I don’t know if the human body can change as fast as the changes being brought on by meta-sizing of everything. As someone who loves the possibilities of technology, it is inevitable we will need computers to augment our internal capabilities to deal with these changes. For now, even the best efforts are not good enough and we have a ways to go.
From my own blog in 2019, Why we need to slowdown time
For the past few weeks, I have immersed myself in various generative AI tools. It has been a while since I have woken up and been excited about what every new day will bring. There are so many tools and apps to try. And new things to learn. We may have a long way to go — ChatGPT is spectacularly wrong about my bio — but still, this feeling of something new is afoot is like a jolt of energy after taking a sip of an ultra-strong coffee. Again, don’t get me wrong — this phase of “AI” comes with all sorts of risks. However, there is no need to avoid it or not understand it.
Wayne Shorter & Herbie Hancock, in an open letter to the next generation of artists, extoll them to think differently and think anew.
The world needs new pathways. Don’t allow yourself to be hijacked by common rhetoric, or false beliefs and illusions about how life should be lived. It’s up to you to be the pioneers. Whether through the exploration of new sounds, rhythms, and harmonies or unexpected collaborations, processes and experiences, we encourage you to dispel repetition in all of its negative forms and consequences. Strive to create new actions both musically and with the pathway of your life. Never conform.
As we accumulate years, parts of our imagination tend to dull. Whether from sadness, prolonged struggle, or social conditioning, somewhere along the way people forget how to tap into the inherent magic that exists within our minds. Don’t let that part of your imagination fade away. All that exists is a product of someone’s imagination; treasure and nurture yours and you’ll always find yourself on the precipice of discovery.
The reactions to these tools are either of amazement, and wonder. Or those of fear and doom. It is hard not to appreciate both points of view — after all, we must confront the idea of something so new that we might be forced to adapt and reinvent ourselves or be left behind. As someone who lives at the end of technology and creative arts, I can’t help but feel excited at the prospect of trying to reinvent myself for this new future. As an older person, I find these new tools are challenging my brain and sending synapses in a different part of my brain, making me wonder — what I can do with this.
As a photographer, I can’t help but see something like Stable Diffusion, Dalle 2, Microsoft Designer, or MidJourney as spiritual descendants to Thomas and John Knoll’s 1987 experiment that eventually became the media manipulation and creative tool behemoth that it is today, Photoshop.
My early experience with these new tools (for the lack of a better description) has me convinced that they will help foster new art forms, more digital, for a future where we consume media and information through a mixed reality layer. And even today’s tools will benefit from this group of technologies we have labeled “ai.”
Originally published as part of issue#3 of my twice-a-month newsletter, A Letter from Om.
Coming away from SXSW and the many panels on AI I am struck that we must not repeat the mistakes of the settlement-free, permissionless and anonymous internet. We must in fact build in incentives and disincentives in order to reduce bias and polarization and increase generativity and sustainability across the AI platforms. At the same time, the right type of settlements will go a long way towards preserving pareto and standard distributions we find in nature and reduce the winner takes all end-game we see in most of humanity’s institutions.
Michael,
Thanks for the comment. You are spot on about this — the lack of nuance in our discourse, is what is troubling. The fear factor and the hype factor are only muddying the waters.
It is pretty clear we are going to stumble for a while, but will eventually will get on the right path. There is too much pressure and urgency to do that. Ironically, we can thank social media for it.
Unlike in the past, the social media is catalyzing so much conversation, push back and debate that I am hoping we will avoid some of the mistakes of the past.