As I’ve said before, I get that people are upset that AI generated art won’t give them historically accurate depictions — but for one thing: fucking Nazis.
Do we really want a future where members of the Patriot Front can pump out millions of images to use as Nazi propaganda? Are Tech Bros really so willfully oblivious that they don’t see the harm in something like that happening? Some of them have gotten really, really worked up about there being ANY guardrails for AI.
Ok, I understand the complaints of people like Marc Andreessen that AI image generation can come across as a little too “woke” for its own good. As is seen here:
But the strange thing about it all is inevitably they ask AI to generate Nazi imagery and they get all butt hurt when it won’t do it to for them. I find this very, very strange.
You’re not putting Nazis in a memory hole by simply refusing to generate what would inevitably become Nazi propaganda. Just because you want the absolute right for AI to generate “unwoke” photorealistic historical pictures, doesn’t mean that the Patriot Front or whomever won’t jump at the chance to pump out millions upon millions of Nazi propaganda photos.
And where do you stop?
Do you want the right to prompt an AI to show you “a proud SS officer leading a child to the gas chambers?” It sure does sound like that’s what you want when you complain that you can’t get Nazis generated by AI.
And when you call someone on this desire, they either get really mad or just punt the issue and say, “it brings up a lot of tough questions.” No, fuck you, you fucking fascist Nazi. Ugh.
From what I can tell of OpenAI’s Sora software, we’re rushing towards a future where human Hollywood becomes moot. What’s more, it seems as though the far Left and the far Right might fuse into some sort of anti-AI coalition that would demand legal carveouts for human Hollywood and human transportation workers.
I do think that, no matter what, human generated art will thrive, just the context will be different. It will be that 99.9% of all media is AI generated, and the little bit of pop art that is human generated will be really, really good. The one genre of human are that will probably see the most success because of AI is live entertainment ranging from sports, to music to theatre.
Actually experiencing something in the real world, rather than via AI generated VR wearing your Apple Vision Pro will start to be valued a great deal by the average person. I could see Broadway and live theatre in general replacing most of the current movie going experience because it will be real and true and human.
I love movies, yes, but in the future it could be that people will be so used to “playing” their gamified VR movies that if they are going to take their headset off, they’re going to want it to be a live experience. I will note again that scifi novel The Unincorporated Man talks about the downsides of VR in a really interesting way.
Anyway. It will really be interesting to see how things play out. I would like to think that I still have a window of opportunity to finish my novel and see if I can successfully querying it.
I think the only way I’m actually going to get past the first few chapters is just…not look at the first few chapters of the third draft once I finish them. Just wing it when it comes to consistency.
My dream is to write a novel as accessible and popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Things are set up now that I should be able to methodically go through at least the first half of the novel without feeling forced to re-read everything from the beginning. I had a real problem the last time I thought I had transitioned from the first to second acts of the third draft to the point that I went back to the very beginning and made some structural changes.
I’m pretty pleased, in general, with what I’ve come up with. I continue to worry about things I just can’t control. The rise of AI and the possibility of The Fourth Turning happening at some point over the next 18 months weigh heavily on my mind. But, as I’ve written, finishing this novel is existential.
I’m going to try to finish the third draft of this novel not later than April, but it might be closer to July. THEN I have to worry about finding the funds to get someone to look over the novel before I query an agent. And even then, I have to worry about an agenda doing due dilligence on me and thinking I’m not only a crackpot, but a smelly CIS white male who writes from a female POV sometimes.
I do still have a few scifi concepts I want to work on. It’s just so difficult for me to stop fixating on the mystery-thriller long enough to do such a thing. But I really do need to do it ASAP. I don’t like having all my eggs in one basket.
So. I have a window of opportunity before either The Fourth Turning destroys the country and / or AI makes all human generated entertainment moot. So, I have to hurry. At this point, finishing this novel is now existential and, to some extent, irrational.
I should just give up and stare at my ceiling all day until I die of boredom. I suppose that’s what a “normal” person would do — just give up.
But fuck that. I’m not normal. Never have been. So, once more into the breach. Now that I’m sober, I feel in a better position to sprint. All I want to do is to express my humanity by telling a great story that one — one! — person who isn’t related to me or who doesn’t know me personally finishes and really likes and wants to read more.
That, in my mind, will prove that I don’t suck as a writer.
It may take a little while — 18 months? — but there is going to come a moment in the not-so-distant future when we have a Her movie future where our digital personal assistant will, on the fly, churn on VR narrative immersive media for our Apple Vision Pros.
The beautiful Zendaya.
I don’t see how “human” Hollywood has much of a long term future unless Congress passes some sort of carveout whereby a certain amount of entertainment HAS to be created by the hand of man, rather than an AI. And if we’ve gotten to that point, I could see maybe neo-Luddism being the natural evolution of MAGA.
I mean, if 3 million high paying blue collar transportation jobs go poof overnight, that is going to have a severe economic impact. At this point, my only question is if “The Fourth Turning” is going to somehow pause development of all this cool shit while we bomb ourselves into oblivion because of “vibes.”
I continue to feel very uneasy about America’s political future. Shit is going to get really complicated really soon and it could be that all this cool stuff we keep expecting to happen in the next few years simply will be punted down the road until we decide if we’re going to be an autocracy or not.
I don’t know if this is the cultural equivalent of The Fourth Turning or not, but it seems like we need some sort of cultural reset. It we need to lurch into a new, more exciting future. We exist in some sort of luminal state whereby a bunch of old people control culture.
I honestly don’t know how to fix this problem.
But I suppose if there was some sort of Fourth Turning then once it was over and we came out the other side, we would have a new, vibrant culture again. But it definitely seems as though we’re stuck in a cultural malaise for the foreseeable future.
I also think that people aren’t thinking through how bad things suck at the moment in general. I suppose there is a possibility that technology will fix the problem. Some combination of AI and the Apple Vision Pro going mainstream might be the thing that prompts some sort of cultural reset or vibe shift.
Any discussion of what I’m about to talk about must address the huge MAGA elephant in the room — it’s very possible that we may have to go through something along the lines of WW3 before we reach any sort of Singularity, petite or otherwise.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump somehow doesn’t manage to kill about 1 billion people when he is re-elected and in an effort to remake the global order in his image causes WW3 to break out. Let’s say we continue to have relative peace and prosperity.
It definitely seems as though by about 2030 that some combination AI and android technology make totally upend and disrupt the currently human-dominated service industry. There would likely to be an number of unexpected side effects.
The most obvious is, of course, a real push for some sort of Universal Basic Income. I could see this being paid for by some combination of a 30% vat and the taxation of the economic activity of non-human actors. (Though I know some Objectivists who think ANY taxation is theft, even if the “thing” being taxed isn’t even human. Ugh.)
The other, less obvious side-effect of the wide spread use of AI and androids would be that there would be no DDD jobs for undocumented immigrants to fill. Now, apparently some conservatives are soooooo racist that they somehow think that undocumented people will still come to America even if they’re going to starve to death because there are no jobs for them.
But, I think any reasonable person can assume that if all service jobs and all DDD jobs are done by AI androids that, well, that might single-handedly solve a few macro problems in the American body politic. There’s a reason why Japan has been obsessed androids for decades — they knew they would need them because of a lack of new babies.
So, if there was a snap, massive rollout of AI androids in the US it’s possible that the weird bending of in America’s political system that has caused MAGA to warp everything might subside and we might go back to “normal.” Or not, maybe things will just get worse because the plutocrat oligarchs who would control the AI androids would use those very same androids to control the everyone.
I was listening to The All In Podcast today and one of the participants made an interesting observation — the content found on YouTube could be the most valuable information in the world. The idea that it’s possible that Google might train its AI models on YouTube is kind of mind blowing.
Now, there might be the issue of Google’s management may fumble the bag for various reasons and even with all that content not be able to build a “moat” around its AI. But just the idea that you might have a commercial AI product trained on YouTube content is staggering.
It will be interesting to see what happens going forward.
One thing is clear — barring The Fourth Turning / WW3, the next 18 months could see hyper development on the AI, android and spatial computing fronts. As part of that, I think we’re going to have to start taking the Universal Basic Income as a serious policy agenda.
I’m well aware of all the problems with both Apple Vision Pro and existing AI models. But I’m old enough to remember the early days of the Internet and how in fits and starts that technology gradually took over the world.
Again, remember, before I continue that there IS the issue of The Fourth Turning to worry about. It could be that much like WW2 delayed the development of TV, so, too, will the collapse of the US and WW3 could delay the actual Petite Singularity from happening.
But back to the point — when AI Generated Media is available on something like an Apple Vision Pro, then, lulz, we’re definitely in a Burn, Hollywood, Burn type scenario. In fact, the only way I could see Hollywood surviving such a thing is Washington passing some sort of carve outs for humans created art.
I could also see passive, human Hollywood surviving in some way if we, as a society, begin to give human-made media some sort of specific cultural value. In line with that, I could see Broadway really becoming culturally white-hot because Hollywood has been consumed by the technologies associated with the Petite Singularity.
And that doesn’t even begin to address how things might be disrupted if we can figure out a way to stick LLMs into android technology. It’s at least possible that if all the DDD jobs that immigrants come to the US to fill simply are done by androids…that MIGHT solve our border crisis. (Though, I will not that the racism of the Right is white hot that it could take decades for them to calm down about the lack of those sweet, sweet white babies — even if technology makes their concerns moot.)
Who knows. I can’t predict the future. But I do think that the next 18-odd months could be some of the most eventful on both a technological and political manner in recent human history.
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