This post on AI, in addition to being so well written, just nailed it for me. I've been ranting about AI for months now and shocked by how many don't understand where this is going. Most think its just another nifty tech thing. I've been thinking of writing something myself. I love how you've framed the issue around stories. For me, I'm pondering the human capacity for wonder and a grasp of transcendance. I don't think the chatbots can go there either. If they ever do then we have a huge moral issue on our hands. Keep writing, Ryan.
ChatGPT prompt: "Write an approximately 20,000-word story in the style of R.G. Miga, whose theme explores the base concept of 'storytelling' as, not the mechanical construction of just any comprehensible narrative, but rather a fundamentally human way of coping with the loneliness of being an individual soul cursed with awareness of its Self and its discontinuity from all the rest of Creation. And set it in a bougie apartment building on the Upper West Side, and have the characters make a lot of snotty jokes about the other Boroughs that are incomprehensible to people who, bafflingly, have chosen to live in any other state or city. Just to piss him off, I guess."
You're not wrong that posting any kind of bespoke writing on the internet in 2023 has become a form of feeding the Beast, so to speak. But there are still fellow humans out there, voyaging on this stormy sea (Hello!), still utilizing the most powerful tool humankind has ever constructed for its once-purpose of seeking out meaningful relationships with real people they never could have known existed otherwise. I'm peeved to lose the internet to the Bots and the text generation models and the advertising algorithm. I'm peeved that this project probably can't be salvaged--that there's no possibility of voluntary reversion to a simpler degree of engagement ("Usenet-pastoralism," if you will)--because there really was a lot of good in it, alongside all the awful.
Much like out here in meatspace, where the Empire can be seen slowly grinding to a halt around us every day, I suppose the only thing to do is to take stock of what cherished things were gotten while the getting was still good, and either prepare to bid them a dignified goodbye or start putting in the hard work to, somehow, ensure their continuity in an uncertain future. Neither option is easy. But I suppose I'd rather make the choice for myself than have it made for me.
ChatGPT can't do too much to hurt me because i'm still accessible. i don't have a massive audience, or a huge body of work; if anything claiming to be "me" shows up anywhere besides here and G&R, my tens of followers can be reasonably sure that it's not; if they want to verify, i still answer my mail. i intend to keep it that way. if i was firing bylines off with gay abandon all over the Internet, yeah, i might worry, because that's all i'd be to most people—a byline and a box full of words. easy to replicate. and if the Machines are going to hack into my Stack and create an impostor—me, a relative nobody—just to fuck with me and my relatively small audience—well, the game's probably up anyway, isn't it.
and as far as meeting new people, how much time are we going to waste giving everybody we meet online the Voight-Kampf test before it stops being worth it? i'm already sure that a significant chunk of my followers are Cylons, and we haven't even hit the hockeystick part of the curve yet. how long will it be before we start every post like a post-apocalyptic radio broadcast? ("if anyone's still listening...") it might still be theoretically possible to find new people in a few years, but will anyone actually want to wade through a bunch of hologram personalities in order to do it? maybe. maybe not.
thanks for the reminder to get around to changing my 'stack title to "R. G. Miga Writes," I had almost neglected that shenanigan.
what's the other option, though?--when you've got a story in your heart that demands to be told, it's a tall order on both the spiritual and economic fronts to voluntarily choose to keep its dissemination wholly local and analog. certainly not impossible, but we're of a generation trained to think on global scales; not giving my darling at least the *chance* to be read and appreciated by the whole world carries similar emotional resonance as choosing to just smother it in its crib.
counterpoint to myself: imagine thinking you've cultivated a worldwide following of devoted readers to your passion project, only to discover one bright sunny day that they were all, each and every one of them, AI personalities digesting your work as complex linguistic string and spitting out responses designed to bait further output that can be used to refine your personal audience-algorithm. my gut curls at the thought. i might have a sheen of cold sweat. on the one hand, you consign yourself to oblivion; on the other hand, you fall into it unknowingly and spend eternity making impassioned conversation with the shadows on the wall.
i have no further response to any of these possibilities except to close the computer and go lay in the sun for a little while.
maybe that's the problem: thinking our work deserves the chance to be read and appreciated by the whole world. technology has allowed us to conflate "technically possible" with "creatively desirable" for a good long while. just like so many of us have been chasing the pipe dream of making a full-time living from sitting at our computers for four hours a day, with no deadlines, only when we're feeling inspired. witness the global race to the bottom for cents-per-word and social media clout to see how that dream turned out. the current infestation of digital parasites might just be hastening the need to readjust our expectations.
personally, i'd be happy with a few dozen devoted listeners and the chance to pass the hat once a month, trusting that the effects will ripple out much further than i can see. Eisenstein's idea of working at the level of the Field is very relevant here.
This post on AI, in addition to being so well written, just nailed it for me. I've been ranting about AI for months now and shocked by how many don't understand where this is going. Most think its just another nifty tech thing. I've been thinking of writing something myself. I love how you've framed the issue around stories. For me, I'm pondering the human capacity for wonder and a grasp of transcendance. I don't think the chatbots can go there either. If they ever do then we have a huge moral issue on our hands. Keep writing, Ryan.
ChatGPT prompt: "Write an approximately 20,000-word story in the style of R.G. Miga, whose theme explores the base concept of 'storytelling' as, not the mechanical construction of just any comprehensible narrative, but rather a fundamentally human way of coping with the loneliness of being an individual soul cursed with awareness of its Self and its discontinuity from all the rest of Creation. And set it in a bougie apartment building on the Upper West Side, and have the characters make a lot of snotty jokes about the other Boroughs that are incomprehensible to people who, bafflingly, have chosen to live in any other state or city. Just to piss him off, I guess."
You're not wrong that posting any kind of bespoke writing on the internet in 2023 has become a form of feeding the Beast, so to speak. But there are still fellow humans out there, voyaging on this stormy sea (Hello!), still utilizing the most powerful tool humankind has ever constructed for its once-purpose of seeking out meaningful relationships with real people they never could have known existed otherwise. I'm peeved to lose the internet to the Bots and the text generation models and the advertising algorithm. I'm peeved that this project probably can't be salvaged--that there's no possibility of voluntary reversion to a simpler degree of engagement ("Usenet-pastoralism," if you will)--because there really was a lot of good in it, alongside all the awful.
Much like out here in meatspace, where the Empire can be seen slowly grinding to a halt around us every day, I suppose the only thing to do is to take stock of what cherished things were gotten while the getting was still good, and either prepare to bid them a dignified goodbye or start putting in the hard work to, somehow, ensure their continuity in an uncertain future. Neither option is easy. But I suppose I'd rather make the choice for myself than have it made for me.
ChatGPT can't do too much to hurt me because i'm still accessible. i don't have a massive audience, or a huge body of work; if anything claiming to be "me" shows up anywhere besides here and G&R, my tens of followers can be reasonably sure that it's not; if they want to verify, i still answer my mail. i intend to keep it that way. if i was firing bylines off with gay abandon all over the Internet, yeah, i might worry, because that's all i'd be to most people—a byline and a box full of words. easy to replicate. and if the Machines are going to hack into my Stack and create an impostor—me, a relative nobody—just to fuck with me and my relatively small audience—well, the game's probably up anyway, isn't it.
and as far as meeting new people, how much time are we going to waste giving everybody we meet online the Voight-Kampf test before it stops being worth it? i'm already sure that a significant chunk of my followers are Cylons, and we haven't even hit the hockeystick part of the curve yet. how long will it be before we start every post like a post-apocalyptic radio broadcast? ("if anyone's still listening...") it might still be theoretically possible to find new people in a few years, but will anyone actually want to wade through a bunch of hologram personalities in order to do it? maybe. maybe not.
thanks for the reminder to get around to changing my 'stack title to "R. G. Miga Writes," I had almost neglected that shenanigan.
what's the other option, though?--when you've got a story in your heart that demands to be told, it's a tall order on both the spiritual and economic fronts to voluntarily choose to keep its dissemination wholly local and analog. certainly not impossible, but we're of a generation trained to think on global scales; not giving my darling at least the *chance* to be read and appreciated by the whole world carries similar emotional resonance as choosing to just smother it in its crib.
counterpoint to myself: imagine thinking you've cultivated a worldwide following of devoted readers to your passion project, only to discover one bright sunny day that they were all, each and every one of them, AI personalities digesting your work as complex linguistic string and spitting out responses designed to bait further output that can be used to refine your personal audience-algorithm. my gut curls at the thought. i might have a sheen of cold sweat. on the one hand, you consign yourself to oblivion; on the other hand, you fall into it unknowingly and spend eternity making impassioned conversation with the shadows on the wall.
i have no further response to any of these possibilities except to close the computer and go lay in the sun for a little while.
maybe that's the problem: thinking our work deserves the chance to be read and appreciated by the whole world. technology has allowed us to conflate "technically possible" with "creatively desirable" for a good long while. just like so many of us have been chasing the pipe dream of making a full-time living from sitting at our computers for four hours a day, with no deadlines, only when we're feeling inspired. witness the global race to the bottom for cents-per-word and social media clout to see how that dream turned out. the current infestation of digital parasites might just be hastening the need to readjust our expectations.
personally, i'd be happy with a few dozen devoted listeners and the chance to pass the hat once a month, trusting that the effects will ripple out much further than i can see. Eisenstein's idea of working at the level of the Field is very relevant here.