AI and the sacred act of farting around
Plus a little on the Royal photo editor
DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope.
KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?
KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great-looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know...
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
The above quote from American writer Kurt Vonnegut regularly does the rounds on social. Vonnegut wrote a version of it and then he said the above in 2005 in an interview with PBS and he subsequently included it in lectures. In some versions, he is quoted as saying ”great-looking babes”, not “babies” but I prefer the babies line. You can watch a more meandering description of his day here:
But the central point of the speech, in whatever form Vonnegut presents it, is that we are here on earth to fart around.
Versions of the quote keeps popping up because it’s a nice Instagrammable way of pushing back against encroaching technology, not least AI. Vonnegut had his kids decades before writing this, so he evidently forgot how annoying it is to buy stamps or, well, anything with kids attached. But the point stands, that people like just farting around. Doing bits. Not comedy bits - though that is also nice - just having a few bits to do. Getting bits done.
The AI evangelist argument is that AI will free you up to do the specific version of farting around that you love to do. It’s a nice thought for a few seconds before the follow-up question kicks in: How can we afford this farting around time?
When Sam Altman says, “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI”, it sounds exciting for people who like writing ‘innovation’ in all caps LinkedIn posts. But the rest of us have some questions about our bank balance.
The past of Vonnegut’s story that is left out of the quotes is him starting out the day in his four-story New York townhouse. That’s OK, we’ll allow the premier advocate for farting around his luxuries. But when AI advocates talk about all the free time they are going to create for us, well, it’s understandable to sense a grift. Are we getting more time or less money?
The big swing solutions to this conundrum, like a Universal Basic Income or a 32-hour working week for the same pay, or publically owned AI companies might come if general AI was achieved and we were forced into some paradigm-shifting decisions.
But if AI trundles along - farts around if you will - and continues to be just about good enough to replace admin jobs or squeeze creative work, if it changes things without posing an existential threat to the middle class, then maybe we just get the present but worse. Fewer jobs, more concentration of wealth, and the concept of farting around being an incredible luxury.
More on farting around
On the theme of people not doing anything productive with their time, the British Royal Family had its first AI story this week! Except it wasn’t an AI story, just labeled as such by many outlets because image manipulation and AI now go hand-in-hand in news stories. The AI angle is that we’re on a path to no one trusting any image they see. Though a more positive spin is that the system worked, the manipulated royal image was spiked, and experts knew what to look for and found it. That’s a good thing! It’s perhaps more concerning, but less surprising, that many UK news outlets parroted the line that the Princess of Wales is an amateur Photoshop enthusiast.
Taking the Mickey
Every week on Reddit there is a new popular method of tricking LLMs into circumventing its own guidelines. This week a Reddit user demoed how to get from an innocent, non-infringing, illustration of a mouse into a full-on copyright-violating production. It involves slowly asking GPT for amendments rather than a straight-up request for copyrighted material. The whole process can be seen here.
More taking the Mickey
This new /describe feature from Midjourney is, predictably, getting pushback from artists. It does feel like a feature that will make it even easier for an AI-creator to make derivative work.