I recommend taking a careful look at the much broader topic of risks associated with AI. One good place to start is with this presentation. But even this is just a small starting place for a vast topic.
Watched it at your suggestion. There's a significant problem with their analysis which I'll discuss in my next installment of The Mysteria. Thanks for the link!
And when the entire internet is 99% filled with this meaningless drivel, and it becomes almost impossible to find beautiful human created works, will people turn their gaze away from the screens? 😵💫
I think not so simple. I really imagine if there was an event that took down the internet/power/water here where I live (or rather in the city...) I imagine people would spend the first two or three days constantly checking for phone signal until they realized they wasted a lot of time that could have been spent sourcing water or food. I’d like to hope I’m very wrong about this 😀
Good to see a Marxian take on AI. I think this is as good and sober an analysis as any other I've so far read. It does look like what's emerging currently via AI is some kind of crazy online mash-up of 'creativity'. Maybe AI is (currently) seeing and presenting to the world like a child's scribbles, although it will obviously get more sophisticated.
I very much agree with your take on this. We need to think, though, about how the sacred content we make gets shared/distributed. How do we find our way to the sacred texts and away from the drivel? How do we pass these sacred efforts from one generation to the next? How do we become the counter force to the meaninglessness capitalism smothers us with every day?
On another note, as suggested above, AI is a beast that already has a multitude of tentacles reaching into humanity. There are numerous threats as well as possibilities and we’d be wise to pay attention to this broad landscape. It’s a capitalist beast and as Caliban and the Witch demonstrated, the beast has won at every turn. How can we become the generations that turn the tide?
It's worth giving attention to these problems, absolutely, but it's a bit too easy to get caught up in panic over it when just "unplugging" the whole damn thing would work quite well...
Which is sort of why I’ve never had a tv. It was just having this advertising rubbish thrown at you every couple of minutes.
I’m not that way with the internet yet but I have a rule with social media that I only scroll until the first advertisement gets thrown at me. It’s gotten to the point now that it’s often right at the top, the first advert, and so I don’t scroll at all. It’s really reduced my time on social media. But since Substack doesn’t do adverts I do “waste” more time here, but it’s certainly helped my attention span reading these longer essays.
Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023Liked by Rhyd Wildermuth
I love the insight that “teaching” AI on the works of artists and writers is a form of primitive accumulation. I’ll admit to having paranoid spiritual concerns about the use of AI to generate art in the style of a particular artist. For example, creating “Beethoven” music by feeding AI Beethoven and having it create a “Beethoven” piece. I’m haven’t quite articulated my fear but I would describe such a thing as necromancy. Of course, I also have reservations about recorded music, especially from dead artists as well for similar reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the hell out of listening to my favorite dead people sing but I wonder if there was some sort of natural limit implied in having to have a living person perform music composed by someone who is dead. That in some way that is healthy way of allowing the dead to speak, while I’m on the fence about listening to the dead soul sing
I also sometimes feel human creativity is being used as though entrails in haruspicy. As we have already entirely opened ourselves up to the algorithms, via our every urge and desire being logged and tracked via our phones and search histories, our guts are completely spilled. The AIs are just smooshing it all around, and divining our futures for us, and we are half dead on the slab under the impartial gaze of the machine.
But on better days I don't worry about this at all...
Hi Rhyd -
I recommend taking a careful look at the much broader topic of risks associated with AI. One good place to start is with this presentation. But even this is just a small starting place for a vast topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=4s
Watched it at your suggestion. There's a significant problem with their analysis which I'll discuss in my next installment of The Mysteria. Thanks for the link!
Clear even for a luddite like me. I agree with James. Thank you for putting this together.
Be well.
And when the entire internet is 99% filled with this meaningless drivel, and it becomes almost impossible to find beautiful human created works, will people turn their gaze away from the screens? 😵💫
Yeah, well, obviously! There's always been a really simple answer to this. :)
I think not so simple. I really imagine if there was an event that took down the internet/power/water here where I live (or rather in the city...) I imagine people would spend the first two or three days constantly checking for phone signal until they realized they wasted a lot of time that could have been spent sourcing water or food. I’d like to hope I’m very wrong about this 😀
Good to see a Marxian take on AI. I think this is as good and sober an analysis as any other I've so far read. It does look like what's emerging currently via AI is some kind of crazy online mash-up of 'creativity'. Maybe AI is (currently) seeing and presenting to the world like a child's scribbles, although it will obviously get more sophisticated.
I very much agree with your take on this. We need to think, though, about how the sacred content we make gets shared/distributed. How do we find our way to the sacred texts and away from the drivel? How do we pass these sacred efforts from one generation to the next? How do we become the counter force to the meaninglessness capitalism smothers us with every day?
On another note, as suggested above, AI is a beast that already has a multitude of tentacles reaching into humanity. There are numerous threats as well as possibilities and we’d be wise to pay attention to this broad landscape. It’s a capitalist beast and as Caliban and the Witch demonstrated, the beast has won at every turn. How can we become the generations that turn the tide?
It's worth giving attention to these problems, absolutely, but it's a bit too easy to get caught up in panic over it when just "unplugging" the whole damn thing would work quite well...
Which is sort of why I’ve never had a tv. It was just having this advertising rubbish thrown at you every couple of minutes.
I’m not that way with the internet yet but I have a rule with social media that I only scroll until the first advertisement gets thrown at me. It’s gotten to the point now that it’s often right at the top, the first advert, and so I don’t scroll at all. It’s really reduced my time on social media. But since Substack doesn’t do adverts I do “waste” more time here, but it’s certainly helped my attention span reading these longer essays.
I love the insight that “teaching” AI on the works of artists and writers is a form of primitive accumulation. I’ll admit to having paranoid spiritual concerns about the use of AI to generate art in the style of a particular artist. For example, creating “Beethoven” music by feeding AI Beethoven and having it create a “Beethoven” piece. I’m haven’t quite articulated my fear but I would describe such a thing as necromancy. Of course, I also have reservations about recorded music, especially from dead artists as well for similar reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the hell out of listening to my favorite dead people sing but I wonder if there was some sort of natural limit implied in having to have a living person perform music composed by someone who is dead. That in some way that is healthy way of allowing the dead to speak, while I’m on the fence about listening to the dead soul sing
The necromancy feeling is indeed pervasive.
I also sometimes feel human creativity is being used as though entrails in haruspicy. As we have already entirely opened ourselves up to the algorithms, via our every urge and desire being logged and tracked via our phones and search histories, our guts are completely spilled. The AIs are just smooshing it all around, and divining our futures for us, and we are half dead on the slab under the impartial gaze of the machine.
But on better days I don't worry about this at all...
Well put! Thank you 🙏🏼