After two millions years it still makes evolutionary sense for working groups of creative people to cluster in real life around a piano or a drafting table or a monitor on a movie set. Software sends us to isolated laptops, with intermediation run through glass screens. Software can eat the soul of good work if the team isn’t careful, with participants fiddling with settings as much as they may be working on bringing new ideas to life.
Read MoreDELUGE
The number one thing we collectively did with our Promethean information powers was unhinge our jaws and try to swallow as much newly emerging social media as possible—voraciously, absent-mindedly, relentlessly. We became boa constrictors incapacitated by trying to swallow not simply a goat, but an elephant.
Read MoreOur AIs, Ourselves (An Essay by and for Humans)
What does it matter if I skip a single, socially lubricating word when I’m talking to a massive, barely competent LLM housed in the cloud? I might be saying words, but nobody’s ears are really listening to what I’m saying. If we’re being honest about this, who cares?, especially considering that I’m only speaking to a digital assistant. Read on, because I believe it means a lot, and I’ll explain why.
Read MorePLASTICS: What We Lose When Reality Isn't Important
So many things are shot on various kinds of virtual sets that actors and directors less frequently get to fully steep in a sense of place. That doesn’t mean modern creative teams can’t do good work; they clearly can. But over time, I think there’s something eroded in the foundations of culture every time a prop or a throne room gets inserted electronically by work done in a quiet computer lab isolated from the living, breathing crew.
Read MoreTHE RECURSIVE PROBLEM WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
I’m not opposed to modernity, or the soul of a new machine. I fully embrace the inevitable process where innovation forces new ways of working that are destined to replace older modes. My specific concern is that the embrace of AI’s siren promise for innovation seems uncaring about its implications while simultaneously acting as a transformational agent.
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