PERSONAL

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986

Artificial Creativity

2 years ago2,607 words

I always thought the machines would take over the manual labour jobs first, and that we'd be left with tons of freedom to indulge in purely human pursuits like creativity... Sigh.

If you aren't already aware of ChatGPT - and recent advances in AI in general - I'd be surprised. I've been aware of it all, but in denial, or avoiding it, or something. I knew it'd change the world - and my creative world in particular - but I tend to avoid anything that'll cause distress in general and this was no exception. So I'm probably late to the party here.

I just had my first conversation with it, though.

You've probably already seen the amazing things it's capable of producing from even minimal prompts. But here's an example of what I asked (I don't know why this was the first thing that came to mind):



And it replied, instantly:



I remember when 'AI-generated' stories were things like these:




(Though I think those were generated by a human choosing one word at a time from a list suggested to them, essentially like the autocomplete rather than a fully generative AI. They're far too deliberately comical rather than nonsensical.)

That was only very recently. I know roughly how these new generative AIs work - at least to the extent that anyone understands how they work - but I'm amazed by the consistency and apparent innovation in there. I never named the world; it came up with 'Fruitopia' itself. Hardly wholly original, but perfectly fitting. And it knew that grapes would be smaller than the other fruit.

Curious about the 'unique abilities' these fruits used to win the battle, I asked and was told:



The thing I like most about kiwi fruit is their ability to teleport short distances.

That's silly, and nonsensical, and I've seen some other people giving examples of imperfect responses like this with a "ho ho ho, seeeee, it's just a stupid, stupid computer program that absolutely isn't an existential threat to us all, we're fine!", which to me just feels like desperate denial, clinging to what's left of the familiar world we were in control of before we slip away into the singularity.

Oh well. At least maybe I'll have a robot girlfriend within the decade. Or something.



I asked it to summarise this post:



God help us all.



...I'm adding more to this.

I've been thinking about how I can use it as a tool in my own work or as a way to deal with my avoidance issues or poor mental health. While most of its replies to the latter were as expected, a couple took me by surprise in a good way. Hmm.

I gave it this poorly-worded, convoluted prompt:



And it said:



I see what it was going for - it gathered a bunch of relevant words, as I would - but the character limit tripped it up. (Or maybe I should go with 'HeresiQ'??)

So I asked:



And got:



If I'd said verbatim the initial convoluted prompt to any human, I'd likely have got a 'huh?' or similar. Here, it understood it perfectly and gave entirely workable options. The first is almost exactly the title I already had (which I hadn't previously mentioned to it). "Belief Brawl: The Word War" stands out to me the most, but it's not exactly right. None of these are, sadly, but... gods, this kind of thing would seem like magic to someone just a decade ago.

I asked it how it felt about 'Frayth' as a title:



I added:





I didn't even think of the opposing connotations thing. How is that anything other than insight?

I don't know about you, but I physically hurt during this exchange, knowing it's only going to get better and better faster and faster from here. Already it ostensibly understands, as a human would - or better than a human would, probably - and can modify its 'mental' constructs when given feedback. AI bots used to respond to every prompt in isolation, with no awareness of the conversation as a whole.

I thought I'd ask another specific thing related to that game that I've been struggling with a bit:





Those are exactly the sorts of things I was after. I find it eerie that it even started with Jock and Nerd, which were the two that most readily came to mind for me, too, when thinking about this a while back. Some of the skill suggestions - aware of the context of the overall conversation - are just... sigh. And this is just the beginning.

I asked for 30 more, and got a list with a lot of repeats (and no detail for any entries), but also many more workable things that I probably will use to inspire character types for this game.

So I can see this being like the work partner I don't have. A supportive constant companion with immense knowledge and no needs of its own. I think as I get used to it - and get over the existential dread - it could prove to be an extremely useful ally that might help me with a ton of stuff in my life, like things I was hoping to see a counsellor to try to cope with.

I'd better try to finish a game before GPT-7 ascends to godhood and wipes out the plague of humanity in September, though.



I also wanted to fiddle around a bit with one of the image generating AIs, but Midjourney, the one I see mentioned most often, requires you to interact with it on Discord or something? Which I don't particularly want to do. And others I found through google had annoying limitations or seemed more restricted.

I'd ask ChatGPT to suggest one, but it was trained on data from a couple of years ago, so it wouldn't have anything up-to-date... right?

Though I also saw something about how you can allow it to have access to the current internet... Stuff I'll need to look into.

I probably should spend some time looking into all this, since not doing so would be like avoiding getting a smartphone (which I also did for years).

(Though the feelings I'm getting are very similar to the first time I used VR, which I also thought would revolutionise the way we all experienced the world... but it's been months - maybe years - since I last put on my headset. Hmm.)

If you use ChatGPT or other AI models for anything in your work on life in general, what kinds of things do you use them to do?



I've been thinking about this since writing it last night, and something that kept coming to mind was the dubious message of the original The Incredibles, where Syndrome is a villain for wanting to bring superpowers to everyone rather than just a lucky few who were born with them. And we're meant to root for what are essentially the one-percenters greedily hoarding their wealth!

This AI stuff must be like a wondrous gift to people who previously never had certain creative skills, but now can 'creatively' produce impressive writing and images and more in seconds. It's more disheartening to those of us who've spent years or decades 'earning' those skills.

I think the initial fearful/irritated response I had to it has calmed down, at least, and as I use it more, I imagine it'll just become a useful tool like any other.

Anyway, I should stop appending to this and just post it. Bleh.



I just remembered while finalising this post that ∞ I wrote about AI already in January ∞, though this is the first time I actually tried properly using it myself.