Tag: creativity

General Buck or AI

Just read a sort of matter-of-fact article stating that in the future (tomorrow?) countries will protect their trillion-dollar investments in AI processing centers with nuclear weapons.  Now if this does not remind you of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey or maybe Dr. Strangelove then you aren’t paying attention.

A country is ready to kill humans on an epic scale to protect the “Big Brain”.  If it wasn’t so sad it would be laughable.  And who will decide if the moment has arrived to launch the death missiles—maybe the Big Brain. 

I write, or try to write, mystery novels.  100% fiction.  I would not dare write something along those lines because I would worry my reader would not find it believable.

Now, of course, this was not a press release from any government, but someone speculating on what would be a logical conclusion based on the investment and the increasing dependence on mega-watt computing power to determine the course of action countries take to defend themselves. 

So, it may not be true, but it sure follows logic.  Human tragedies have occurred in the past by countries protecting minor assets such as bridges or airplanes or just because they could.  The Big Brain will, no doubt, become such a critical part of national security that it will be easy to justify anything to prevent the death of the Big Brain.  Just ask the Big Brain!

AI on a massive scale is inevitable.  Who would stop it?

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A certain hypocrisy exists in my tone about AI.  I’m using it in many ways, like many people, and finding it intriguing and useful. 

I’m old enough to remember the first discussions about computers.  These were mostly primitive devices that could count and sort things.  This was the 1950s.  My brother, Curt, had been drafted into the Navy (yes, there is a story there for another time), and through a testing program to determine your best usefulness, the Navy assigned him to their “state-of-the-art” computer facility.  It was the early stages of computing.  The public was not told much about what the military was doing with computers, but they were the leaders at this time—not IBM, in advanced use of the technology.  That only meant that they had advanced further in sorting and counting. 

Even then, there was a great deal of concern that “machines” would take over decision making from humans.  In fact, they were working on just that.  Leaping forward some seventy years and you can imagine what is going on now.  Maybe it’s good or maybe it’s bad; but it is inevitable that the ability to make decisions within seconds based on a massive amount of data is the skill machines excel at, while humans often pause.  That pause is the difference between surviving and dying in the scenarios the military studies.  Thus, General Buck is no longer the best decision maker it’s AI.

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I once requested an image of lizards in the desert from AI and one of the lizards had a leg coming out its head—a glitch.  Not a big deal.  Oops, was that missile just launched – “who ordered that?”—no one answers.

Human Feeling

My good friend Stanley Nelson and I have been discussing AI and the implications for artists and writers.  We agree and then we disagree.  We collaborated on three books, Murder So Wrong, Murder So Strange and Murder So Final, which were centered around a time in Oklahoma City when there was a newspaper war between the established and powerful newspaper and the upstart, The Oklahoma Journal.  We lived there during this time and knew many of the people involved.

We survive collaboration, just barely, and still speak, although there was a somewhat quiet phase right after the books.  Here was our latest email exchange about AI.

Stan.

Once I stopped to study an oil of yours, hung somewhere in your house. I was particularly taken by how you used simple, brief touches and swaths of color to suggest, successfully, a window, a door, a wall, a shadow. It was hard not to compare that with a nude portrait you did decades ago, hung so that it commanded the den in the house in Del City. I found that one far busier with its colors, not quite achieving the impressionism I figured was being tried for, although I never asked about it. I had only taken a junior high-school art class, but I had learned enough to wonder.

This is an opinion, but I should say your representational and sometimes impressionistic art has evolved over time, and for the better. Whether anyone agrees is hardly the point, which instead is about how art gives us a way to gauge someone else’s progress, or even regress, as an interpreter of the world around them. Consider the obsessive study of Van Gogh’s progress as an artist. Much like science, the matter is never conclusive.

So, here is my point: that art is not, nor has it ever been, a matter of instant gratification or product quality, i.e., salability or favorable critical appreciation. The goal of art is personal expression on a scale greater than or, at least, different from the ordinary, and for that a person must be the source. To credit AI for arranging pixels—zeros and ones—so a visually striking picture appears is a bit like giving out prizes to frying pans for not burning the bacon.

My response:

The artist, human or AI, is judged by the results.  You can ponder the artist behind the work, but it is the art itself that sticks in our head.  If we could extract personal expressions in art, then your point would be well stated.  I’m just not sure we can.  I have buried in my basement an accumulation of art that has not been seen by many–you might even call it hidden.  Why, because it was not what I was trying to achieve.  Failures?  No, probably not, those mostly got painted over; this would be “it’s okay, but just not right”.  So, if the result is what matters, soulless, stolen, zeros and ones generated art still must be judged by the result.  Therein lies the problem, the results are awesome.

That’s one of the reasons I think AI writing is not as powerful as art.  The writer is easier to “feel” in writing, I think, than in art (1).  Of course, that is still debatable.  I have played with AI writing, book descriptions and others, and it feels different.  While competent, there is something missing.  Now, you can say the same about art–but I don’t get that feeling with art itself.  It looks great, conveys with subtlety the qualities listed in the instructions.  I’m still going to say the art generated by AI will stunt any on-going development of human artists.  Why do something that is mostly inferior to what can be done with AI.  While it’s sad, it doesn’t change the fact; AI results are better.

I haven’t heard back from Stan, but my gut says he is going to say bullshit (although he doesn’t use that language as much as I do).  If you’re a creative person AI is a threat.  If not your soul, then maybe your pocketbook.  But AI is going to replace many people, people who love what they do, but cannot work for nothing or 24 hours a day.

Even with that pain, I will still say on almost any objective level AI is brilliant.  Maybe an asshole but many creative people (things?) have been assholes, so what’s so different.

I believe that we all will incorporate AI tools into much of our daily lives.  How do we not use that easy access tool that produces such amazing and easy results.  Many of us already have and it will grow because it works.

Are there risks, even existential risks?  Yes.

(1) When I wrote the “feeling” sentence I was thinking about creative writing, such as novels.  It’s possible that technical or business writing will be better not worse when done by AI since there was not much “feel” involved in the human version.

Art and Power

Every day the tech world makes life easier and more confusing.  Do any of us really know how this stuff works?  We cannot exist without a functioning internet.  At alarming speed, the basic needs for human existence are food, water, shelter and now electricity.

Sure, electric power has been a human need since the days of Benjamin Franklin, but with the internet it is a vital necessity that would leave us lifeless if it was cut-off.  Whether that is good or bad or somewhere in between is not relevant.  The relevant point is that few of us have considered the risk of losing access to electricity. 

One of my “side-hustles” is advising companies in the electric infrastructure industry.  My advice is financial and has nothing to do with their work.  As a result of that connection, I have a feeling that the whole system is vulnerable.  This is not news.  Most people with any knowledge recognize the great vulnerability of the electric grid system.  It’s not terrorists, although the system is not well protected, mostly it is the overall age of the total infrastructure.

In the 1950s government thinkers (no that is not an oxymoron) decided the largest vulnerability for USA security and commerce was a poor highway system that traversed the country.  From those first thoughts huge amounts of money were spent on designing and building the interstate highway system.  That system may have changed the country as much as anything that has ever been done.

The same approach needs to be focused on our electrical distribution system.  My layman’s advice has been to focus on small units of energy production and improved storage of power.  I won’t go into the details, because they are boring—but believe me this is a big problem that needs attention.

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In the fourth grade Miss Smith told me I was the best artist in her class.  I was a little bit surprised but immediately believed her, after all she was the teacher.  From that point up to my initial year in college I thought of myself as an artist.  An artist who didn’t produce much but none the less; I was an artist—ask Miss Smith. 

I enrolled in college and was immediately told I had to have a major.  I tried to tell them I was only avoiding the draft and was not really interested in much and for sure had no idea about a major.  They insisted.  So, I became an art major.  Of course, that meant I needed to take some art classes.  I enrolled in art appreciation (how hard could that be?) and a drawing class.  After reviewing the supply list for the drawing class, which was going to cost me a month’s rent (which wasn’t all that much) I was considering dropping the course. 

I didn’t drop the class and after only a few weeks wished that I had.  The instructor was never going to be my buddy.  He yelled at people, me included, about artistic sense and how many of us were obviously not in the right class.  He acted offended that we were not better at what we were studying to be better at.  It was a personal affront to his whole being that he had to be around such talentless ingrates.  After a few weeks of this haranguing, I was giving thought to enlisting.

Around the third week, Mr. “I’m So Wonderful” art instructor had to leave school due to some emergency that was never explained.  He was replaced by an older woman who looked lost, scared, and usually didn’t show up for the classes. 

Several people in the class gave me good advice and were instrumental in my becoming a better artist, although I’m sure Mr. I.S. Wonderful would still have given me an F.  Despite Miss Smith’s opinion, that unpleasant experience was probably the first time I was a “real” artist.  If you are required to suffer to become an artist, I was now in the club.