A.i The Tool
My Dad, 82 years old in a few days, has lately been taking AI classes and shown me the results thus far, some short selfie-videos basically.
I would describe it as a disorienting bend of reality. Someone you know very well and whom you instantly recognise with a personality thats completely alien.
This is all just fun and games, and whether its exciting or scary, either-way, it’s a genie that’s not going to be put back into the bottle.
At the same time, a politician we’re both a fan of, Senator Ralph Babet, has also begun using Ai to generate simple but effective animated imagery to support his regular posts on his parliamentary activity.
It’s very hard for even well-meaning politicians to make the mundane happenings of parliamentary life engaging to their audience. So on that basis he’s done it very well and props to him. Its a good blend of fun and serious. Or rather than the word fun, let’s say “engaging”.
Just as much as AI is destroying old forms and causing to doubt our previous reality, its allowing users to invent new forms and a new reality and the human brain is adapting.
My Dad and I had a brief chat about the concern that Ai is destroying literature, citing the example of the Polish wokestapo bitch of the new Berliner-bauhaus anti-human school who won a nobel prize several years ago and openly admits to using AI to write her works apparently.
But it’s important to remember that even a lot of the classic literature of the 19th century was padded with fluff.
A recent debate on substack discussed Pride and Prejudice and how boring large chunks of it supposedly are. I’ve never read it, but I suppose this is why it was updated by some snarky wit a few years ago to be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Personally I remember reading Moby Dick and encountering large tracts of the middle of the book just beinjg about the biology of whales, how a whaling vessel is constructed and blahblahblah. Pages and pages of pointless tedium. But the start and end of the book was good though.
It has been pointed out that in the 19th century, people were more limited in entertainment options than they are now. Especially when the weather was bad and you were stuck alone indoors. No TV, No Video Games, No Radio, No phones. Reading and writing was all you had, especially in the colder climates. And so thats what you did. The mind would wonder away deep in words.
As I’ve mentioned previously, in sunnier and warmer countries this makes less sense as you can go outside more and take advantage of the better climate to do other prctical activities. I suppose you can do it in the cold as well. It wouldn’t like be painting or plaster-sculpture, but it might be woodcarving or ice-sculpture or tapestry.
Anyway, embrace the possibilities.
