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Rebecca Liu
Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

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There are only girls on the internet

Book Review

August 2022

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2022

I remember the first time I saw it, like a freshly alert hare alarmed by movement in the distant grasslands. It was 2013. Model...

Book Review

September 2020

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Bland Fanatics’

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

September 2020

The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater. ‘Watch...

The ability of computers to semantically understand the world – and the humans in it – is next to nonexistent Computers are wonderful at crunching numbers, transforming data, and analysing the organisation of bits and bytes in any forms, but only in so far as those bits and bytes are complete in themselves When it comes to a holistic understanding of how that data relates to the world in which they live, computers remain inept, unable even to understand the rudimentary meanings of the English language Try to ask Google a question, rather than just punching in words to search for, and watch how quickly Google will run into difficulties understanding what question you’re asking It might know ‘What year was Obama born?’, but ask ‘What term is Obama in?’ and it cannot tell you ‘His second’   In the near-term seeking such human-level understanding is a futile endeavour In a previous article for The White Review, ‘Choose Your Own Formalism’, I wrote about the formal aspects of human-computer interaction in games: the ways in which the limitations of computer representation of characters and ideas place constraints on what can be done within the confines of digital interactivity These delineate the difficulties computers have in simulating – and thus in representing – human character and interaction   There is little cause for optimism in that regard The ability to create interactive analogues for the complexities of human activity and emotion are limited by the need to specify them to the very finest detail Unless a computer can ‘think’ like a human, which it certainly can’t, the only way for human-like interaction to take place is if the designers manually code up every variation and possibility, an endless, exhausting, and uncommercial task But there is a much richer vein of development, one that promises far more surprises and advances in the year to come I am talking about interactive modalities, the means by which we exert control over our player character counterpart within a game There is one catch, however, which is that it is entirely sub-rational and non-cognitive   When I

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror’

Book Review

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2019

Talk about the fates of young professional women today and you will often alight on two themes: the anxieties that come with living in...

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feature

January 2014

Afterword: The Death of the Translator

George Szirtes

feature

January 2014

1. The translator meets himself emerging from his lover’s bedroom. So much for fidelity, he thinks. 2. Je est...

poetry

June 2013

Belly

Melissa Lee-Houghton

poetry

June 2013

When I was fifteen I took my two little cousins into town and had them wait outside the tattoo...

poetry

June 2014

Death on Rua Augusta

Tedi López Mills

TR. David Shook

poetry

June 2014

Translator’s Note Death on Rua Augusta is a book I knew I would translate before I had even finished...

 

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