tag > Ideas
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If you want to viscerally understand Marshall Mcluhan's warnings about #Augmentation from 50y ago, spend a week in Tokyo. In this hyper artificial environment, tuned to meet seemingly any human need - Mcluhan's insight that "Augmentation leads to Amputation" is extremely real.
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As computation makes it increasingly easy to create virtual experiences which perfectly fool all our senses ~ experiences which mainly focus on sensory spectacles will will become meaningles quickly. Less extrospection, more introspection. Less "Wtf! Wow!", more laughter, peace and love.
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Thoughts on the generative creative economy
I find it comedic how professional digital creative tools (video, music, design, etc.) in 2018 are still being mainly promoted as "tools for hand-crafted, artisanal creation" - while we are living in an age where bot-nets are producing and recommending artefacts by the trillions.
While the quality of creative artefacts generated with machine assistance is debatable - it is quickly getting "good enough" across many fields. Combined with other unique benefits of the generative model, traditional digital creative tools are becoming obsolete fast.
The outlines of the new creative economy are clear: 90% of all content will be machine generated (with little to no human intervention) and extremely cheap to buy. The remaining 10% will be artisanally made by humans, which focus mainly on branding and storytelling. Technologically, you don't need "AI" or very sophisticated machine learning for most of this to happen - good old creative computation (at massive scale) does the trick.
Finally, a note to the people saying "no worries, AI + creativity is all about empowering and augmenting human creators, there won't be blood". I've worked in this industry for years & find such talk intellectually lazy and at times even deceptive. There will be blood.
I am not questioning that AI can and is empowering some creators and enable wonderful new forms of creation - it will. But to see what happens with such tech when at industrial scale, one can look at fake-news and spam generation bots. That's a more realistic view of whats coming to all creative industries, operating under our current global economic paradigm.
The generative creative economy won't be a utopia by any stretch, but likely a messy hell-hole for many creatives - not unlike the situation right now. We have to actively shape this future by fighting vested interests in the system. Yes, human jobs destroyed through growing automation capabilities can be replaced with entirely new jobs. But it won't happen magically - its a major generational effort which requires deep investment in education and culture. Human creators need to be recognised, not hidden by AI. Under the current klepto-capitalist global system, that seems highly unlikely.
If we want more positive outcomes, the "why" needs to be addressed properly, beyond our current semi-pornographic obsession with the "how".
Follow up posts:
"Is this concern real or just doom & gloom? Is there a concrete example?":
https://samim.io/p/2018-05-26-my-recent-piece-thoughts-on-the-generative-ai-creative/Thoughts on Botnets and Creativity:
https://samim.io/p/2018-04-23-the-solution-to-exploding-fake-news-and-spam-botnets-ca/ -
If you are interested in innovation, never forget that - no matter what topic - it will first be used by the porn & spam industry.
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Thomas Edison said "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". While that might be true for the 0.0001% of the population which are geniuses, i find this more accurate:
"Creative work is 70% relaxation, 15% inspiration and 15% perspiration."
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Autonomous Generative Business (#AGB)
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The parallels between using twitter and smoking nicotine are striking: A constant stream of micro rewards keeps one firmly focused on a virtual future, resulting in stress in the present moment. Unsustainable.
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Fauxtelligence - When key human decisions get rendered invisible to maintain illusion machines & systems smarter than they actually are.
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Fauxtomation - "When workers get rendered invisible to maintain illusion machines & systems smarter than they actually are" (coined by @astradisastra).
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The combination Machine Learning and Human Mindfulness will be a major industry by 2023.
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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
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The internet in 2018 is basically a re-hash of the 1960s: A very large mainframe computer owned by a even larger corporation - serving billions of dumbed down clients. #Ideas
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The 3 stages of Creative AI: #ML #Creativity #Ideas
1. Discovery: "Wow, ML can generate creative stuff, crazy!"
2. Reality: "Oh, tech and creativity are hard! ML is not magic after all."
3. Wisdom: "How" to generate is interesting - but deciding "What" to generate "Why" is the art of life. -
When i doubt, prefer dadaistic language over pseudo-scientific language.
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The entire "America VS China", "China VS Europe" etc. militaristic narrative is totally backwards. The primary concern of all humans on the planet right now is climate change and the anthropocene. The solution can only be more collaboration, not more conflict and destruction.
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Generative Art/Design Projects which are intensely focused on the resulting artefacts, are in my opinion missing the point: Generativity is about focusing on process, beyond object fetishism.
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'Catastrophe' as France's bird population collapses due to pesticides. "populations in have fallen by a third in 15 years": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/catastrophe-as-frances-bird-population-collapses-due-to-pesticides #FFHCI #Ideas
All the 'innovation' in machine learning, robotics, blockchains and [insert your tech buzzword here] are completely meaningless, if humanity fails to address environmental challenges NOW.
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While many are upset about a lack of "privacy", a lack of "respect" is an even bigger failing of industries (tech/finance/etc.). Respect for humans, culture, diversity, flora and fauna - not just respect for $.
