Will the Real Beethoven Please Stand Up?
AI images are starting to take over the internetWhereas the original painting offers a nuanced revelation of the person, the AI image looks like a malcontented version of Mel Gibson.
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Live Music is Making a Comeback, and So is Bob Dylan
People still want to experience music in person.This past summer, 110,000 people convened for a George Strait concert in College Station, TX, the biggest crowd ever recorded to hear live music. Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” has amassed over a billion dollars in revenue, with the pop star traveling the world to sold-out amphitheaters. Coldplay, another massive musical act, is gearing up for the release of their tenth studio album, Moon Music, set to drop on October 4th. They plan a world tour for the album and are also known to fill up stadiums far and wide. So, whatever plights the world of arts and culture might be facing, and given AI’s incursion into the creator economy, one thing remains evident: people still want to experience music in Read More ›
AI Increased the Market Cap of the Magnificent Seven by $10 Trillion. Will it last?
AI is here to stay, just not in these insanely high share pricesAre the benefits from generative AI really hundreds of times higher than those from Microsoft Office?
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Learning to Build and Create Offline as Well as On
Is the internet the only place to build and expand culture?How can we build beauty instead of glass blocks? Cathedrals instead of consumer malls? And how can we avoid simply rebuilding a modern rendition of Babel?
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A Weekend Watch: Paul Kingsnorth and Louise Perry
Who is technology serving?What do we lose when we’re never quiet with our own thoughts, always checking our phones, always listening to Spotify or a podcast in the background?
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Revisiting Neil Postman’s Laws of Technology
How can we judge technology realistically?Without guiding principles, technology can progress while our moral maturity stays the same or even backtracks.
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Our Tech Use Crosses the Line When We Trust It Too Much
Don't be like Michael Scott and let AI drive your car into a lakeI’ve never driven my car into a lake screaming “the machine knows!” like Michael Scott did but the temptation to use technology like this loom in everyday life.
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AI: The Future of Friendship?
Odd visions of dystopia keep popping up in real life in our current social moment.Odd visions of dystopia keep popping up in real life in our current social moment. An upcoming device simply called “friend” is now being advertised. Per the product description, the “friend” is a Bluetooth disk that hangs around a person’s neck and “listens” to the user. It then has the capacity to make conversation by “texting” you at random times of the day, like a human friend might do. The website includes a “frequently asked questions” portion, which is where you can discover what the product is and what it can do. Here’s a bizarre response to the question: “what does ‘always listening’ mean”: When connected via bluetooth, your friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We Read More ›
Musk Wants to Use AI to Understand the Universe. Will it Work?
Could AI ever aid our quest to fully understand the universe?Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk sat down this week for an extensive conversation ranging from technology, AI, politics, and even religion and questions of the metaphysical. These two prominent figures are active on Musk’s X, and frequently call out infringements on free speech and other authoritarian measures they see as a danger. In one interesting point in the interview, Musk described how he diverged in his views from his friend Larry Page on AI safety. Page evidently believes that we will “upload our minds to the computer,” to which Peterson said, “There’s not much difference between that and the death of humanity.” Musk nonetheless is the developer of his own AI system and believes that AI can aid humanity’s perennial Read More ›
Study: Writing by Hand is Good for the Brain. What Does that Say About ChatGPT?
Nothing can replace pen and paperIt might be time to get the pens and notebooks back out and shut off the keyboard for a while. Just pretend you’re back in the first grade and don’t have a minicomputer in your back pocket. Writing by hand can help stimulate the whole brain and stave off cognitive decline, according to a study by Van der Weel and Van der Meer (2024), as reported by Pamela B. Rutledge in Psychology Today. Using a more personal note, she writes, I’ve never been one to keep a journal, but I now wonder if the exclusive use of computers and the lack of handwriting practice is doing my brain a disservice by decreasing the activity of cortico-subcortical components of the writing Read More ›
We Shouldn’t Let AI Steal Art and Entertainment
This is an opportunity for artists and writers to create excellent work that champions the uniqueness of human creativityIt’s no secret that new forms of AI threaten the integrity of the arts and entertainment industry. Actors might be deep faked. Artists’ original work can be scraped by word prompts, and writers could be “replaced” by large language models that only seem to be getting more adept at copycatting human language. One of the reasons it’s tempting for Hollywood producers to use AI seems to go beyond simply cutting costs. It makes sense massive companies want to capitalize on a tool that will get them unpaid labor. But in a way, entertainment, including books and movies, have become apportioned to popular demand. Which means they tend to be more formulaic and geared towards marketability instead of genuine quality. I Read More ›
Robert Marks & Zoltan Istvan Debate AI and Transhumanism
Are we on the verge of an era of incalculable human progress because of the power of AI, or are we threatened with being made obsolete and perhaps extinguished in an age of intelligent machines? In this episode, Robert J. Marks and author Zoltan Istvan debate secular transhumanism and artificial intelligence (AI). Marks argues that AI can never be creative Read More ›
Are We Close to Peak AI Hype?
Outrageous statements are proliferating.Sanity might be about ready to return to the market. Just maybe, we have reached peak hype.
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“I’m Not There Yet”
Scott Galloway opens up about the writing processScott Galloway is one of the most successful writers on the planet, at least by monetary metrics. He’s also a remarkably talented presenter and appears consistently on top channels to talk about business, masculinity, finance, and relationships. In a new interview with David Perell, who founded the writing organization “Write of Passage,” Galloway said that he thinks he’s a “good writer” but not a “great” one yet. It might surprise us given that Galloway is around sixty and is a successful author, but he went on to explain how practice is key when reaching any type of mastery of a skill. Writing is no different. He described his recent encounter with a Stephen King novel, admiring the vividness of the Read More ›
Famous Actress Wonders About AI, TV Culture, and Humanity
AI isn't like the printing press, Rashida Jones lamentsWe no longer talk about mainstream entertainment swallowing art. Now, distraction is swallowing both entertainment and art.
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Coldplay, Pop Music, and AI Mimicry
Musicians are being pressured into the pop music maniaColdplay is my favorite band. Some make fun of me for this, but their discography, ranging from the raw immediacy of Rush of Blood to the Head (2002) to the synthetic coldness of Ghost Stories (2014) is too wide ranging, beautifully rendered, and personally resonant for me to dismiss. That said, something’s happened to the music industry that has even alt-rockers in its grip, including Coldplay. The super-band’s latest single, “feelslikeimfallinginlove,” is a far cry from their roots. While some bands maturate with age, Coldplay has simplified and infantilized; frontman Chris Martin was writing much more interesting, compelling lyrics at age twenty-five than forty-five. The new single is a simple pop song, youthful, exuberant, without much musical complexity or the Read More ›
Roger Scruton on AI and the Human Soul
Is something missing in the discussion on AI and human exceptionalism? Back in the 1980s, Roger Scruton thought soWill we start to regard each other as little more than complicated data centers if we lose the concept of the soul entirely?
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Kingsnorth: How to Stay Sane in the Deepfake World
A lesson for modern people from the desert monks of antiquityWe might have to get caught up in the online freneticism again at some point, but returning to physical and spiritual reality, is a good practice to cultivate.
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Marvin Minsky Asks: Can GPT4 Hack Itself?
Will AI of the future be able to count the number of objects in an image?Creativity and understanding, properly defined, lie beyond the capability of the computers of today and tomorrow.
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Writers Are Getting Fired for…Not Using ChatGPT?
AI detectors aren't totally accurate, and the cost is steep for the writing industryEven though writers wanted nothing to do with the chatbots, their work is still being flagged by detectors. And it’s literally costing them their jobs.
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