#sensory-engagement

#sensory-engagement

Aesthetic inspiration is social and collective, but aesthetic results are deeply personal. What works for one face, skin type, or bone structure won't always work for another.

You know, I feel sharper now than I did ten years ago, and all I'm doing is asking questions about stuff.

Character.AI's new 'Books' mode allows users to engage with over 20 classic public domain titles, offering a structured roleplaying experience that aims to broaden perceptions of AI interactions.

"Nature appears to have built the apparatus of rationality not just on top of the apparatus of biological regulation, but also from it and with it."

"I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object," says Varun Wadia, highlighting the dual capability of visual perception and imagination.

Neal Stephenson argues that the metaverse is dead, particularly in light of the failure of Meta's Horizon Worlds, which raises significant concerns about the future of virtual reality.

Meta's AI-powered glasses are designed to enhance personal presence, allowing users to engage more fully with their surroundings while offering features that could assist those with vision impairments or hearing loss.

To view this video, please enable JavaScript and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Media Summit and Experiential Marketing | Nov 8, 2022 Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard (US), explores how the world of marketing is embracing more sensory and experiential approaches. And looks at what all marketers can learn from this broader approach.

At a time when memories are increasingly flattened into folders, feeds, and cloud backups, a new experimental device from MIT Media Lab proposes a far more intimate archive: scent. Developed by Cyrus Clarke, the Anemoia Device is a speculative yet functional prototype that translates photographs into bespoke fragrances using generative AI, inviting users not to view memories, but to inhabit them through the body.

For many of us, that compulsive need to touch isn't about poor impulse control. It's about confirmation. It's about making sure the world around us is real, solid, tangible - because somewhere along the line, we learned that the emotional landscape we navigated wasn't.

Close your eyes and picture an apple. Most people see something-a faint, slightly blurry image, less vivid than a real apple. A few, however, will see it as clearly as if it were sitting right in front of them. This ability is called hyperphantasia. Hyperphantasia, literally meaning "beyond imagination," refers to exceptionally vivid mental imagery. It is often described as the opposite of aphantasia, a condition in which people report little or no ability to form mental images.

One scientist at MIT, Cyrus Clarke, is working to do just that. Alongside a team of fellow researchers, Clarke has developed a physical machine called the Anemoia Device, which uses a generative AI model to analyze an archival photograph, describe it in a short sentence, and, following the user's own inputs, convert that description into a unique fragrance. The word "anemoia" was coined by author John Koenig and included in his 2021 book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Accomplishment Hallucination is a cognitive state in which speed feels like competence, output feels like accomplishment, and work feels done when the actual work-the thinking-through, the failure-mode analysis, the sitting with uncertainty until the problem reveals its structure-hasn't happened at all. Physics need not apply. AI can create a similar state in waking life—literally, as your very words assume form before your eyes like a conjuring sorcerer. But, like real life, the code may be buggier than we realize.

LLMs have made AI assistants a standard feature across SaaS. AI assistants allow users to instantly retrieve information and interact with a system through text-based prompts. Mathias Biilmann, in his article " Introducing AX: Why Agent Experience Matters," discusses two distinct approaches to building AI assistants. The Closed Approach involves a conversational assistant embedded directly within a single SaaS product. Examples include Zoom's AI Companion, Salesforce CRM's Einstein, and Microsoft's Copilot. The Open Approach involves external conversational assistants, such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini,