small tweaks

_posts/2015-11-20-ai.markdown

@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ Fully suited up, he began scrolling past a seemingly endless list of options. Fi
 
 *"Merus is fantastic. He has a strong intuition for spotting gaps in the data, and uses exceedingly effective curriculum and shaping strategies. When Merus gets on the job our validation accuracies consistently shoot up much faster than what we see with average shapers. Keep up the great work and please think of us if you're searching for great, rewarding and impactful HITs!",*
 
-one review read. With his reviews and certifications the shaping world was wide open. His list contained many lucrative, well-paying HITs to choose from, many of them visible to only the most trusted shapers. This morning he came by several that caught his attention: a bodyguard HIT for some politician in Sweden, a HIT from a science expedition in Antarctica that needed help with setting up their equipment, a dog-walking HIT for a music celebrity, a quick drone delivery HIT that seemed to be payed very well... Suddenly, a notification caught the corner of his eye: Licia had just clocked in and started a HIT. He opened up its details pane and skimmed the description. His eyes rolled as he spotted the keywords he was afraid of - event assembly at the Hilltop Hotel. *"Again?"* - he moaned in a hushed voice, raising his hands up and over his head in quiet contemplation. Licia had often picked up HITs from that same hotel, but they were often unexciting and menial tasks that weren't paid much. Merus rearranged himself in his chair, and sunk his face into his palms. He noticed though the crack of his fingers that the drone delivery HIT had just been taken by someone else. He cursed to himself. Absent mindlessly and with a deep sigh, he accepted the second remaining slot on the Hilltop Hotel HIT.
+one review read. HIT was an acronym for *Human Intelligence Task* - a unit of work that required human supervision. With his reviews and certifications the shaping world was wide open. His list contained many lucrative, well-paying HITs to choose from, many of them visible to only the most trusted shapers. This morning he came by several that caught his attention: a bodyguard HIT for some politician in Sweden, a HIT from a science expedition in Antarctica that needed help with setting up their equipment, a dog-walking HIT for a music celebrity, a quick drone delivery HIT that seemed to be payed very well... Suddenly, a notification caught the corner of his eye: Licia had just clocked in and started a HIT. He opened up its details pane and skimmed the description. His eyes rolled as he spotted the keywords he was afraid of - event assembly at the Hilltop Hotel. *"Again?"* - he moaned in a hushed voice, raising his hands up and over his head in quiet contemplation. Licia had often picked up HITs from that same hotel, but they were often unexciting and menial tasks that weren't paid much. Merus rearranged himself in his chair, and sunk his face into his palms. He noticed though the crack of his fingers that the drone delivery HIT had just been taken by someone else. He cursed to himself. Absent mindlessly and with a deep sigh, he accepted the second remaining slot on the Hilltop Hotel HIT.
 
 His hardware lit up with numbers and indicators, and his console began spewing diagnostic information as the boot sequence initiated. Anyone could be a shaper and get started with inexpensive gear, but the company provided state of the art hardware that allowed him be much more productive. A good amount of interesting HITs also demanded certain low-latency hardware requirements, which only the most professional gear could meet. In turn, the company took a cut from his HITs. Merus dreamed of one day becoming an independent shaper, but he knew that would take a while. He put on the last pieces of his equipment. The positional tracking in his booth calibrated his full pose and all markers tracked green. The haptics that enveloped his body in his chair stiffened up around him as they initialized. He placed his helmet over his face and booted up.
 
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ His hardware lit up with numbers and indicators, and his console began spewing d
 <img src="/assets/ai/lifetree.gif" style="border:none; width:100%;">
 </div>
 
-The buzz and hum of the office disappeared. Merus was enveloped in a complete, peaceful silence and darkness while the HIT request was processed. Connections were made, transactions accepted, certification checks performed, security tokens exchanged, HIT approval process initiated. At last, Merus' vision was flooded with light. The shrieks of some tropical birds were now audible in the background. He found himself at the charging station of Pegasus Avatars, which his company had a nearly exclusive relationship with. Merus eagerly glanced down at his avatar body and breathed a sigh of relief. Among the several suspended avatars at that charging station he happened to get assigned the one with the most recent hardware specs. Everything looked great, his avatar was fully charged, and all the hardware diagnostics checked out. Except the body came in hot pink. *"You just can't have it all".*
+The buzz and hum of the office disappeared. Merus was immersed in a complete, peaceful silence and darkness while the HIT request was processed. Connections were made, transactions accepted, certification checks performed, security tokens exchanged, HIT approval process initiated. At last, Merus' vision was flooded with light. The shrieks of some tropical birds were now audible in the background. He found himself at the charging station of Pegasus Avatars, which his company had a nearly exclusive relationship with. Merus eagerly glanced down at his avatar body and breathed a sigh of relief. Among the several suspended avatars at that charging station he happened to get assigned the one with the most recent hardware specs. Everything looked great, his avatar was fully charged, and all the hardware diagnostics checked out. Except the body came in hot pink. *"You just can't have it all".*
 
 The usual first order of business was to run a few routine diagnostics to double check proper functioning of the avatar. He opened up the neural network inspector and navigated to the overview pane of the agent checkpoint that was running the avatar. The model was a relatively recent fork of the standard, open source Visceral 5.0 series. Merus was delighted - the Visceral family of agents was one of his specialties. The Visceral agents had a minimalist design that came in at a total of only about 1 trillion parameters and had a very simple, clean, proven and reliable architecture. However, there were still a few exotic architectural elements packed in too, including shortcut sensorimotor reflex pathways, fractal connectivity in the visual streams, and distributed motor areas inspired by the octopus neurobiology. And then, of course, there was also the famous Mystery module.
 
@@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ Merus was silent, stunned by what he was hearing. He knew that what the avatar s
 
 The compute activity within the agent's brain was at a steady and unbroken 100%, running the hardware to its limit. Merus needed more time. He took over the agent and spun around in place, looking for something. Anything. He spotted Licia's avatar walking towards him from the patio. An idea summoned itself in his mind. A glint of hope. He sprinted the avatar towards her across the grass, crashing into her body with force.
 
-*"Licia, do not have any time to explain but please trust me. We must perform a manual backup of my agent right away."*<br>
+*"Licia, I do not have any time to explain but please trust me. We must perform a manual backup of my agent right away."*<br>
 *"A manual backup? Can't you just sync him to the clo-"*<br>
 *"IT WON'T DO!"*, Merus exclaimed loudly, losing his composure as adrenalin pumped in his veins. A part of him immediately felt bad that he raised his voice. He hoped she'd understand.