The End Of (Human Generated) Art?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As we all wake up from the Superhero movie era daze we’ve been in for 20 years, I think maybe we aren’t asking the right question. The question isn’t, “What type of movie genre will replace Superhero movies?” but, rather, “Is this the twilight of not just mass media, but human generated art?”

It’s very possible that a lot sooner than you might think, AI sensors on your TV and phone hooked up to “Her”-like technology will generate movies, TV shows, songs and — gulp — novels, that are designed specifically for what you want at that specific moment because of your mood.

Some 99% of what is generated by the hand of man when it comes to art is shit and, as such, 99% of all art could very well be, well, AI generated shit. AND, there won’t be any mass media anymore, no shared reality.

As such, the Singularity won’t come with us uploading our minds into computers, but with the very idea of human-generated art for profit being seen as a quaint notion of a bygone era. And that dystopian nightmare is probably going to happen a lot — A LOT — sooner than you think.

If it happens at all, that is.

And add the general tendency to name, shame and drug anyone who is “different” and, lulz, our posthuman future may already be here.

The WGA Is In Trouble

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I often say — I’m always, always wrong. But it definitely seems as though it’s at least possible that we’re in something of a waiting game when it comes to the current WGA strike.

And the two sides, tragically, are waiting for different things.

The WGA is waiting for the Suits to come back to the negotiating table, while the Suits are waiting for LLMs to advance to the point that Hollywood writers are…moot. So, rather than “September” being the deadline as one very young and naive striking WGA writer proposed, I think we have a far more open-ended situation on our hands.

It could be 18 months before there’s any resolution to the Writers’ Strike and the resolution will be that technology has reached a point where the Suits feel like they can just ignore the WGA altogether. And, rather than thinking about a WGA strike, they’re thinking about how many programmers they’re going to have to pay in place of them.

Like I said — I’m always, always wrong. So, I suppose it’s possible that something will happen and the Suits will come to some sort of agreement with writers. But..I couldn’t count on it.

Suits, Software and Schmucks: The Path to Hollywood’s ‘Her’ Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Hollywood is fucking doomed. While we may have to go through a civil war (Reds) or revolution (Blues) between now and then, it definitely seems as though within 10 years even Hollywood suits will be replaced by a Her-like AI.

Let me say that again in a different way — it could be that through a combination of Her and Simone all recorded entertainment will be generated by AI. People will develop parasocial relationships not with Tay-Tay or a this or that Hollywood heartthrob — but with a simulation generated on-the-fly by their very own Her-type digital assistant.

The path to this (dystopian?) future won’t be a straight line, but that’s definitely where macrotrends seems to be taking us in the medium-to-long term. Hollywood is so, so very fucked.

Two things to keep in mind.

One, the transitional phase of all of this will be a new Feudal system for Hollywood where there will be three types of people — suits, software and schmucks. Writers, directors and actors will be seen as quaint and moot soon enough — unless they join together and demand specific, hard-fast carveouts for those jobs.

I just don’t see that happening because things are moving too fast.

The other issue to think about is — Broadway may see a real resurgence. It could be that the revolution may not be televised — because it will be performed live on the stage. People who want “real” actors will turn to having parasocial relationships with Broadway and Westend, (and local theatre) stars rather than some computer-generated bullshit.

I can’t predict the future, but it’s definitely something to think about, something to worry about. The future may see a very, very dramatic change in how we interact with entertainment.

Hollywood’s Eternal ‘Now:’ The Streaming Endgame

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here is what I think is the endgame for the streaming industry. At some point in the near future — probably after we’ve either transitioned into a MAGA autocracy or wrapped up a civil war / revolution — Netflix will be morea database than an entertainment provider.

Simone is the future of Hollywood and celebrity culture.

Because of advancements in AI, you will sit down in front of your TV or cellphone and you will be scanned for your particular mood at that specific moment. Then AI will spit out a six episode TV show or a 2 hour movie that fits your specific mood at that specific moment. It will use the bodyscans of your favorite actors to produce these completely AI-generated forms of entertainment.

So, there will come a point when Hollywood just feeds off the popularity of stars from the last 100 years, never generating any new ones because there won’t be any need. Unless, of course, someone really makes name for themselves on Broadway and they get a body scan so they can live passively off the licensing of that scan on streaming and other forms of mediated recorded entertainment.

But, wait, there’s more!

Soon enough, even having any form of human actors will be quaint and moot. All your favorite stars will be AI generated. They will be human like that all those dystopian 1990s movies about people developing parasocial relationships with faux Hollywood stars will seem very prescient.

And, what’s more,give us 20 years and all of your favorite Hollywood stars could be fucking androids. Unless SAG gets its act together, the only actors making any money professionally will be those on Broadway.

Otherwise, lulz.

We’re careening towards a very strange and weird future — especially when it comes to entertainment.

What To Make Of XR

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to struggle with the idea that there is any real-world use cause for Virtual Reality. But some combination of AI and Augmented Reality makes a lot of sense.

Just imagine how AI and AR could fix simple social issues like remembering someone’s name at a dinner party. And Apple’s Vision Pro is the first XR headset that actually looks somewhat sexxy.

Now, this is the point where I wonder where my Mindcap is. We’re rushing towards having the technology to read our minds digitally. It would be pretty cool if we could just shave our heads, put on a Mindcap full of electrodes and totally skip having to wear any sort of goggles of visors in the first place.

But that’s a ways down the road, I’m afraid.

It definitely seems as though XR in the guise of AI and AR could really, really revolutionize our lives in a pretty profound manner. Too bad we’re going to probably have to make the existential choice of autocracy or civil war / revolution first starting in late 2024, early 2025 before the cool stuff like XR is widely adopted.

A Breached Second Draft Scene Birth

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m really struggling with a few scenes in the second draft. Two scenes in particular at the moment have pretty much caused everything to come a screeching halt.

I’m going to have to give them a lot of forethought tonight before I hopefully can turn around tomorrow morning and write them out. Not even using AI has been able to help me with these scenes because what I need from them is too complicated and, in a sense abstract.

So, I’m just going to have to go back to the old way of thinking really hard and struggling with how I can fill the scene with all the information that I need within it. Another problem is subsequent scenes really depend on what I lay out in these two scenes, so it’s difficult for me to just breeze past them and come back to them when I feel better.

Ugh.

Anyway, I continue to be impressed with how effective AI is in aiding me developing this novel. It’s definitely, in general terms, speeding up the process. But’s far from perfect.

I still have to actually write the novel out. But it definitely is filling a gap that I’ve long had because I have no friends no no one likes me. I no longer feel like I’m doing all of this in a complete creative vacuum.

Of Usenet News & LLM Datasets

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The last I checked, Google has a nearly-complete archive of Usenet from its founding until at least around 2000 when everything went to shit there because of porn spam. It would be dumb for Google not to include Usenet in any Large Language Model dataset.

You would have to tweak it some, of course, but there are about 20 years of high quality words to use to train your LLM to be found with any Usenet archive. A lot of is outdated and full of vitral, but there is also a lot of human interaction and humanity to be found there, as well.

This is so much the case that if you were to include Usenet archive information in your LLM training dataset, you would probably endup with a very human-like LLM. I don’t know, maybe Google is already using their Usenet archive. Usenet was very popular back in the day.

Given how many Usenet servers there were at one point, I’m sure if you were working on an open source LLM that you could probably find a few million words to train your open source LLM by scooping up all the archived Usenet posts you could find.

Or not, what do I know. But it is an intriguing use for all those words that are now just forgotten Internet history. For everyone except for me, of course. 🙂

History Repeats Itself: Being One of “Those” People — An Early Adaptor

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only reason why I didn’t endup a billionaire as part of the Internet / Web revolution is I’m writer of words not of code. But for that, I would be living a life of hookers and blow to this day.

So, with the advent of the LLM revolution, I find myself in a similar situation because I’m becoming a regular fucking “prompt engineer” because of how I’m using LLMs in the context of developing my novel.

As I’ve said before, I usually flesh out scenes before I write them in the guise of a Scene Summary. Using LLMs, I’ve managed to reduce the time working on a scene summary from a few hours to a few minutes. Of course, I had to get over my natural inclination to just obsess over making the scene summary perfect. I’ve generally decided that when the scenes summary is just good enough to get the job done, I move on to the next thing.

But I think any advantage I have because of developing a novel via LLMs will be brief and ultimately moot. I think in the end the entire notion of professional writing is going to be so revolutionized that it will be like the transition from horse and buggy to cars.

There may still be writers, but probably any professional writers will be artisanal in nature. They probably will be playwrights. Every other form of writer will be mooted by the eventual rise of Her-like technology. Actors, director and writers in any form of *recorded* media will be mooted pretty soon, the way things are going.

There may be some entropy in the system that slows this down, but given how the DGA gave up so easily and the the Hollywood Suits have the high ground when it comes to the WGA — things aren’t looking so great.

But I am known for my “hysterical doom shit” and it’s possible that I’m wrong. I’m wrong all the time, afterall.

Yet, I do think we need to realize that if LLMs are helping some dumbass like me be a much better novelist by helping me develop faster, that a lot of people a lot lazier than me are just going to shrug and let LLMs do all their writing for them and, in the end, Netflix will be more a database of actor body scans hooked up to Her-like technology than it is a studio.

Anyway. Enjoy these waning days of Hollywood while you can.

No, ChatGPT, *I* Am Still The Writer

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I see ChatGPT as a great — wonderful even — development tool when it comes to writing this novel. I’ve gotten pretty good at using it to speed up the process of writing scene summaries.

I use scene summaries to give myself something of an agenda before I sit down to write out a scene. With ChatGPT, what could have taken hours…now can be done in pretty much a few minutes.

The problem is, of course, that people are very fucking lazy and hackined and would rather just lulz the entire writing process to the point that they don’t actually have to write anything at all. This is not only very, very lazy, it kind of misses the point of writing to begin with — writers tend to be pretty fucked up and need an outlet for all their bent up neurosis.

But “normal” people — IE, Hollywood suits — who want to cut out all the expensive, weird people who produce fiction will see LLMs — and eventually AI — as a way to pretty much end the very idea of writing as a profession. Writing will go the way of the horse and buggy.

Combine the natural tendency to load freaky weirdos up with drugs to make them “normal” and there is a good chance that the future will be bleak place for writers. Not only will we all be turned into drones living off of UBI, but we’ll have reached some sort of post-human future.

Ugh. Fuck that.

Anyway. ChatGPT is a great tool. But for me, at least, it’s just a tool.

Building The Perfect Beast: ChatGPT is a Dangerous (and Dumb) Threat To Hollywood

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve spent much of the day today using ChatGPT as an impromptu manuscript consultant as I gamed out scene summaries and, in general, it was a struggle. A fun, interesting struggle,but a struggle nonetheless.

But key takeaway is how dangerous LLMs are to the future of traditional Hollywood. It may not be ChatGPT. It may not be Bard. But at some point in the near, near future, the very idea of human-produced recorded entertainment may seem rather, well…quaint.

And, remember, for all the talk of how ChatGPT can “hallucinate” when you ask it a question, what is fiction, but a usually some neurotic human “hallucinating” a truth that makes them feel better for having a weird childhood. Or losing their parents at a young age.

You name it — fiction could be described as a “truthful hallucination.”

In fact, if I were to design a LLM for Hollywood studios, that’s what I could name it — Hallucination.

In short, LLM — which aren’t even AI — are really good at bullshit. They aren’t at the moment, very good at writing without a lot of hand holding, but that will come soon enough. If you combine LLMs propensity for bullshit with just a bit more abstract thought and, well, there you go end of (the human told) story.

As I keep saying, it could be — after we have a civil war / revolution in starting late 2024, early 2025 — that we wake up one day and Netflix is more about being a database of body scans of Hollywood stars than it is any sort of movie studio. I just don’t see “mass media” as we currently conceive of it lasting much longer.

By 2030, Hollywood could be a quaint memory, replaced by Broadway and local community theatre which is where everyone goes to if they want to see any sort of human-generated story. Otherwise, they just plop down on their couch and vedge out to a very unique, very personal story that was specifically created by a scan of their face by a device on their TV or phone.

That’s the future, folks.

Talk about Burn, Hollywood, Burn.

At a minimum, LLMs will be a very powerful tool in developing of fiction, ranging from novels,and TV to movies. It will be a lot like how we take for granted that a writer might use a search engine to help game out a fictional story.

The danger is, of course, that because of greed and people being dumb and hackied, that soon enough Hollywood will be three types of people: Suits, a few programmers and a shit ton of interns making minimum wage. Any actors that exist will first make their name on Broadway, become popular enough to get a body scan then live passively off the income of that scan.

Programmers will replace movie directors — do you hear that DGA? You, too, will become moot soon enough if you don’t demand human carveouts.

In a sense, I think it’s too late.

Now that people understand the power of LLM and they understand that we may be zooming towards Artificial General Intelligence, welp, that’s all folks, for human Hollywood.