Yuli Ban wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:09 pm
Advanced synthetic media goes
far beyond just creating movies.
Think.
One of the things that defines the human experience is imagination. It's the ability to visualize and communicate.
Imagine being able to
MATERIALIZE IMAGINATION. We've long had that ability through art, speech, mass media, and whatnot. But now it can be automated.
At which point the human condition fundamentally changes on a level we've never seen before.
On top of that, giving machines the ability to imagine is all but the final step before we reach artificial general intelligence. It's no coincidence that it's a language model that sparked discussion of whether AI has finally become sentient. It was always going to be imaginative AI— of text, video, audio, images, and more— that gave us the first machines of science fiction.
And then there's the implications for alternative realities. We're not going to spend years handcrafting every little pixel for the coming Metaverse. We're going to get AI to create it all for us. This is another profoundly transformative technology, the first gasps of transhumanism where humans begin losing themselves into high technology. It'll drive people to merge with technology to cut out the middle man.
I'm still not sure. I'll grant you that we need AI that can imagine (to a degree) in order to have machines/robots that can respond to our requests in the real world. But there's a limit to how smart/creative/sentient (and fyi, we're misusing that word; what most people call sentient is really sapient - our pet hamsters are probably sentient, but only humans are sapient [officially, but scientists are pondering if chimps and dolphins also qualify]) needs to be in order to serve us. Frankly I don't want a computer that can think and act on its own without being issued an order. I'm interested in AI purely as a tool to serve me, not to serve as my replacement. But that still somewhat seems separate from media creation. More like, they're linked in the same way video and videogames are - you need video in order to have videogames. You need an AI that can understand, and thus create, representations of trees and cars and buildings aka make video of these things, in order to have an AGI that can intelligently interact with them. But at the end of the day, while an AI capable of doing these things is needed for AGI, media creation as we use it is still just a time and boredom killer. Even your alternative realities, the whole metaverse, is mostly just going to be used as videogames, albeit with a communications aspect. I'm more interested in how this will be applied to AR rather than VR - the ways it will help us navigate and understand the world we have, rather than creating worlds to escape too.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the amazing implications of what all (well, some - it's the singularity for a reason, we can't predict what all will come) this could mean down the line, how the tech to make
Batman vs T-Rex: Jurassic Gotham could also be used to have an AI that thinks up more innovative building designs to solve various urban problems like housing, cooling with less AC, reducing waste, improving both mental and physical well being, etc - but then call out those uses. Focusing on how this will give us our own personalized and tailored Netflix/Spotify/library kind of undersells the future by focusing on the, well, meaningless entertainment aspect.
I don't know, maybe I'm just overthinking it. It's just the ability to create my own movies/songs/books/VR worlds doesn't spark my imagination much. I'm not interested in technology for further escapism, but more for further exploration, enhancement, and quality of life improvements. I fear a future where mankind, or post-mankind, shrinks into our own fantasy worlds and never push further to find what else lies out beyond there. I would like to spread out tentacles or roots of my consciousness along with others to the furthest corners of our universe, or however much of it we can reach within the laws of physics. I would like to linger on earth for the next several billion years, and then drift back to watch our sun expand and take our little blue marble. I want copies of me spread out across galaxies to settle new worlds and then watch as the expansion of space pulls the stars so far away they blink out of the night sky, leaving behind only darkness. I want to witness the last moments of our reality, trillions of years from now, when entrophy finally wins out and there's no energy left in all reachable space for me to continue on any further. And with any luck, I want some versions of me to escape into newer, younger universes to repeat the process all over again, time and time again, if such is even possible in those distant eons beyond. I think sometimes we sell short the visions of the future, hyping up how cool it will be to live in VR worlds as gods creating our own worlds to suit our own tastes. Virtual Godhood seems so small in the scope of eternity, escapism just misses out on the infinite possibilities of dealing with the physical limitations of the endless complexities of realities that exist now and in the future that we had no say in creating, in the puzzles they pose for us to solve created by such cosmic forces that no "difficulty setting" in our self-created worlds could ever equate the satisfaction of experiencing. I don't know, I see the next century and the Singularity not as this great big wondrous transhuman ending, but as a stepping stone to watching the stars burn out and surfing the last light waves into the dark Chaos of nothing, and perhaps to even greater realities beyond our small bubble of spacetime to Membranes of alien spacetime...
I suppose it's just a matter of focus. AI learning to create media and imagine is great, but we need to emphasis more what this means beyond just short term thrills I think. Or maybe, just maybe, I'm overthinking this whole thing.