Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager. Hey.
Speaker 1: Something that people probably don't know about both of us
Speaker 1: is that outside of doing this show, we're both quote
Speaker 1: unquote creative people, right Like, even in the show. Well,
Speaker 1: in the show, we try to be creative. We can't
Speaker 1: strip the creativity off of cats like that. This is
Speaker 1: very true. But um, you are a fiction writer, which
Speaker 1: I always try to mention on the episodes that you're
Speaker 1: not on so that you're not like somehow embarrassed or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But I try to plug Robert's books. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then I do comics and and in the past
Speaker 1: I've done music as well, and I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you were you like in a band. You were
Speaker 1: in a band, right, Yeah. And I had a period
Speaker 1: of time I'm gonna talk about in this episode where
Speaker 1: I dabbled with electronic music as well. Um, but yeah, so,
Speaker 1: but I was in a band for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: And Uh, there's this interesting thing going on right now
Speaker 1: that you saw when you went to the World Science
Speaker 1: Festival two weeks ago. That is sort of like trying
Speaker 1: to come to grips with what happens when you teach
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence or really, I guess the correct term is
Speaker 1: machine learning to be creative quote unquote, and like, how
Speaker 1: do people feel about that? And you saw this amazing
Speaker 1: panel where they had people who were dabbling in that,
Speaker 1: both in music and culinary arts and drawing, and then
Speaker 1: they had the psychologist on the panel to who is
Speaker 1: like the skeptic kind of Yeah, yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: really good, good panel. I saw it live at the
Speaker 1: World Science Festival this year, and if you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: you can watch it as well, because this one not
Speaker 1: all the talks are available on video, but this one
Speaker 1: is available on video, and I'll include a link to
Speaker 1: that talk on the landing page for this episode of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot Com. But it was
Speaker 1: titled Computational Creativity. He was moderated by w n y
Speaker 1: C S John Schaefer, and the panelist included artist Song
Speaker 1: Win Chung, computer scientists and musician Jesse Ingle, neuroscientist Peter
Speaker 1: you Rock Say, and engineering theorist A lab of Varshney. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the four of them had this interesting discussion
Speaker 1: kind of a back and forth about what what they
Speaker 1: were experimenting with in terms of trying to teach machines
Speaker 1: to be creative, and then more along the lines of
Speaker 1: defining creativity, uh, systematizing creativity for human beings, so that
Speaker 1: you could somehow try to take that and apply it
Speaker 1: to machines and algorithms. Uh. And that the that's where
Speaker 1: Peter Rix, say was sort of like the the neuroscientists,
Speaker 1: not naysayer really, but just like he was doubtful right
Speaker 1: because he was he could not see a way that
Speaker 1: quote unquote creativity as he understood it could be replicated
Speaker 1: uh in machines the way that the other three were
Speaker 1: pretty excited about. Yeah. He I guess if you were
Speaker 1: thinking of this as a like a jam band or something.
Speaker 1: He was the guy with doing the jazzy solos, like
Speaker 1: all the other three had had really particular examples tied
Speaker 1: into their research, and then Say would come in and
Speaker 1: he'd just kind of he'd weigh a little bit. He
Speaker 1: had very interesting stuff to add to Yeah. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was great, um, and it definitely brought some balance to it.
Speaker 1: So we thought, after you've seen it, you said, you
Speaker 1: gotta check this out. I watched the video, took notes,
Speaker 1: and we thought this is worth us having a conversation
Speaker 1: here on the show about it, especially because we're sort
Speaker 1: of at the intersectionality of science and creativity. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: what we're not gonna do here today, We're not going
Speaker 1: to just replicate their discussion. We're gonna We're gonna spring
Speaker 1: off their discussion, uh, talk about our own experience, his
Speaker 1: own thoughts, and we're gonna drag in a few additional
Speaker 1: resources as well and in some additional examples, uh, to
Speaker 1: to bring this conversation to you and then hopefully here
Speaker 1: back from all of you creative people about your thoughts
Speaker 1: on machine creativity, machine learning, and the future of human creativity.
Speaker 1: So along those lines, Robert, like, when you hear the
Speaker 1: idea of a machine being creative, how does that make
Speaker 1: you feel as a person who like you know, I
Speaker 1: I imagine you're like me, Like it's work, you know,
Speaker 1: being creative, writing, drawing, playing music. It. You know, there's
Speaker 1: there's something that feels unescapable human about it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I I hear, I hear about it, and
Speaker 1: and I read articles or studies where they've taken a
Speaker 1: computer program and it's writing high coups, or it's where
Speaker 1: it's printing paintings, that sort of thing. I see that,
Speaker 1: and then I I think about these stories of say
Speaker 1: journalism jobs like local journalism jobs, jobs being outsourced to
Speaker 1: another country that I hear about, of course, the impact
Speaker 1: on manufacturing, of the impact of automation on manufacturing, and
Speaker 1: that makes me, you know, try and envision the future
Speaker 1: or where suddenly you're going to have programs and machines
Speaker 1: that can replicate what I do. Yeah, we've actually exactly
Speaker 1: to that point. We've actually like encountered that in this business,
Speaker 1: where like people will occasionally come to us and say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to make your job easier podcasting. We've come
Speaker 1: up with this program that will do all the research
Speaker 1: for you, and all you have to do is just
Speaker 1: like you know, printed out and go into the studio
Speaker 1: with it. Uh. And you know that seems really interesting
Speaker 1: to me. That's I don't like I got that email.
Speaker 1: I got the one about where you're basically outsourcing it
Speaker 1: to other researchers. There's that, but then there's also, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll just basically just pluck stuff for you and put
Speaker 1: it into a dock. Uh. This has has been pitched
Speaker 1: to me before at least. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: that I've heard about is like, you know, some of
Speaker 1: our listeners are familiar that we do videos occasionally. Uh,
Speaker 1: the old stuff to blow your mind videos would be
Speaker 1: a good example of this. So essentially you punch in
Speaker 1: parameters of what your video would be about. In this
Speaker 1: software spits out a like video for you that has
Speaker 1: text on the screen and pulls image clips or video
Speaker 1: clips out of a library to just make something rather
Speaker 1: than you're working together with a producer, writing script. All
Speaker 1: the things that we do when we make those videos
Speaker 1: just makes me feel like we need to be marketing.
Speaker 1: Our podcast is a craft podcast, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: like all the research is done by hand, granted, you know,
Speaker 1: on a computer screen. A lot of people don't know this.
Speaker 1: Book Mark Marin, all of his research is done by
Speaker 1: robot in his garage. Yeah yeah, okay, among the cats
Speaker 1: I'm imagining it's a robot cat actually yeah, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel the same way, especially like when
Speaker 1: I hear these examples. But then at the same time, like,
Speaker 1: so I've done commercial art before. I was a graphic
Speaker 1: designer for a number of years before I got into
Speaker 1: the podcasting business. And I've done creative stuff where I've
Speaker 1: been an illustrator, I've worked as a musician, I write, uh,
Speaker 1: And so the thing that I've learned is that, like
Speaker 1: the one of the most iportant lessons I've learned about
Speaker 1: creativity is that you have to impose limits upon your canvas.
Speaker 1: No matter what medium you're performing in, right or else,
Speaker 1: You're just gonna like stare into this abyss forever with
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out where to place your creative ideas, um,
Speaker 1: because there's this infinite possibility of like what could be right,
Speaker 1: what could be wrong? Which which things should I use?
Speaker 1: Which combination of words, which kind of ink all those things? Um?
Speaker 1: For instance, like writers that I've encountered who have the
Speaker 1: problem where they'll rewrite the first paragraph that they write
Speaker 1: over and over and over again and obsessed on making
Speaker 1: that paragraph perfect before they'll move on, and then they
Speaker 1: never finished. Right. Yeah, I've I've I've done that before.
Speaker 1: Like when I first started righting fiction, I was doing
Speaker 1: that model, and of course the thing I was writing
Speaker 1: is still to this day incomplete from from that totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been there too, and It's like that's one of
Speaker 1: those things that they don't ever really teach you. At
Speaker 1: least they didn't teach me very well in composition, yes,
Speaker 1: like just move on, um. But when I think about
Speaker 1: creative machines, then I have to wonder, first of all,
Speaker 1: are they aware of what their limitations are or are
Speaker 1: they just executing an algorithm? And how do they do
Speaker 1: they know how to make those limitations work for them
Speaker 1: creatively the same way that human beings do well. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, when you when you start picking
Speaker 1: apart your own creative process, you can you can begin
Speaker 1: to see how a machine could do some of it,
Speaker 1: you know, because you're talking about it imposing limits on yourself.
Speaker 1: Like I'm instantly thinking like, all right, I'm writing, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write a I'm gonna write this science fiction short story. Okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of ideas can I explore within the confines
Speaker 1: of this story, this setting, maybe this type of character
Speaker 1: that I want to write? And then you start you
Speaker 1: start throwing in another parameter. It's like what kind of
Speaker 1: stories are selling? What? What? What kind of story can
Speaker 1: I write that doesn't have a vampire in it? You know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, And so there's a there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of creativity. Is not necessarily this just magical explosion
Speaker 1: that takes place. There's a lot of computation that goes
Speaker 1: into it, and therefore there's an entire side to it
Speaker 1: that could easily be mastered by an inhuman entity, right,
Speaker 1: especially if like we as humans are able to go
Speaker 1: to that machine and input the parameters of those limits
Speaker 1: to it, right and say like, okay, here's your limitations
Speaker 1: now right this story or here's your limitations now create
Speaker 1: this music. And that seems to be what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, And I know when when I think about,
Speaker 1: you know, these various anxieties about you know, future writers
Speaker 1: and podcasters that are entirely machine. You know, we all
Speaker 1: tell ourselves, well, they can replicate a lot of it,
Speaker 1: but there there's a certain spark, there's something I have
Speaker 1: that cannot be replicated. And we we also tell that's
Speaker 1: the same thing we tell ourselves when we're talking about
Speaker 1: human competition. You can say, all right, well this this
Speaker 1: individual may be better at at this skill set than me.
Speaker 1: They maybe have a better voice or what have you,
Speaker 1: but but there's something special about me, and so do
Speaker 1: I extend or is that just sort of a self
Speaker 1: inflating uh fiction that we're telling ourselves all the time anyway.
Speaker 1: Uh And and so maybe the machines will just swoop
Speaker 1: in and take all of our creative jobs. Maybe, Although
Speaker 1: I have to say, like sitting down and listening to
Speaker 1: this conversation and then like filling out notes and doing
Speaker 1: a little extra research for this episode, it made me
Speaker 1: think about my creative process in a systematized way that
Speaker 1: I haven't before, And it made me really realize that
Speaker 1: for me at least, I think like one of the
Speaker 1: big like jumping points for human beings being creative is
Speaker 1: when they start creating new tools to be creative in
Speaker 1: different ways. And we'll talk about that later because this
Speaker 1: is something they discussed in the panel as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I can't see a future yet where AI is
Speaker 1: doing those things where AI says, I like a guitar,
Speaker 1: and I can write these songs on guitar, But what
Speaker 1: if I go over to a tree and I carve
Speaker 1: an entirely different kind of instrument so that I can
Speaker 1: get this effect. That's true. That's that's a good point,
Speaker 1: sort of like meta creativity ideas. All right, so we'll
Speaker 1: definitely get into the tools here in a bit, but
Speaker 1: before we roll on, I just want to want to
Speaker 1: really draw attention to two particular ideas that came up
Speaker 1: in the discussion um that that I that I thought
Speaker 1: were particularly striking, and that will come up again and
Speaker 1: again as we uh as we roll through the episode.
Speaker 1: First of all, they kept to bring up this analogy
Speaker 1: of the career of creative technology compared to the airplane.
Speaker 1: So obviously we make airplanes that fly faster and higher
Speaker 1: than any bird, but that doesn't mean we fully understand
Speaker 1: how birds fly, nor does it mean we can replicate
Speaker 1: the evolved perfection of their powered flight. So technology essentially
Speaker 1: gives us a version of the same thing that outperforms
Speaker 1: the organic in many respects, but also underperforms and other areas.
Speaker 1: And this was al rix Says primary argument sort of
Speaker 1: against the idea that AI could be quote unquote creative,
Speaker 1: right because birds airplanes are not birds, right, And so
Speaker 1: he was saying basically that then subsequently the software couldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily be human in its creativity, But it depends on
Speaker 1: how you define creativity too. Yeah, it's a great metaphor,
Speaker 1: and I think all the panelists ended up, picking up
Speaker 1: and playing with it a little bit, and well we'll
Speaker 1: play with it here as well, now chewing. For her part,
Speaker 1: she highlighted her own projects with creative machine learning, in
Speaker 1: which she and there's some wonderful like overhead video examples
Speaker 1: of this, but she draws, uh with or paints with
Speaker 1: a piano. Believe it was a piano. It looked to
Speaker 1: me like she was using some kind of stylist tablet thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like basically she from what I could tell
Speaker 1: as somebody who does illustration, she was drawing on the
Speaker 1: right half of a of a canvas, and what she
Speaker 1: would draw, the computer would then draw on the left
Speaker 1: half of the canvas. But it wouldn't just imitate her.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, I mean, you can do this in
Speaker 1: like Adobe Illustrator where it just like draws the exact
Speaker 1: same thing you draw, and you've got like a perfectly
Speaker 1: symmetrical drawing. So it's not a mirror image though. This
Speaker 1: was this was like creating its own thing, learning from
Speaker 1: her curves and lines. Yeah, I was playing off her movement,
Speaker 1: sort of improvising with her to create a work of
Speaker 1: collaborative art. And so she argues that the notion of
Speaker 1: a robotic agent that creates with you the dreams with
Speaker 1: you in harmony is quote an underserved narrative in our culture,
Speaker 1: and I and I definitely agree with that. She was
Speaker 1: to me the most compelling person on the panel. I
Speaker 1: thought they were all really interesting. There was something about
Speaker 1: her that I was like, this person is going to
Speaker 1: go on to do like amazing work, and she's gonna
Speaker 1: come back. Because she was relatively young, I can see
Speaker 1: her in like ten twenty years coming back to us
Speaker 1: and just like dropping like some huge revelation on us
Speaker 1: about creativity and computer learning after the Singularity, after shelded
Speaker 1: into the mind. They chose me I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the go between. But she was like she was dropping
Speaker 1: some really interesting tidbits into the conversation, Like she was
Speaker 1: thinking about the way that she draws based on competitive gaming.
Speaker 1: Like she kept bringing up like, and by this we
Speaker 1: mean like video games where people are playing I don't know,
Speaker 1: League of Legends or um Overwatch, and so just the
Speaker 1: idea that she was thinking about how like the AI
Speaker 1: in those games was compensating for the human movements or
Speaker 1: or play styles as opposed to how she drew and
Speaker 1: how the computer drew along with her. That's an very
Speaker 1: interesting connection that I would never have thought of before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that that is that's a That's a really
Speaker 1: a really great example because you don't think about like
Speaker 1: this competitive model being applicable to a creative collaboration. And
Speaker 1: you and I play a lot of video games, you know,
Speaker 1: but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: how the AI in the game is compensating for my movements.
Speaker 1: I have the only time I've thought about this, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be kind of geeky and and silly,
Speaker 1: but in playing uh, pro wrestling video games, I've thought
Speaker 1: about this because because there's like certain wrestling styles that
Speaker 1: the characters have, well, it basically comes down to this weirdness.
Speaker 1: Professional wrestling is a simulated combat sport. So yes, sorry spoilers,
Speaker 1: but as you see it on TV, it's two humans pretending,
Speaker 1: you know, acting out a combat scenario. We actually have
Speaker 1: a video about this on KFE that you did a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Yeah, and so when people make
Speaker 1: a video game of that, they make a fighting game
Speaker 1: in which too like a huge too humans or a
Speaker 1: human in an AI or two AI s if you're
Speaker 1: doing a demo mode, are fighting each other in a
Speaker 1: competitive in calendar using the moves of professional wrestling. And
Speaker 1: then on top of that, some players are going to
Speaker 1: play that video game just like a fighting game. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna beat my opponent, but others will play it attempting
Speaker 1: to tell a story, attempting to get the most dramatic match.
Speaker 1: And in those cases, I don't know that any programmers
Speaker 1: have really gained that really strange area of video game playing,
Speaker 1: but like, like that's that's what I think of when
Speaker 1: she brings up this example, Like, here's an example of
Speaker 1: somebody trying to not only defeat an AI opponent, but
Speaker 1: to try and tell a story with an AI opponent. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is an episode where we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: little bit of more digressions than we normally do because
Speaker 1: of our creative backgrounds and sort of things we can
Speaker 1: bring to this. I have a story that I think
Speaker 1: can tie into this that we can then maybe bring
Speaker 1: back to this AI. Okay, So a friend of mine
Speaker 1: is currently working on a comic book for a w
Speaker 1: W E comic. He's just doing like a short story
Speaker 1: and it's about some missfight between the Undertaker and Mankind
Speaker 1: is the guy that would okay, and uh so I
Speaker 1: never saw this. I'm not as bigger a wrestling fan
Speaker 1: as Robert, but uh when he told me about it,
Speaker 1: was like, oh, cool, like you could you could do
Speaker 1: some fun stuff like that, like have them being a
Speaker 1: slaughterhouse or have them be in a graveyard and they're
Speaker 1: hitting each other with gravestones or something, right, and he
Speaker 1: was like, no, we have to do an exact replica
Speaker 1: in comic form of this infamous fight they hadn't like
Speaker 1: I don't know, two thousand or something. And I was like, huh,
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting. But to me that like here we
Speaker 1: go with limitations, right, Like the limitation there is so
Speaker 1: limiting that I don't see what would be creative about
Speaker 1: it or interesting other than obviously my friend and his
Speaker 1: style and how he draws the thing. But he's not
Speaker 1: being able to express anything. Mhmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: see what you mean. Because the one thing if you
Speaker 1: could say, I tell this, tell the story, but they
Speaker 1: actually have magical powers, like they're Undertakers, really an undead
Speaker 1: creature exactly, That's how I was thinking it would be.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that this is the benefit of
Speaker 1: doing it in the comics medium is that you can
Speaker 1: actually give them weird powers and you can like really
Speaker 1: play with the the goofy narrative of like their their roles. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: But then this this also leads to the creative challenge,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes just because the constraints are there doesn't mean
Speaker 1: there's there's not an opportunity exactly. And that's what I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to it because when I hear that, I go, man,
Speaker 1: there's there's too many limitations there. But you know, who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a way within all those limitations. I trust
Speaker 1: that my friend is gonna be able to do this,
Speaker 1: that that they'll be like a really cool way to
Speaker 1: depict that fight. All right, but it's gonna take creativity.
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna we're gonna roll it back a
Speaker 1: little bit and talk about what creativity actually is, like
Speaker 1: boiling it down, reconstructing it so that we can understand
Speaker 1: what we're doing when we're create and in order to
Speaker 1: uh make a machine engage in the same process. Right,
Speaker 1: So they come up with some of their uh kind
Speaker 1: of limited limitations on what creativity can or cannot be.
Speaker 1: And this is where I think, like Ultimately, like the
Speaker 1: split between the four of them, or maybe the three
Speaker 1: of them versus Alri say came down was that Ria
Speaker 1: has this sort of broader definition of creativity as being
Speaker 1: this sort of magical thing that happens in the human brain. Right,
Speaker 1: like he talks about at different times in the discussion,
Speaker 1: talks about the importance of pain, of intent, of consciousness,
Speaker 1: various attributes that are currently beyond the scope of of
Speaker 1: AI and would be problematic if we had them, you know,
Speaker 1: if you could, would it be It's a whole separate issue,
Speaker 1: but it would it be ethical to make a you know,
Speaker 1: a depressed artist robot because why what kind of cruel
Speaker 1: god are you to make a robot so depressed? You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny you mentioned that later on in the notes.
Speaker 1: I have a question on whether robots can be crazy
Speaker 1: enough to be creative, because, as we know, many creative
Speaker 1: people suffer mental health issues. Yeah, well that's how we
Speaker 1: got David and in the Covenant. Well they already answered
Speaker 1: it for us, Thanks for at le Scott. Alright, So
Speaker 1: one of the one of these sort of loose models
Speaker 1: though for creativity that that is thrown out here is
Speaker 1: it comes from engineering theorist lab Varshny, and he breaks
Speaker 1: it all down to a comp to a combination of
Speaker 1: novelty and high quality that comes together in a way
Speaker 1: that changes your belief. So like a Venn diagram, I'm
Speaker 1: imagining here of is it novel, is it knew? Is
Speaker 1: it something different? And is it of high enough quality?
Speaker 1: And when it comes and does it come together in
Speaker 1: a way that actually have some sort of meaning to me?
Speaker 1: I think this is a really interesting way to model
Speaker 1: aesthetics and that I had not thought of before. And
Speaker 1: when you try to like sort of lay this on
Speaker 1: top of like creative artifacts and see like how that works,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, right, like the first thing I thought of.
Speaker 1: I was talking to you about this before we went
Speaker 1: in to the studio, and no spoilers, but the new
Speaker 1: Twin Peaks is on TV and I've been watching it
Speaker 1: every week, and as you would expect from David Lynch,
Speaker 1: it's wacky, right, But in terms of lab varsenyse ven
Speaker 1: diagram here of novelty and high quality, it's just the
Speaker 1: right amount of novelty and just the right amount of
Speaker 1: quality that it works for me. Now maybe for other people,
Speaker 1: because obviously creativity and artist objective. It doesn't, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I was seeing it like, oh, that is the perfect
Speaker 1: David Lynch is like the perfect metaphor for this, because,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, like some of David Lynch's stuff, the
Speaker 1: novelty factor can get a little too big in that
Speaker 1: ven diagramic situation and you're like and and Varsny actually
Speaker 1: describes it as noise. He says, like, when either one
Speaker 1: of those things gets too big in comparison to the other,
Speaker 1: it turns into noise and we're no longer experiencing something
Speaker 1: like that's communicative. And he also says that if they
Speaker 1: both are too if there's too much of both at
Speaker 1: the same time, right, Like, if it's incredibly novel and
Speaker 1: it's super high quality, then it's just like that overloads
Speaker 1: people's circuits. Right, So I'm thinking of like Finnegan's Wake
Speaker 1: or something like that. Probably well, and it's gonna vary
Speaker 1: from person to person because you know, obviously, because you're
Speaker 1: I think we can all imagine movies that we've seen
Speaker 1: where either like I've seen plenty of movies where there's
Speaker 1: some great ideas, the quality is not there though you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the acting is bad, the monster doesn't look right
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then you see the reverse to some
Speaker 1: beautiful films and you're just like, my eyes are eating
Speaker 1: up everything that's on the screen, but I feel nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like you get. You get the opposite too, when
Speaker 1: like these things are too small in comparison to one another, Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if it's super high quality, but it's a story that
Speaker 1: you've seen and it's been done three times before, you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to be that engaged with it, right,
Speaker 1: So there's got to be a little bit of novel
Speaker 1: something to it. But at the same time, if it's
Speaker 1: totally novel, it's this cool idea, it's it's like the
Speaker 1: ultimate Hollywood pitch high concept, like the Ocean Walker, the
Speaker 1: rest of Development, Yeah, something like that. And then the
Speaker 1: qualities garbage. Well, you know that's not going to do
Speaker 1: very well either. But but to his point about like
Speaker 1: both areas being blown out, both novelty and high quality, well,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess one example would be if you
Speaker 1: take somebody who does not have much, uh you know,
Speaker 1: of of a bedrock understanding of a modern art or surrealism,
Speaker 1: and you just really throw them into the deep end
Speaker 1: at a modern art museum, So they might encounter a
Speaker 1: piece of work that is, you know, it's highly novel uh,
Speaker 1: you know, created with wonderful you know, high level craftsmanship,
Speaker 1: but they're just not in a place where they're going
Speaker 1: to be able to understand. It's just gonna be essentially
Speaker 1: over their head and therefore, like the it's going to
Speaker 1: be a failure of the art in a way. You
Speaker 1: may have created something wonderful and thought provoking, but if
Speaker 1: it doesn't connect with people, then does it Does it work?
Speaker 1: When he says noise, I immediately think of the image
Speaker 1: of a television and with white noise on it, right,
Speaker 1: so the snow. So that for some people that's what
Speaker 1: it's like looking at modern art is just like staring
Speaker 1: at the screen while while it's playing, you know, the
Speaker 1: staticky snow. But rix Say basically argues that because brains
Speaker 1: and AI are using completely different processes that he doesn't
Speaker 1: even know that you can call what they're doing creativity,
Speaker 1: right because he's defining it as being pretty specific to
Speaker 1: human beings. Uh. And in that human creativity is seen
Speaker 1: as simple problem solving by generating a lot of possibilities
Speaker 1: and then selecting from those possibilities and that's this is
Speaker 1: how we evolved as human beings, right, So we went
Speaker 1: from using stone tools to access to eventually Neanderthal's using
Speaker 1: instruments and actually making cave art. You know, like that
Speaker 1: process of evolution through our our physical evolution also evolved
Speaker 1: our creativity. And he's wondering, like if that topic selection,
Speaker 1: if that type problem solving is even possible for computers,
Speaker 1: but where it really skyrockets. And this is what I
Speaker 1: think is most fascinating about creativity. Here is when you
Speaker 1: start to imagine things that don't really exist. And possibly
Speaker 1: he was saying that this kind of creativity is due
Speaker 1: to the fact that we haven't evolved prefrontal cortex. And
Speaker 1: then the video you get to see, like he shows
Speaker 1: you different um images of various hominids and their skull
Speaker 1: shapes and how they evolved over time, and then creativity
Speaker 1: evolved with them. And then you see examples where there's
Speaker 1: cave art with a with like say, human with a
Speaker 1: beast's head. This is something that doesn't actually exist but
Speaker 1: is a uh, you know, arguably at an example of
Speaker 1: early creativity creating these unreal things that then have various
Speaker 1: meanings and an effect on the viewer and then they like,
Speaker 1: they get to this point in their conversation where they
Speaker 1: start talking about where the AI quote unquote fails at creativity.
Speaker 1: And that was interesting to me too, because they seem
Speaker 1: to be talking about how the machines were failing, but
Speaker 1: not how humans could necessarily fail. Yeah, yeah, they're they
Speaker 1: were talking about how essentially in all of this, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have this machine essentially brainstorming, but there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a person that comes along, and the person is is
Speaker 1: then selecting and judging the ideas in the In the
Speaker 1: case of Varcheny, he's doing a lot of culinary computation.
Speaker 1: So humans are gonna cook the food based on the
Speaker 1: recipe that the computer has come up with, and then
Speaker 1: they're going to taste it. And in some cases it's
Speaker 1: gonna be like, Oh, that's a novel combination that actually works.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think it would. In other cases you would
Speaker 1: say they would say, all right, we'll slow down their
Speaker 1: machine overlords, because this is not really all that tasty. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get into this idea where there are are failures. Uh,
Speaker 1: But failures and mistakes are of course an important part
Speaker 1: of the creative process as well. For humans. Right. This
Speaker 1: is where like I stepped back and I was thinking
Speaker 1: about my creative process because I was like, look, I
Speaker 1: know that I spend a good amount of time quote
Speaker 1: unquote failing on every project that I work on. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just part of being creative is like doing a
Speaker 1: thing and then realizing that's not what it is, crossing
Speaker 1: it out, moving onto the next thing. You know. It's
Speaker 1: basically like what they were talking about before, where you're
Speaker 1: generating all these possibilities and then you're selecting from them.
Speaker 1: But you have to generate some possibilities that you're not
Speaker 1: going to use, that you're going to see as failures
Speaker 1: before you can eventually get to the thing that you
Speaker 1: see as a success. Right. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: anybody out there who has has engaged in a creative process,
Speaker 1: you've come up with some They can't all be singers,
Speaker 1: as they say, You're gonna come up with some duds,
Speaker 1: and for a while, you might think that dud is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing because maybe it is really novel, you know,
Speaker 1: or maybe it is really high quality, but the balance
Speaker 1: is is perhaps not there. Yeah, Now there's a there's
Speaker 1: also the notion of intent in all of this feelings,
Speaker 1: the later of which is is you know, obviously currently
Speaker 1: uh uh not present in artificial intelligence and machine learning,
Speaker 1: but perhaps you're we're just talking about two different sorts
Speaker 1: of flight. To come back to the bird airplane scenario.
Speaker 1: And indeed, moderator John Shaffer points brought up the point
Speaker 1: of apophenia. So this is a this is this is interesting.
Speaker 1: This is a concept coined by German scientists Class Conrad
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty eight, and it's the opposite of an epiphany,
Speaker 1: and epiphany being you know, the you know, a true
Speaker 1: intuition of the world's interconnectedness. And in statistics, apophenia is
Speaker 1: essentially a type one error or false positive, where you
Speaker 1: think something's connected and it's not. Uh In. In psychology,
Speaker 1: according to Conrad, it's the stuff of schizophrenia, right, And
Speaker 1: that's where it's primarily being discussed in present day as
Speaker 1: like a psychological problem. It's when unrelated details seem to
Speaker 1: be saturated with connections and meaning, but they're those are false.
Speaker 1: They ultimately lead to nowhere. Right. And I've absolutely had
Speaker 1: this experience with writing before I'm like, oh, I'm totally
Speaker 1: on the right path, and then like I look back
Speaker 1: at it a week later and like that was garbage,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And in the like the schizophrenia case, uh,
Speaker 1: this would be like if you see the same person
Speaker 1: on the subway twice and you're convinced that if someone
Speaker 1: following making a connection that isn't there, and it might
Speaker 1: it might take on you know, a pathological um uh energy.
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me here, though, is that I think
Speaker 1: this type one error definition of it is sort of
Speaker 1: connected to the idea of creativity back to so it's
Speaker 1: it's defined as believing something is real when it isn't. Okay,
Speaker 1: that could be said to be part of the creative
Speaker 1: process when you're imagining something that isn't real, at least
Speaker 1: not yet, right either, Like like if you're writing a
Speaker 1: fantasy story and it's like, Okay, my main character has
Speaker 1: wings in the head of a lion and carries a
Speaker 1: flaming sword, right, like, like that doesn't exist, it probably
Speaker 1: won't ever exist. But that doesn't mean necessarily that it's
Speaker 1: not create native, right, But in this sense, it's the
Speaker 1: actual belief that it's real, right Like that if you
Speaker 1: are like, so, there's this angel with a lion's head
Speaker 1: that's following me, around everywhere the flaming sword. Then I
Speaker 1: can see how that would be schizophrenia. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: in real life and in statistics this is a problem.
Speaker 1: But but in again creativity, uh as John Shaffer points out,
Speaker 1: like our brain engages with it. Our brain uses apithania
Speaker 1: essentially to forward connections where there where there isn't one,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that is where we end up,
Speaker 1: you know, creating something unique. You know, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the whole why does the human have have a lion
Speaker 1: for a head and a flaming sword? You feel in
Speaker 1: the details and you can reach the point where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: well now it makes sense I have I have sown
Speaker 1: these two things together and now I have this complete form. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so when you make those associations in specific ways
Speaker 1: with different media, right, So, like I'm thinking here of
Speaker 1: a bum art, because you listen to the music, that's
Speaker 1: the artifact that the album is ultimately four, But then
Speaker 1: there's album art that's created kind of as part of
Speaker 1: the creative package, but also as marketing and ultimately like
Speaker 1: it gives you, there's connections between those two things, like
Speaker 1: when you buy them. It's interesting to me since I
Speaker 1: moved away from buying physical records and I mainly just
Speaker 1: get digital music. Now I realized that I had so
Speaker 1: many emotional connections with music purely because of the artwork
Speaker 1: that it came with, because of the packaging that it
Speaker 1: came with, and I wasn't simply just judging the music
Speaker 1: on its own merits outside of any kind of visual thing. Well,
Speaker 1: so here's a quick question on this, this idea of
Speaker 1: of albums in their album art. What's an example in
Speaker 1: your opinion where the album art and the music like
Speaker 1: perfectly matched. Oh. You know, it's funny, as I was
Speaker 1: actually listening to this record this morning, thinking of you, uh, Tools,
Speaker 1: is it undertow? Yeah, that like weird sculpture that's on
Speaker 1: the cover of that. And then okay, surrounding that album
Speaker 1: coming out, there were like at least three videos that
Speaker 1: used that similar kind of like gothic claymation style. Right,
Speaker 1: None of those things were the music themselves, But when
Speaker 1: I hear that music, now, for whatever reason in my head,
Speaker 1: are these like swirling clay sculpture forms. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's a great example. My example would have been Tools
Speaker 1: on Automa. Actually, they're certainly a band that has always
Speaker 1: put a lot of thought into how their art and
Speaker 1: music coming together. Now that being said, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of albums out there where the art and the music
Speaker 1: seemed to be on separate planets, and you did a
Speaker 1: fascinating experiment for this episode. I'm thrilled about this, and
Speaker 1: I can't wait for you to tell the audience. Because
Speaker 1: it's interactive, they can go and listen and look at
Speaker 1: this album art as well. That's right. If you think
Speaker 1: back to our episode on Ntrarch, Gieger, we mentioned how
Speaker 1: he was generally cool with just about anybody using his
Speaker 1: art for their album, provided they went through official channels.
Speaker 1: You know, it was, you know, on the level. So
Speaker 1: there are a number of different albums out there that
Speaker 1: have Geeger covers and the music doesn't always match up
Speaker 1: with Or, I would argue, rarely matches up with the
Speaker 1: the aesthetic energy that he possessed. Yeah, with Geeger, like,
Speaker 1: I assume that it's going to be something that's kind
Speaker 1: of kind of industrial or metallic in someone, right. So
Speaker 1: what I did is I went on Spotify. I made
Speaker 1: a playlist with like one song from every album I
Speaker 1: could find on Spotify that had a Geeger cover, like
Speaker 1: like or Or in one case came out at at
Speaker 1: a at a certain point with geeger Art promoting it.
Speaker 1: So I then listened to each example and I tried
Speaker 1: to decide, all right, is this something where the album
Speaker 1: art makes sense for me? Does it do? Is there
Speaker 1: a an actual connection in my mind between Giger and
Speaker 1: this artist? Is they're totally not? And can I detect
Speaker 1: any moments where I feel apophania kicking in and this
Speaker 1: creative process in my brain bringing the two together, finding
Speaker 1: and forging the connections. So that's what I did, and
Speaker 1: you can do this too. I'm gonna have the link
Speaker 1: for this Spotify playlist on the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot Com. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I started listening to these. I listened to Emerson Lake
Speaker 1: and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery, which, uh, we're talking about
Speaker 1: this before. I don't know a lot about them, but
Speaker 1: I just kind of assume it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: like a Prague post hippie band. It's prog rock, for sure,
Speaker 1: it's it's many people love them. I think Joe's a
Speaker 1: big fan of it. Loves the Tarkus cover for sure.
Speaker 1: He talks about that a lot. Yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 1: a bit too jazzy from my personal taste. And so
Speaker 1: this was an example where I'm like, yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: not I'm not not feeling this Geeger, Emerson Lake and
Speaker 1: Palmber connection. The same thing with Debbie Harry's uh Cuckoo album.
Speaker 1: I'm straining to make that connection. The same with Steve
Speaker 1: Simons Electric Playboys, and with the Dead Kennedy's album as well.
Speaker 1: And I think on the Dead Kennedy's one, because that
Speaker 1: was like so hotly contested with the pr MC, it
Speaker 1: was only in the interior they have like a different
Speaker 1: cover that's like I think like Shriner's and like little
Speaker 1: roller Cars or something. Yeah, And then I think on
Speaker 1: the inside is that notorious controversial thing the landscape with
Speaker 1: a lot of yeah. Yeah. So those are so those
Speaker 1: are examples where I'm all, right, no connection at all.
Speaker 1: I don't get this, the connection between the art and
Speaker 1: the music. But then there's stuff on the other hands
Speaker 1: into the spectrum. So Celtic Frost for example, Uh, that's
Speaker 1: some some early death metal very much feels uh like
Speaker 1: a Geeger soundscape. Same thing with the Danzig three. I
Speaker 1: you know, it's gloomy and dark and you know, as
Speaker 1: all the this focus on you know, weird ideas, it works,
Speaker 1: all right. I totally but totally buy these album covers.
Speaker 1: But the one area, the one example where I felt
Speaker 1: things coming together and I had to like kind of struggling,
Speaker 1: but also I could I could feel the connection taking
Speaker 1: place was with a group called Magma. So they had
Speaker 1: this album called Attack A T T A h K.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of them until today, and it's and
Speaker 1: it has like Geeger. It's one of these where Gieger
Speaker 1: made the album art with the the name of the bands.
Speaker 1: It was like a commission. It looks kind of like
Speaker 1: his Atomic Babies very much. So yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: there's some clothes, some safety pins in there as well, so,
Speaker 1: you know, very much a Geeger piece with Geegers a
Speaker 1: signature symbolism and uh. And at first time like I'm
Speaker 1: not really feeling this connection, but then I started reading
Speaker 1: about the band French prog Rock. Uh. Their album is
Speaker 1: again very weird. The drum the drummer and founder Christian
Speaker 1: vander He composed the lyrics and a constructed language called Kobayan,
Speaker 1: and the whole project came together over an ecological, spiritual
Speaker 1: vision for humanity's future. And so I read about that
Speaker 1: and I listened to it a bit more, and I
Speaker 1: have to say, yeah, I was beginning to feel the
Speaker 1: connection between the track No No and Gieger's art. So
Speaker 1: this makes me think of, so you and I are
Speaker 1: old enough that we're seeing this resurgence with vinyl, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, that's stuff that we used to listen
Speaker 1: on and then it went away, and now it's coming back,
Speaker 1: and it in a way, it's novel and high quality,
Speaker 1: right and and uh, but the vinyl resurgence seems to
Speaker 1: me to be inherently connected to this apophenia into this
Speaker 1: like creativity that's going on in the consumer's head. Right.
Speaker 1: And uh, my friend Charlie actually talks about this because
Speaker 1: he's a big vinyl fan. He refers to like having
Speaker 1: the artifact as the material oomph of a thing. And
Speaker 1: I I just I stopped acting records because I was like,
Speaker 1: I have too much physical space. I can't carry these
Speaker 1: around with me anymore for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: and moved almost entirely to digital. But so many of
Speaker 1: my friends are really into this new resurgence of vinyl,
Speaker 1: and I understand it, right, because like if you're sitting
Speaker 1: there between like what you just said about Magma, you
Speaker 1: look at this record art and then like maybe you
Speaker 1: look the liner notes while the album's playing, and then
Speaker 1: maybe you go on Wikipedia or something and you read
Speaker 1: up on them. It creates this like a series of
Speaker 1: connections that may or may not exist but add something
Speaker 1: to the music. Yeah. So with to bring it back
Speaker 1: to machine learning and creativity, to what extent is it
Speaker 1: a case of machines throwing together combinations? Still something begins
Speaker 1: to catch till you have this Magma moment, and then
Speaker 1: the randomness touches on possible synchronicity, and then just as
Speaker 1: our brains try to make sense of it, we engage
Speaker 1: in the creative process of refining the machine made connections.
Speaker 1: So I'll just say this before we take a break,
Speaker 1: which is that whatever the first album is that's created
Speaker 1: entirely by AI, it should have an HR cover. That's true.
Speaker 1: And if it's already out there, the first d A A
Speaker 1: I album, it needs a new cover by g As
Speaker 1: we talked about in the hr Giger episode, that house
Speaker 1: in Switzerland is just full of unused arts. Yeah, contact them,
Speaker 1: commission knock on something and get the rights to it. So, okay,
Speaker 1: let's take a break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk more about the effects of the actual
Speaker 1: technology on the act of creativity. Alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: in all of this, we're talking about machine learning and
Speaker 1: robotic arms that are drawing, uh, computer programs that are
Speaker 1: taking the various you know, hierarchies of of of values
Speaker 1: within a particular discipline and then using those to create
Speaker 1: quote unquote art or fiction or you know, or or
Speaker 1: or a recipe. In all of these cases, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's essential to point out that the technology is working
Speaker 1: as a tool. And obviously, creativity and tools have always
Speaker 1: co evolved. So think of any great work of human art,
Speaker 1: and you have to contemplate the tools and the technology
Speaker 1: is required to create it. The physical tools for carving
Speaker 1: rock or would working and firing pottery, the chemical technologies
Speaker 1: of paints, varnishes, and laquers. The evolution of musical instruments,
Speaker 1: electrical musical instruments and recording and producing technology, writing technologies
Speaker 1: from clay tablets two pens to the printing press, the typewriter,
Speaker 1: word processors, and beyond. Yeah, and so in this conversation,
Speaker 1: the panelists are essentially arguing that AI. Some of them
Speaker 1: are arguing that the AI would just be a tool
Speaker 1: for humans to use creatively. It's not that the AI
Speaker 1: itself would be creative, but that we would be using
Speaker 1: it in the same way we use a guitar or
Speaker 1: a pen or something like that. Yeah, And and that
Speaker 1: ultimately it's not going to be any more destructive than
Speaker 1: you know, the effects of the synthesizer or any of
Speaker 1: any of these various electronic musical technologies that obviously did
Speaker 1: not destroy traditional music or or or caused judgment day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or caused judgment day. That they didn't destroy the the
Speaker 1: artistic traditions that came before. They took the existing traditions
Speaker 1: in new directions, sometimes surprising new directions. They bring up
Speaker 1: the example of the drum machine, where when it came out,
Speaker 1: you know it, there were people who were figuring out
Speaker 1: ways to use it where you're creating sounds that did
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't match, They weren't perfectly replicating real
Speaker 1: world drumming, but they were able to to use them
Speaker 1: in novel ways that that brought about some some new
Speaker 1: sounds and hip hop and electronic music. But then one
Speaker 1: of the panelists is the guy from Google and forgetting
Speaker 1: his name right now, but he likened AI to a garden,
Speaker 1: and he said it's where you're growing things, but you're
Speaker 1: growing them with intentionality, and that computer systems themselves are
Speaker 1: not in a state where they can reflect upon that intentionality. Yet,
Speaker 1: So does this count as create activity when they're doing
Speaker 1: it without intentionality? And it really depends on what you're
Speaker 1: focusing on here. Some of them were focusing on the
Speaker 1: process of creativity and others were focusing on the artifacts
Speaker 1: of creativity. Right. So a computer program can certainly currently
Speaker 1: create an artifact, right, whether it's a recipe, a song,
Speaker 1: or a drawing, right, as we saw examples of all
Speaker 1: three in this panel. Um, but it's not necessarily engaged
Speaker 1: in the process. And so that seems to be where
Speaker 1: they're diverging, especially because for the latter, intentionality may not
Speaker 1: actually be necessary. You can make artifacts without having any
Speaker 1: intention right. And to your point on the process, Chung
Speaker 1: points out that the process is vital to what she does,
Speaker 1: like it's really more important than the finished artifact exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, the painting is one thing, but it's it's
Speaker 1: that that video as well of her interacting with this
Speaker 1: robotic arm that is that is essentially jamming with her. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think this is really interesting because it forces us
Speaker 1: to systematize our own creativity. And ironically, you know, we
Speaker 1: as human beings like to think that our own internal system,
Speaker 1: especially when we're being creative, is not computational, right, but
Speaker 1: maybe it is more than we know. Well. This is
Speaker 1: always one of those areas where you don't want to
Speaker 1: fall into the trap of thinking entirely of human cognition
Speaker 1: in terms of a computer. Um, even though technology is
Speaker 1: always a a handy way to try and uh and
Speaker 1: see our own cognitive processes. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you don't want to You can't dismiss the fact that
Speaker 1: there are there are aspects of our cognition that they
Speaker 1: are very much in line with the functioning of a computer. Right.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing as the bird is not an airplane, right,
Speaker 1: But at the same time they are, they both learned,
Speaker 1: they both carry out the same process. Yeah. Um. I
Speaker 1: think though, like the tool building thing, is where it
Speaker 1: really gets interesting to me and determining whether or not
Speaker 1: computers are creative because for creative purposes, when you actually
Speaker 1: go out and build old the new tool. For me,
Speaker 1: that's a sign that a creator has actually like graduated
Speaker 1: to this other level of making, right. I think I
Speaker 1: referred to it as meta creativity earlier. They're somehow not
Speaker 1: satisfied with the available tools that are there, and they
Speaker 1: need to experiment, and in terms of that novelty quality divide,
Speaker 1: this isn't always successful obviously, right, And it's especially fascinating
Speaker 1: when a creator balances the novelty of that experiment with
Speaker 1: actual aesthetics and creates like a new tool that other
Speaker 1: people end up going on to use. You know, we
Speaker 1: were talking about Burrows, William Burrows and Naked Lunch here.
Speaker 1: I think the cutoup machine is an example where the
Speaker 1: it is a novel approach to take essentially like taking
Speaker 1: these these these paragraphs and phrases and they're literally cut
Speaker 1: up and then may combined. And yet when I've when
Speaker 1: I've read cut up literature, it's noise. It's mostly noise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then sometimes I like it, But most of the
Speaker 1: time I it doesn't quite connect from me. And when
Speaker 1: I've tried to do it myself, I've really not not
Speaker 1: liked it. So I experimented with it a while ago
Speaker 1: and what I ended up doing was rather than just
Speaker 1: like doing cut up method, I guess we should explain
Speaker 1: what cut up is. So you write something with intentionality
Speaker 1: and then you cut out all the words up into
Speaker 1: separate little pieces of paper. At least is how Burrows
Speaker 1: did it. I think there are programs that will do
Speaker 1: it for you know, UM, and you literally randomly paced
Speaker 1: them together so they form just ungrammatical, oddly formed sentences,
Speaker 1: and try to see what kind of apothenic connections are
Speaker 1: formed by these words combined the way they are. UM.
Speaker 1: The way I was doing it was I would do
Speaker 1: that and then I would look to see where there
Speaker 1: were interesting connections, and then I would pull those out
Speaker 1: and put them in my writing rather than actually use
Speaker 1: cut up method to write anything. Well. And that that
Speaker 1: comes back around to what what the panels we're talking
Speaker 1: about here? The idea that that it is a tool,
Speaker 1: that that there's still going to be this this human
Speaker 1: at the center of it that's walking in this garden
Speaker 1: of robotic creativity, of machine creativity and saying that's a
Speaker 1: good carrot. I'm going to pick that one. That carrot
Speaker 1: looks like crap. We're gonna leave that that carrot was
Speaker 1: never meant to be. So this whole thing leads me
Speaker 1: to ask a question that I don't think they addressed,
Speaker 1: which is if tool use and making tools is an
Speaker 1: essential part of creativity, right, Like somebody had to invent
Speaker 1: the right kind of crow quill pen to illustrate with,
Speaker 1: or somebody invented a particular style of guitar with pickups
Speaker 1: in the six strings and the exact kind of materials
Speaker 1: that are used in the body and the neck right,
Speaker 1: or narrative style, or even stoves right, particular kinds of
Speaker 1: stoves for cooking, So all of those things are actually
Speaker 1: part of creativity. Our computers then capable of creating their
Speaker 1: own tools for the sake of experimenting and being novel.
Speaker 1: And I think the answer to this would be that
Speaker 1: we would say, well, that's how they write algorithms, right,
Speaker 1: The algorithms are their tools. But what about actual artifacts
Speaker 1: that they're using to make other artifacts? Huh? Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't recall any examples of that, whether within this
Speaker 1: discussion or or outside of it. Um that seems to
Speaker 1: me like it might be a good place to draw
Speaker 1: a line of like when AI starts being creative at
Speaker 1: least from my perspective. But then again, I mean I
Speaker 1: think of of great creative minds, and so many of
Speaker 1: them your prefab tools. Yeah, and they're working within the
Speaker 1: confines of their genre. But between you know, within say,
Speaker 1: literary norms in many cases, well in many cases, of course,
Speaker 1: you see someone sort of mastering the norms and then
Speaker 1: figuring out what new spins to put on it. But
Speaker 1: they're not really I would I would ask are they
Speaker 1: actually creating any new tools though, or are they just
Speaker 1: using the existing tools in slightly different ways, breaking the rules? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's interesting, though. I wish we
Speaker 1: could to ask those panelists this question. Like Corn McCarthy
Speaker 1: used as a typewriter. I think he uses like an
Speaker 1: old typewriter to knock out his his fiction, but he
Speaker 1: did not create his own. He didn't build his typewriter, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bowl skulls and children's skulls. This is kind
Speaker 1: of what I'm getting at, Yeah, exactly, Like, but but
Speaker 1: you could argue maybe that Cormac McCarthy had created a
Speaker 1: certain kind of prose style, right that is unique to him.
Speaker 1: Um or and I don't I haven't read enough McCarthy.
Speaker 1: So I might be totally off here, but like maybe
Speaker 1: he's like fiddled with narrative rules in such a way
Speaker 1: that it's novel true. Yeah, I mean you can also
Speaker 1: go back to Gieger when we've talked about how he
Speaker 1: was using the airbrush. He did not invente brush, but
Speaker 1: he was using the airbrush in ways that well. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to speak to method too much
Speaker 1: because I don't really know much about the methodology of
Speaker 1: airbrush art, but he was doing things with it that
Speaker 1: no one else had done. From what I could tell
Speaker 1: from when we did that hr Geiger episode, he was
Speaker 1: using ink and paint that hadn't been used in an
Speaker 1: airbrush for Yeah, So I think that might be part
Speaker 1: of that. Would that would yeah, I think that would
Speaker 1: support the idea of using a new tool. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're changing the tool, you are creating a new tool.
Speaker 1: That's That's something they touched on in the in the
Speaker 1: panel discussion of the World Science Festivals that one of
Speaker 1: the things about human tools is that they have evolved
Speaker 1: and we have evolved with them. Our brain, our culture,
Speaker 1: our language, this is all been part of the same
Speaker 1: journey out of out of the Stone Age out of
Speaker 1: the pre Stone Age. As we as we we adapt
Speaker 1: these tools, we figure out new ways to communicate the
Speaker 1: construction of these tools and then create increasingly complex um
Speaker 1: bits of pieces of art, technologies, etcetera with those tools. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then getting back to limits, right, which is something
Speaker 1: I brought up really before even we out into these panels,
Speaker 1: is that, Okay, a I can use the tools, and
Speaker 1: it can learn the composition traits of art, and it
Speaker 1: can learn those rules. What we're questioning is whether or
Speaker 1: not it can learn how to break those rules. But uh,
Speaker 1: when they're using a tool, they have to kind of
Speaker 1: figure out the same constraints on the system that humans do.
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering if these patterns are based on
Speaker 1: quote unquote how the world works as we humans see it,
Speaker 1: then that's human culture, and the we're just teaching the
Speaker 1: computers the sort of like mathematics of human culture and
Speaker 1: then having them replicate that rather than the machines looking
Speaker 1: at the world and kind of coming up with their
Speaker 1: own cultural interpretation of it. Maybe I'm leaning more towards Ulrica,
Speaker 1: say than I thought I would. All Right, well, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about what it means for the future and uh,
Speaker 1: and also some more compare between the creative process and
Speaker 1: machine learning and airplanes. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: you were really taken with Chung as I was. I
Speaker 1: think like she she just stood up. I mean, everybody
Speaker 1: on the panel was interesting, but Chung just was really
Speaker 1: fascinating the way she talked about her process and then
Speaker 1: when you watched her actual process. Yeah. The second she
Speaker 1: said that bit about like the narrative of machines and
Speaker 1: humans cooperating, I totally agreed with because it lines up
Speaker 1: with a lot of what I've been thinking about with
Speaker 1: science fiction, is that we we continually see the dystopian
Speaker 1: vision of robot overlords and evil robots, evil androids, and
Speaker 1: I love all that stuff, don't get me wrong. But
Speaker 1: when I read in in Banks and his view of
Speaker 1: the culture, uh, this post scarcity, far future um utopian
Speaker 1: society living with computers live basically having this sort of
Speaker 1: hybrid cultural scenaria, you know, with super intelligent machines, Like
Speaker 1: it makes me think, what we should have more of that?
Speaker 1: We should have more of this This side of the
Speaker 1: argument for a post singularity world and and the and
Speaker 1: and not not to say that we shouldn't be concerned
Speaker 1: about the potential dire consequences. I mean, obviously we if
Speaker 1: to whatever extent it's practical, we should try to avoid
Speaker 1: terminator scenarios. But but there's this whole other side. There's
Speaker 1: this whole there's this view of the machine as a tool.
Speaker 1: This machine is a collaborative of process, and I think
Speaker 1: that's that's very important to keep in mind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I totally admire their intention, but I wonder if there
Speaker 1: is a point where it's really down to like sort
Speaker 1: of what our linguistic definitions are here. I think there
Speaker 1: might be a little bit of confusing collaboration for tool building.
Speaker 1: Is the machine actually collaborating with Chung or was she
Speaker 1: building a new tool that she could use to create
Speaker 1: new art with. Yeah, because you could argue that in
Speaker 1: the same way that a French horn, you you buzz
Speaker 1: your error into one end, and the technology of the
Speaker 1: horn allows a different sound to come out. So you
Speaker 1: could say that that's what she's doing here. She's essentially
Speaker 1: blowing into a horn, and we're appreciating the the duality
Speaker 1: of her organic sound and in the manufactured sound of
Speaker 1: the horn, right, It's like she's developed a new instrument
Speaker 1: and she's learning how to play it. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that's a valid reading what's going on as well
Speaker 1: now in all of this, uh. Jesse Ingle, the computer
Speaker 1: scientist musician. UH, he spoke a bit about the Google
Speaker 1: Magenta project that he's involved with, and he pointed out
Speaker 1: that with Magenta, there's always a human in the process
Speaker 1: because again the human as a tool. This is the
Speaker 1: gardener walking, you know, amid the the creative machines in
Speaker 1: the garden. But this isn't soil and green. It's not
Speaker 1: like Google is made of people. Right. But I found
Speaker 1: this particularly interesting because it closely mirrors the inner workings
Speaker 1: of military drones. So a few years back I spoke
Speaker 1: with this guy, Knowles Sharkley, as a professor of Artificial
Speaker 1: Intelligence and Robotics of the University of Sheffield and uh
Speaker 1: and and he he had some some interesting revelations about
Speaker 1: the necessary human components of u a v s of
Speaker 1: of unmanned aerial vehicles. He said, quote, these are all
Speaker 1: man in the loop systems, which means essentially there's someone, uh,
Speaker 1: someone controls the applications of lethal force. They're not exactly
Speaker 1: remote control. They're sort of a hybrid. They have a
Speaker 1: certain they have certain autonomous functions, meaning they can be
Speaker 1: programmed to react to their to their GPS, so they
Speaker 1: can go about on their own. They can navigate themselves,
Speaker 1: though a pilot will control their height and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. It's the first step towards full autonomy. The
Speaker 1: most recent US Air Force documents describe a swarm of planes.
Speaker 1: The term swarm is kind of a technical term in robotics,
Speaker 1: meaning a bunch of robots that interact with one another
Speaker 1: on a local basis. The man on the loop would
Speaker 1: be in an executive control of the swarm, So rather
Speaker 1: than having at least two pilots in charge of a
Speaker 1: predator drone in his example, you'll have one person in
Speaker 1: charge of a swarm of robots. So human technology can
Speaker 1: be used to kill people or create heart as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is interesting, especially in lieu of the other episode
Speaker 1: that we're working on right now, which is it's gonna
Speaker 1: come out after this one. But it's about violence in
Speaker 1: the capacity for human violence, and drones in general, I
Speaker 1: think are interesting in that respect because they allow us
Speaker 1: to create violence from a distance and there is sort
Speaker 1: of an apophenia. I don't know what the right application
Speaker 1: of apophenia is there, but there's something going on there
Speaker 1: with that right that allows that disconnection. Yeah, So in
Speaker 1: the case of the drones, it's you know, very much
Speaker 1: a person uh, you know, checking in and uh in
Speaker 1: fine tuning everything. And in the case of say Young's
Speaker 1: example of working with a with a with a machine
Speaker 1: collaborator a similar case. So it's it's like a feedback
Speaker 1: loot process. The machine creates something, the human ads their spin,
Speaker 1: and the machine adds a spin on that, and the
Speaker 1: human adds an additional spin and and weeds out what's
Speaker 1: not working and maybe add some flourishes that that tweak
Speaker 1: it for human consumption. And this is again what Jesse
Speaker 1: Engle compared to tending a garden, you know. And this
Speaker 1: also reminded me of of another conversation I had, and
Speaker 1: this was back in two thousand and eleven. I spoke
Speaker 1: with Atlanta area electronic musician Richard Divine uh, who was
Speaker 1: a really cool guy. I'll include the link to the
Speaker 1: full interview on the landing page for this episode, but
Speaker 1: he said there were at the time against eleven, he
Speaker 1: said there were more electronic music tools on the market
Speaker 1: that didn't exist when he was starting out, and it
Speaker 1: was at the point where anyone could really create something
Speaker 1: and put it out on SoundCloud. And he told me quote,
Speaker 1: there are so many people trying to emulate specific styles,
Speaker 1: so now you have hundreds and hundreds of people trying
Speaker 1: to sound a particular way. I find that there is
Speaker 1: less and less innovation in music, but more and more
Speaker 1: people creating it. And he also talked about the use
Speaker 1: of algorithmic music composition, UH, something that's been around for years.
Speaker 1: Brian Eno has engaged with it, aw Tecker, the famous
Speaker 1: I d M group, They've they've used it various to
Speaker 1: our artists. This is essentially where you you have you
Speaker 1: have a program ustually have an algorithm for creative output,
Speaker 1: and you tend it like the garden that is, and
Speaker 1: and see what it creates. But in those cases, right
Speaker 1: at least with Eno and Oddiker, they're creating the software themselves,
Speaker 1: right with a team of people. I believe, so yes,
Speaker 1: So I asked, I asked Divine about this, and he said,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because you're defining the rules and parameters
Speaker 1: of that environment, and then you can decide how that
Speaker 1: environment behave. But then he he closed with the following
Speaker 1: about the limits of your tools, and this is this
Speaker 1: is key because it gets into what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Imposing limits, he said, I don't necessarily think that always
Speaker 1: helps creatively or makes people more creative. I think it
Speaker 1: sometimes makes people lazy. When I have too many resources
Speaker 1: at my fingertips, I have a tendency to get really
Speaker 1: lazy with the creativity. So for me, I try to
Speaker 1: limit myself with how many tools I use. I try
Speaker 1: to keep it to just a couple of pieces of
Speaker 1: equipment and learn those pieces of equipment really really well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this gets back to sort of what I was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier about like self imposed rotations. Yeah. Um, so
Speaker 1: this is actually interesting to me because, as I brought
Speaker 1: up earlier, I did have a little foray in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's where I locked myself in my bedroom
Speaker 1: and made electronic music over a winter. Um, and the
Speaker 1: way I did it was with this this video game
Speaker 1: for PlayStation. This is this shows you how far back
Speaker 1: it's going. It's the original PlayStation It was called the
Speaker 1: MTV Music Generator. Have you ever heard of this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is branded MTV. Uh and Basically, it was like
Speaker 1: the the most basic way that you could create your
Speaker 1: own electronic music. I had like pre built in beats
Speaker 1: and pre built in like melodies and things like that,
Speaker 1: and you could add layers of effects and things like
Speaker 1: that on top of it. But what I thought was
Speaker 1: really cool was you could take c d s at
Speaker 1: the time, because the MP three's were just just getting
Speaker 1: off the ground, um, and you could put them in
Speaker 1: and you could rip segments off from your c d
Speaker 1: s and then insert those sound files into these compositions
Speaker 1: that you've created using mtvs just prefab generator. And so
Speaker 1: I wrote like five songs I think, and like put
Speaker 1: them all up online there. I don't know, maybe if
Speaker 1: the audience is interested, maybe I'll put them on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this or one or two of them.
Speaker 1: They're silly, I I wrote under the name Invisible Maniac.
Speaker 1: And this literally lasted for like three months and then
Speaker 1: nothing ever came of it. But the thing about it, though,
Speaker 1: was that that was all I did with the electronic music, right.
Speaker 1: I never went beyond my CD collection and the PlayStation
Speaker 1: in this video game that allowed me to do all
Speaker 1: these things. But uh, the very idea of doing something
Speaker 1: like Ottoker or uh Brian Eno going out and writing
Speaker 1: my own software, or going out and recording my own
Speaker 1: drumbeats or other sounds to work with. It was like
Speaker 1: way past the point of my creative interest with electronic music. Right.
Speaker 1: But I take something like writing or or comics the
Speaker 1: stuff that I work in now, and I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about the tools that are available
Speaker 1: in the ways I can use them to tell stories differently.
Speaker 1: I think this all comes back to the systematization of art. Right.
Speaker 1: So you're you're when you start getting to a point
Speaker 1: with the art form where you're you're so interested in
Speaker 1: it and you want to take it a step further
Speaker 1: that you start figuring out like, Okay, well how does
Speaker 1: the actual form work, how does it tick? And then
Speaker 1: how can I take that and apply it in new ways.
Speaker 1: That's that's something really interesting to me. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, like and I played in bands, I never
Speaker 1: built my own guitars. I never built my own pedals.
Speaker 1: I have friends who do that though, Like they have
Speaker 1: you know, little electronics backgrounds, and they build their own
Speaker 1: pedals and make music that nobody else has ever made before.
Speaker 1: And I feel like there's a distinction between us. They're
Speaker 1: like they feel it feels to me like they're more
Speaker 1: masters of their craft than I am. They go out
Speaker 1: and they build something new or likewise, uh for instance,
Speaker 1: like in graphic design, I have friends who are graphic designers.
Speaker 1: They'll go and write algorithms for Adobe software to help
Speaker 1: them make graphic design in ways that they haven't been
Speaker 1: able to before. What's interesting from what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here is that it seems like in music certainly, and
Speaker 1: then also in UH, in the use of Adobe, Photoshop
Speaker 1: and digital um digital art creation tools, like there many
Speaker 1: steps ahead of of the literary model. Right, so we
Speaker 1: can try to hype right analogy from earlier is exactly right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't exactly work the same way tool was now.
Speaker 1: Now granted, we have we're fabulous word processing options out there.
Speaker 1: We have we have spell check and grammar checks and all.
Speaker 1: You know, of course, the what Clippy popping up and
Speaker 1: giving us tips. But imagine if you know easily it
Speaker 1: easily imagine I can easily imagine reaching the point where
Speaker 1: Clippy pops up and says, hey, I see you're writing
Speaker 1: a short story in the style of Clark Ashton Smith.
Speaker 1: Would you like to tweak it in this direction, and
Speaker 1: I wonder, I wonder what it would be like to
Speaker 1: reach that point where you're essentially you're writing with this
Speaker 1: machine filter in place. And you know, certainly you can
Speaker 1: be a very purist about it and say like, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's cheating if you're you're writing through a machine
Speaker 1: and something else is coming out on the on the
Speaker 1: other side, that's that's not the authentic process of writing.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, how is it any different
Speaker 1: than buzzing into a horn and getting that song on
Speaker 1: the other end? You know, we don't say, ah, who
Speaker 1: is the great trumpeter dizny Llespie? Yeah, that sounds right,
Speaker 1: and nobody says, ah, if you heard the sound of
Speaker 1: him just buzzing his lips, it's awful. It's all that
Speaker 1: more And it was just it's clearly it's the technology.
Speaker 1: That's that's who's to just be Disney Galpsie's trumpet credited
Speaker 1: on the album. No, nobody's doing that, like you credit
Speaker 1: the lips buzzing into the into the machine. You know
Speaker 1: what's interesting though, is I think of like the media
Speaker 1: world that that we exist in today, where in you
Speaker 1: and I hear this all the time content is king
Speaker 1: and the idea that just like the the consumption levels
Speaker 1: for content are so high right now that like almost
Speaker 1: the human beings creating the content can't keep up right.
Speaker 1: And so there's all these like businesses that are trying
Speaker 1: to come up with a lot of like quick and
Speaker 1: easy ways to to get more content out there. And
Speaker 1: this seems to me like a way to do that
Speaker 1: that might not necessarily be aesthetically displeasing to the audience
Speaker 1: that's that's consuming it. And that's whether or not you're
Speaker 1: reading something in an RSS feed or you're listening to
Speaker 1: an MP three file or whatever you're consuming digitally. Uh,
Speaker 1: having machines that can create content for you, I can
Speaker 1: totally see in like less than twenty five years that
Speaker 1: being the thing. I don't think it will replace us necessarily,
Speaker 1: but it could absolutely be a way for what's the
Speaker 1: word click farms, for click farms to sort of create
Speaker 1: more stuff. I'll tell you. Another example that comes to
Speaker 1: mind is, uh, I enjoyed I enjoyed reading. For a
Speaker 1: brief time towards the end of his life. Hunter S.
Speaker 1: Thompson wrote for one of the ESPN websites, and he
Speaker 1: was comment sports stuff is interesting, yeah, and but in
Speaker 1: this one he just wrote about whatever. So he's often
Speaker 1: talking about politics and what have you. For someone who
Speaker 1: wanted Hunter S. Thompson to essentially come back from the
Speaker 1: grave and comment on today's political news, you could conceivably,
Speaker 1: I mean, or I can conceive of a future in
Speaker 1: which you have the the Hunter S. Thompson AI that
Speaker 1: and you just drop in the news feeds to it
Speaker 1: and then it creates commentary in the style of him,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's a human in the mix as well.
Speaker 1: Maybe not right, but I mean I can see people
Speaker 1: digging that even though they know that Hunter S. Thompson
Speaker 1: has been dead for a long time. What I mean
Speaker 1: what you just described, if that existed tomorrow, that would
Speaker 1: be the news of the week other than like you know,
Speaker 1: big current events and things that are going on. But
Speaker 1: like in terms of like media, everybody would be sharing
Speaker 1: it and everybody would be like, look what I plugged
Speaker 1: into Hunter S. Thompson bought and it came out with this,
Speaker 1: you know, remember that was the Twitter thing that was
Speaker 1: created that was like Jonathan Strickling would know this because
Speaker 1: I think they talked about it on tech stuff. There's
Speaker 1: like a Twitter bot that was created, and the idea
Speaker 1: was that it would learn how to tweet from reading
Speaker 1: other people's tweets, and like, within like a day or something,
Speaker 1: it eventually was just like swearing and saying like horrible,
Speaker 1: racist and like things like Like it was like super
Speaker 1: quick that it just devolved into this monster. Now along
Speaker 1: these lines, um, an example that came up in the
Speaker 1: talk is, uh this a Sony CSL research laboratory project
Speaker 1: where they use their AI flow machines system to create
Speaker 1: a new Beatles song. So essentially they just loaded in,
Speaker 1: you know, all the parameters of of the Beatles discography
Speaker 1: and then they created this song. It wrote this song
Speaker 1: Daddy's Car, and then they got humans to perform it,
Speaker 1: because you know, we're not at the point where that
Speaker 1: the machine can perfectly replicate recording that would sound like
Speaker 1: the Beatles, and this essentially sounds like a Beatles cover band.
Speaker 1: I listened to it, and it's very weird, like the
Speaker 1: lyrics are written by humans. That's another thing that's important
Speaker 1: to distinguish. But the machine itself decides, you know, what
Speaker 1: the composition is, and there is something just a little
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to like uncanny
Speaker 1: Valley in music, which I've never thought of before. When
Speaker 1: you guys talked about Uncanny Alley in that episode, did
Speaker 1: it come up in any other sense structure other than vision,
Speaker 1: I do not. I know it didn't come up in
Speaker 1: terms of music. So yeah, I think this is an
Speaker 1: interesting example because when I listened to it, I definitely
Speaker 1: feel that uncanny effect. But how much of that is
Speaker 1: me knowing beforehand that this is not a Beatles song? Right?
Speaker 1: So it was presented to me as hey, here's the
Speaker 1: lost Beatles song. Would I dig it? Would I be
Speaker 1: all in on it? And then the additional question is
Speaker 1: will we reach a point where audiences won't care? So,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned Tool earlier, I've I've had to wait
Speaker 1: for the last three albums to come out, and that's
Speaker 1: like a twenty something year span there. Uh, But there
Speaker 1: are new fans who come online and they're like, all
Speaker 1: the albums are there and they can start waiting on
Speaker 1: the next album with the rest office and if and
Speaker 1: if fake material comes out, we're not going to accept it.
Speaker 1: I mentioned I mentioned at Tacker earlier. I believe a
Speaker 1: tecker Is is an example where there have been fake
Speaker 1: leaks that have come out where someone says, here's the
Speaker 1: new Autacker and listen to an itch really some other
Speaker 1: album that somebody else created, and everyone just you know,
Speaker 1: craps on it. They're like, get this, I can see
Speaker 1: that being pretty easily not replicable, but like you could
Speaker 1: get faked out on that pretty easily given their music.
Speaker 1: Exactly can you imagine the a point in the future
Speaker 1: where the fakery, if you want to call it, or
Speaker 1: at least the AI the machine creativity involved is so
Speaker 1: advanced that they can come up with something that scratches
Speaker 1: your itch, that itch for say, another Tool album or
Speaker 1: another mos Art composition, whatever the uh the need is,
Speaker 1: and maybe on top of that, it even customizes it
Speaker 1: to your own particular taste within that group, your own
Speaker 1: real time emotional demands. Well, what this all boils down
Speaker 1: to that I think is really interesting and didn't come
Speaker 1: up in their conversation at all, is um Are you
Speaker 1: familiar with Walter Benjamin or Benjamin sometimes pronounced his nineteen
Speaker 1: essay Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? No,
Speaker 1: I don't, I am not. It's this really interesting take
Speaker 1: on what the difference is between art and copies of
Speaker 1: art and he throws out this term aura in it,
Speaker 1: where he essentially argues that mechanically reproduced art is missing
Speaker 1: this aesthetic uniqueness that the original has. Right, So, if
Speaker 1: you take the Mona Lisa and then you run it over,
Speaker 1: you get a like really high definition quality print of
Speaker 1: it that's not the Mona Lisa though, right, Like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the aesthetic uniqueness there. And so when you
Speaker 1: apply that here, I'm wondering, is the art of the
Speaker 1: computer authentic then? Like, so, for instance, they were talking
Speaker 1: about the recipes that were being created by the by
Speaker 1: the computer. If that comes out and it tastes great
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, this is really good, does it
Speaker 1: have that aesthetic uniqueness of somebody figuring it out or
Speaker 1: is it a mechanical reproduction? Huh? But this brings to
Speaker 1: mind an example that also ties into my trip to
Speaker 1: New York that I kept thinking about Arnold Bocklin's painting
Speaker 1: Isle of the Dead, in part because I've just seen
Speaker 1: Alien Covenant and they referenced the painting in the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a scene where it's like one of the castles
Speaker 1: of the Engineers and David and Walter standing out there
Speaker 1: having a conversation, and it's clearly inspired by this painting.
Speaker 1: The The Isle of the Dead coincidentally, is a painting
Speaker 1: the gieger Um did versions of and in his own style.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Well, that must be where they got
Speaker 1: the idea for it from. I would I would assume
Speaker 1: that's very like when you look at it and you've
Speaker 1: seen that movie, you can see the influence. Yea. But
Speaker 1: it's a it has it's a picture. It's an image
Speaker 1: with a lot of darkness in it, like literal darkness.
Speaker 1: And there are some fabulous prints out there of it.
Speaker 1: There's some fabulous digital versions of it online you go
Speaker 1: on Getty, etcetera. But seeing it, seeing an actual version
Speaker 1: of it at the met Or it was actually a
Speaker 1: little lackluster because there's this gleam on the black on
Speaker 1: the black paint and it's aged a bit. So it
Speaker 1: was one of these rare cases where seeing the original
Speaker 1: it felt unique in many in many cases like here's
Speaker 1: the thing itself. But on the other hand, it was
Speaker 1: less satisfying. Wow. So that's like a reverse of Walter
Speaker 1: Benjamine's uh Aura. It's like the aura itself was diminished somehow.
Speaker 1: And I should add that usually I feel the other
Speaker 1: way around. Usually if I see the an actual painting
Speaker 1: that I that I care about, like it's it's amazing
Speaker 1: to get in there close to it or close as
Speaker 1: you're allowed and uh and see the details, see the brushstrokes,
Speaker 1: see that like the physical paint. Another example would be
Speaker 1: like the difference between seeing a band live and listening
Speaker 1: to them on recording um. And this makes me think
Speaker 1: of synthesis and synthesizers because in this talk they brought
Speaker 1: up synthesizers as being like an early example kind of
Speaker 1: like the drum machine of this computer generated creativity and
Speaker 1: synthesis makes me think of blooms taxonomy of learning and
Speaker 1: within it, synthesis is one of the modes of learning
Speaker 1: that you're you're supposed to try to achieve, and it's
Speaker 1: basically one has to put together parts from diverse elements
Speaker 1: to form a whole. So the process of synthesis creates
Speaker 1: a unique form of ideas, communication, operations, relations, and sometimes art.
Speaker 1: So while machines are currently capable of being synthesizers right there,
Speaker 1: they have a combination of those elements, but the humans
Speaker 1: are the ones doing the synthesizing. The machines themselves aren't
Speaker 1: doing that, So that role still seems to be held
Speaker 1: by humans in this relationship between us and seems inherent
Speaker 1: to the creative process to me. And they sort of
Speaker 1: get into this a little bit when they start talking
Speaker 1: about ownership, because they brought up the idea that computational
Speaker 1: artifacts are actually not owned by anyone under current law.
Speaker 1: They're defined as public domain. So if a company can't
Speaker 1: patent what comes out of a computer that generates art,
Speaker 1: what's their incentive to fund further develop min of AI creativity.
Speaker 1: So actually, this goes back to what we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: right like if you were going to, uh, let's say,
Speaker 1: how stuff Works built an army AI robot that would
Speaker 1: write all our articles for us, and it was able
Speaker 1: to write like a hundred articles a day based on
Speaker 1: like whatever it saw coming up in the news. Technically
Speaker 1: how stuff Works wouldn't own those articles because they'd be
Speaker 1: in the public domain because they're created by computation. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this brings back them to mind the idea
Speaker 1: of having a human in the loop, And so I
Speaker 1: could see the case where you'd have to have a
Speaker 1: human in the loop just for for legal purposes, just
Speaker 1: so that it could be a definite owner because then
Speaker 1: that that that human can have it in their contract.
Speaker 1: Of course that anything they create, uh you know on
Speaker 1: the company clock is property of the company. That's pretty standard. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I assume the machines contributions to that. The
Speaker 1: machine would be more of a pure tool in that scenario,
Speaker 1: but a a self aware tool or if you will,
Speaker 1: is just going to be outside of the confines of
Speaker 1: existing law. Yeah, yeah, for now at least. So wow,
Speaker 1: we've had a pretty extended and a deep discussion about this.
Speaker 1: I knew that this was going to be interesting, but
Speaker 1: we really dove deep. And one of the things that I,
Speaker 1: you know, to close out watching the panel, they sort
Speaker 1: of said, well, why are we asking this now? Why
Speaker 1: are we asking these questions about machines and creativity? And
Speaker 1: they said, well, because this was actually Chung I think
Speaker 1: said this. She said, we're currently generating these huge amounts
Speaker 1: of data, right, like just think of like our information systems,
Speaker 1: just on the Internet in general, all the data that's
Speaker 1: being generated, and we're trying to wrap our heads around it.
Speaker 1: So we're using models that we're already familiar with. So
Speaker 1: in this case, the model of creativity right again, getting
Speaker 1: back to systematizing it, and so human culture is being
Speaker 1: applied on top of he chnology. Uh, and that that's
Speaker 1: what's interesting, I think, is like we've gotten to this
Speaker 1: point now where we're like, oh my god, there's so
Speaker 1: much information that even like we cannot process it and
Speaker 1: figure it out. We need to turn to these machines
Speaker 1: to try to help us do that, but we need
Speaker 1: to like layer our cultural understanding of the world on
Speaker 1: top of that. Yeah, So creativity is not it's not
Speaker 1: it goes beyond just merely using these machines to make
Speaker 1: our art, but using these machines to make sense of ourselves. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean I guess ultimately that's the point. Well that
Speaker 1: in like cat videos all right, Well, you know this
Speaker 1: is gonna be a great one to get some feedback
Speaker 1: on because I I know for a fact that we
Speaker 1: have creators out there who create their art while listening
Speaker 1: to episodes of stuff to blow your mind. So you
Speaker 1: guys and gals in particular probably have some insightful commentary
Speaker 1: on on the material discussed here today. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you about at There are
Speaker 1: a number of ways that you can get in touch
Speaker 1: with us. We're all over social media. If you want
Speaker 1: to write us about your creative experiments or your thoughts
Speaker 1: on computational creativity, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And has already mentioned we are a craft
Speaker 1: podcast and uh and we were. We require your support
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Speaker 1: for it and most of our episodes as well. All
Speaker 1: of our episodes have landing pages on our website, Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com, So we always recommend
Speaker 1: that you go check those out because they have like
Speaker 1: interesting links to other stuff that we've worked on that's related.
Speaker 1: But this one, as we've discussed in the episode, is
Speaker 1: going to have all kinds of cool stuff, including that
Speaker 1: playlist that Robert put together of all the Gager album
Speaker 1: cover songs. Uh so check that out for sure, and
Speaker 1: as always, you can get in touch with us directly
Speaker 1: by emailing us at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com