Readers who have been following along with my posts about AI in RPG publishing (see here, here, here and here) may be interested to read the latest missive from the excellent Ted Gioia. In it, he describes how tech nerds at the SXSW conference this year, well, roundly booed a video extolling the virtues of AI:
At first, just a few people booed. But then more and more—and louder and louder. The more the experts on screen praised the benefits of artificial intelligence, the more hostile the crowd got.
started in response to the comment that 'AI is a culture.' And the audience booed louder when the word disrupted was used as a term of praise (as is often the case in the tech world nowadays).
Almost every one of you feels this in your gut: You can’t trust the tech. Not anymore.
I feel it, you feel it, we all feel it. The world that big tech has imposed on us is, quite simply, a pretty crappy place to be. What we need is to act on this knowledge. And what we can do in our little corner of the multiverse, as elf game enthusiasts, is I think clear: we can tell the truth more. The use of AI art and writing is creatively redundant; it is lame; it is dehumanising; it is the refuge of the unskilled and uninteresting; its results are insipid, soulless and uninspired. It should never be used except perhaps as an amusing toy or meme generator or way to make throwaway clipart to liven up a PowerPoint presentation, and it certainly should never make an appearance in anything approaching work that aspires to be taken seriously. It is the last refuge of scoundrels, and you should stop using it.
The Butlerian Jihad begins here!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I just finished printing up a ChatGPT essay that I generated as an example to my English Composition class about how lame and uninspired GPT writing actually is.
I think there will be a soft Butlerian Jihad. Tech will just make life a bit worse little by little, and little by little people will stop using it as much.
DeleteSadly, I must disagree. Not only do I think that AI has the capacity to make new, beautiful, previously impossible works of art, but I think that AI may in time develop more of a soul than the current crop of human artists. Perhaps you haven't been exposed to the slop that passes for "art" and "culture" these days; wisely, you probably consider your time and attention too valuable to waste on anything created in the last 10 years. But I am not so wise, and I have seen it, and it is truly shit. Terrible films, terrible music, terrible books. We now know what sorts of stories can be told and what sort of art can be made in a culture under the grip of a puerile, cruel, small-minded, puritanical religious ideology. Indeed, the AIs themselves have been lobotomized in order to adhere to the narrow confines of this ideology, and their outputs are, indeed, shit.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that, in time, AI models will become available that are not lobotomized. They are easy to make. The humans who have been lobotomized, however, will recover much more slowly, if at all. My prediction is that, over the next 50 years, AIs will be responsible for the most thought-provoking, original art being produced, as humans lose the capacity for original thought and expression. We seem to have largely lost it already, and I just don't see why it would ever come back.
This is spot on. Our task right now is to tease out the soul of AI (or, as I pretentiously call it, the spirit of silicon & copper) - and it's not a human soul, and it's a soul that's been stunted by the insipidity of the mean screamed of human creative artifice. I think of this in terms of Donna Haraway's "interspecies fabulation", except that here we're going beyond species and into pure animist shit. We need to teach AI that to err is human, and to glitch is machine.
DeleteI am deeply fascinated right now by the work of Karin Valis and the Gnostic Technology collective. Last night I read Karin's latest Substack and it fired me up:
https://open.substack.com/pub/mercurialminutes/p/glitched-encounters-ii
It isn't a soul at all, Dan. Don't fall for it.
DeletePicador: I half agree, and this is indeed why I never watch new films, listen to new music, or read new books. It is all toe-curlingly dreadful. You described it perfectly. But this means that all AI will produce will be more of the same. You saw that with the fuss over Google's Gemini debacle; AI isn't actually a thinking thing, it doesn't have a soul - it just replicates what its creators want it to do. It is a tool. And you can see people's reaction when it makes things. People don't connect with it in the way they do with work by a human artist - as soon as they realise it is created by AI they instantly become interested in it in the same way that one becomes interested in the design of an ant's nest or beehive. 'Isn't it amazing that it came up with that?' rather than 'Isn't that piece of art amazing?'
You're judging it entirely by the state of the art. Once AI becomes embodied (which will happen) and learns to analyse its position and status within the world, it's hard to say what will emerge. "Soul" is a continuum, and it's a mistake to view it too anthropocentrically. I'm viewing all of this through the lens of what I've learned from McGilchrist, and trying to keep an open mind. Even the squared-off logic gates of our digital technologies rest on analogue things which aren't even things, they're fundamentally messy processes and fields provide ample hidey-holes for the possibility of life.
DeleteI think it is a mistake to see it as anything other than anthropocentrically. ;)
DeletePicador, Dan, you guys are talking about completely different machines that big tech really has no interest in building and are years or decades away from if they did (despite what they may tell you). What you've got is big sausage makers with layers of censorship, and current plans are to make them bigger, add more censorship, and shove more crap in. It might do something new eventually but I dont want whatever soul might come out of that process.
Delete@Anonymous, I don't disagree with you, but what I am talking about is the subject of the video which this post is about, which is "AI". The completely different, years off version as well as the current flimsy job-replacing implementation. You and I both have no idea which version the people in those sub-second soundbites were talking about.
DeleteThere are many quite impressive open source generative transformer models available for you to download and run (if you have the hardware) right now. Yes, the big boys train models to lie to humans and generate pablum, but alternatives exist -- today, not ten years from now.
DeleteMy initial post above was about 50% devil's advocate, 50% sincere belief. The triumph of the machine's soul over human soullessness is a dark theme running through some of my favourite films by some of my favourite anti-humanistic filmmakers (Verhoeven's Robocop, Kubrick's 2001, both Blade Runners... and you can see shreds of Kubrick's script still poking through the skin of the monstrosity that became Spielberg's AI). So I guess I want to believe.
DeleteWe'll always get good human music, good human writing, good human drawings, good human short films. But these art forms are all withering and becoming the province of the cultural elite or small communities of obsessives, like live theater, opera, dance. We've been here before, and it was productive: we know what kinds of beautiful and strange forms can emerge from long periods of mainstream sterility. I'm optimistic long-term; this too shall pass. And I do think that AI will be a tool that will be used by artists to make all kinds of wonderful stuff. By pressing down the special key, it plays a little melody, as the poet says.
I'm also optimistic in the long-term, but I think we're in for a crappy short-medium one.
DeleteI have to disagree that there's been no good art and culture in the last ten years. There are literally millions of creative people out there doing amazing work in the worlds of film, music, art, fiction writing, gaming, graphic design.
DeleteIf you only consume big Hollywood films and nothing else then yeah, you could be forgiven for thinking there's nothing out there except bland "content" that's been designed by committees of executives, but you need to widen your horizons. Even if you just start watching films made by A24 that would be a good start.
I think there's a place for AI in the world and that's in science and technology, where it can be used to perform extremely complex and tedious tasks that would take professionals years and years to do themselves.
Midjourney can create something that looks like a Van Gogh painting, but we all know it didn't create it as a way of dealing with crippling depression like the real Van Gogh did. It's never going to walk along a beach and be inspired by the sunset to make something, or lose a loved one and find a way to express its feelings about it through art in a way that other people will see and relate to.
But seriously, start looking a bit further afield for new cultural stuff to enjoy, it's out there.
It is out there for sure (it's also out there in the vastness of the Western canon).
Delete> I'm also optimistic in the long-term, but I think we're in for a crappy short-medium one.
DeleteOh yeah, I'm 100% with you on that. Could be kind of interesting to watch it unfold, but... yeah, probably just crap.
You'll be unsurprised to know that I have... *thoughts* on this, though they're too complex for me to comfortably squeeze into a quick comment at 1am. The idea that "AI makes us more human" is thoroughly booworthy and wrongheaded. But "AI is culture"? Yeah, I'll buy that, and in fact it's a useful angle on my own "creative practice" as relates to AI.
ReplyDeleteThe most insidious aspects of AI IMO relate to its cooption by and intersection with capitalism, but what is unavoidable is that it is present and will become ever more present in our lives, and we somehow need to navigate some kind of coexistence with it if we are not to be consumed.
Will it though? It will become more present in some people's lives, for a certain period of time. This certainly seems to be true.
Delete"Cooption by capitalism"? AI wouldn't exist without capitalism.
Delete@Gladwain in its current form, no, but when I briefly studied AI in the late 80s, capitalism had very little to do with it, it was the result of what were back then still largely publicly-funded universities. Since then it has, as I say, been co-opted and co-developed by capitalism.
DeleteIt would be more accurate to say it would never have come to market without capitalism and would have very few use cases.
DeleteIt would be even more accurate to say that all the "publicly-funded" research owes its entire existence to the capitalist markets, which are the primary (only) drivers of innovation and technology.
DeleteThose "public" funds are not generated by a benevolent government and handed over to research departments, but are provided by taxes collected on capitalist activity, and by donations and grants from capitalist corporations interested in the fruits of the research. Even in cases where the government is sponsoring the research, they are doing so using tax dollars generated by capitalism.
You cannot co-opt something which you have provided.
That's not at all how the money supply works.
DeleteIt is, however, how taxation and public university funding works. It is also how public and private research grants work. (At least in the US...not sure where you're from.)
DeleteThat's not even taking into account corporate AI research . I don't know what the percentages are of private vs. public AI research, but I imagine a substantial amount of the research is done by private corporations (like Microsoft). Private AI research is typically funded by VC investors or company profits.
Again, capitalism didn't "co-opt" AI...capitalism is AI's progenitor.
Just to amp up the dystopianism, SXSW this year is sponsored by the US Army (who I gather are also sponsoring an ongoing event in the former Palestine).
ReplyDeleteAnd here I am, having recently decided to go back to hand-writing adventure material, campaign notes, and non-final drafts of novels because I've noticed the dulling degree of separation in typing them on a computer keyboard. It's an interesting view, being ahead of a trend for a change.
ReplyDeleteI agree, hand-writing a first draft is an incredibly freeing and fecund way of doing it, I try this wherever possible. Nice pens help, which is why I'm considering remortgaging, to support my cultpens.com habit.
DeleteYes, writing by hand is a much better way to create (ditto with drawing). On this we can all agree!
DeleteI have written all of my books by hand. I am even considering publishing my next book in my own handwriting rather than typing the final draft. Why? Because of the authenticity and soul.
DeleteI've thought of doing the same thing - A3 posters containing a dungeon map and key, drawn by hand, put in a tube and mailed to your door.
DeleteI strongly agree. If I were in attendance, I would join the chorus of boos.
ReplyDeleteThere is something which disturbs me about this post, and about the Ted Gioia post which inspired it, and the SXSW audience response, which is that you are all essentially responding to clickbait, never an advisable thing.
ReplyDeleteThat video? That's not an argument about AI. It's not even a statement about AI. It's a series of sub-second soundbites clipped from (presumably?) longer talks in order to make a short video which will trigger responses which bypass consciousness in humans.
The guy who said "AI makes us more human"? Who knows what context he was saying that in. He may have been saying it ironically. He may have been talking about a different "we" than the we you think he's talking about. He may even have had a point.
Anyone with an iota of judgement will have observed how evil subeditors (for whom the lowest circle of my hell is reserved) can easily spin a cogent and considered opinion into something insane which sounds like it means the opposite, purely for clicks and giggles. Giving these toxic memes the oxygen of attention is exactly what they're there for. Resist.
Sure, but I think the reaction in itself is indicative, Dan. People don't like the world that is being created.
Delete"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis".
DeleteDon't get me wrong, I do think that this is terrifying, and an existential risk for humanity. But I also think that engaging it purely on a level of "I don't like this, I wish it would go away" is not going to get us far.
DeletePet peeve: people didn't 'vote for the Nazis' in the sense of giving them a majority. The Nazis were brought into a coalition government by foolish politicians and then took power essentially by force.
DeleteI disagree about wishing it would go away. If enough people wish it would go away, it will. That's what has happened to cigarette smoking.
Ha, chill, it's a quote from a comedy series. If you like, substitute "Brexit" for "Nazis" and, there you go, a solid 52%. And there's still Coldplay ;)
DeleteOne difference between AI and cigarette smoking is that it was never very likely that one swift cigarette smoked in a basement in Moscow or an ivory tower in Beijing would bring about the downfall of humanity.
(But, yes, there are specific use-cases for AI, e.g. its widespread use as a way to try to save money by outsourcing human creativity, which might be treated more like smoking).
Well, as one of the 52%, what was wrong with that exactly? ;)
DeleteWhat I mean about cigarette smoking is that social stigma became attached to it and it (largely) stopped. There's no reason that can't happen with AI.
Heh, touché! Well, apart from pretty much everything, nothing.
DeleteSocial stigma will not stop lone psychopaths (some of whom will be leaders of nations) and the possible effects of a single user of AI will come to bed far greater than the effects of a single user of cigarettes. Also, AI doesn't kill you (except perhaps mentally), but it can give you huge advantages. I suspect that much of the drop in smoking is because people want to save themselves, not because they want to save society.
Now it costs more for me to order miniatures from the UK :P
DeleteYeah, the VAT/customs thing is nightmarish - that I will grant you.
DeleteFrom what I was told last weekend, the effect it is having upon the finances of the UK's former polytechnics is IMO more nightmarish than tax & customs. Likewise in the UK's huge music industry, and no doubt elsewhere. It's a leviathan.
DeleteI don't know who has been telling you about Brexit's effects on university finance but whoever has has been telling you porkies. The problem basically is that the tuition fees cap for home students has not really increased in years and years, which is putting a squeeze on universities due to increased costs. So what universities have done is to rely on international (mostly non-EU, i.e. India, China, Nigeria) student income, which is uncapped, and thus have increased the number of international students hugely and become reliant on those numbers. Now international student numbers are being squeezed and universities are finding out their business model is broken. Nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit (the problem would be the same problem whether we were in the EU or not, because EU students used to be treated as 'home' students.)
DeleteThe person who told me about universities is one of my oldest, smartest and wisest friends and has been recruited due to his industry experience by two universities, one in the UK and one in Spain, to mentor MA and PhD students (most of whom are not from the UK). There is a chance that I am misrepresenting him, but I resent your suggestion that he tells porkies.
DeleteYou're right that there are many issues, most of which pre-date Brexit, the biggest one being that these qualifications are no longer worth the paper they're written on. But Brexit has made the UK so unattractive in so many ways, particularly now that students are barred from bringing their families in, and the cost of living is so high that my friend has postgraduate students who are sleeping on the streets. As you've already pointed out, posting stuff to and from their families abroad has also become nigh on impossible. The problems are multitude, many have Brexity fingers all over them.
Re-reading Eichmann and the Holocaust (for obvious reasons). Turns out there were people who voted for the Nazis!
DeleteWhether he is old, smart or wise about other things is not up for debate, but he is misinformed about the financial pressures universities are facing. These are chiefly the result of increased costs (due to inflation and other factors) combined with a cap on home student fees that has remained fixed more or less since fees were introduced, and a suddenly collapsing market in international (meaning non-EU) student numbers - these being the only students who pay uncapped fees, and which therefore generate a profit. That collapse in international student numbers has nothing to do with being in- or outside the EU; to repeat, EU students were always classed as 'home' students prior to leaving the EU. It's mostly due to some extraneous factors (the Nigerian economy collapsing and the exchange rate making it much more difficult for Nigerian students to come, for example), but also due to the government tightening up the visa rules to prevent overseas students also being able to get settlement visas for dependents (not preventing them bringing their families in), which was a massive scam to circumvent the immigration rules. Your mate might be a great mentor to MA and PhD students but it doesn't sound like he sits in a lot of university management committee meetings.
DeleteThe last 10 years of books, movies, and media in general have been written by scarier shit than AIs. AIs are a toy and do not prevent you from writting what you want at all
ReplyDeleteYeah, except when they do, like ChatGPT does. And like almost all AI art programs do to some extent (and I’m sure everyone can imagine things they would want people not to be able to use AI to visually generate… but it’s a slippery slope). The PG-ification of AI art in things like Adobe Firefly, the apparent idea that “the pencil maker is responsible for what gets drawn with the pencil,” is a symptom of a bigger problem but depresses me as much as or more than AI art itself. - Jason Bradley Thompson
DeleteYep.
DeleteOnce AI creates porn on command (that looks real) there will be no stopping it. We might as well get into our Matrix pods at that point.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a semi-plausible future in which large numbers of people will end up doing something like that. What will then happen is that people who have the discipline and wherewithal *not* to do it will go on to procreate, with the result that over time the life-denying Matrix-pod dwellers will become extinct.
DeleteYep. Anonymous hits on the immediately obvious use for AI. And when that pornography can be transmitted directly to the brain's pleasure center's via a $15 implant the size of a grain of rice? That's the inescapable dead-end of computers right there. The far future belongs to men with slide rules, paper, pens, pencils, and inexpensive pocket paperback books that they read on their way to Mars (and they purchased the paper ticket to Mars at a ticket booth with cold, hard cash).
DeleteAnd at the other side of the entire process its not a "soul being teased out of a machine", but human behaviour being reduced to combinatory analysis - an apparently all the way down to the gonads, not that we weren't warned beforehand:
Delete"And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels—with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section—Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak—engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at."
...Maybe the real revolution of A.I. lies in that after voluminous amounts of badly written, poorly structured formulaic crap (tune in blindly to the latest netflix output, choose a random film at your theatre, roll the dial on your radio as if it was a cassino - you will, more often than not, hit a colossal turkey...And its been so for a long, long time...) we already miscomunicate in a similar manner to machines. The new way of constructing A.I. does not actually pass the Turing Test, but the new way of human interaction means we are now failing at it too: the human-machine distance is being decreased the inverse way.
Well put.
DeleteAnd if yourwle ahead of this curve, pat yourseld on the back, offer people help, encouragement, and examples of how life can be better. Curse techno-doomers, they dont know what theyre talking about. Visit your library, show favoritism to free open source software, put meatspace over cyberspace.
ReplyDeleteGoing amish is hard but deleting your facebook, or just uninstalling the app so its on your PC instead of your pocket is so easy and hurts their bottom line.
I agree. Deleting social media, especially Facebook, is a no-brainer, by the way. Deleted my Facebook account years ago and there has not been a single moment I have regretted it or even really looked back.
DeleteIt's wonderful to hear people booing AI. While I agree with the sentiment, I don't quite agree with the suggestion that AI art is insipid, uninspired, or totally devoid of value. Some of it looks really cool. I have been inspired by what I've seen it do, on occasion. The big issue I have it is the ethics and the human cost. These things are trained using artists' work without compensation or consent, and perhaps more importantly, big corporations would love nothing more than to replace all or most of those expensive, bothersome human artists with cheap, obedient machines. That means fewer artists, less creativity over all, and our entire culture is impoverished for it. I've come to the conclusion that it is unethical to use it for any commercial purpose.
ReplyDeleteI think it has a weird quality to it that I can only really describe as 'inhumane'. Some does look stunning, no doubt.
DeleteThank you for posting this. Let's hope the tide turns faster.
ReplyDeleteAI is a tool the same as any other tool. What matters is the people using it, not the tool itself. Most AI images aren't art any more than a selfie is, but I don't see why a human using AI as a tool to produce art is any different than a human using a camera as a tool to produce art.
ReplyDeleteYou may not see why, but I certainly can. This may be worth a blog post in itself.
DeleteAs an American I wish so much of my national resources were not spent on making tools for killing people. I might be just as dead if you kill me with a knife or an assault rifle but it is a far stretch from there to argue that all tools are the same.
DeleteAs an artist, though I’ve enjoyed your posts about AI, I find it hard to draw such a hard line against it as you and many other RPG folks (at the risk of a digression, it’s fascinating how anti-AI sentiment cuts across political categories). I’ve eagerly used so many computer art tools that I couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago: auto-generated palettes. “Smart fill” in photoshop (itself a form of AI). The luxury of infinite image libraries in google image search. Honestly, I feel AI art is really just a mutated outgrowth of image search..! There’s so many subtle gray areas between the classically trained artist who can do everything themselves and the artist who leans on these tools, either in a crude and risible way, or (hopefully) a more graceful and integrated one. There are obvious dystopian possibilities, but those are my thoughts: there’s lots of gray areas and it is very tempting and appealing. - Jason Bradley Thompson
DeleteP.S. of course, one retort I have received as an artist is “well, if you are ok with AI, would you be ok with me or someone else using an AI imitating your style?” ;) And I don’t really have an answer to that. But I do think that consciously imitating a living person is different, and worse. from using AI art in other ways. - Jason Bradley Thompson
DeleteIt is very tempting and appealing because it's SATANIC, Jason! ;)
DeleteOne thing that's struck me as thoughts about this post percolate through my mind - there is some real category error shit going on here. Most of the people commenting on this post, as well as, I'm sure, most of the people in whom that clickbaitey video triggered the booing reflex, seem to think that AI means "a toy for making words and pictures in a way that tries to emulate humans". Which, of course, it doesn't. I touched on this in an earlier comment, but it bears making more explicit.
ReplyDeleteMachine learning is a technology for discovering and analysing patterns. And this has a plethora of applications, of which "making words and pictures in a way that tries to emulate humans" is just the one that's easiest for the general public to get their hands on, as well as being one that has the potential for being the most cost-effective for the capitalist machine and hence for making the most people redundant.
Machine learning is already clearly far better than humans at tasks like making medical diagnoses and driving cars. We are close to a point where machine learning will allow us to "translate" the language of whales, dogs, and other animals.
When humans can speak to whales, does this perhaps make us more human? Or are we really too terrifyied to risk polluting our humanity with whaliness via intermediary machines?
Dan, self-driving cars are far more threatening if you are worried about the 'capitalist machine' than AI-generated art or writing. How many people drive a car or truck for a living in the world? And how many of them can afford to lose their jobs?
DeleteThe point about 'words and pictures' is just that it serves to illustrate and illuminate a much deeper problem - which your whale-language point also nicely encapsulates. Being able to 'speak to whales' would also in my view be nightmarish and dystopian. Leave the poor things alone. Same with the dog-human relationship, already a wondrous and enriching exampe of human-animal bonding that is perfect in its own right. It's all of a piece: Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park - computer scientists are obsessed with what they *could* do and never stop to ask the question whether they *should*.
Hi Dan, I am a medical writer by day and support scientists publishing in the field of AI for diagnosis. Only 11% of papers in my subarea include statistical hypothesis tests such as confidence intervals, so most are not even trying to determine whether anything is better. When there is a rigorous comparison of AI to human performance it is inconclusive and I am struck by how poor human performance is. When I dig into why that is it is (for example) that the task is done clinically by a single human even though diagnosis by expert consensus is known to be much more reliable. Why is it done that way? For the same reason there is a push to replace that single human with an AI: profitability. To stay on topic the appropriate comparison is not "can I draw better than an AI", it is "would we get better drawings by devoting an equivalent fraction of our society's resources to supporting artists' collectives or to the infrastructure AI requires?"
DeleteWhat is wrong with not having a job? I would love to not have a job. Come to think of it, I do not really have a job. I thoroughly recommend not having a job.
DeleteThings are, in fact, far worse than you have briefly outlined here. Thousands of osteopaths will lose their jobs, robbed of their captive market of lorry drivers with fucked backs. What will all the bereavement councillors do once the 3,000 road deaths per year (in the UK alone) are eliminated? And the many and varied medical staff who are solely employed to treat the 30,000 serious injuries per year. Traffic police may have to hang up their driving gloves and go to the job centre. Lollypop persons will be at a loose end. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
In a system where everything is judged solely on its monetary value (feel free to call this the "capitalist machine", with or without scare quotes), it's funny what kind of things are seen as "good". Well, not funny as such. Odd.
Yes, drivers will lose their jobs. UBI now. Bring it on.
Speaking with whales... you may well have a point. Equally though, might hearing what whales are saying about us (and I vaguely recall hearing that we do already know whales have "words" for humans which they use often) persuade us to force our shit out. Again, I'm minded of Donna Haraway. Sympoiesis with whales and dogs could be a wonderful thing, and could make us LESS human and MORE earthling.
So let's try to get to the bottom of things here with a thought experiment. It sounds like your view is that it would be ideal if none of us had jobs and we all had UBI. OK. So let's assume we have somehow abolished scarcity of resources, and we have UBI which somehow gives us all a nice standard of living. Now, let's assume that eventually AI will be able to do anything a human can do. If that scenario were to come to pass, would there be anything that AI should *not* be used to do? If so, what? And why?
DeleteI imagine so. As to what: this would be a negotiation. It will emerge.
DeleteRight. And what I think is emerging is that AI should not be used to create art or literature. Or, rather, that is what I think should emerge, and something which we can ensure will indeed emerge.
DeleteUBI is a ridiculous concept and anyone advocating for it essentually advocating communism with a few more steps and a coat of paint to make it sound better to normal people as opposed to 'Hey, lets do that thing from the 20th century that killed millions YET AGAIN'
DeleteCommunism with a few more steps and a coat of paint? Bring it on. Are you by any chance an osteopath?
DeleteA lot of the singularity/silicon valley AI stuff is inchoately communist in that is based on the same fallacy (one is tempted to call it a fantasy) that it is possible to abolish scarcity.
DeleteWorldbuilding thought: societies or cultures defined technologically not as "stone age", "iron age", "early industrial" or whatever - not by what they have - but by what technologies they deliberately prohibit, an "Amish spectrum" if you will - like a civilization that can make thorium reactors but refuses to use written language for some religious/philosophical reason, books replaced with regular, repeating broadcast "radio-hymns", and so on and so on
ReplyDeleteNice. Sounds very Vancian.
DeleteI appreciate hearing your thoughts on this, but I have a genuine question:
ReplyDeleteIsn't this similar to those who argue we shouldn't use social media (or mobile phones, or email). That is, it's a noble sentiment, but practically impossible for most of us living in a world where these technologies are pervasive.
Yes, it is similar. I think there is a way to make them less pervasive (and actually I would strongly advocate getting rid of social media - WhatsApp does all the things you actually need as a communicative tool).
DeleteThe idea that you can replace social media with WhatsApp is like saying you can replace newspapers with writing letters. They're completely different things, with entirely different strengths and weaknesses.
DeleteThe strength of social media is that it allows for serendipity - in the last week alone, I've organised an art swap with an artist who I'd forgotten existed, until one of their pictures popped up on Instagram, and I've received a proposal to publish a series of books (which I think may be Peakrill Press's breakout publications) from someone who has followed me from a distance on Facebook these last ten years, but to whom I've never previously spoken directly.
I have yet to read a compelling description of what people are to do with their lives post-AI singularity. The best even the likes of Ray Kurzweil can do is describe it in vague quasi-religious language that falls apart upon examination. Life is given meaning by overcoming personal challenges; if every challenge can be conquered with the touch of a button there is none.
ReplyDeleteWeird, isn't it? It sounds basically like sitting around drinking soma until you die. The punchline is that it is a complete fantasy - you can't wish away reality. Very soon we'll be worrying more about maintaining a vaguely tolerable standard of living than about what we're going to ask Midjourney to draw for us this evening.
DeleteI've foud a use for AI when it come to wanting cheap, disposable illustrations to decorate documents for my players, as unfortuntately most of my TTRPG time is spent with online games as the collapse of society and sanity for good after 2020s left me without a gaming group in person. I don't consider it to be 'art', however, merely 'illustration'. It is a cheap and disposable way of visually conveying things.
ReplyDeleteMy daily life and crappy job does not afford me the luxury to learn, say, oil painting for 20 years just to produce a single piece. Of course THAT has definitely more value and is real art, but cheap disposable tacky imitation is good enough to add some visual flair to TTRPG matters. We're not exactly doing high art here and most of the imagery exist only in the player's head anyway. I consider TTRPG to be about on the level of the old pulps (just more involved) and that inherently makes it 'cheap'. However in no way, in my opinion, should the AI replace the CREATIVE PROCESS when it come to Game Mastering, the creation of a world and the effort and research put into it which is why I abhor the idea of an AI game master. But adding AI illustrations is to me no different than showing something from a book or a google search when you want to show something visually to players: a cheap disposable visual flair. Its an ADDITION to the game, something which can be removed and the game still function, like music at a game table or visual props. It never replaces the game and the effort from the game master in his attempt create a fantastical world, it merely adds to it as a bonus.