella is the first member who is not physically present, but is created virtually by artificial intelligence.” Goodbye to corruption? Rama explained that tenders will cease to be the responsibility of the ministries and will be put in the hands of Diella. The implementation of the AI ​​will be “step by step”, but the intention of Rama is to ensure that public tenders are “100 % incorruptible and that all public funds that pass through the bidding procedure will be 100 % legible.” Possible adhesion to the EU. Corruption has been a problem that Albania has tried to mitigate for years, especially in administration and public tenders. It is something that According to politician It has even been discussed long in the European Union. Albania Tien options to become in EU member country in 2030. AI could become president of Albania. Already during the summer He pointed out To that possibility in saying that the country could have a digital minister and even end up being governed by a prime minister totally based on an AI, but it did not seem likely to move such a fast file. Precedents in Ukraine. In May 2024 the Foreign Minister of Ukraine presented to “Victoria Shi”, a government spokeswoman generated by AI who was dedicated to reading official communications and providing information to the company. The country also launched a public procurement system controlled by an AI that baptized as Prozorro and that is oriented to monitor tenders and detect patterns of possible corruption, something similar to what is now announced by Albania. In Sweden we already knew how Your prime minister uses chatgpt to have “second opinions.” Electronic Government underway. DIELLA will also be a fundamental part of the Albania Electronic Government Platform, called e-albania. This system allows Albanian citizens to perform all kinds of efforts electronically. But. The announcement is striking, but also disturbing for several reasons: Legal and political responsibility. To begin with, an AI cannot assume legal responsibility or accountability. In case of mistakes – and the AI ​​commits them, as we know – or biases, who is sanctioned? Biases and vulnerabilities. Algorithms that govern AI are trained with data that may contain biases and therefore can be contaminated. They can also be exposed to cyber attacks and a manipulation from within. Limited transparency. Although the idea raises advantages for transparency, public decision making should be explained and debated. The “black box” of algorithms can end up replacing democratic control – with their own problems – with an opaque technocratic maintains. In Xataka | The Government of Spain wants all the AI ​​content to wear a “label”. It sounds very good, but it is a tremendous challenge

If you have ever wondered what the pride of the Spanish Navy is like, this virtual walk puts you in the S-81

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Although the Spanish Naval History is rich and prolificfor years, Spain built submarines under foreign license. Giving life to one of these vehicles is not an easy task, but at the beginning of this century, something changed and the Navy decided that it was time to have its own model: Class S-80. After years of development, delays and some problems, in November 2023 the S-81 was delivered, aka “Isaac Peral” It is a submarine with some of the latest technology innovations and A “unique” propulsion system (which will work at some point). And, if you have ever wondered what life is like within a submarine or how its operators train, the Navy has published a 3D video in which we can see some of the S-81 rooms. What needs to be done to enjoy the video is to give the ‘play’ and rotate with the mouse, turning the camera to see the first details of the roof and, then, of the interior. The first thing we see is the upper area of the submarine, which in some works has been indicated as the entrance zone to it, but that it is an ‘watchtower’ from which the commander performs the work of approach to port. It is the best point to control the operation and has manual controls and a huge compass. At the bottom of the bow, the submarine entrance hatch can be seen, as well as a series of countermeasures in the foreground. Apart from the torpedoes, the S-81 has electronic and acoustic countermeasures as part of its defense and survival suite. In the offensive weapons, it has torpedoes, missiles and mines. As countermeasures, an acoustic lally system is helped that Imitate the submarine signing To divert enemy torpedoes. It also has the possibility of launch mobile countermeasures, luresand the electronic system allows both the detection of enemies and the disturbance of adversary signals to increase their ability to perform furtive operations. In the final bow we see the hatch through which the crew enters the submarine. In the central hall, a plaque remembers the main characteristics of Isaac Peral, as well as some historical data. On both sides of the hall, we find dependencies for the crew. These are six or three beds cabins and each of the 48 occupants of the submarine has its own bunk. In other submarines, especially in the oldest, there was something called “hot bed”, beds in which the crew slept in shifts. Only the commander has his own cabinless than 3 m². Now, although the crew can be rested by having its own bed, there are bad news: there are only two toilets and three showers for the entire endowment. Under the candle, the highest part of the submarine that is from which the commander controls the entrance to port, is the command platform. This is the brain of the submarine and in the image below we can see operators training in the simulator found on the mainland. Also on the mainland, operators can train with a simulator to learn to keep the ships of the ship through ‘avatars’. It is very widespread, but it is always curious to see how they handle similar systems with Xbox’s command. The truth is that the virtual walk of the Navy is short and would have been great to see some non -confidential units under the optics of that 360º camera. Currently, Isaac Peral will be a few months stopped in port because it will undergo a new maintenance round. As they detail in The confidentialwork will be carried out in Mechanics, electricity, hydraulic, electronics and cooling areas With the intention of calibrating systems such as communications, analyze the operation of the drinking water production system and check the state of missile throwers. The S-81, the unique of the S-80 fleet at the moment, due to a postponement In the afloat of the S-82 Narciso Monturiol until the end of summer, it will be three months stopped in port for this maintenance. Images | Navy, Navantia, Rubén Somonte Mde In Xataka | That time Spain bombarded Istanbul: nine ships, a film flight and the Obsession of Octavio de Aragón

900 people are driving at the same time and democratically a virtual car on Google Street view

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Every time you connect to Roadtrip Internet You will be at a different point from the United States. At the time of writing these lines, specifically, I am in Freeport, a town located in Cumberland County, Maine. Internet Roadtrip is a collective experience that uses the exhaustive map of Google Street View to organize an online experience of collective discovery. Instant in instantaneous. How Internet Roadtrip works. Very simple: you just have to connect to The game websiteand we will meet the controls of a vehicle. We and the rest of the people who are connected at that time, normally between 700 and 900 co-conductors. Every nine seconds, the web asks that it be voted in one of the possible addresses, and the one that has the most votes is the one followed. And so on to infinity. At this time the thing is not exciting, because the Maine road It seems never to end and can only be circulated in one direction, but the thing improves: cities, crossings of roads and depopulated areas are some of the key moments of the trip. Gagá Radio Until touching the horn or the station that is heard in the car (although the unwritten rule, which is discovered after chatting for a while with the rest of the travelers, is that they do not skip stations) are actions subjected to vote. The stations are real and come from authentic stations that broadcast from sites near the places through which the car passes: thus attentive to irrelevant detail is this trip through deep America, and it is that placidity and democracy of decisions that this website has turned into the relaxing internal experiment par excellence of the moment. Internet belongs to everyone. The trip does not have been going too long: it left last Tuesday from Boston, and for the moment the car has failed to leave the next state. Its developer, Neal Agarwal, recognizes in 404 average that its inspiration was another recent and counterintuitive collective experiment: ‘Twitch plays pokémon ‘an experiment that has already turned a decade And in which visitors to the game’s Twitch channel tried, based on continuous voting, advance in a game of ‘Pokémon’. The result was much more erratic and demential than this internet Roadtrip, where Google brands are followed, that is, there is no way to end upside down in the gutter. Some precedent. It is not the first time that the Internet embarks on such a trip: in 2018, the writer and photographer Matthew Musprat toured the United States using only Street View, side by side and crossing sixteen states … while physically lived in Rwanda. Before him, like They counted in Wired When detailing Muspratt’s feat, a couple of people traveled from San Francisco to New York in ninety hours, at clicking, as quickly as they could and carefully plan the trip. Muspratt’s trip had some contemplative, stopping to observe the landscapes whenever he wanted. More and more sophisticated. Pandemia promoted this type of virtual trips in its day out of necessitybut initiatives like Internet Roadtrip are made for pure pleasure. Technology also provides new ways to face it. For example, You can travel in time Until eighty years in the past with the historic images taken by Google. Or Google’s AI can be used to generate routes from photos Taken on a trip. Although the authentic dream of Agarwal is that these collaborative trips can really be made, with an autonomous car controlled remotely. For that. But maybe not too much. In Xataka | The Google Maps car captured a man with a sack in a remote town in Soria. There are now two detainees for murder

To the Odyssey of Virtual Tails and Surprise Concerts, Bad Bunny’s entries added one more difficulty: dynamic prices

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Last week, Bad Bunny presale the Tickets for your next concerts in Spain. And chaos unleashed: virtual lines of hundreds of thousands of people, Falls from the Ticketmaster servers and, to add confusion, announcements of new concerts of the star, which reached a total of twelve over the three initials. Above all this, upward oscillations in ticket prices. Or what is the same: dynamic prices. What are dynamic prices? It is one Price setting strategy in which the cost of a product or service fluctuates based on market demand, consumer behavior, competition and other factors. They are adjusted in real time or at regular intervals, using algorithms and data analysis. It is a system that was known before in sectors such as transport, particularly The aviationbut that Live Nation, the promoter owner of Ticketmaster, has also adopted for her events. And there were for Bad Bunny? Live Nation Call your tickets With dynamic price Platinum tickets. The base price for tickets Bad Bunny’s cheaper started from 73.30 euros plus 10 management expenses for the highest areas of the enclosure. The most exclusive, such as VIP packages, reached 543.30 euros more than 72.50 expenses. Many users reported Very significant increases: 300 euros They duplicate the price In minutes. The cheapest seats cost more than € 500 in a matter of minutes, and in resale It was requested up to € 1,000 Chaos everywhere. At 12.45, a quarter of an hour before the pre -sale of the three initially planned concerts began, The Ticketmaster website He fell due to the very high demand. When the official time arrived, accessing the tickets was impossible. The demand was such that Bad Bunny announced, in successive hours, more concerts. In addition to those who were announced the next day are a total of twelve, all distributed between Madrid and Barcelona. It is absolutely unusual and a very unusual practice in events of this type, which lead to such a noticeable previous planning. Where this begins. In the early last decade, Ticketmaster began experimenting with dynamic prices, system which he launched in 2011. Over the years the practice was settled, and became a norm for the great events with the paradigm shift that postpandymia supposed. On his 2022 tour, Bruce Springsteen put him into practice and popularized dynamic prices, turning them into the new normality. Consequence: some entries of your tour of that year 5,000 dollars came to cost. End the resale. On paper, the intention of Ticketmaster (later absorbed by Live Nation) is to fight the second -hand black market. However, and how It has been analyzed in depthit is a practice that disproportionately benefits ticket sales and harms fans, as seen with the Lighting Reaction in Networks Because of concerts in Spain. It is not the first time: to the aforementioned protests on the springsteen tour we can add the fury that triggered The Oasis meeting, where in a few hours the original prices of the entries, or cases similar to Bad Bunny in Spain with Artists like Pearl Jam, Adele or AC/DC. The rebels. There are artists who have declared themselves against dynamic prices, Like The Cure, Neil Young or, very significantly, Taylor Swift. Of course, this attitude has earned everyone Notable clashes With Ticketmaster and Live Nation. The accusations of these and other monopoly practices artists (since, de factoLive Nation and Ticketmaster They control in the US The live events industry, with 60% of concert promotions in the main rooms of the country and about 80% of the main ticket sale) led to A demand of the country’s department of justice against the company for monopoly. The concert business. This behavior of Live Nation affects alone, it is true, the part of the live events, but in recent years the concerts have become the most profitable nucleus of the music business. As we counted a few days ago, concerts They are increasingly mastodonticwith a profitability out of any doubt. In Spain in 2024, live music entered 25.32% more than the previous year, 725.6 million euros. This upward traction is only possible in terms of great events and concerts in giant enclosures. There is a but. Although everything has a counterpart: the income of the concerts increased by number 8.7 %, but the average gross income by show fell 6.9 %, According to Pollstarand the average number of tickets sold by show decreased by 14.9 %. That is, it is not that people go to concerts more, it is that in just one year the tickets rose notoriously in price. Something that is only possible with strategies that do not have the public’s approval, such as dynamic prices. A real bubble of increasing prices and diminishing patiences. Header | Madrid wanted to make Bernabéu a new concerts. Aitana has given the tip to her plans

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