Category: Other Page 54 of 178

Conspiratopia Streisand Effect

On 28 May 2023

It’s funny, that Futurism article trashing my AI books has accidentally boosted sales of my non-AI written book, Conspiratopia. It recently pushed out of place Mysterious Antarctica as the current top seller.

This is good proof of what I set out to do in the first place by writing AI books: promote my non-AI books, of which Conspiratopia was always well-received.

In some ways, narratively speaking, many of the early AI Lore books might actually be considered as having been written by the manipulative AIs we first see featured in Conspiratopia, as a means of recruiting people into their project.

Notes on The Second Octave

By Tim B.

On 28 May 2023

In Other

The Second Octave is book #100 of the AI Lore books series, as chronicled by the New York Post.

It fits in the mode of a collection of flash fiction pieces that extend on stories begun in The Octave of Time, which itself was “hand-written” (without AI assistance on text). By contrast, this volume, The Second Octave, consists mostly of AI-generated text from Anthropic’s Claude.

In a way, this book is also a continuation of Tales from the House of Life, in that the same technique was employed, and many of the same characters appear in both (semi-canonically). The technique was ingesting a longer work (for House of Life the source text was The Lost Direction), and then using the AI to generate more or less in-world stories based on that text.

I have one more human-written source text I will try this technique on, Conspiratopia, for a volume I’m expecting to call Return to Conspiratopia. The tone and style of that book are very “special” though, so I have my doubts as to whether or not AIs will in fact be able to do it justice.

Here’s the preview art for Second Octave:

I’m supposing I will do eight octaves in all for this series, where I will iteratively read back in the two prior texts to generate the third, and so on.

Midjourney Needs OSINT Tools

By Tim B.

On 27 May 2023

In Other

Over the past few days, I was looking into whether I could prove if that faked Pentagon smoke image had been made using Midjourney. I’ve done a fair bit of OSINT work in the past, and no stranger to reverse image searches.

Apparently you cannot do reverse image searches from the midjourney.com/app/feed though, which is unfortunate. You can, however, search based on keywords, and maybe find something kind of like what you’re looking for. But given the variability of prompts to begin with, never mind that someone could have started with an image prompt of a building and then used some random text to modify it, the chances of you actually finding the job ID and user account which made an image become pretty low.

I’m not actually in favor of Midjourney’s showing your work to the community by default. I think it breaks protections of personal data baked into GDPR, and filed complaints in the EU about it (which were summarily rejected because I’m not an EU citizen, btw – not because they are not in violation).

That said, if you do have public-by-default images, already being displayed in a community feed, it would only make sense really to have the ability to reverse search an image, and find and follow the creator. As things heat up in the generative political image space, I think we’re going to see many more calls for these services to add more tools beyond just rev. img. search for OSINT investigators, and other enforcement bodies.

Reply to ktt2.com thread

By Tim B.

On 27 May 2023

In Other

Some at least novel reactions to my AI Lore books on this thread at a website called ktt2.com.

Maybe some books deserve to be burned

These are ebooks. But please try.

Ai should be outlawed

Good luck with that.

A lot of people are judging this without actually reading any of the books, classic ktt… I got a really good deal and bought 3 of these books for $50 which is actually really good value since new books are usually $25-30 at least. Amazing reads so far considering how cheap I got em. Don’t even realize its AI

Hard to tell in context, but I guess this is a joke? If it’s not, well… they are wrong.

just read the thirteenth installment in the robussy incantation diaries. s*** was mindblowing this dude is onto something

Again, I guess this is a joke? But I think now I will in fact publish a book called: The Robussy Incantation Diaries: XIII. That’ll teach em!

Art is supposed to be a human experience. If you don’t see how AI can and is harming the landscape I don’t know what to tell you

I know someone with this viewpoint won’t ever be brought around, but I would simply argue that… AI is now a part of the human experience. Hence, it is now a part of art. Get used to it. Within the next few years, our greatest artistic achievements will all use AI extensively.

“Earned millions”

By Tim B.

On 26 May 2023

In Other

Another interesting example of what happens as my story gets re-told and distorted in global media.

Presumably as a result of my books appearing in India TV, I’ve seen pick ups from a number of other sites which seem to be India-based as well.

Much like the one that said I had written not 100, but 1000 books, a few of them seem to have few qualms about exaggerating.

One site writes:

Meanwhile, a shocking news is coming out regarding Chat GPT. In fact, an author wrote more than 100 novels in less than a year using this AI tool and earned millions by selling them.

I looked, in case $2000 USD equals millions in india, but it seems to be “only” 165k Rs in India, which I’ve got my suspicions might go a bit further there than it does here.

India TV Calls AI Mini-Novels “Captivating”

By Tim B.

On 26 May 2023

In Other

It’s encouraging to see that some large news outlets in India, like India TV have picked up my story about selling illustrated dystopian AI mini-novels.

They called it a “captivating collection.”

They even add this interesting line, which I don’t think I said anywhere in precisely these terms, but okay:

It is noted that the popularity of AI-generated novels has been on the rise, creating a thriving market for this unique form of literature.

AI ‘Author’ Writes Nearly 1000 Books

By Tim B.

On 26 May 2023

In Other

It’s fun watching how my story gets distorted in the press through less-than-accurate re-reporting by third parties, such as this piece from Livemint.com, asserting that I’ve now written “nearly 1000” books using AI.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What actually is appropriate effective treatment for content moderators?

By Tim B.

On 25 May 2023

In Other

I was looking a little at reporting around the FB and Tiktok moderators who sued the companies or are trying to perhaps still (unsure) in class action suits, and found this one, Mar. 2022, Techcrunch:

The lawsuit alleges that TikTok and ByteDance violated California labor laws by failing to provide Velez and Young with adequate mental health support in spite of the mental risks of the “abnormally dangerous activities” they were made to engage with on a daily basis. It also claims that the companies pushed moderators to review high volumes of extreme content to hit quotas and then amplified that harm by forcing them to sign NDAs so they were legally unable to discuss what they saw.

“Defendants have failed to provide a safe workplace for the thousands of contractors who are the gatekeepers between the unfiltered, disgusting and offensive content uploaded to the App and the hundreds of millions of people who use the App every day,” the lawsuit states. It alleges that in spite of knowing the psychological risks of prolonged exposure to such traumatic content, TikTok and ByteDance made no effort to provide “appropriate ameliorative measures” to help workers cope with the extreme content after the fact.

What I’d like to know is actually, what the hell are “appropriate ameliorative measures” for content moderators, either while they’re still doing the job, or after they’ve stopped, and are still experiencing negative fallout psychologically?

I’ve looked it into it a bit, and as far as I’ve seen, there’s really no commonly agreed on industry standard of what this means. Is this lawsuit asking for something that doesn’t actually even exist?

How content moderation informs my artistic work

By Tim B.

On 25 May 2023

In Other

I worked five years as a content moderator for a major web platform and was daily exposed to humanity’s worst impulses at scale. As a result of this work, I developed mild-PTSD symptoms, and needed to find a way to cope with all that I’d experienced. Not having any guidance or access to treatment, I embarked on an unconventional therapeutic project of creative world-building in order to work through the invisible scars left by constant exposure to toxicity and angry web users. Through this creative journey, I aimed to hopefully regain some measure of normalcy, control, and happiness in my own inner life.

Over time, my invented worlds became more and more elaborate, and I began integrating generative AI technologies to accelerate the process of intuitive discovery I’d been using to heal myself. Now, I’ve produced 100 short illustrated dystopian mini-novels with help from AI image generators like Midjourney, and text generators like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.

Thematically, the books deal with our feelings of hopelessness in the face of out of control technology, and the need to listen to the authentic human spirit to find a way through it all. My work has recently been featured in Newsweek, CNN, and the New York Post.

I am coming forward to talk honestly about these issues from the perspective of someone who has ‘fought in the trenches’ of the Culture Wars, so to speak. Unfortunately, there are very few content moderators who have had the chance to speak publicly and share their experiences in a candid way, as they are often bound by non-disclosure agreements, or can’t talk for fear of losing their jobs. We must stop ignoring the hidden human costs of our highly toxic social media ecosystems, and start finding new ways forward that don’t exploit and distort human well-being for profit.

Partnership on AI could be more inclusive

By Tim B.

On 25 May 2023

In Other

Within the past few months, a non-profit called Partnership for AI (PAI, for short), released a document entitled “Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media,” which I read with interest. I then submitted to them a sample implementation of their recommendations within the context of a fictional blogging service, to engage with them and other interested parties about how these principles might be deployed at the level of actual products.

I wrote them a few times, actually, expressing my interest. I’m not completely a nobody; I’ve worked for 8 years in online Trust & Safety, and published nearly 100 AI-assisted books that have received international coverage in the media. I never heard back from anyone I reached out to about chatting more.

Eventually after maybe 6 weeks or something, I got added to a newsletter, the first edition of which included what appeared to be a polite brush-off text, including:

We are currently working with existing collaborators on the next phase of the Framework launch and developing a process for an open call for additional Framework supporters.

We will share more information about joining the Framework in the near future. In the meantime, we will keep you updated as we collect insights on how organizations are using the Framework as well as on PAI’s synthetic media work more broadly.

Then I waited another month to get another newsletter, which seemed delighted to inform me that they had held a big meeting with a bunch of important “experts” (of which I was not included nor invited), and that this esteemed group had made a bunch of new vague recommendations that I could read if I wanted to. Something to the effect of:

In this update, we share more about our latest initiative to develop safety protocols for large-scale AI, including top three insights from the kickoff of a multistakeholder dialogue on these protocols at a workshop co-hosted with IBM. Below you can find links to the Version 0 of the Protocols as well as recommendations and open questions from our recent workshop.

I don’t want to blast or alienate anybody, but for a group which includes “partnership” in its title, this is a kind of staid and somewhat boring response to the work and excitement I tried to share with them as an interested & expert third party potential collaborator.

Their email went on to explain:

The meeting convened 40 experts from across industry, academia, and civil society, including representatives from 12 industry model providers. Discussions included lightning talks from model providers who shared insights on their organization’s deployment decisions and challenges, followed by group work…

To me, as a let’s say “AI practitioner,” what this all says is that… we asked a bunch of “experts” who have a vested financial interest in a particular outcome (aka our “partners”), and we excluded anybody who isn’t important enough, or who is not actually… you know.. using the tools.

I know this kind of meeting does not come from a bad place; it is all incredibly well-intentioned, I have no doubt. But I think it is indicative of the state of the industry, and illustrative of the dangers of ONLY allowing companies, a handful of non-profits, and other assorted grab bag “civil society” people to basically… decide things which will impact all of humanity by influencing the direction of regulations and norms in business.

I find it a travesty that other types of potential contributors are summarily excluded from this kinds of convocations; and I think it is a practice that needs to be thoroughly re-evaluated and changed. Because AI is a huge, frickin enormously consequential development for humanity. And we can’t just keep replicating the same old broken patterns that we have always perpetuated, and expect them to yield new, different, or interesting results. From where I’m standing, this looks like more of the same old establishment jockeying and ‘inside baseball.’ Not a true partnership of the kind that we need to face these enormous issues uncovered by AI.