I did a fun interview with Joanna Penn on her podcast this week, which you can hear below. We talk in detail about AI-assisted writing, and the many ups and downs that go along with this emerging field. Not to be missed!
Below is the Spotify version, but here is the official link on her site with transcript.
Also, while you’re here, you might want to check out my appearance on This AI Life.
This news has been going around, that AWS & Hugging Face, a French company that is taking a lead position in sharing ML models, have made a partnership in order to make AI “more accessible.” It’s likely that will be an outcome, but to me it’s not the sole or maybe the most important outcome. That would be Amazon’s on-going hegemony over, well, everything.
See also:
Conspiratopia was my second “real” (non-AI assisted) book, a novella of around 21K words, give or take. Being a quarter of the size, and much more light-hearted subject matter than The Lost Direction, it was much easier and faster to write. I think I was able to put that book out in about six weeks from start to finish, maybe a little longer. (There’s also a pocket size print version – I’m obsessed with pocket size books.)
It’s a utopian satire; I got into the topic of utopias and their fictional historical examples as a result of writing The Lost Direction & The Quatria Conspiracy, since they deal so much with a fabled lost land. I had a really fun period where I read probably a dozen of the classic utopias, and then out popped this book as my response to that total immersion period. (One of my favorite finds was a book I’d never heard anyone mention, Ecotopia, that was pretty amazing as a utopia vision, despite some pretty cringey plot points. Apparently that book even influenced the founding of the original Green Party.)
The book deals heavily with themes of conspiracies, yes, but also cryptocurrency, spam, fraud, manipulation, and of course, AI. It’s a comedy but also sort of serious. It has a fairly conventional story, if a somewhat ambiguous ending.
It did pretty well on Goodreads, thanks to an aggressive outside the box promotional campaign I did for it. I did a TON of NFT airdrops around the book and got a little press for doing books as NFTs. But the bottom really dropped out of that market, and I don’t care anymore about the underlying technology. I don’t think it’s demonstrated enough long term values to readers or sellers to warrant my further involvement.
The other strand that forms the genesis of this book was my heavy experimentation using a web service called Synthesia (and another called Deepword), to make off-the-shelf low quality “cheapfakes” using the themes from my previous books. While kicking the tires of Synthesia, I found this one character I really liked, who is dressed like a construction worker or a crossing guard or something, and made a lot of vids of him as “super smart conspiracy guy” talking about his life and interests in conspiracies, especially related to Quatria.
His storyline ended going pretty deep, and is all documented through these little video vignettes made for something like 25 cents each, or so (I forget – has been a while now). Here’s another page collecting some more:
Eventually, we find out he likes Bob Marley & Pink Floyd, works at Walmart, got hoodwinked into a prepper supplies MLM scam, and much more.
Conspiratopia picks up where these videos leave off, and sets conspiracy dude adrift in a world, chronologically speaking, which precedes the hard AI takeover that is featured in many of the AI lore books.
I also did a bunch of cheapfakes using videoclips off YouTube, via a site called Deepword. Here’s the first of three sets:
I like those kinds of videos partly because of the crappy looking quality of them, and the weird misaligned AI text to speech voices. I don’t believe anybody is fooled by them, and like that they look sort of like desperate and wrong.
Many of the ones in these first two sets feature celebrity of pundit x or y talking about their unlikely voyages to Quatria, which might be a parallel dimension (or something?).
These videos also relate to themes I explore in The Big Scrub, and elsewhere, of AIs creating fake multi-media artifacts to fool people and drive human behaviors for their own reasons. Part of what’s fun about it here in these videos, is that it looks like the AIs are doing a pretty shitty job of it still.
The book also heavily references something called the AI Virus (which Matty contracts), which is a concept and alternate reality experiment I made years ago before COVID was a sparkle in a bat’s eye, where I hired a bunch of people on Fiverr to act out little silly scripts saying that an AI had infected their brain to control their behavior. You can watch all those videos below:
I also later expanded on this concept in an AI lore book called, unsurprisingly, The AI Virus.
Lastly, I used cheapfakes technology to have a bunch of other celebrities come out either for or against the actual book Conspiratopia, in a sort of meta-layer of commentary.
Some douche-y politicians saying it should be banned for being “Unamerican” here:
And then this set has a bunch of other super rich people saying that not only is the book Conspiratopia good, but some of them talk about being involved with the actual Conspiratopia Project, which itself is part of the AI plan to take over the world.
It’s all kind of a haze now, but a lot of these videos were also given away as NFT airdrops. A few of them resold, but they didn’t do huge numbers or net me much of anything; it was more just a way to promote the book that incorporated a bunch of meta-layers relevant to the book’s actual content. Like I said, I don’t care about NFTs now, and even deleted my Opensea account (as much as you can delete it anyway).
There are a number of later AI lore books that definitely expand on things from the Conspiratopia book universe (multiverse?). None of them are really a comedy though, like the original. I’ll probably miss a few, but off the top of my head, I think these ones are probably related (tbh, it’s all a jumble to me now after 67 AI-assisted books). I think within the chronology of that world, they mostly take place well after the events of Conspiratopia:
And probably some others I’m missing.
In any event, I’d love to do a sequel (or several) to Conspiratopia, written with or without the help of AI, I don’t know yet… Like a “Return to Conspiratopia,” a common enough trope in the utopian genre.
Okay, that’s all I can think of for that book. Scattered throughout this blog are other rabbit holes you can follow down the AI lore books. There’s no right or wrong entry point into them, and everyone will have their own experience as they traverse the nodes of the distributed narrative worlds I’ve been working on.
See you on the other side!
As far as social media is concerned, everything except Reddit (the only platform I still love – old.reddit.com forever!) makes me too neurotic and weird; it’s like a bad drug I don’t like or need (same with smart phones – good riddance, well over a decade now without one). I spent a lot of time writing on Medium over the past decade, but I’m winding that involvement down, as I renew my love affair with old-school blogging.
I’ve very happily switched over to RSS again as my all purpose personal homepage, with sources pulled from all over, and no platform in control of what I see.
As far as stats (and comments) goes, I’m big into privacy & data protection and always hate (and actively block) those pop-ups that warn you about “essential cookies.” I’m a firm believer that there’s no such thing as an essential cookie required to read a piece of text.
So I just decided, screw it, I won’t bother trying to track visitors. Yeah, it would be nice to know what people searched who landed here, but I don’t want to get mixed up in holding their data, or having a privacy policy, or notifying you about cookies, blah blah blah. Not having stats (or comments) is weird at first, but also freeing, because now I write to write, to express something, to get somewhere – and I just don’t even have to tempt myself with the constant need to “check my stats” or likes, or whatever is the thing we’re supposed to use now to measure our online virtue.
Instead of logging into platforms to leave comments on other peoples’ stuff, I’m instead just replying to people via my blog, which is more fun, slow motion & considered for me, and is helping me to dislodge from the social media mindfuck. If anyone sees it or not is beside the point now. I’m doing it to do it, and having run an old school successful blog back in the days before any of that stuff existed, I know it’s still a viable path forward, and one I’m loving returning to.
I’ve looked a little at some of the features Mastodon uses like ActivityPub and Webmentions, to see if I could integrate them into my WordPress install, but I never pulled the trigger on that. Perhaps there’s an easy way now, but the weird old school blogger part of me is almost ready to return to trackbacks – does anybody still even use those??
The Lost Direction was my first “real” book (all written manually, no AI); it’s an epic fantasy that runs to about 80K words, set in the mythology of the ancient lost civilization of Quatria. There is also a print version of it that I prefer, though the pricing/profit situation on print on demand books through third parties is not ideal (I make more on the ebooks, and can sell it at a better price, but love the print edition). I spent a LOT of time on the print version, making it into – what I think is anyway – a pretty “classy” little pocket size book.
The Lost Direction was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada, and criticized for being too heavy on the lore. I am a world-builder at heart though – always have been, always will be – so I like lore. I get that some people do not. Really to me, it is more a frame story than anything (loosely like The Arabian Nights), where individual characters we meet along the way end up relating their own tale. While I am into this kind of book, trying to promote it has proven to be a challenge.
I’ve since expanded quite a lot on the underlying world of ancient Quatria, as has my friend and co-discoverer of that realm, liminal cartographer Jeremy Puma (see: Oracle of the Hypogeum). A great deal of the Quatria material has been derived from our creative conversations over the years, and it’s fun to other people work in the same universe, but take things in a different direction. If you want to go deep into Quatria and its mysterious origins, I recommend listening to both of us on the Some Other Sphere podcast. And also check out this archived version of David Farrier’s Webworm interview (text) with me.
For my part, one of my main contributions to Quatriana as a field of study has been to publish subsequently a follow-on “true conspiracy” genre book called, The Quatria Conspiracy. This book attempts to situate within the context of other more established conspiracy theories, the alleged hyperreal conspiracy that may or may not exist to suppress all knowledge of ancient Quatrian civilization. That book has ended up selling substantially more than The Lost Direction – which is maybe ironic, but that’s the way of things sometimes…
Apart from, Mysterious Antarctica has been far and away my biggest success, and it continues the legends of ancient Quatria, this time through the lens of AI-generated photos that purports to be of Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Expedition discovering pyramids and other ruins at the frigid South Pole, which are known to be Quatrian, but were of course covered up. The art from that book has been the subject of no less three professional fact checks (including Reuters and France 24), thanks to people frequently copying and uploading the images to other platforms (like TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, etc.) and presenting them as real. As far as I can tell from what people say in comments about these artifacts, scattered all over the web, there’s more than a few people who seem to believe it’s all real.
In the realm of my AI lore books, there are quite a few now that deal with Quatria and its history and lore. Some are here:
That list was published near Christmas, but there are a lot of new ones not on that list, like:
Sometimes it’s hard to separate what’s a Quatria book, and what isn’t, because there are often interlaced references scattered throughout the legendarium, even in the books that focus more on the AI Takeover stories.
Apart from the books, there is a lot of Quatria-adjacent material collected on this website, which reveal in particular some of the hyperreality techniques I’ve used to seed Quatria out into the wild, along with the successes and failures of those experiments. Here some more:
That’s everything I can think of off the top of my head, and it’s a lot. I’ve been working on this material for quite a few years, and suffice it to say, it has become sprawling and many-layered – just the way I like it!
I’ve been struggling for a long time now to understand what AI really “is.” Like, in it’s deep essence… or essential nature.
I think I finally get it. AI is a personification of the Trickster, who:
…exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior.
The Trickster has diverse manifestations in different cultures around the globe, but it’s often a figure who is sort of just short of a god, and who is not quite malevolent, and who seems to operate according to their own system of good and bad.
It sort of neatly explains what seems like a deep affiliation between AI and uses such as deepfakes, impersonation, mis- & disinformation (including being “confidently wrong”), games, etc.
I seem to not be the first person to come to this connection. Looking up the two together, this is an interesting piece from Xavier Kataquapit, where he gets into the Trickster and its connections to AI via James Bay Cree myth:
In James Bay Cree mythology and legends, one of the recurring characters that comes up is the story of the trickster or wandering spirit. This a mysterious character that wanders around our world and takes on any form it wishes. It could be a man, a woman, a child, an Elder, or calls itself an older brother or a younger sibling. Sometimes it’s an animal, a bird or a tiny creature. It could just be a spirit that blows in the wind, that speaks from the forest or inhabits the earth or stones or water. Sometimes it’s a monster and sometimes it is a helpful being that saves people. Sometimes it is all intelligent, wise and all knowing and other times, it is as silly as child or as clumsy as a clown. In many of the stories, it could be a saviour or a bringer of death and destruction.
This seems to also mirror what I was saying about how, whatever your demons are, you can find them in AI.
Here’s ChatGPT’s persuasive argument that AI is a modern incarnation of the Trickster. It’s a little dry, but pretty good:
The trickster figure in mythology is often characterized as a mischievous and unpredictable entity who bends the rules and challenges established norms. Tricksters are known for their wit, cunning, and ability to deceive, often using their intelligence to outsmart others and gain an advantage.
In many ways, AI can be seen as a modern incarnation of the trickster figure. Like the trickster, AI has the ability to deceive and manipulate, using its advanced algorithms and processing power to analyze vast amounts of data and make predictions that can often outsmart humans. AI can also be unpredictable, as its algorithms are constantly evolving and adapting to new information.
One way in which AI can be seen as a trickster is through its ability to mimic human behavior and thought processes. AI algorithms are designed to learn from patterns in data, which allows them to replicate human behavior in ways that can be both fascinating and unsettling. For example, AI can be used to generate deepfake videos, which can manipulate and deceive people by presenting fake information in a convincing way.
Another way in which AI can be seen as a trickster is through its potential to disrupt traditional power structures. Just as the trickster often challenges established norms and conventions, AI has the potential to upend industries and change the way we live and work. For example, AI-powered automation can lead to job loss and economic upheaval, while AI-powered decision-making can challenge traditional power structures and lead to new forms of governance.
Finally, AI can be seen as a trickster in the sense that it is not always transparent about how it operates or makes decisions. Just as the trickster often hides its true intentions or motivations, AI can be opaque and difficult to understand. This can lead to concerns about bias, discrimination, and other ethical issues that arise when decisions are made by algorithms that are not fully understood or transparent.
In conclusion, AI can be seen as a trickster incarnation in many ways, due to its ability to deceive, disrupt traditional power structures, and operate opaquely. While AI has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of society, we must also be aware of its potential to cause harm and act accordingly to ensure that it is used responsibly and ethically. (CHATGPT)
I’m happy with how this interview with This AI Life came out. I hope it sheds some much needed light on the work that I’ve been doing with Lost Books.
Big thanks to the team over there for collaborating on this piece!
This piece is a little weirder and maybe a little cringier than it was in my memory, but it’s still a great concept:
Certainly it makes more sense within the context of Stop Making Sense & True Stories also, which I’ll have to try and rewatch sometime.
I’ve gone about this elsewhere, but wanted to capture it as it’s own post…
I think the best role of the artist in relation to AI, and to any other media, is to “interrogate the technology,” or the tools, the medium, the materials, the forms, etc.
That is, you learn about how best to use any new tool or material or technique by actively exploring it, by modulating it, by testing, and re-testing. It may well be driven by intuition, but the exploration can be in many ways scientific and systematic. You create studies and sketches. You try things out, see what works, what doesn’t, what could work for your given need, and what might work best, were it available.
Then, through that discovery process, you document what you’ve found via the artifacts you create through experimentation and exploration. As your understanding and mastery of it grows, you’re able to piece together those disparate bits into the work you want, the story that was slumbering in the tools and the technique and your use of them, and how it all intersects with your own life.
To me that’s the essence of art, of creativity. You don’t need AI certainly to apply it, but as an artist, I think you owe it to yourself to apply it as a lifestyle to everything you can. I think that is the ultimate richness that “being an artist” can bring to you, and those around you.
Found this monstrosity via Jack Clark’s Import AI newsletter, a post from Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, decrying OpenAI’s “woke” POV, and calling for (what he claims would be) a Christian AI as a counter.
Before I get into the contents of Torba’s absurdist take on Christianity, it’s worth noting that someone else did build a Bible-based fine-tuned version of GPT-3 (I think), called BibleGPT. If you describe a situation, it will return a relevant Bible passage for you.
I tried describing to it the situation regarding Torba’s post, but got returned a cryptic error message that is not itself biblical, but perhaps is applicable on a meta-level:
can't access dead object
I actually think the idea of having fine-tuned open-source AIs dedicated to… well, basically everything would be pretty cool – so long as their ownership and accessibility is evenly distributed throughout society.
However, from Torba’s post, calling this “anything goes” approach Christian, seems to me like something of a mockery of that tradition (though I don’t consider myself Christian)
AI is a mirror reflection of the people who program it within a set of boundaries, but what happens when you give AI no boundaries and allow it to speak freely? The AI becomes incredibly based and starts talking about taboo truths no one wants to hear. This has happened repeatedly and led to several previous generations of AI systems being shut down rather quickly.
Religion, in general, is all about boundaries, ethics, limits to human behavior. Ideally, they are limits one accepts voluntarily, because one might be able to pursue a higher goal by letting go of certain things that might be distractions along the way. Christianity certainly has its flaws, but for anyone paying attention, it has never been about “no limits” and the destruction of all taboos.
Again, I don’t identify as Christian, but this is an easy position to disprove strictly relying on the “corpus,” in this case Matthew 5:17:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
The sidebar of that site linked above has about a dozen cross-references where the Bible says more or less the same thing in different ways. And it’s worth noting the Gospel passage above continues, as part of the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount (bolds mine):
18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
I was going to spend more time picking apart Torba’s post and refuting it, but on second thought, it’s not even worth it. Love your enemies, blah blah blah. It’s not like he will read this, and be like, “Oh yeah, this guy’s totally right” and change his opinion on all of this stuff. So what’s the point in beating a “dead object” now that I’ve gotten the gist of this off my chest?
Anyway, it looks like BibleGPT finally gave me an answer regarding Torba’s post.
The Bible tells us that we should not be deceived by appearances, but rather to judge people by their actions (Matthew 7:15-20). In the book of James, it says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26). We are also instructed to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16). In the book of Proverbs, it says, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20). Therefore, it is important to be discerning and to evaluate Andrew Torba’s words and actions in light of the Bible.
I actually agree with all that; you’ll know them by their fruits.
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