Bacon Bits: Lonely and Creepy
The loneliest Metro stop. The Loudoun County Gateway Metro averages 317 riders daily, according to The Washington Post. It’s the least busy of the Metro rail system’s 98 stations. Opened to much fanfare as part of the $3 billion Phase 2 of the Silver Line in Northern Virginia, it is a sad reminder of broken promises. Not only was Phase 2 four years late and $250 million over budget, it’s not generating the hoped-for traffic or stimulating the hoped-for development around the Gateway station. Writes the Post: “From the platform, there are no buildings visible other than the station’s five-story mostly empty parking garage and a boxy internet data center a short walk away. On several recent visits to the station, the eight bus shelters in its sprawling parking lot were empty. Often the only person there is the station manager sitting behind a window in a booth.”
Amazon delivers. Maybe the Gateway Metro station will get a few more riders when Amazon resume working in the office five days a week effective January 2. Between Amazon HQ2, Amazon Web Services, and Amazon fulfillment, the Seattle-based corporation has leaped out nowhere over the past decade to become one of Northern Virginia’s largest employers, according to The Washington Business Journal.
Creepy beyond words. Virginia Commonwealth University has introduced an Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbot names Ramona (in homage to the school’s mascot, Rodney the Ram…. except Ramona is a she/her) to help with alumni fundraising. Ramona contacted 1,000 alumni last month and received a “better-than-normal” response rate, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Click on the link and check it out. The chatbot has entered the “uncanny valley,” in which it falls just shy of appearing indistinguishable from a real human, which real humans find vaguely disconcerting. For me, the giveaway is the failure of Ramona’s mouth and lips to precisely synch up with the speech — Ramona does better than any animation I’ve seen before, but she’s not… quite… there. I see no harm in this particular application of AI. It’s kind of cool, actually. But only God knows where the technology will take us when the “pig butchering” fraud farms in Southeast Asia learn how to mimic real people.
