Category: Other Page 85 of 182

After having experimented quite a lot with AI content generation (both images and text), it’s got me thinking about what are the next level applications for story-tellers and world-builders.

The first is obvious: integrate AI text and image generation tools directly into writing/publishing software (WordPress? Medium? Scrivener? Vellum?). Hm, it does appear there is a WP Stable Diffusion tool you can use directly within blocks. I think Novel AI also lets you generate text or images (and there was some big stupid kerfuffle about them in the SD community that I largely ignored the details of).

The second (or alternate first) is like Playground AI is doing, where you can use either Dall-E or SD models right from within the same UI. TextSynth does this for open source alternatives to GPT-3.

So as a writer/world-builder, you’d want to be able to effortless switch between generation tools all from within the same comfortable UI that you’re used to, or that you prefer from available tools. And then you’d string together and be able to edit & reconfigure items in the composition (sequence) you are creating.

But then there’s another couple layers on top of that, which I’m calling maybe the metaversal and evolutionary layers.

The metaversal or world-building layer would be the web of connections, entity names, attributes & relationships. You could enter whatever training data you want there, and it would also automatically track, cross-reference, etc. (including compares/diffs – not just file versions, but I’m thinking about “factual” references in-world across diverse documents)

The evolutionary layer would then be like, you could walk away from the app, and it would sort of automatically progress or generate within certain constraints customizable by the user, based on the content in its training data, or that has already been auto-generated and approved by the user.

So when you come back, it would present you with various events, suggestions, problems, checkpoints, or other evolutionary decisions. As the user, you could peruse them, and rate them, choose whether they are right/wrong for the world, and rate them according to some scale of how canonical they are. You could save or trash new text and image developments. Spin out, cancel, or merge timelines.

Also included would be character AIs where at key points, you could interact by chat messages with characters. You could do it as yourself to train/instruct characters (e.g., stage directions), or you could do it in-character (using the guise of someone else in the world), and this could become the basis for canonical text.

You would be able to take all these artifacts, and arrange them into groups, and sequences, and export them to various formats to work with other applications (such as outputting files for an ebook or a blog post, or even an audiobook or video down the road).

In looking around for World-Building AIs, there are certain tools out there that do aspects of this, but none of them all of it together. What I’ve also learned as a user and worker in software is that I don’t really want to trust someone else’s paid subscription service. What happens if they go out of business? What happens if they turn off a key feature?

WordPress is one of the only models for me that still holds any water, where I can run my own instance, and be in complete control of it, and host it myself. There’s a big developer community & regular updates, but I don’t have to take them if I don’t want, or I can augment on my own. Running locally would also be probably a desirable option. I’ve seen people mention Obsidian in a similar context for running locally, and being highly extensible (runs on markdown, I believe), but I never got into it when I tinkered with it, and it lacks all these evolutionary capacities I mentioned, which is what would take this all to the next level.

Wikipedia:

“…cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm.^[1] As the universal dominant ideology, the ruling-class worldview misrepresents the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, and perpetual social conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class”

This sounds really interesting & just ordered it:

The novel takes the form of three cross-referenced mini-encyclopedias, sometimes contradicting each other, each compiled from the sources of one of the major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). In his introduction to the work, Pavić wrote:

“No chronology will be observed here, nor is one necessary. Hence each reader will put together the book for himself, as in a game of dominoes or cards, and, as with a mirror, he will get out of this dictionary as much as he puts into it, for you […] cannot get more out of the truth than what you put into it.^[3]“

Usually categorically hate Quora answers, but this excerpted bit is not bad:

‘Fiction’ or ‘non-fiction’ doesn’t help us very much, and ‘fake’ and ‘real’ help us less. In a particular work, the better questions are ‘what kind of work (genre) is this?’; ‘what truths might it be teaching?’. If nothing else, a little discipline with those questions might alleviate some of the pointless and misguided wrangles which recur with disheartening frequency.

I agree that, especially with hyperreal texts, the validation of “facts” is only one of many possible avenues of experience. And it may not always be the most useful, versus a more structural (or structuralist) approach. It may be that the references/relationships/re-arranging have a greater relevance than maybe more fluid factual/counter-factual inclusions.

I often feel while working with AI content generation tools – like Stable Diffusion, Dall-e, Fairseq & GPT-NeoX (the main ones I use) – that something like a co-defined narrative unfolds from the process. I saw someone call it I think divinatory in an article. Each of the participants, the human prompter, and the AI model offering their own bits and replies back to one another. Then you look at what they output, and you re-steer and kind of lean back into that.

It strikes me this happens with the reader also, who happens into this chaotic non-linear narrative latent space. Each might only read or look at a small subset of artifacts, a very few ingest a great number. Each comes in through their own path, and leaves their own trail across the nodes of the narrative that they traverse in the unique sequence they themselves traverse it in.

Found via the Onion amicus brief, attributed to Mark Twain at this source:

“The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.”

Have been thinking, what if the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden was… a bit of a misunderstanding. What if God hadn’t forbidden Adam & Eve from eating it altogether? What if he had merely suggested they not eat it before it’s ripe?

Think about it: what if the only reason it tasted of bitterness was because it had not had time to mature to its full sweetness? What if they had waited longer, and instead of merely transmitting knowledge of good and evil, it also transmitted the mature wisdom to handle the two? What if, indeed, they had even let it ferment into a strong wine, full of richness, complexity & subtle aroma? And then let that too age.

The ultimate spiritual aim of Tenrikyo is the construction of the Kanrodai, a divinely ordained pillar in an axis mundi called the Jiba, and the correct performance of the Kagura ritual around the Kanrodai, which will bring about the salvation of all human beings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenrikyo

And:

It is said that when the hearts of humankind have been adequately purified, God will inaugurate the world of the Joyous Life by bestowing a sweet dew on the basin to be placed on top of the Kanrodai, which when consumed, will allow people to live the full lifespan of 115 years without illness or misfortune, and die painlessly to be reborn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyous_Life

“The common goal of corporations around the world is to monetize human activity and what’s left of nature’s abundance as rapidly and efficiently as possible.”

Source: Patterns of meaning

Also from same author, a relevant & worthwhile read:

• AI has already taken over. It’s called the corporation