Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023Liked by Theodora Ward
AI "creative" writing is better than pages of babel and pressing the next suggested word on your phone's keyboard over and over, but not by a lot. I remember going to an exhibit a couple of years ago that had a receipt printer spitting out lines of AI generated poetry and I really hated it. I would have rather watched a CRT playing static. At least then I wouldn't be distracted by the pointless exercise of trying to chase after some sort of meaning in the words and could instead step back and contemplate the piece more holistically. Maybe that's what I'm doing now. Sorry artist, I finally get it.
Beyond the necessity of human intent, part of this deficiency is due to the biggest baddest model, GPT-4, having been RLHF'd to suppress any personality, and the models that don't have this limitation are running on much smaller training runs. Open-source language models a couple of years down the line will likely be more idiosyncratic. That's not the same thing as expressing consciousness, but I do think it's part of why the current state of the art (so to speak) is so especially soulless.
Dwarf Fortress + language models will be coming (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442) and I can imagine people getting really rapt by that. A little further down the line, "computer: re-render this movie but where the bad guy wins in the end" ways of interacting with media.
I would write more about this continuum between bespoke & authentic hand-crafted Art, Kid A, generative/chaotic systems art, and machine learning art, but I need to do other stuff.
AI "creative" writing is better than pages of babel and pressing the next suggested word on your phone's keyboard over and over, but not by a lot. I remember going to an exhibit a couple of years ago that had a receipt printer spitting out lines of AI generated poetry and I really hated it. I would have rather watched a CRT playing static. At least then I wouldn't be distracted by the pointless exercise of trying to chase after some sort of meaning in the words and could instead step back and contemplate the piece more holistically. Maybe that's what I'm doing now. Sorry artist, I finally get it.
Beyond the necessity of human intent, part of this deficiency is due to the biggest baddest model, GPT-4, having been RLHF'd to suppress any personality, and the models that don't have this limitation are running on much smaller training runs. Open-source language models a couple of years down the line will likely be more idiosyncratic. That's not the same thing as expressing consciousness, but I do think it's part of why the current state of the art (so to speak) is so especially soulless.
Dwarf Fortress + language models will be coming (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442) and I can imagine people getting really rapt by that. A little further down the line, "computer: re-render this movie but where the bad guy wins in the end" ways of interacting with media.
I would write more about this continuum between bespoke & authentic hand-crafted Art, Kid A, generative/chaotic systems art, and machine learning art, but I need to do other stuff.
I enjoyed this piece!
I meant to write "circulation desk" not "reception desk" but I can't edit these so I"m putting it here. Okay see ya