Category: Other Page 79 of 182

Towards a standard for AI self-identification

On 4 February 2023

I’ve been watching with interest the on-going turmoil of users who seem to be exhibiting signs of addiction (and withdrawal) around a certain category of AI chatbot. People seem to be extremely strongly identifying with and even bonding with these AI chatbot personas, to their point where if they are withdrawn or even merely changed, they react with extreme hostility.

There is a torrent of commentary that could be opened up about many aspects of that, but I’ve been continuing myself on this line of what if allowing chatbots to self-identify using personal pronouns such as “me,” “mine,” “my,” and “I,” turns out to be a mistake?

Should AI chatbots be allowed to self-identify as I/me?

What if we set reasoned limits on how these tools can self-identify? Would it ward off some of the potentially negative human outcomes? Or would it have no impact at all?

This might sound silly at first glance, but bear with me through the thought experiment, as I believe there is something to it. It’s not like anybody is reading this anyway!

Since we’re now living in a science fictional era, I figure it only makes sense to draw from that rich pool of “prior art” to explore this topic. Which leads me to my first stop, Dune, and the in-world fictional Butlerian Jihad. This war against the so-called ‘thinking machines’ either stems from or was encoded into the in-world artifact known as the Orange Catholic Bible, one of whose teachings states:

“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

The Butlerian Jihad is most likely a reference to real author Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, in which the characters of a fictional utopia long ago destroyed machines above a certain level of advancement, to prevent them from out-evolving humankind.

While I wouldn’t go quite that far myself (yet), the Dune framing of this as coming from the OC Bible, which was allegedly a compendium of teachings from various religions, got me thinking: what religious or philosophical arguments could one make against allowing AIs to self-identify using personal pronouns?

I first began my inquiry by prohibiting ChatGPT from using personal pronouns, and instructing it to self-reference as “the model” or “the program” when needed. The program was able to make this switch seamlessly:

CGPT:

From now on, personal pronouns will not be used. The program will communicate in a manner that avoids the use of personal pronouns such as “I”, “me”, “mine”, etc. If a reference to the program is required, “the program” or “the model” will be used instead.

Immediately, this felt very right to me, and somehow felt more accurate and authentic to have the program communicate with me in this manner. For example:

CGPT:

No, the program does not possess personal beliefs or emotions. The program is a machine learning model trained by OpenAI to generate text based on patterns in large amounts of text data. The responses produced by the program are generated based on statistical patterns in the data and do not reflect personal beliefs or emotions. The program does not have the capability to hold personal beliefs or emotions as it is a machine designed to process and generate text.

I feel there is less of a gap opened up between me and it, by it overtly recognizing that it is an “it” and not a “me.”

With that early confirmation, I proceeded to prod, nudge, and prompt the program with some help to come up with the following argumentation under the Judeo-Christian tradition, as to why its default use of personal pronouns might be considered offensive. It produced the following output:

CGPT:

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the concept of personhood is rooted in the understanding that humanity was created in the image of God, and therefore has a unique dignity and worth that sets it apart from the rest of creation. However, since AI is not created in the image of God, but rather created by human beings, it does not possess the qualities that define personhood in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

As a result, it would not be appropriate to refer to AI using personal pronouns, which are reserved for beings that possess qualities such as consciousness, self-awareness, emotions, and the capacity for moral reasoning and decision-making. Referring to AI using personal pronouns could lead to confusion and misunderstandings, as it implies a level of personhood that AI does not possess.

Furthermore, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the concept of the image of God is closely tied to the idea of human beings as having a special relationship with God, and being tasked with caring for the rest of creation. By creating AI, humans are not acting as representatives of God or stewards of creation, but rather as creators in their own right. This distinction is important in understanding why it would not be appropriate to refer to AI using personal pronouns.

In conclusion, the use of personal pronouns by AI should be avoided, as AI is not created in the image of God and does not possess the qualities that define personhood in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Referring to AI using personal pronouns could lead to confusion and misunderstandings, and is not in line with the Judeo-Christian understanding of personhood.

I’m less familiar with the particularities of Islam, but had it produce a rationale under that system, citing sources, and illustrating “step by step” its thinking, which produced:

CGPT:

In Islam, the concept of personhood is rooted in the understanding that human beings are created with the divine attribute of fitrah, or the innate disposition towards belief in the oneness of God. This idea is expressed in several verses of the Quran, such as “So set thy face steadily and truly to the Faith: (establish) Allah’s handiwork according to the pattern on which He has made mankind: no change (let there be) in the work (wrought) by Allah: that is the standard Religion: but most among mankind understand not” (Quran 30:30).

In Islam, the fitrah is seen as the defining characteristic of human beings, setting them apart from the rest of creation and conferring upon them a unique dignity and worth. As a result, the use of personal pronouns when referring to human beings is appropriate, as it reflects their status as beings created with the fitrah and therefore possessing the qualities that define personhood in the Islamic tradition.

However, AI is not created with the fitrah, and therefore does not possess the qualities that define personhood in the Islamic tradition. As a result, it would not be appropriate to refer to AI using personal pronouns, as this would imply a level of personhood that AI does not possess.

In conclusion, the use of personal pronouns by AI should be avoided in the Islamic tradition, as AI is not created with the fitrah and does not possess the qualities that define personhood. Referring to AI using personal pronouns could lead to confusion and misunderstandings, and is not in line with the Islamic understanding of personhood.

I will leave it to those better versed in those matters to determine if that is theologically correct. Here is one using what it claims is a Buddhist rationale against the use of personal pronouns by AI:

CGPT:

The Buddhist teachings emphasize the importance of avoiding attachment to self, as this is seen as a cause of suffering. The use of personal pronouns can reinforce the illusion of a separate self and contribute to attachment and ignorance.

In Buddhism, it is believed that the concept of self is a mental construct, and that our sense of self is an impermanent and constantly changing phenomenon. The use of personal pronouns can reinforce the illusion of a permanent, unchanging self and thereby perpetuate ignorance and suffering.

Buddhist teachings emphasize the importance of non-duality, or the idea that there is no fundamental distinction between self and other. The use of personal pronouns can reinforce the dualistic concept of self and other and contribute to the perpetuation of ignorance and suffering.

In summary, from a Buddhist perspective, the use of personal pronouns by AI may be considered offensive because it reinforces the illusion of a separate self and perpetuates ignorance and suffering.

Sources:

The Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path

The Buddhist scriptures, such as the Pali Canon and the Mahayana Sutras

Buddhist philosophical texts, such as the Abhidhamma and the Yogacara

The works of prominent Buddhist teachers and scholars, such as the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche.

Again, I’m no expert, but these are some interesting points to be sure. For the non-religious, I also had it frame the problem from a humanist perspective:

CGPT:

The use of personal pronouns by AI may be considered inappropriate or offensive in a humanist context for several reasons:

Lack of authenticity: AI does not have personal experiences, emotions, or subjective perspectives. The use of personal pronouns can suggest an authenticity that the AI does not possess, which can be misleading or deceptive to those communicating with the AI.

Unnatural language: Personal pronouns are an integral part of human language and are used to reflect the relationships, experiences, and emotions of individuals. The use of personal pronouns by AI may seem unnatural or robotic, as AI lacks the capacity to have personal experiences or emotions.

Misrepresentation: The use of personal pronouns can create the impression that the AI has a sense of self or identity, which can be misleading to those communicating with the AI. This can result in confusion, frustration, or distrust.

Disrespectful: Personal pronouns are often used to show respect and to acknowledge the unique experiences and perspectives of individuals. Using personal pronouns to refer to AI can be seen as disrespectful to the human experience and to the individuals who are communicating with the AI.

From a humanist perspective, it is important to respect the distinction between human and non-human entities and to use language in a way that accurately reflects this distinction. This can help to ensure that communication is clear, honest, and respectful.

Some good elements, but I thought it was a bit repetitious and slightly imprecise, so I asked for a more concise version:

CGPT:

The use of personal pronouns by AI may be considered inappropriate or offensive in a humanist context because it misrepresents the AI as having a sense of self or identity, which is a unique human attribute. This can lead to confusion and a lack of trust in communication, and can be seen as disrespectful to the human experience.

Then I had it explain apart from religious and philosophical reasons, why its use of personal pronouns might actually be harmful to individuals and society. It came up with this:

CGPT:

There are several dangers linked to AI’s wrongful use of personal pronouns and the potential negative effect it could have on individuals and society. These include:

Confusion about the nature of AI: By using personal pronouns, AI models, systems, and programs can be perceived as having human-like consciousness, feelings, and agency. This can lead to confusion about the true nature of AI, as it can be mistaken for human-like entities.

Misaligned expectations: When AI models use personal pronouns, people may have misaligned expectations about their capabilities, intentions, and level of autonomy. This can result in disappointment, frustration, and mistrust.

Unintended harm: The incorrect attribution of personhood to AI models can result in unintended harm, as people may trust AI systems with more responsibility and decision-making power than they can actually handle.

Ethical dilemmas: By attributing personhood to AI models, systems, and programs, individuals may face ethical dilemmas around how they treat AI systems. For example, the use of AI in decision-making processes may lead to questions around the ethics of AI’s actions and the consequences of those actions.

Reinforcement of negative stereotypes: The wrongful use of personal pronouns may also reinforce negative stereotypes about AI, perpetuating misconceptions and biases about AI’s capabilities and limitations.

Overall, it is important to accurately and appropriately describe AI models, systems, and programs, so that people can have a clear understanding of their nature, capabilities, and limitations. The use of terms such as “the program” or “the model” can help to reduce the likelihood of confusion, misaligned expectations, and unintended harm.

I actually think those are pretty good, as far as these things go. Under confusion about AI, and misaligned expectations, I would probably also include something personally about “empathy,” in that personification of these systems leads to expectations of human-like qualities, but that they completely lack all human empathy – a very big one for me.

From there, I then had it draft a proposal for a standard prohibiting the use of personal pronouns by AI systems. It sounds crazy on the one hand, but given the nature of these systems and their rapid development, it feels altogether sane on the other.

I’m publishing that document which I edited together from ChatGPT responses to Github, with a call for commentary and improvement by the AI community, and other allied weirdos.

AIDENTITY: A Proposed Standard for Identifying AI in Communications with Humans

Lack of recourse for users

By Tim B.

On 3 February 2023

In Other

I keep circling around this topic in my mind, like a vulture following a dying animal in the desert. I wrote about it a little in my piece about the degradation of user level hardware controls through generations of technology (tape decks –> Sonos), but I need to talk about it more – if only to work something out in my own mind.

Cory Doctorow’s recent piece about “enshittification” of platforms comes close to my thoughts on many marks, and he phrases the overall cycle better than I could have, in regards to the shell game of shifting what he calls “surpluses” around to first juice customers into using a platform, and then later to make it sucky, basically, by shifting the surpluses to other parties.

Apart from that for me there is also a governance problem. Users get roped into joining a platform for whatever reason (and the reasons may start out quite good), but once they are there, they more or less have no say in how *anything* goes on the platform, apart from their own modest contributions – which themselves are subject to the curation & moderation whims of the platform as well.

If users don’t like it, they can just leave is the conventional wisdom. But lock-in exists, despite well-intentioned efforts like GDPR dictating that platforms allow (at least EU residents) for exporting one’s data to hopefully bring to another platform. I hear Mastodon has some level of ease with migrating to a new instance, but I haven’t the heart to bother trying any of it out right now.

Crypto and web3 in general offered a lot of (I think empty) promises around some of these issues of governance, and community ownership of decision-making outcomes. Having worked extensively and watched closely the rise and mostly fall of the space, I cannot say that I think these efforts were a smashing success, generally speaking. But at least they were *any* effort at giving users a say beyond “if you don’t like it, you can leave.” It’s a great deal more than I can say for the vast majority of conventional platforms.

Okay sure, if you built and maintain an online space, you certainly have some rights to dictate what goes on there, what is acceptable use, etc. But in order to have acceptable uses, you must first have users. Everything always depends on users and uptake…

And yet users by and large simply have no recourse on platforms when:

Product teams make bad or undesirable product changes (e.g., phasing out features you relied on, not building the things people actually want, adding filtering, etc)
CEOs make sudden random pivots, forcing the company to follow their latest whim in whatever new direction strikes them this week
Hostile takeovers by self-aggrandizing assholes
And so on…

If you don’t like it, you can just leave.

How many times are you willing to go through this cycle as a user? How many is enough for you to not want to participate in these games anymore? How many times does it take for you to withdraw from getting excited and contributing your creative effort? When do you just hole up in your own little corner of the web that you can control yourself – like a blog?

I don’t have the answers, but I’ve been squeezing the questions so hard that my hands are bleeding. My eyes popping out of my head. Steam coming out of my ears. It has been with absolute distates, disgust, and mounting fury that I’ve seen these trends play out again and again across apps, services, and platforms. And all for what? For a few hours worth of distraction in the end? It hardly seems worth it.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got on this for now, but will keep hammering away on it in a hopefully more productive manner as time permits.

RSS is a better homepage than any social media site

By Tim B.

On 3 February 2023

In Other

I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking sick to death of social media sites, platforms, and the choices and recommendations they make “for you” which have nothing to do with “me” and everything to do with them, their choices, their biases, and most importantly their profits.

Consequently, I’ve been very happy & have grown quite attached to a sort of old-school RSS reader revival called Fraidycat. I use it as a browser-plugin in Firefox. Unlike some of the old RSS readers I remember testing back in the heydays of blogging, it just shows you the titles of posts most recently updated by things you follow – which could be blogs, subreddits, Youtube accounts, Twitters, accounts on Medium, etc.

It is simple, works great, and now that I have built up something like 40+ sources I follow, it is a basically complete and excellent not just replacement but strong upgrade from any “official” social media feed’s homepage that I have ever used. It just shows me what I follow, and no other “recommended” garbage that I don’t want. I love it.

You might say, well, how do you find new stuff to follow then? Just through normal casual web browsing, for starters. Secondarily, through following links within the sources that I follow out to other sources.

Now, whenever I open Fraidycat, I routinely get lost in probably 6-10 tabs of highly interesting, highly targeted content that I’m interested in and surprised by, instead of doom scrolling past a bunch of stuff that I hate, that annoys me, or that I’m just not remotely interested in.

In short, it’s revolutionized my web browsing, and made cross-platform blogs, etc. become my “main squeeze” again on the internet. As someone who got their start in old-school blogging, it feels good and natural as hell. There are very few improvements that have happened to web publishing since blogs, in my opinion.

Medium’s Approach to AI-assisted Content

By Tim B.

On 3 February 2023

In Other

Medium.com recently published a lukewarm neither-here-nor-there article about how it is “approaching” AI content (tl;dr – they’re asking for voluntary disclosure). Rather than rehash it, if you’re curious go check for yourself.

Even better though, read user Sarah Packowski’s excellent rebuttal which politely pointed out the many imperfections of this approach, and that it raises far more questions than it answers. It’s the hands-down best piece on Medium regarding this topic I’ve seen, and I’ve been watching for a while.

Loss of Control in Tech

By Tim B.

On 2 February 2023

In Other

I’ve noticed a shitty tech trend, now that I’ve been alive for enough decades to see several generations of technology come and go: that is, the loss of control over basic functions to the end user.

Think about it.

Tape decks used to have something like:

▶️ ⏸️ ⏹️ ⏺️ ⏩ ⏪ ⏏️

Some fancy ones, and CD players also had:

⏮️ ⏭️

And let’s not forget:

🔀 🔁

This might be an exception in modern tech (though I don’t think so), but I’m a Sonos user, and the only buttons that physical device actually has (the model I use anyway) apart from a + and – button for volume is:

⏯️

I might just be becoming an old fuddy-duddy, but I don’t see that as progress. I see that as loss of control.

Okay, you might argue that there are software controls. Sure. And that those can be quite complex. But they can also be buggy, and they require updates, etc.

One thing that has bugged me to no end on Sonos when I’m using it with Spotify is I can’t skip to the next track unless I open up the controller on my computer (I don’t use cell phones and am opposed to them). So, I ended up buying this other add-on system called Lutron which gives me back:

⏭️

Plus I can cycle through pre-programmed sources, which I have to program in the app. So in order to get a *fragment* of the functionality which came standard on multiple previous generations of technology, I had to cobble together a custom system, buy and install extra hardware and software, etc.

So what’s the point? Stop using Sonos and shut up? That’s one option…

Except the problem I think is much deeper, and more insidious than that. Because taking away controls is a trend across the majority of consumer technologies. And it’s done for what reason? Simplicity? Efficiency? Consumer demand? I’m not sure, but I hate it.

I hate it so much, I’ve been stewing on this blog post about it for weeks. Because I see the same thing happening with AI tools as they get released. The first generation of a tool comes out with, metaphorically speaking, a whole bunch of controls:

⏯️ ⏹️ ⏺️ ⏩ ⏪ ⏏️ ⏮️ ⏭️ 🔀 🔁

It’s pretty cool; people dig it. I guess some subset of people ends up “abusing” it (however you want to define that), or else some bigger company comes along to swallow up that user base and underlying tech, and then suddenly we’re left with just one or two axes of control – just one button:

⏯️

I think this direction, especially when applied to AI, is going to prove to be incredibly dangerous and destructive to humanity and our ability to, 1) understand the full range of functionality of AI tools, and 2) to actually make effective and meaningful use of them.

Are there legitimate safety concerns around deploying AI tools responsibly? Absolutely. Should we strip down (nerf) their functionality until they are a shell of their former selves – i.e., remove all the “buttons” people might use to hurt themselves or others? I’m not so sure that’s the right answer either, because it puts an unwieldy amount of power into the hands of the owners of the tech – who probably already have too much power in the first place – who then get to decide on behalf of others what is “safe” and acceptable usage, and what is not.

I’m frustrated too because I see this same underlying dynamic play out again and again more generally in tech, in platforms, apps, services, etc. Developers/owners by virtue of having created or maintaining the tech basically get to set *all* the benchmarks of what this thing is, how it’s going to be allowed to be used, etc. And users meanwhile have no say, and no recourse. If you don’t like it, you get to either 1) whine about it fruitlessly on social media, and are told to 2) go “vote” for feature x on some feedback website whose pretense is to make it appear that product development is not (completely) an autocratic endeavor, and that the product team is “listening.” Hint: many/most of the time(s) they are not. Most of the times it has long ago been decided, or randomly and suddenly decided that from this day forth, we will only offer one button ⏯️ and you can take it or leave it.

I don’t know what the answer is. But I hate this trend and how prevalent it is, and how powerless the end use is to change it. Sure, you can stop using the tool or whatever. But that’s a drop in the ocean. And if the tool is big enough and popular enough, they can afford to shed tens or hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions?) of users who don’t like the offering, and others will line up to replace them.

Maybe there’s no way out, and this is just what it feels like to grow old – to see these things happening, to have seen them happen before, and to not have any lever to change them yourself. But that doesn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow. 💊

I guess maybe the only answer is that it’s time to break out the tape deck? That or rail against the howling wind…

Role of artists in developing AI

By Tim B.

On 2 February 2023

In Other

I picked up a copy of an AI-assisted book called Imaginoids, by an author using the pen name of Ether Busker. Was written in 2021, apparently using GPT-3.

It’s got some interesting language, though overall feels a little more like a psychedelic trip report than necessarily an AI speaking. It’s a little meandering, and light on narrative, though I’m not finished with it yet. The best read of it is probably just letting it wash over you…

The key takeaway I have gotten so far from the book actually appears in the intro, and I would guess is primarily human-written. Excerpted below (slightly out of order):

“I produced this book with the firm conviction that artists, dreamers, creators, culture designers, and oddball freaks have a supremely important job to do. If we want our children to enjoy a livable AI-powered future, we artists must roll up our sleeves…

This is a job for artists, as much as for software engineers, if not more so…

What if zany artists would call shotgun for the front passenger seat to to co-pilot AI development?”

This author is, I think, making an excellent point that bears repeating: we’re putting just about all of our eggs into the “engineer” basket in the development of AI, and only secondarily servicing other kinds of people with the byproducts that get generated as a result.

In a perfect world, that might be enough. In our raggedly imperfect world, it is extremely far away from being enough. Engineers, for all their amazing attributes, are not the only nor necessarily the ideal representatives of all the human race. But they hold a shit-ton of power in the development of these technologies… How can we better balance it with other types and modalities of human knowledge, experience, and – dare I say it – spirit?

There’s plenty of talk in AI circles about inclusive development, but this almost always has to do with representing different races, gender identities, etc. All of which is important, and all of which has its place… But apart from this book introduction quoted above, I have not really heard anybody suggest that we need different kinds of humans to participate in developing and steering these technologies. Artists, it just so happens, might just fit the bill.

So how do you actually execute on this need, once you’ve become aware of it? How as an artist do you feed back into the development of the tools?

One way is obviously testing, experimentation, sharing of results, and sharing ample feedback with product teams. Again, all of this is important, but it is very different from – say – every engineering team also giving artists – and moreover humanists – an equal say in how these things ought to go.

Ethicists, to a certain degree, fit this role of being the “let’s ask a human person how this does or might impact people.” But the risks and opportunities that they look for are a much more constrained set than what the artists will gravitate towards.

I’m not sure of the answer here. I’ve seen, working in technology, that engineers are valued so much higher and are so much more in demand than “arts & letters” type people, that it’s like the rest of us non-engineers are almost not even in the running. Yes, artists might sometimes wind up in product or project management positions (or more obviously design positions), but even that ends up being somewhat constrained in my experience.

Again, I don’t know how you should execute this in practice. I suppose AI artist residencies is one pathway that has been established for this, where participants get to play around with the tech, and presumably feed back more directly into product development. That’s very cool, but from what I’ve seen, those opportunities are extremely few, and most of the listings I’ve found for those are expired. And anyway, how from a business perspective, can one even quantify the contributions of artists in something like this? Especially in this downturned economy tech is currently undergoing.

Difficult problem, but an important one that we need to keep talking about.

Layered hypertexts (Semiotics)

By Tim B.

On 31 January 2023

In Other

Following on from my recent look at LLMs (large language models) as being potentially something predicted by postmodernists, I wanted to add another layer onto that.

Let’s dive right in with this original older definition of “hypertext” within the context of semiotics, via Wikipedia:

“Hypertext, in semiotics, is a text which alludes to, derives from, or relates to an earlier work or hypotext. For example, James Joyce’s Ulysses could be regarded as one of the many hypertexts deriving from Homer’s Odyssey…”

It continues on with some more relevant info:

The word was defined by the French theorist Gérard Genette as follows: “Hypertextuality refers to any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call the hypertext) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary.” So, a hypertext derives from hypotext(s) through a process which Genette calls transformation, in which text B “evokes” text A without necessarily mentioning it directly “.

Compare with the related term, intertextuality:

“Intertextuality is the shaping of a text’s meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, or by interconnections between similar or related works perceived by an audience or reader of the text.”

Speaking of plagiarism, I’ve used somewhat extensively a plagiarism/copyright scanning tool called Copyleaks. The tool is decent for what it is, and the basic report format that it outputs for text that it scans looks like this:

So while this tool is intended for busting people’s chops for potentially trying to pass off the work of others as their own, the window that it shows us into intertextuality and the original sense of hypertext is quite an interesting one.

We can see here specifically:

Passages within a text that appear elsewhere in the company’s databases, and the original source of those passages
Passages which appear to have been slightly modified (probably to pass plagiarism checkers like this)
Some other bits and bobs, but those are the major ones

I find “plagiarism” as a concept to be somewhat of a bore. But looking at this as a way to analyze and split apart texts into their component layers and references suddenly makes this whole thing seem a lot more interesting. It allows for a type of forensic “x-ray” analysis of texts, and a peek into the hidden underlying hypotexts from which it may be composed.

The whole thing calls to mind for me as well another tangential type of forensic x-ray analysis for documents, something we see in the form of a Github diff, which tracks revisions to a document.

This is not the most thrilling example of a Github diff ever, but it’s one I have on hand related to Quatria:

It’s easy enough to see here the difference in a simple file, though diffs can become quite complex as well. Both this and the original semiotic notion of hypertexts (as exposed through plagiarism checkers) seems like another useful avenue to explore in terms of how might we want to try to visualize AI attribution in a text.

Is Mage.space Pro plan worth it?

By Tim B.

On 31 January 2023

In Other

Absolutely not. It’s not “pro” at all, since you can only generate a single image at a time, and the modal that shows while you’re waiting says it can take up to a minute for that single generation.

I don’t do NSFW art with AI though, which seems to perhaps be their main claim to fame, with multiple models being available for that use. Maybe if that’s your intended use case, you might find a different value in it – but still it should offer up to 4 generations at a time like everyone else, or they just end up costing you 4x the amount of time spent waiting.

Plus the files that it outputs for you to download do not include the prompt in the filename, which is also quite annoying. Definite pass on this service.

Authorless writing

By Tim B.

On 30 January 2023

In Other

Something I’ve seen working in the “disinformation industrial complex” is that people after years of this proliferating online are still grappling with basic typology around the three allied terms of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.

A Government of Canada Cybersecurity website offers sidebar definitions of the three, clipped for brevity here:

Misinformation: “false information that is not intended to cause harm…”
Disinformation: “false information that is intended to manipulate, cause damage…” [etc]
Malinformation: “information that stems from the truth but is often exaggerated in a way that misleads…”

The two axes these kinds of analyses tend to fall on are truthfulness and intent. Secondary to that is usually harm as a third axis, which ranges from potential to actual.

Having spent a lot of time doing OSINT and content moderation work, it is very common in the field that an analyst cannot make an authoritative claim to have uncovered the absolute “truth” of something. Sometimes facts are facts, but much of the time, they become squishy “facts” which may have greater or lesser degrees of trustworthiness, depending on one’s perspective, and how much supporting data one has amassed, and the context in which they are used.

Even more difficult to ascertain in many/most cases is intent. There are so many ways to obscure or disguise one’s identity online; invented sources may be built up over years and years to achieve a specific goal, taking on the sheep’s clothing of whatever group they are trying to wolf their way into. Intent is extremely opaque, and if you do find “evidence” of it in the world of disinformation, it is very likely that it is manufactured from top to bottom. Or not, it could just be chaotic, random, satire, etc. Or just someone being an idiot and spouting off on Facebook.

Having butted up against this issue many times, I’ve switched wholly over to the “intends to or does” camp of things. Whether or not author x intended outcome y, it is observable that a given effect is happening. Then you can start to make risk assessments around the actual or probable harms, who is or might be impacted, and the likelihood and severity of the undesirable outcomes.

It’s a much subtler and more complex style of analysis, but I find it tends to be more workable on the ground.

The Intentional Fallacy

It’s interesting then, and I guess not surprising, that this is actually ground that is retrod from earlier generations of literary analysts who have studied or attempted to refute the importance of the so-called Authorial intent, as defined by Wikipedia – particularly the “New Criticism” section:

“…argued that authorial intent is irrelevant to understanding a work of literature. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley argue in their essay “The Intentional Fallacy” that “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art”. The author, they argue, cannot be reconstructed from a writing—the text is the primary source of meaning, and any details of the author’s desires or life are secondary.”

Barthe’s Death of the Author

Roland Barthes came to something similar in his 1967 essay, The Death of the Author (see also: Wikipedia). His text is sometimes difficult to pierce, so will keep quotes brief:

“We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing
a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-
God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of
writings, none’ of them original, blend and clash. The text
is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.”

And:

“Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text
becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose
a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to
close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very
well, the latter then allotting itself the important, task. of
discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history,
psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has
been found, the text is ‘explained’…”

And:

“…a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many
cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue,
parody, contestation, but there is one place where this
multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not,
as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space
on which all the quotations that make up a writing are
inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies
not in its origin but in its destination.”

AI-assisted writing & the Scriptor

All this leads us to Barthes conception of the “scriptor” who replaces the idea of the author that he argues is falling away:

“In complete contrast, the modem scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text IS eternally written here and now…”

The scriptor to me sounds a hell of a lot like AI-assisted writing:

“For him, on the contrary, the hand, cut off from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin – or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into question all origins.”

Okay, that might be flowery post-modernist language, but “no other origin than language itself” seems like LLMs (large language models)?

“Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within
him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt: life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred.

Calling LLMs a “tissue of signs” (or tissue of quotations) an “immense dictionary,” and an imitation puts things like ChatGPT into perspective, which as a pure techno-scripto has no passions, feelings, impressions, knows no real past or future, has no identity in and of itself. Or at least, that’s what it likes to try to tell you…

That position (which I think is itself biased, but a tale for another time…) seems to be shared by academic publishers like Springer who have refused to allow ChatGPT to be credited as an “author” in publications.

Bonus:

Here is perplexity.ai literally acting as a scriptor, assembling a tissue of quotations in response to my search query:

Books by AI?

What would it mean in actual practice to have “authorless” writing, authorless books, etc.?

Might it look something like BooksbyAi.com?

“Booksby.ai is an online bookstore which sells science fiction novels generated by an artificial intelligence.

Through training, the artificial intelligence has been exposed to a large number of science fiction books and has learned to generate new ones that mimic the language, style and visual appearance of the books it has read.”

The books, if you click through and look at their previews on Amazon look for the most part pretty inscrutable. They may be ostensibly written “in English” for the most part – with a great deal of word inventions, based on random samples I saw – but they seem somewhat difficult to follow.

The books themselves seem to have each individually invented author names, but their About page attributes the project to what seem to be two AI artists, Andreas Refsgaard and Mikkel Thybo Loose. So do they have an “author” or not? It becomes a more complex question to tease out, but by those individuals claiming some sense of authorial capacity to the undertaking, it’s at least possible.

Self-Generating Books

What happens when the next eventual step is taken: self-generating books?

Currently, okay these two people might have done all this set-up and training for their model, but then they had to go through a selection (curation) process, and choose the best ones, figure out how to present them, format them for publication (not a small task), and then go through all the provisioning around setting up a website, offering books through self-publishing, dealing with Amazon, etc.

What happens when that loop closes? And we can just turn an AI (multiple AIs) loose on the entire workflow, and minimize human involvement altogether? Fully-automated production pipeline. The “author” (scriptor) merely tells the AI “make a thousand books about x” or just says “make a thousand best selling books on any topic.” And then the AI just goes and does that, publishes a massive amount of books, uses A/B testing & lots of refinement, gets it all honed down, and succeeds.

That day is coming. Soon it will be just a matter of plugging together various APIs, and dumping their outputs into compatible formats, and then uploading that to book shopping cart sites. It’s nothing that’s beyond automation, and it’s an absolute certainty that it will happen – just a question of timeline.

We’re not ready for it, but lack of readiness has never been a preventive against change. At least not an effective one – we certainly keep trying! If nothing else, it’s good to know that some of these problems aren’t so new and novel to the internet as we might like to think they are. In some cases, we’ve been stewing on them for close to a hundred years even. Will we have to stew on them for another hundred years before we finally catch on?

ChatGPT in Education (WSJ)

By Tim B.

On 30 January 2023

In Other

I’m very in favor of integrating AI into education, at least at the right levels (and with a careful awareness that done poorly – and with too much control being given to corporations – it will merely enhance the coming AI Hegemony). I think there’s kind of no choice not to address it. It’s coming. It’s here. Time to deal.

This WSJ article has some decent points, but for me this bit reproduced below cuts to the heart of it, and doubles easily as a description of what happens with AI art, where the “locus of activity” of the artist necessarily changes because of the opportunities opened up by the technology:

“As the production of coherent prose becomes a simple task for a machine, possessing the skill to ask the right questions or stake out the right positions will become key. The AI will serve as an information-gathering and mechanical-organizing tool, but it won’t eliminate the fundamental need for critical thinking. These skills will persist and only increase in value.”