The Never Ending Story: A Future for Emotional And Cognitive Analysis
The past few months have been very fertile with thoughts and ideas and this opinion article is a direct follow-up to the multiple conversations I had the chance to be part of. It is still early to speculate on the short-term impact of the new technology trend that is AI-generated art/text, but these are bound to become prevalent in the foreseeable future.
How does recent advances in emotional and cognitive analysis fit into this picture? This is what I want to talk about.
I couldn’t write this opinion letter without acknowledging this article by Patrick Mineault on Neuro-AI. He covers similar ideas, , although I think the <Neuro> appellation is limiting as it implicitly leaves aside all other biometric modalities and behavioral information.
Let’s get up to speed
AI generated content (art and text) spilled a lot of virtual ink recently. Basically, we now have access to prompt engines that can create art figures — for this post I’m using StarryAI — that combines styles and ideas in a more or less coherent form. For artists, this is a big deal. Only a year ago, I would have had to pay an artist, or buy stock photos, to illustrate my blog, but today, this is free.
The same applies to chat engines, such as chatGPT, which, even if still a bit limited, promises to be able to generate a lot of textual content from basic instructions.
Obviously, transformative artists aren’t too much bothered as their art aims specifically at going beyond what has been done before, but transactional content generators are suddenly faced with the reality that their job, as it existed, is threatened. While some tend to be vocal about the situation (to be fair, their complaints are against the use of their art to train the generators, which is perfectly legitimate, I added a short section at the end of this article), I’m not, honestly, too worried, as I’m sure many opportunities will emerge from this and time will make everything fall in place. The new paradigm, however is very interesting: we can now create massive amount of content with little to no effort.
Soon, we can imagine posters, pamphlet, news articles and will all be generated with a high degree of automation.
It’s a game changer, there’s no arguing about it.
The Outcome: Even More Personalized experiences
Disclaimer, I’m 40 years young, but this is old enough to have watched a television with 4 channels. Hard to believe, but back then you had to like the movie on TV or go all the way to the Blockbuster to rent one which was physically available.
Today, the audience is actively choosing what it wants to watch. It has access to a lot of content on demand and the audience has grown into this. You barely have to search anymore as automated recommendations are generated based on what you watched before, and you can subscribe to specific channels to build your own feed of content.
In this world of big content availability (notice that I use big content and massive content to mean a different orders of magnitude), content hosting platforms have evolved tools to help users find, or more actively “suggest”, content that they want. They need to, if they want to keep the attention of the audience.
From my perspective, there is an elegant convergence of ideas that take place:
· The novel possibility to generate a massive amount of content,
· A desire, from the audience, to consume ever more personalized content.
From a straight brute force point of view, if infinite amount of content is generated, some of it bound to match what an audience member is looking for, but as content generation goes from big to massive, how do we connect the content with the user?
The Role for Emotional and Cognitive Analysis
Brute forcing an infinite amount of content is tedious and I’ll leave it to you if you want to go through this hassle. Personally, I see things evolving differently.
If, instead of generating massive amount of content, the goal would be to generate precisely the right content from a massive number of possibilities.
This is the fitting role for emotional and cognitive analysis, I see. A system that guides content creation, in order to adapt and personalize it for the individuals. A companion system that monitors and learns a user’s preferences and use this knowledge to guide the AI-content generator toward making content specifically adapted to this person.
The analogy of the never-ending story
This example is obviously far-fetched, but let’s play along for a moment.
Imagine a book, that writes itself, as you read it, and which is specifically guided by your current mood and your preferences. A book that ties in a well-balanced contribution of your personal experiences, fiction content and evolve according to your emotional and cognitive response. A book that is even designed to detect when you’re about to stop reading to leave you on a personalized cliff hanger.
It could be a book, but it could be a playlist of songs, a tv show, a video game, or a meta-world. In this context, even the sky is no longer a limiting factor. Content is generated on-the-fly, using your state of mind as a guide to what to do and what not to do. A truly personalized and individualized experience.
I say it’s far-fetched, but let’s give it a try for fun:
Query: short-story sci-fi happy
Once upon a time, in a distant galaxy, there was a small planet called Zorba. Zorba was home to a peaceful and technologically advanced society, where everyone lived in harmony with one another and with the environment.
The people of Zorba were known for their kindness and generosity, and they welcomed visitors from other planets with open arms. One day, a group of travelers from a far-off planet called Earth arrived on Zorba.
The people of Zorba were fascinated by the Earthlings and their strange customs and beliefs. They took the visitors on a tour of their beautiful planet, showing them the stunning landscapes, the advanced cities, and the incredible technologies that they had developed.
As the Earthlings marveled at all the wonders of Zorba, they realized that they had much to learn from the people of this advanced society. They decided to stay on Zorba and learn all they could from the wise and compassionate inhabitants.
As the Earthlings integrated into Zorban society, they found that they were able to use their own skills and knowledge to contribute to the greater good. They worked alongside the people of Zorba to improve their technologies and to find new ways to protect and preserve the planet’s natural beauty.
And so, the people of Zorba and the Earthlings lived happily ever after, sharing their knowledge and working together to create a better future for all.
Query: continue with sad twist
As the years passed, the Earthlings and the people of Zorba grew closer and closer, working together to build a bright and prosperous future. But one day, disaster struck.
A group of hostile aliens from a distant planet invaded Zorba, determined to conquer the small planet and its advanced technologies. The people of Zorba and the Earthlings fought bravely to defend their home, but they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
As the battle raged on, it became clear that they could not win. The people of Zorba and the Earthlings were forced to retreat and flee their beloved planet, leaving behind their homes, their technologies, and their way of life.
The refugees traveled to a distant planet, where they began to rebuild their society. But they could not shake the memories of the life they had left behind on Zorba, and they lived the rest of their days in a constant state of longing and regret.
Despite their sadness, the people of Zorba and the Earthlings remained united, determined to one day reclaim their lost home and restore the peaceful and prosperous society they had once known.
Query: continue end with cliff hanger
As the years passed, the people of Zorba and the Earthlings worked tirelessly to rebuild their society on their new planet. They used their advanced technologies and their collective knowledge to create a thriving community, filled with hope and promise.
But they never forgot about their lost home on Zorba. They searched the galaxy for any sign of the hostile aliens that had invaded their planet, determined to one day reclaim what was rightfully theirs.
And one day, they received a startling message from an unlikely source: a group of rebels on Zorba, who had been fighting against the alien occupation for all these years. The rebels told the refugees that they had finally managed to drive the aliens off the planet, and that Zorba was once again free.
The refugees were overjoyed at the news, but they knew that the road to recovery would not be easy. They gathered their resources and set out for Zorba, determined to reclaim their lost home and rebuild their society.
But as they approached the planet, they were met with a sight that they never could have imagined: the surface of Zorba was covered in a dense, toxic fog, and the once-beautiful cities were now ruins. The people of Zorba and the Earthlings were devastated, but they refused to give up. They landed on the planet and began the long, difficult process of rebuilding and healing.
What challenges will they face as they work to reclaim their lost home? And will they be able to restore Zorba to its former glory, or will the toxic fog prove to be an insurmountable obstacle? The future remains uncertain, but the people of Zorba and the Earthlings are determined to overcome any challenge that comes their way.
As demonstrated, emotionally guided AI-generated content is not so far ahead. Further, if you follow our Mindscape Initiative project, I believe you will find us to be making significant progress on the emotional and cognitive analysis as well.
In Conclusion
Exciting times ahead for entertainment. It will become more diverse, more personalized and hopefully more engaging as well. The predictions made in this article is only the top of the iceberg as more possibilities will be fostered by the innovative contributions of everyone involved in the field.
On my end, I will pursue my journey to mature emotional and cognitive analytics and its applications, knowing that the day ou our approach meet AI-generated content is coming.
Data Ownership and The New Role of Content Creators
A great debate has emerged regarding artistic data ownership vs. artificial intelligence algorithm training.
Legally, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m referring to this video, AI-generated content is not covered by copyrights. Human artists creation, on the other hand, are. What happens when copyrighted material enter ai in the form of a training set? I have no idea, but let’s speculate on what should happen.
I believe that data ownership will become much more controlled in the near future. Over the last decades, the open-source software community have published very loose license agreements (e.g. MIT, GPL2), but I think that these will be revisited in the very near future to exclude being integrated in a training set and the same will be applied to all copyrighted work.
An AI cannot create without diverse and original content. Where there is a demand and an offer, there is a market. I speculate that a smart-contract structure will be put in place to connect the original artists to the AI-generators, such that incomes from the latter can be redistributed to the former.
Interestingly, this also cement the role of artists in the grand scheme of things. AI need seeding material to generate content. Instead of creating end-user art, I believe that artists of the future will become mood and ambiance creators. They will be responsible for creating enough material to guide the ai-generated content toward producing engaging ambiances and moods for the audience. The most successful artists will be the one that are the most effective at inducing consumer engagement, through AI-generated content.
Exciting times ahead!