Your video, You can surf the perfect manmade wave for $10,000 an hour, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

You're right! Costs have come down--though I don't know if they reach "reasonable" lol...
"two 1-hour surf sessions on the wave with equipment. The cost of that all-inclusive deal? A cool ...US 5,499...AU$250 for the booking fee, of course...you may well end up sharing the 1-hour session with other people." or

Hiring the Surf Ranch for the day

Groups can also hire the whole facility out for the day...it it will cost them just under ...US$50,000 during the high season and a bit over ...US$35,000 in the off-season. Yes, for the day." or

"...in a group of 10 surfers, they would each be paying ...US$5,000 in the high season or ...US$3,500 per day at the ranch..."

A friend of my brothers has paid $3,000 to join a group who rented it for a day. When my brother looked into going, the numbers were much less than described in the description above.

I think this article gives more accurate numbers https://motionsmag.com/originals/how-much-does-it-cost-to-surf-at-kelly-slaters-surf-ranch/

Am I the only one that after hearing "Then the seekers learned to climb on top of boxes and surf them around to overcome barriers" immediately thought "That's not smart AI, that is just shitty coding"

This isn't really true though and greatly understates how amazing this demo, and current AI actually is.

Saying the agents are obeying a set of human defined rules / freedoms / constraints and objective functions would lead one to imagine something more like video game AI.

Typically video game AI works on a set of weighted decisions and actions, where the weights, decisions and actions are defined by the developer; a more complex variation of:

if my health is low, move towards the health pack,
otherwise, move towards the opponent

In this demo, no such rules exist. It's not given any weights (health), rules (if health is low), nor any instructions (move towards health pack). I guess you could apply neural networks to traditional game AI to determine the weights for decision making (which are typically hard coded by the developer); but that would be far less interesting than what's actually happening here.

Instead, the agent is given a set of inputs, a set of available outputs, and a goal.

4 Inputs:
- Position of the agent itself
- Position and type (other agent, box, ramp) of objects within a limited forward facing conical view
- Position (but not type) of objects within a small radius around the agent
- Reward: Whether they are doing a good job or not

Note the agent is given no information about each type of object, or what they mean, or how they behave. You may as well call them A, B, C rather than agent, box, ramp.

3 Outputs:
- Move
- Grab
- Lock

Again, the agent knows nothing about what these mean, only that they can enable and disable each at any time. A good analogy is someone giving you a game controller for a game you've never played. The controller has a stick and two buttons and you figure out what they do by using them. It'd be accurate to call the outputs: stick, A, B rather than move, grab, lock.

Goal:
- Do a good job.

The goal is simply for the reward input to be maximised. A good analogy is saying 'good girl' or giving a treat to a dog that you are training when they do the right thing. It's up to the dog to figure out what it is that they're doing that's good.

The reward is entirely separate from the agent, and agent behaviour can be completely changed just by changing when the reward is given. The demo is about hide and seek, where the agents are rewarded for not being seen / seeing their opponent (and not leaving the play area). The agents also succeeded at other games, where the only difference to the agent was when the reward was given.

It isn't really different from physically building the same play space, dropping some rats in it, and rewarding them with cheese when they are hidden from their opponents - except rats are unlikely to figure out how to maximise their reward in such a 'complex' game.

Given this description of how the AI actually works, the fact they came up with complex strategies like blocking doors, ramp surfing, taking the ramp to stop their opponents from ramp surfing, and just the general cooperation with other agents, without any code describing any of those things - is pretty amazing.

You can find out more about how the agents were trained, and other exercises they performed here:

https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/

Thanks.
I learned to wind surf in the bay off the Berkeley shore as a kid, which seems like an indoor pool compared to that.

Yes, widespread poverty, largely because of insane wealth inequality. (I'll elaborate if you wish) The rich had plenty to eat, and as the dismissive "let them eat cake" implied, had no concern for those who didn't. It was that disparity paired with the dismissal of the peasants plight by the ruling class that tipped a bad situation into civil war/revolt, imo.

Yes, poor are going hungry in the United States, maybe not starving to death often, but suffering to death from ailments caused by the only diets they can afford, which barely qualify as food. No, it's not to the extent of 1700 France, but we wouldn't tolerate anywhere near those conditions today, so that argument is ludicrous.

The real poor in America don't have roofs or electricity, where are these TV'S they're parked in front of exactly? The homeless problem is growing exponentially...those are the real poor surfs in this analogy, not just people like me who can live fine on $15k a year.

Hey, Sorry if I seem frustrated lately about videos not working - It's just mainly that I really am getting frustrated. I'm getting almost half of all videos that are unviewable - either because of Facebook embeds, or region blocked.

I used to be able to come to the SIFT and get all my video views and see lots of new videos and keep up with current world activites etc.
But lately every SNL, Conan, Late Night Tonight, Tonight Show videos, are all region blocked.
The overall quality of videos here have gone down, are we running out of videos?
Anyway, with 50% of the videos not working, and the 30% being junk, it's not leaving much and I find this is becoming a dead site for me. The problem is I really like this site, and I don't want to go elsewhere. I find myself, just surfing youtube now, but getting to the good stuff takes time, and I don't always have that time.

anyway - sorry to rant, just wanted to apologize if I've seemed argumentative as of late. Have a great weekend!!!

It ain't surfin' unless you can take a 25' cabin cruiser into the pipe with you...

This is the surfing equivalent to the Running of the Bulls...

I had an episode kind of like this a couple years ago taking my garbage & recycling bins to the curb. Lost traction, but was able to surf down the driveway and stay upright. Bonus: high school kid waiting for the bus got to see it all.

Your video, Surfer Dan Surfing Lake Superior, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Arcata, being our college town, is the most expensive town here. I would consider other nearby towns if being cheap is important. Try Blue Lake, where I am (I'm outside town), it's more rural but under 10 miles from Arcata.
We moved here 25 years ago....back then, a 1000 square ft house with an acre cost us $800a month. I've owned my home since then, so I'm out of the rent loop, but poking on craigslist looks like around $1500-$2000 for a decent house, with some more, some less depending on what you get. Nice 2-3 bedroom homes seem to be about $500000 now with some property.

Our gas is the most expensive in the country consistently, over $4.

Beyond that, it's pretty cheap. Property tax is 1%, food is reasonable, entertainment is mostly nature and community, fishing, hunting, hiking, boating, surfing, diving, even back country skiing 1/2 hour up hill, so free, although there are paid events too, we even had GWAR play a few times in Eureka, but no opera or ballet.

My wife and I live on $30k....we have 4 cars, pets, vacations, a large pond, hot tub, etc. Because I have room, I grow a lot of our produce and we have around 40 fruit trees. We aren't putting any extra in the bank, but aren't depleting our savings either.

We are the marijuana capital of America, if you know the right people, it's maybe $100 an oz for A grade, $10-20 a gram for wax/oil.

All in all, it depends on your lifestyle. It would be easy to spend all you save living here on gas, or easy to not have a car at all if you're in town and will ride a bike in the rain. While there are certainly cheaper places to live, I'm not sure there's better. Our forests are gorgeous with skyscraper redwoods, the ocean is cold but clean here, the rivers unspoilt and full of fish, our air is some of the cleanest in the lower 48, water is too, and our summer daytime temperature is mostly 70-75 F, winter is low 50's- freezing, but we have very few freezing days.

Mckinleyville, just above Arcata, was (still is?) the largest town in California with no police, only highway patrol. They got a multiplex before police!

We have a ton of immigration from the bay area, but more often than not they move back because they miss the fast pace and abundant services and entertainment....I didn't.

Hope that helps. We love it here, but we're slow paced and super cheap bastards. If you are too, come check it out.

Your video, Skyler the surfing dog, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

*promote some *quality K9 surfing. I think he was at the dog surf competition I saw in Baja last summer, possibly the winner. Keep hanging 8, buddy.

So what you're saying is, the Dolphin is basically surfing without a surfboard on an underwater wave created at the bow of the boat.

I can live with that.