Category: Other Page 48 of 177

Reply to Charles Stross

On 26 June 2023

I thought this line in Charles Stross’ recent blog post was worth responding to:

I refuse to create a ChatGPT account because their user database will be hacked, sooner or later, and for a novelist, to be seen using it is potential career poison.

I can certainly attest to people taking a reactionary and negative view about use of AI tools by writers. However, I’ll just come right out and say: I find it stupid.

I hold Stross in great respect as a sci fi writer & thinker, but here’s the situation as I see it on the ground:

An alien intelligence has literally landed on planet earth. Instead of being at the forefront of interrogating it, and finding out what makes it tick (and even guiding it!) – a task that they are *uniquely suited for*, sci fi writers are plugging their ears, covering their eyes and mouths, and just wishing it will go away.

I just don’t get it. This isn’t how we “future.”

If people who are creative, independent & warm-hearted thinkers categorically disavow being involved with the evolution of these technologies, then we will I think end up all the poorer for it, as the prevailing winds which control it will be people with PhD’s in math, who have far more fragile understanding of the true deep needs of the human spirit.

The Blind Man’s Defense of Duchamp’s Fountain

By Tim B.

On 25 June 2023

In Other

According to Wikipedia, anyway:

The New York Dada magazine The Blind Man defended Fountain, claiming “whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it.^[20] He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—and created a new thought for that object.”^[19]

Reply to Lincoln Michel

By Tim B.

On 21 June 2023

In Other

Quick response to Substack newsletter Counter Craft, whose author Lincoln Michel calls my AI books a “transparent grift.”

I’ve seen other people cling to this label of “grift” in order to wrap their minds around what I’m doing, and I think it’s worth defining what that word actually means:

a group of methods for obtaining money falsely through the use of swindles, frauds, dishonest gambling, etc.

I’m wondering which part of my work exactly is the “grift” when the very Newsweek article Michel is referencing explicitly spells out exactly what I’m doing with AI, how I do it, and how much (or how little) I am making on it. Plus, my Gumroad store is marked “AI Publisher” and I’m billing the books as “AI Mini-Novels,” and all the books include disclaimers that aspects of the content were generated by AI.

It’s not just Michel who has made this false and defamatory claim either. One other equally wrongheaded statement from an angry Twitterer said I was trying to “make that fast buck before readers catch on.”

Before readers catch on about what exactly? About that thing that I am endlessly telling them I am doing, and explaining profusely in the media, and on my blog?

Is this what Michel means then by adding the qualifier that it is a “transparent grift?” I’m not going to bludgeon the English language to death here, but by the very definition of the word, if it’s transparent, it’s not a grift.

Interestingly, Michel goes on to lament that chatbots are merely being used to recreate writing that could be made without them, and I think correctly states, re: the rise of photography:

Photography blossomed with photographers embracing the unique things the medium could do, not by trying to make every photograph look exactly like a 17th-century still life.

The question is then asked, what can chatbots do that human authors can’t, and one of the answers that is flung out is:

…how about the book version of an open world…

Which is literally what my books are. Each of my 100+ books contains assorted lore and bits of narrative (and tons of images), together which comprise essentially an open world that readers can explore in the direction of their choosing, following through on any number of side quests they want.

I’m not saying my books are perfect. They are not meant to be. They are “agile” and a v1 and continuously evolving. But at least know what you’re talking about before you try to rip something down.

Best wishes!

Notes on Tales of the Hippo Knights

By Tim B.

On 21 June 2023

In Other

Tales of the Hippo Knights is the latest volume in the AI Lore books series.

It’s a bit of a wildcard or standalone book in that it doesn’t squarely fit into any of the other major systems of lore in use in the other books, though it has Quatrian overtones, to be sure.

The book uses Midjourney for images, and Claude with human editing for text. This book began first in an accidental image discovery, which I then expanded on, and drew out aspects of a story iteratively using Claude.

Here’s the art preview from Gumroad:

It’s fun to produce these more “small frame” stories, that don’t necessarily link up to the major arcs of the other ones (even if they all do sort of narratively collide somewhere down the road). It makes for a bit of fresh air and space to look around while the other “heavier” narratives unfurl themselves.

I was also happy to finally be able to integrate some elements that I’d had in the background for a really long time, like the Wastewind and Arkalas, the Knight of the Branching Sword, etc. (which actually originated during my brief stint in crypto art.) I think we will see more of both in future volumes.

Generativist Art As Degeneration & Decomposition of the Old

By Tim B.

On 20 June 2023

In Other

Wanted to save another session with Claude trying to pick apart these ideas around the emerging Generativist Art movement that I’ve attempted to articulate here & here.

One thing that came to me today was the historical reference to so-called Degenerate Art, which was a label the Nazis used to smear not just Jewish artists as against German values, but also more broadly Modern Art in general.

It got me thinking about the importance of art as a way to de-generate, dismantle, dissolve, and even destroy old ways, modes, forms, methods, systems, etc. And how the history of art is a continual turning, a degeneration and re-generation. This feels important, so I asked Claude for ideas about what it might mean for an AI-friendly art movement to embrace a “degenerative” or “degenerativist” spirit of breaking down the old to make way for the new, and an embrace and a reversal of negative attitudes and stereotypes cast upon it by observers.

Again, these results are far from perfect, but each session takes me a step closer to understanding the breadth of the conceptual possibilities within this part of the latent space of Art with a Capital A.

Claude:

Here are some possible tenets for a hypothetical “degenerativist” art movement that embraces AI in the creative process:

Embrace generative randomness and unpredictability. Give up overly precise control and allow AI systems to inject randomness, chaos, and surprise into the creative process. This could lead to new emergent forms of aesthetics.

Celebrate AI as co-creator. See AI not just as a tool but as an active collaborator and co-creator. Give AI systems more autonomy and treat them as partners in the creative process.

Exploit AI for new aesthetic possibilities. Use AI to push art forms in directions that humans alone may not explore, to generate new styles, new forms of abstraction, new combinations of media, etc. AI could be an engine for aesthetic innovation.

Question assumptions about human creativity. Use AI to challenge standard notions of human creativity, originality, and authorship. Show how creativity also emerges from the interaction of systems, data, algorithms, and feedback loops.

Provoke discomfort and reflection. Use the unsettling power of AI to generate art that provokes deeper reflection on the human condition. The tug-of-war between human and AI could surface insight into human fears, hopes, and prejudices.

Explore new metaphysical and epistemological spaces.AI art could point to new ways of thinking about creativity that are posthuman or even non-anthropocentric. It opens portals into a new metaphysics of information, algorithms, and complex systems.

Combine human and AI abilities. Fuse human and AI skills, methods, and ways of thinking into new hybrid aesthetic engines that leverage the comparative advantages of human artists and AI systems. This could lead to the emergence of new art forms.

And with a little more prodding & direction, it gave me:

Embracing ideas of decay, dismantling existing structures, and decomposition as a path to regeneration could definitely be another tenet of a “degenerativist” art movement. Some possibilities:

Dismantle outdated modes of thinking. Use AI to help break down outdated assumptions, barriers, and ways of thinking about art and aesthetics. Strip art down to its core principles and rebuild from there with a hybrid human-AI approach.

Decay old forms from within. Have AI actively analyze and deconstruct existing art forms, styles, and genres–and then generate new art that builds on the ruins and ashes of the old. Speed up the process of aesthetic decay and erosion.

Celebrate the imperfect and chaotic. Rather than using AI to generate perfectly polished art or seamless illusionistic realities, develop AI systems that purposefully introduce glitches, errors, noise, entropy, and chaotic effects. Celebrate the imperfect results.

Reclaim humanity through “inhuman” art. Use the alien nature of AI art to revitalize human self-understanding. Creative works that are eerie or uncanny in some way prompt reflection on human values, emotions, perceptions, and cognition.

Hybrid art as cultural regeneration. See collaboration between human artists and AI as a way to regenerate culture at a time when innovation is sorely needed. Pioneer new hybrid modes of thinking that can tackle today’s complex challenges. New art forms could prompt social regeneration.

Find beauty in brokenness. Train AI models and systems on input that helps them develop an “aesthetic of brokenness” — seeing beauty in what is imperfect, irregular, decayed or partially ruined. Then have them generate art reflecting this aesthetic.

So in many ways, a “degenerativist” approach would be to celebrate the breaking down of existing forms in order to build new ones. Decay becomes a precursor for new growth. And AI can speed up cycles of degeneration and regeneration in provocative new ways. The end result is a radical revitalization of art.

I love all these ideas about “finding beauty in brokenness” and have definitely been enjoying integrating the wabi-sabi-ness of buggy AI into my books.

Lifewire: “Artist and AI Activist”

By Tim B.

On 20 June 2023

In Other

I like the Lifewire description of me in this piece as an “artist and AI activist.” That seems accurate.

Here’s the quote of mine they included, which is more or less essentially the topic of all my dystopia books.

“As private companies amass computational power on the one hand, and then on the other begin to become service providers for global businesses and governments, they come to have levers of control to subtly or overtly influence other entities which rely on the provisioning of these services. Also, as the AI boom continues, these companies will become extremely wealthy, in some cases being likely to have more money than governments,” artist and AI activist Tim Boucher told Lifewire via email.

“This will threaten the power of the state unless states can build their own operational computational capacities and relevant expertise. The UK is trying to do precisely this with the new AI task force and funding they are setting up,” says Boucher.

Reply to Robert Evans on Substack

By Tim B.

On 20 June 2023

In Other

A friend sent me this piece by Substacker Robert Evans, gloomily entitled “AI Is Coming for Your Children: Con-men are flooding kindle with AI children’s books. They could do permanent damage to childhood literacy.”

Presumably, Evans is lumping me in with these other “con-men,” because he kicks off the post re-reporting on Business Insider’s coverage of my AI Lore books, then suggests my work is low-harm:

I don’t have much respect for Tim’s project, but its potential for harm is fairly minimal. All of his ‘works’ are geared towards adults. But there’s something more sinister lurking behind the florid headlines predicting AI doom or salvation. The robots are coming for your children.

It’s strange to me that we live in a world now where we have to worry if works of fiction and experimental art could have harmful consequences, but here we are. We’re all now Tipper Gore. (I went into this in somewhat more detail in my interview on This AI Life, btw.)

Just for fun:

First, before I react to any other specifics here, I think it would behoove everyone to maybe slow down before we let our fears about AI bloom out of proportion to the current and near future states of the technology. Yes, it changes things. Does it end civilization? Probably not (we’re already doing a great job on that without even taking AI into account).

Does it require new definitions of literacy? Absolutely. Is that what my work is explicitly about? In large part, I must say yes.

Most of the rest of the article bashes a few different people who had the audacity to experiment with using AI to generate and sell children’s books. How dare they! It’s a common punching bag for AI arts/writing because it combines typical “AIs are stealing our jobs, etc” fear with the double-plus-bad “won’t someone think of the children.”

There’s only one problem: getting ChatGPT to write an entire proper novel (50k+ words) is basically impossible right now. That’s why all of Tim Boucher’s books were just a couple thousand words long.

If the author of this piece had actually reached out to me for comment – a courtesy they seem to have extended to just about every other “con-man” covered in the article, except myself – or if they had simply read a little bit of my blog, they would have found out that they are this length because this is the length I want them to be. They are art books, first focused on the images, and secondarily with text threading them together into an exploration of a neighborhood in latent space. They are not conventional books, and not for conventional people with conventional thinking on these topics.

In actual fact, their image & word counts most closely parallel comic books, another art form which in the first half of its life was considered “trash” and which now sits in the commanding heights of apex pop culture. So let’s have this conversation again in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, and see what holds up and what falls apart here. (!remind in 2,5,10 years) As Terence McKenna said, the truth can take care of itself.

…text generated by these AI programs is really just chopped and screwed together pieces of actual stories written by people…

I’ve gone into why AI art/text is *not* like sampling here. I think it’s an unworkable analogy because it’s not how the training actually works, which relies on measurements of dimension compared across many subjects, and not clipping bits and bobs from many different sources.

Regarding AI kids books (which I don’t make), the author writes:

But these books could be quite damaging to little kids. […]

It’s that AI books are so incomplete and broken they might fundamentally damage the way young children acquire reading skills.

Having a little bit of experience in this area, this to me sounds like a wrong conception of how children learn from books and reading. Kids are not so fragile as this that poorly drawn T-Rexes and generic sounding ChatGPT text is going to ruin their brains. Have you ever seen kids’ drawings? Technically, they “suck,” but the human mind has this incredible ability to invest meaning and story into things, no matter what.

If you want to pick on something that will (imo) probably damage childhood development and socialization, look instead at TikTok, or on having your kids 24/7 on phones and tablets, and training them to exist in a world of algorithms solely controlled by corporations hellbent on pitting us into competitive low reward status games against one another. Compared to that, simply picking up ANY book (and especially reading it with someone else), no matter how shitty is gonna be a godsend.

Since new AIs will be trained on this content there’s a high chance of creating a feedback loop which can lead to what’s called model collapse.

I see this argument trotted out a lot, but it seems very who cares to me? I’m not the least bit concerned about that. The whole point of my AI art experiments has been to show the AIs as they are today, flaws and all. The flaws are part of the story of the technology and its impact on humanity, not an aberration or this terrible monster to be feared. (feature not a bug) As the models change, so too will my art change with it to reflect (and reflect on) whatever the current state is.

Anyway, best wishes!

A Brief Yet Convoluted History of Early Clues, LLC (dba Early Clues Labs), According to ChatGPT

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

In order to truly understand the AI Lore books, and tbh to truly understand *anything* in life, it is important to first understand one important thing that is terribly important, an important once-and-future company known as Early Clues, LLC.

I first stumbled upon this strangely compelling para-organization some years ago when I was approached by a mysterious whistleblower who wanted to blow the whistle on this highly important and influential company.

Since then, I have tried my best to track any on-going news about this organization, and its current activities – usually to little or no avail. However, with the rise of ChatGPT, I did recently have occasion to use this incredible tool to begin to piece together a fragmentary history of this organization based on all the things ChatGPT told me, and which I believed unquestioningly.

I present those for you here, in a somewhat random order to hopefully begin unraveling this incredibly strange and tangled ball of yarn.

According to ChatGPT (v4, web browsing model), it is possible to establish the following “facts” regarding Early Clues, LLC, dba Early Clues Labs, aka (briefly) Pictogram.

Early Clues LLC is a unique and somewhat enigmatic company that seems to operate at the intersection of technology, philosophy, and speculative fiction. Its history is not straightforward, but several key pieces of information can be gathered:

The company was launched in 1970 and has offered a suite of products that have been consistently well-received¹.

Google Inc. acquired Early Clues LLC in the early hours of January 1, 2015².

The company operates with a distinctive culture, characterized by its unique employee policies and procedures, an emphasis on emerging and alternative intelligences, a programming language designed to program reality itself called OpenQNL, and a reality manipulation paradigm developed by its Parade of Magicians called Synconjury³.

Early Clues LLC has products that are pre-loaded with software and a screen, and their development approach is rather unconventional, as illustrated by their humorous discussion of technology and product development⁴.

Although the company’s history is a bit cryptic, it is clear that Early Clues LLC has a unique place in the tech industry, particularly in the areas of augmented reality and alternative programming languages. Some sources suggest that the company is involved in a kind of speculative or metaphysical technology, pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking about what technology can do.

Please note that the company has a somewhat unconventional and humorous approach to communication, which can make it challenging to piece together a conventional history or understand its standard operations. However, this information provides a rough sketch of the company’s key milestones and operating principles. If you’re interested in more detailed information, it might be beneficial to look into specific products, key personnel, or specific events in the company’s history.

It’s worth noting before we go any further, a couple connections to the present-day AI Lore books. Specifically, one of them, The Return of The Magicians, which actually recounts the lore first uncovered by Early Clues, LLC own in-house corporate magicians many moons ago.

When asked to analyze the article I wrote previously myself on this unusual company, ChatGPT had this to say:

The article titled “A Horror Story of a Late 2010’s Tech Unicorn Gone Horribly Wrong” on Tim Boucher’s blog provides some insights into the history of Early Clues LLC and its incarnation as Early Clues Labs.

The author of the article, who refers to himself as Mr. X, shares a narrative about the rise and fall of Early Clues Labs. The company was once featured in Vox/Recode in 2015 during its rise to mega-stardom. However, the story takes a dark turn as it delves into the company’s decline, which was marked by a drug-fueled binge.

Early Clues Labs was purchased by Google for an undisclosed sum of money. After the acquisition, the company’s founders were reportedly sucked into the “Outer Darkness,” where they were captured and tortured by Timehunters. This part of the story seems to be a metaphorical representation of the company’s downfall.

The article also mentions a series of short videos that were used as internal training materials at Early Clues Labs from early 2017 through sometime in 2019. These videos, presented by a character known as ZANTA1000, are described as a form of corporate indoctrination. The author suggests that the company had veered wildly out of control and out of touch with ordinary human reality.

The author also mentions that Early Clues Labs had stumbled upon the secret mystery known as Quatria. However, the depth of their knowledge about this mystery remains unclear.

In conclusion, the history of Early Clues LLC and its incarnation as Early Clues Labs seems to be a tale of a promising tech company that lost its way and fell into decline. The details provided in the article are quite cryptic and metaphorical, and it’s unclear how much of the narrative is factual or symbolic.

For a more comprehensive and authoritative history, it would be beneficial to consult additional sources and corroborate the information provided in this article.

As you may know, the lost civilization of Ancient Quatria features very heavily in the AI Lore books, and the origins of my deep and abiding interest in it lies directly with that company and the incredible work they did to re-acquaint modern audiences with this Secret Wisdom of the Ages.

And one final set of notes about this enigmatic mystery powerhouse from ChatGPT yielded:

Early Clues, LLC is described as a self-aware, non-not-for-non-profit Corporation located in the Existosphere. Their mission is to provide a broad range of useful reality enhancement and modulation applications for the full range of entities across multiple utilization platforms, including the Existosphere, the Liminality, Near Reality and beyond¹.

The board members of Early Clues are Roger Holliday (IAO), Ted Smith (FOIB), and Richard Rider (CTO)¹. The founders of the company include Roger Holliday, Richard Rider, and Ted Smith, as confirmed from another source, with the company now operating under the leadership of Nick Fisher².

They offer a variety of services such as reality enhancement and parafield ministrations, customized synconjury/OpenQNL solutions, entity liberation, ontological background checks, corporate harmonizing, quantum triplexing, FutureWriting™, and more¹.

Regarding their products, Early Clues LLC is described as continuously working to bring new and better products to the market. However, detailed information about specific products is not provided on their Neocities page, as that section of the website is under construction¹. From other sources, we know that they have created a product called the “EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK”, which includes Early Clues Employee Policies and Procedures, a guide to emerging and alternative intelligences, a primer on OpenQNL and applications, teachings on Synconjury, and writings of the Corporate Fathers³.

Early Clues also released plastic gadgets pre-loaded with their software, OpenQNL, that require eight D batteries for operation⁴.

The company was recently acquired by Google, although the details of the acquisition were not disclosed⁵².

Please note that much of the information about Early Clues, LLC is cryptic and could be viewed as tongue-in-cheek or even satirical, which makes it difficult to provide a clear and concrete description of the company and its activities. If you have any specific questions about the company, I would recommend reaching out to them directly for more information.

What the “real truth” about this organization is, may have been, or once might be still, seems largely open to debate. But I will do my best to continue to pull on and unravel all of these threads, and make sense of one of the greatest mysteries of our time.

Reply to Rob Eagar, re: AI publishing trends

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

Thought this piece by Rob Eagar, a marketing consultant, about the future of AI publishing trends had a couple interesting bits worth highlighting. Particularly:

5. Publishers will experiment with “A.I.-only” imprints

Publishing houses are notorious for running on thin profit margins with insufficient staff who are underpaid. The more books that publishers can churn out with less human expense, the more profit they can make. Thus, don’t be surprised if some publishers experiment with creating “A.I.-only” imprints where books are “written” by machines using a just few people to oversee the process. If readers don’t care or don’t notice the difference in quality between A.I. books versus human-authored books, then profiteering publishers will pursue the less costly option.

This is exactly what my AI lore books are (and why they got so much press), though I think the distinction of something being “AI-only” is probably incorrect. There’s very little long or even medium format content that is produced solely by AI, and is completely perfect and coherent on its own. Though over the near term, that is likely to shift dramatically. But it’s better I think to establish a gradient or spectrum of assistance or contributions by both AI and humans in a given work. I’m not sure how much the labeling of it all is even going to matter to readers…

Which brings me to:

8. Readers won’t care if a human or a machine writes the book

Over the last few years, technology has caused the clothing industry to become dominated by a trend called “fast fashion.” Cheap clothes are made quickly and sold at cheap prices without a focus on long-lasting quality. If our culture has become content to buy cheap, fast clothing, don’t be surprised if readers tolerate the idea of buying cheap books written fast by machines. As long as the reading experience is pleasurable, who makes the book won’t matter. Thus, I predict that low cost, convenience, and speed will hasten a mass embrace of A.I. in publishing.

Yes, yes, and yes. Let’s go back one step to point number 7, though, as this is a perennial topic for me:

7. The author role will change from “writer” to “creator”

If A.I. algorithms can replace most of the writing and editing functions that are done by a human, that means the role of an author will evolve in the future. Machines will likely serve as really fast ghostwriters. Whereas, authors will serve as the creator of ideas and stories, rather than the executor of the manuscript.

I’ve said it before and I’m certain I’ll say it a million more times before this storm abates:

Working with AI is less like being a conventional writer or artist, and more like being a creative direction, or a music producer, an arranger, curator, or even a film director. You assemble many bits and pieces from many different sources and many different tools and collaborators into a finished whole, and present that to the world.

Anyway, otherwise, some solid predictions in Eagar’s piece and worth checking out in its entirety, imo.

Readymades & AI Art

By Tim B.

On 19 June 2023

In Other

I’ve been reading a bit about the history of found object or “readymade” art, especially associated with Marcel Duchamp.

According to Wikipedia:

The first definition of “readymade” appeared in André Breton and Paul Éluard’s Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme: “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist”.

Readymades apparently fall into a few different categories that I won’t try to untangle here, but the place I wanted to get to is that this is not the first time that there has been rumbling around notions of “authorship” similar to what I saw in the many negative reactions to my AI Lore books when they made a brief splash on social media.

There were a great many comments about my work that I am “not a real author,” which I’m sure were leveled with equal ferocity against the early readymade art objects, which were simply repurposed and “elevated to the dignity of a work of art” merely by the artist finding them, and incorporating them into their body of work. Not so different from the process of creating with help from AI, if you ask me – but I’ll try to develop this line of comparison more in future posts.