David Revoy | Mastodon | Bonus Timelapse
Transcript
Resonance
A comic in four panels.
Panel 1. Cepper, the gothic sorceress, stands on her high chair, in her painting workshop, with an empty canvas in front of her on the easel. Her expression is blank, staring in the void. On his perch nearby, her Avian Intelligence (AI) Parrot speaks out loud a notification.
Parrot: “Breaking news: Penguin Academy authorizes grimoire contributions made with Avian Intelligence.”
Parrot: “Third major magic school this week after the Pointy Hat and Daemon.”
Cepper: “...”
Panel 2. The Parrot leans forward, studying Cepper’s face. She hasn’t moved.
Parrot: “I thought that would make you furious.”
Cepper: “No. It’s been like this every day for weeks now, so much so that I’ve lost my ability to feel outraged...”
Cepper (smaller): “And all motivation...”
Panel 3. General shot in the workshop, Parrot process while Cepper slowly pick one brush from a pot aside of the canvas.
Parrot: “So what are you going to do?”
Cepper: “Paint what I actually feel.”
Panel 4. Close up of Cepper applying a brush stroke on the canvas. Her voice is quiet, her eyes still blasé, but trying to focus on the canvas. She made a first step.
Cepper: “If this resonates with someone... that will be well enough.”
Cepper: “Enough to not feel alone in this.”
I feel like part of the reason for genAI adoption is a childhood dream of having an anthropomorphized robot friend.
There are so many cool, cute, helpful depictions in sci-fi that were very prominent in our childhood. From R2D2 in star wars to Data from star trek, and there's a lot more I don't think I need to list.
Most adopters however aren't able to see that this is part of the marketing. That LLMs and genAI are never going to reach the levels seen on the screen. And that there are real limitations and consequences for using these tools that are often overlooked.
We probably shouldn't use Anthropic's Claude which pays for compute from SpaceXAI's colossus (named after a movie about a super computer) data center which does incredible harm to the residents of Memphis, TN to patch bugs in the Linux kernel. It kind of goes against the entire spirit of Free and Open Source Software.
But, here we are.
I like how the Avian Intelligence is just kinda there and actively trying to make the human angry. It's not helping or even failing at trying to help. It's just there, doing damage. But the human still has power to do something unpredictable.
Meh, it will never beat creating real Pokemon with CRISPR.
Sue that, Nintendo.
What general public fail to understand is that under the usefulness layer that the corporations are pushing for is a tool for mass/social control, simply and plain.