02023-03-07 | Computer, Music, Quotes
Tonight I sat with one of my very best friends, whose dad just passed. The moon hung over us unseen, as we talked about making music and waxed toward our brightest selves and felt dad and moon nonetheless there with us. I would not trade that for anything.
There has been a lot of talk lately about replacing art, and the artifacts of humanity’s questioning reach into the unknown, with facsimiles generated by machines trying to extract its essence.
I say that’s rubbish. Real creativity, by its nature, is impossible to replicate or pinpoint. It is like water, and will seep its way through the smallest crevice until it opens into a floodgate. There is no faking it. There is no escaping it.
If you can live with crap for your art, blow yourself away. I, for one, want to hear and sing a real song with my friend. If you’re with me, say so. And the rest of y’all, please keep your formulas on your side of the fence.
Robby Rothschild on Instagram
02023-02-27 | Computer
Regarding yesterday’s post Short Story Steve wrote: Well, I did just that. I used your prompt as input. I got this back:
The young man stepped through the gates of the zen temple, his heart pounding with anticipation. He had come seeking guidance, unsure of where to turn in his search for meaning. The serene surroundings of the temple, with its carefully manicured gardens and towering wooden structures, immediately put him at ease. He made his way to the main hall, where a small group of people were gathered in meditation.
A gentle-looking monk approached him, smiling warmly. “Welcome, young one. What brings you to our temple?”
The young man took a deep breath. “I seek instruction. I am lost and in need of guidance.”
The monk nodded, his eyes filled with understanding. “We can certainly help you with that. First, we must teach you the practice of meditation. It is through meditation that we find clarity and peace.”
The monk led the young man to a small room, where he instructed him on the basics of meditation. The young man found it difficult at first, his mind racing with thoughts and distractions. But gradually, he began to sink deeper into a state of tranquility, feeling the weight of his worries lifting from his shoulders.
After his first session, the monk presented him with a koan – a riddle meant to provoke thought and contemplation. “This is your next step,” he said. “Take this koan and meditate upon it. When you have found the answer, come back to me.”
The young man took the koan with gratitude and bowed respectfully to the monk. But as he made his way back to his room, he felt a surge of curiosity. Instead of meditating with the koan, he pulled out his phone and typed the koan into a search engine, hoping to find some insight into its meaning.
To his surprise, he stumbled upon ChatGPT, a language model trained to answer all manner of questions. He posed the koan as a question to ChatGPT and waited for its response. To his amazement, he received a detailed answer that seemed to unlock the riddle’s meaning.
Excited, the young man returned to the monk and presented his answer. The monk listened patiently, then nodded. “You have understood the koan well. You are ready for the next step.”
The young man felt a surge of pride, even as he realized that he had not truly arrived at the answer on his own. But he was eager to continue his journey, and so he took the new koan and set to work, determined to find the answer within himself – with a little help from ChatGPT, of course.
(my comment: it’s readable. I don’t know what it means by towering wooden structures. I don’t see Murakami in this story. There is none of his delightful detail.)
02023-02-26 | Computer, Writing, Zen
I have this idea for a short story and it would be so meta if the short story was itself written by ChatGPT.
Write a short story in the style of Haruki Murakami, about a young man who goes to a zen temple to ask for instruction. He is taught meditation and receives a koan from the zen master. Instead of meditating with the koan, the young person queries ChatGPT and from it he receives a detailed response regarding the solution of the koan. The man represents this solution to the zen teacher as his own, who in turn gives him the next koan. And so on…
02023-02-25 | Computer, Music
I wonder how long it would take today’s super computers to run through every possible variation of musical notes of a four bar length. Tempo, rhythm, pitch, duration – to us the possible combinations seem infinite… but, of course, they aren’t.
In the podcast I linked to yesterday, Ezra Klein mentioned a classic period sci-fi story he read years ago. The short story described a musician who composes a piece for his wife. When the musician finds out that his composition is not original and that, in fact, an AI somewhere already created the same sequence of chords and the exact same melody… he kills himself.
If a super computer or AI could run every possible sequence of musical notes and the owners of the AI were allowed to copyright all of those variations… what would that mean for humans?
I find this an interesting topic that can open up into a vast conversation about creativity and originality, about individuality and uniqueness.
02023-02-17 | Book, Computer, Music, Writing
But fundamentally this version of AI can only ever counterfeit insight by being the average, the approximation derived from analysis of the human cloud. It has no judgement, no taste, no self. It’s all stolen grief, stolen love, stolen experience. Maybe that’s good enough, or maybe we’ll become frustrated by its product.
from Nick Harkaway’s Substack
I added the emphasis. That’s at the center of the so-called AI threat, isn’t it. Without lived grief, love, experience, how deep can the poetry or music coming from an AI be. So far, nothing I’ve learned seemed very interesting. Sure, it’s new and will become better. That’s a possibility.
I remember a story from a friend who went to a food exhibition. In one booth he was invited to try a bottle of wine. So he did. He was asked what he thought of it. It’s not very good, he replied. Then he found out that the wine had never been touched by a grape, it was purely chemical. He was told that he was correct, it wasn’t very good… yet. I remember thinking that in the future there will be two kinds of wine. The first might be made by combining chemicals. It could taste very good and would be reasonably cheap. The second will be wine the way we know it. Grown on fields, touched by sunshine and rain, harvested by people, and so on. It will, of course, be more expensive.
Perhaps this is what will happen with stories and music? There will be books and music created by AI. Lots of it. Cheap. Accessible. And there will be books and music by humans. Those will be words and melodies touched by lived grief, joy, love, despair.
Maybe we will use the words of Nietzsche when we investigate a book or piece of music, wondering whether it is human or not: Can it walk? Even more can they dance?
Do check out Harkaway’s above linked post on Substack. I consistently find him very insightful.
02023-01-24 | Computer, Quotes
Nick Cave responds to a song written by ChatGPT in the style of Nick Cave.
Since its launch in November last year many people, most buzzing with a kind of algorithmic awe, have sent me songs ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ created by ChatGPT. There have been dozens of them. Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology. I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.
The Red Hand Files – Issue #218
