This resonated with me. I've been on the fence about AI art/videos in general, but I've been feeling this sense of unease I couldn't quite pin down. Ultimately I think it stems from the idea that...
"You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross."
She concluded: "And for the love of EVERY THING, stop calling it 'the future,' AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume."
This resonated with me. I've been on the fence about AI art/videos in general, but I've been feeling this sense of unease I couldn't quite pin down. Ultimately I think it stems from the idea that everything from here on out will be overtaken by some sort of averaging effect. Like all of human creativity will just be thrown in the blender perpetually from this day forward, and produce something that is "just fine". :(
This reminds me of that Stargate SG1 episode "The Gamekeeper" where they get trapped in a virtual world reliving their worst memories. Even the bad memories are exciting for the inhabitants...
This reminds me of that Stargate SG1 episode "The Gamekeeper" where they get trapped in a virtual world reliving their worst memories. Even the bad memories are exciting for the inhabitants because they have been trapped for thousands of years with only the same re-hashed content.
Imagine sending the daughter of a celebrity that you have never known fake videos of their dead father? What kind of brain does it take to think this would be wanted and acceptable?
Imagine sending the daughter of a celebrity that you have never known fake videos of their dead father?
What kind of brain does it take to think this would be wanted and acceptable?
Robin Williams is quite literally the only celebrity I have ever cared about enough to feel sad about their death. He had such a huge impact on my childhood that he was practically more of a...
Robin Williams is quite literally the only celebrity I have ever cared about enough to feel sad about their death. He had such a huge impact on my childhood that he was practically more of a father to me than my actual father. But not once did I ever think to use AI to make a simulacra of him to sing and dance for my entertainment.
To me Robin Williams was practically an icon of pathos and empathy. That was the reason why I liked him so much. That was basically his public persona in his last decade; a kind loving father figure. So I have to wonder what these people doing this kind of thing thought of him. It honestly makes me upset to think about it.
While I understand the question being semi-rhetorical, unfortunately I can see a few angles where someone could genuinely be thinking they're doing something good in sending an AI'd relative. I'll...
What kind of brain does it take to think this would be wanted and acceptable?
While I understand the question being semi-rhetorical, unfortunately I can see a few angles where someone could genuinely be thinking they're doing something good in sending an AI'd relative.
I'll spare the details, but if anything it all serves as an amazing case study for one to mentally process in terms of the general "banality of evil."
I remember a reddit post where someone's sister made a deepfake of their dead grandfather for their mom. One of those animated photos that just smiled. There had been viral videos of people...
I remember a reddit post where someone's sister made a deepfake of their dead grandfather for their mom. One of those animated photos that just smiled. There had been viral videos of people getting similar clips of loved ones, and she thought it was a nice gift for their mom since he'd died when she was a teen and she only had one photo where he didn't even smile. In reality, it hit the uncanny valley hard for their mom because it didn't move the way he did. It also reminded her that he was gone and had missed all her milestones.
AI has advanced a bit since then, but I suspect that such clips will still hit that uncanny note for the people closest to the person. Even with all the video references from Robin Williams in movies, I don't think AI can 100% emulate every aspect of the way he'd move on a daily basis. It may seem fine to fans, but for his daughter... Definitely not.
A quote from the sister in that reddit post sums it up best: "I wanted to create a new memory, without thinking about how they might mess with the old ones."
Yeah, I had that scenario/service in mind when I was writing the above. A person with low emotional intelligence receives one of these as a gift, and believes (believe being the key word) it did...
Yeah, I had that scenario/service in mind when I was writing the above.
A person with low emotional intelligence receives one of these as a gift, and believes (believe being the key word) it did them some good. In their ignorance they gift someone the same thing online, consciously thinking they're actually about to do some good, and subconsciously motivated for the internet points.
Anything else beyond that point is just insult added to injury.
Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode where a loved one was 'recreated' into a robot doppelganger of the original person? The robot was built out of a composite of past posts, clips, videos, and...
Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode where a loved one was 'recreated' into a robot doppelganger of the original person? The robot was built out of a composite of past posts, clips, videos, and content... Kind of what AI is doing now.
She's right. This isn't progress. This is regurgitation. This is treading a limitless pool of water for an indefinite amount of time.
Good comparison! Be Right Back was the name of the episode. Excellent acting by Domhall Gleeson. I can recommend anyone interested to give it a try; the themes are spookily prescient.
Good comparison! Be Right Back was the name of the episode.
Excellent acting by Domhall Gleeson. I can recommend anyone interested to give it a try; the themes are spookily prescient.
Canonically, The Architect had attempted two other previous (major) attempts to create the matrix, and they had failed almost as soon as they began - and it's explained that the primary reason...
Exemplary
Canonically, The Architect had attempted two other previous (major) attempts to create the matrix, and they had failed almost as soon as they began - and it's explained that the primary reason that the third major matrix succeeded was that they they chose the absolute "peak of human civilization", 1999, to simulate. The direct era that birthed the machines, the time just before everything began falling apart for humanity where they began becoming dependent on the machines.
In the final wars of Humanity vs The Machines, - after all possible resources were obliterated, and the sky became covered in soot and dark clouds unable to allow light through for energy production, they turned to us, the last of humanity to be their power sources, their batteries1. Just as we became dependent on them, they became dependent on us as "batteries" to continue their existence after we (and they) helped to destroy the world through nuclear and ecological warfare and devastation amongst ourselves.
By using the "peak of civilization", and not another period, this was the best point in our history that gave us choices, lives, and bearing to something our species had expected to become (along with having the most information created to recreate our world in near perfection, a more perfect facsimile). This was the perfect era and time to create 'fake jobs, [and] fake human connections".
This was a time that additionally gave us 'independence" and enough choices and possibilities in life through what we see/hear/do that our minds are active enough to give in, willingly, to the Matrix. To feel comfortable, to feel human. In this third iteration, over 99% of humanity accepted the simulation of 1999, whereas all other models and times had projected far worse acceptance rates.
1. As much as 'humans as batteries' has been derided in the Matrix cannon - caused by the meddling of executives that thought 'neural nets' and distributed computing was too advanced or confusing for the audience, the battery idea kinda works, but it has obvious problems. My personal 'ring around' the cannon to make it work, is that we are batteries, both for power generation (we consume biomatter, which is recycled humans - soylent green style, and output energy) but we are additionally the 'energy' generators of creativity (and randomness through choices) that the machines require to move forward, improve, and upgrade.
Edit: Fixed cadence, concepts, and horrific grammatical errors.
That's a pretty significant omission in the title.
Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, has asked people to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her father, the celebrated US actor and comic who died in 2014.
That's a pretty significant omission in the title.
This resonated with me. I've been on the fence about AI art/videos in general, but I've been feeling this sense of unease I couldn't quite pin down. Ultimately I think it stems from the idea that everything from here on out will be overtaken by some sort of averaging effect. Like all of human creativity will just be thrown in the blender perpetually from this day forward, and produce something that is "just fine". :(
This reminds me of that Stargate SG1 episode "The Gamekeeper" where they get trapped in a virtual world reliving their worst memories. Even the bad memories are exciting for the inhabitants because they have been trapped for thousands of years with only the same re-hashed content.
Imagine sending the daughter of a celebrity that you have never known fake videos of their dead father?
What kind of brain does it take to think this would be wanted and acceptable?
Robin Williams is quite literally the only celebrity I have ever cared about enough to feel sad about their death. He had such a huge impact on my childhood that he was practically more of a father to me than my actual father. But not once did I ever think to use AI to make a simulacra of him to sing and dance for my entertainment.
To me Robin Williams was practically an icon of pathos and empathy. That was the reason why I liked him so much. That was basically his public persona in his last decade; a kind loving father figure. So I have to wonder what these people doing this kind of thing thought of him. It honestly makes me upset to think about it.
While I understand the question being semi-rhetorical, unfortunately I can see a few angles where someone could genuinely be thinking they're doing something good in sending an AI'd relative.
I'll spare the details, but if anything it all serves as an amazing case study for one to mentally process in terms of the general "banality of evil."
I remember a reddit post where someone's sister made a deepfake of their dead grandfather for their mom. One of those animated photos that just smiled. There had been viral videos of people getting similar clips of loved ones, and she thought it was a nice gift for their mom since he'd died when she was a teen and she only had one photo where he didn't even smile. In reality, it hit the uncanny valley hard for their mom because it didn't move the way he did. It also reminded her that he was gone and had missed all her milestones.
AI has advanced a bit since then, but I suspect that such clips will still hit that uncanny note for the people closest to the person. Even with all the video references from Robin Williams in movies, I don't think AI can 100% emulate every aspect of the way he'd move on a daily basis. It may seem fine to fans, but for his daughter... Definitely not.
A quote from the sister in that reddit post sums it up best: "I wanted to create a new memory, without thinking about how they might mess with the old ones."
Yeah, I had that scenario/service in mind when I was writing the above.
A person with low emotional intelligence receives one of these as a gift, and believes (believe being the key word) it did them some good. In their ignorance they gift someone the same thing online, consciously thinking they're actually about to do some good, and subconsciously motivated for the internet points.
Anything else beyond that point is just insult added to injury.
Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode where a loved one was 'recreated' into a robot doppelganger of the original person? The robot was built out of a composite of past posts, clips, videos, and content... Kind of what AI is doing now.
She's right. This isn't progress. This is regurgitation. This is treading a limitless pool of water for an indefinite amount of time.
Good comparison! Be Right Back was the name of the episode.
Excellent acting by Domhall Gleeson. I can recommend anyone interested to give it a try; the themes are spookily prescient.
Fake jobs, fake human connection, services instead of owning anything, what is this, The Matrix?
Maybe this is the reason why The Matrix's internal timeline was set to the 90s.
Canonically, The Architect had attempted two other previous (major) attempts to create the matrix, and they had failed almost as soon as they began - and it's explained that the primary reason that the third major matrix succeeded was that they they chose the absolute "peak of human civilization", 1999, to simulate. The direct era that birthed the machines, the time just before everything began falling apart for humanity where they began becoming dependent on the machines.
In the final wars of Humanity vs The Machines, - after all possible resources were obliterated, and the sky became covered in soot and dark clouds unable to allow light through for energy production, they turned to us, the last of humanity to be their power sources, their batteries1. Just as we became dependent on them, they became dependent on us as "batteries" to continue their existence after we (and they) helped to destroy the world through nuclear and ecological warfare and devastation amongst ourselves.
By using the "peak of civilization", and not another period, this was the best point in our history that gave us choices, lives, and bearing to something our species had expected to become (along with having the most information created to recreate our world in near perfection, a more perfect facsimile). This was the perfect era and time to create 'fake jobs, [and] fake human connections".
This was a time that additionally gave us 'independence" and enough choices and possibilities in life through what we see/hear/do that our minds are active enough to give in, willingly, to the Matrix. To feel comfortable, to feel human. In this third iteration, over 99% of humanity accepted the simulation of 1999, whereas all other models and times had projected far worse acceptance rates.
1. As much as 'humans as batteries' has been derided in the Matrix cannon - caused by the meddling of executives that thought 'neural nets' and distributed computing was too advanced or confusing for the audience, the battery idea kinda works, but it has obvious problems. My personal 'ring around' the cannon to make it work, is that we are batteries, both for power generation (we consume biomatter, which is recycled humans - soylent green style, and output energy) but we are additionally the 'energy' generators of creativity (and randomness through choices) that the machines require to move forward, improve, and upgrade.
Edit: Fixed cadence, concepts, and horrific grammatical errors.
Yeah, but the steak tastes great in here.
This title is crazy. It’s the kind of thing that should exist on a newspaper in the background of a scene in Back to the Future 2.
That's a pretty significant omission in the title.