Free Republic

A two-hour conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) model is all it takes to make an accurate replica of someone's personality, researchers have discovered. In a new study published Nov. 15 to the preprint database arXiv, researchers from Google and Stanford University created "simulation agents" — essentially, AI replicas — of 1,052 individuals based on two-hour interviews with each participant. These interviews were used to train a generative AI model designed to mimic human behavior. ... To create the simulation agents, the researchers conducted in-depth interviews that covered participants' life stories, values and opinions on societal issues. This enabled the...

Joanna Eberhart has come to the quaint little town of Stepford, Connecticut with her family, but soon discovers there lies a sinister truth in the all too perfect behavior of the female residents.

Imagine that you’re a makeup artist or a production manager on a Marvel movie. You’re working long hours and barely have time to shop for groceries or get in any exercise, let alone do yardwork or socialize. But what if your house was a pleasant 10-minute stroll from the studio, during which you passed a craft beer bar and outdoor concert stage? You’re too tired when you get home to think about grocery shopping, but that’s OK, because the delivery robot has just rolled up in front of your house with your weekly order.That’s the almost-too-utopian promise of Trilith, the...

A mother on a New York parenting blog wrote Monday that while shopping at the retailer, she gave her four-year-old daughter a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and "a woman stopped me to lecture me about peanut allergies." The child's mother then asked other moms on UrbanBaby if it was unacceptable to eat peanut butter in public. The anti-peanut butter backlash was swift and brutal. Most responses attacked the mother for potentially endangering children with peanut allergies. Some criticized her for feeding her daughter in a shopping cart, which they considered disgusting. "That's really inconsiderate," one person wrote. "So many...

At least the bride was definitely going to show up. In November 2009, a Japanese man stood before a congregation to marry the woman he loved, Nene Anegasaki. In doing so, he became the first man to marry a computer game character – Nene is one of three "virtual girlfriends" in the Nintendo DS game Love Plus. The marriage might not be recognised by the state, but to the groom, who goes by his on-screen name Sal9000, the relationship is very real. In the months leading up to the wedding the couple went everywhere together, they chatted intimately, held hands...

The STEPFORD CANDIDATES By Jenni Vinson Trejo October 19, 2006 Do you remember the old “Stepford Wives” movie? It was recently remade with Nicole Kidman. The premise of that movie was that the town’s men wanted to have perfect wives so they concocted a way to scientifically alter their wives, erasing all their personal and physical flaws, turning them into subservient, model women. What a deal? Who could possibly be opposed to having a community of perfect people? The Democrats have had some trouble winning elections and they sat around and thought that they could scientifically manufacture candidates. Forget the...

Being a single mother makes it difficult to find a mate —even when you're Nicole Kidman. "I'm hoping to meet someone and be happy with them. But that's not as easy as it sounds. I'm a 37-year-old woman with two children. Men aren't beating a path to my door," she said in an interview published Wednesday in the latest issue of Now magazine. "I don't want to sound like a woman from a lonely hearts club and I don't want to advertise. The children are my priority. I take them around with me — movies or baseball games or local...

The fatal flaw of The Stepford Wives, opening in Sydney this month, is that Nicole Kidman plays an urban power-bitch so well you can quite understand why her long-suffering husband and kids would want to replace her with a robot. As Joanna Eberhard, she begins the movie as a skinny, black-clad, amoral, ball-busting television network president with no redeeming qualities. She doesn't care about ruining the lives of contestants on her reality-TV shows any more than she cares about her two children or her pathetically fawning husband, except as accessories to her glittering career. When she loses her job, the...

When the film The Stepford Wives was released in 1975, it hit a cultural nerve. The premise was a silly one: that is, that men want brainless slaves for wives and would kill to get them. But people responded to the film and the term Stepford wife has become a permanent part of our cultural vocabulary. The movie, a horror film, tapped into the paranoia that even then was an integral part of the feminist movement. The newly released remake of The Stepford Wives is, by contrast, nothing but a reflection of the gender-related confusion that’s taken over our culture...

<p>March 16, 2004 -- IT'S the silly season, that time in the election cycle when campaigns gear up, candidates make gaffes - and the thoughts of the "Spin Sisters," the elite sorority of women's magazine editors, journalists, television producers and PR executives, turn to politics.</p> <p>Democrat politics, that is.</p>