Does Generative AI Have Soul?
Did Georgia O’Keefe Move to New Mexico?
I just read a scare piece about Generative AI video creation tools, ie, they’re getting better…
The author was rather scared about it, but, in the next breath, admitted how enthralled he was with the new-fangled shit.
I left this comment:
Well, I’m laughing a bit. The author has every horror story complaint, but then admits he can’t keep his hands off it, either.
It all reminds me of our own endless human creativity. The Neanderthals and the Denisovans, our own nearest cousins, were around for hundreds of thousands of years, yet, (we only have this data for the Neanderthals so far) continued to make the same tools, spear points for hunting mammoths, when there were no mammoths left to hunt.
We, even 30 or 40 thousand years ago, were hooked on innovation. Just look up our stone tools.
Cave art one day, generative AI tomorrow.
Well, that is a bit facetious, but the point I’m thinking about is we have this thing hardwired into our brains, which I refer to in shorthand as metaphor, ie, A=B, and I don’t even have to explain it.
That gives us, at least according to me, symbolic language, writing, art, culture, gods and imaginary heroes.
Of course you can’t keep your hands off it. You’re one of us.
We are in the goddamned oddest of moments now. I too have my complaints, what I call the no one’s home effect. Read an article written by AI. It’s overly long, is filled with more detail than you want, but, after it’s all done — or even when you’ve just read a couple paragraphs, do you find yourself mentally wandering? The word prediction is perfect, but something crucial is missing. No one’s actually home.
What have I got that the Generative AI doesn’t?
Another example: I read that there’s a complete AI band on Spotify. I looked them up, and they really are so perfect, The Velvet Sundown. Here they are on Youtube:
What’s missing? It’s subtle.
First of all, I know those prompts must have had Kansas on whoever’s mind:
Homage is beautiful and I would never want to discourage it, but listen — one is simply perfect, but no one’s home, in the subtlest of ways. The other grabs you.
Hmmm… You know, it even explains hallucinations. The output is perfect, as in the now infamous court cases, cited in a lazy lawyer’s brief, which, oddly enough, never even existed.
Never even existed. But they’re perfect.
I can’t keep my hands off it, either.
Marilyn Monroe Doing Stand-Up:
Pablo Picasso stepping out of a time machine on the Plaza in Santa Fe (1):
And (2):
(I had to include the 2nd one. The B&W, tourists with 1950s clothes, and the Airstream time machine, I didn’t ask for them, but … yeah!
A Mayan Temple Lost to Time:
Geishas & Hokusai:
A Renoir That Didn’t Exist:
Eeek! Have I subverted my own thesis?
Maybe no one’s home, but I could have fooled me.
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I do absolutely refuse to write with Generative AI, but, you know, the artwork is fun.
