Bob Finlayson is the Futurist. Tanner Latham is the Executive Producer. They’re both storytellers, and with these conversations about Creativity and Culture, they share their ideas and what’s inspiring them. Read Episode 1: On Brainstorming & Collaboration, Episode 2: On Working Fast & Real-Time Collaboration, Episode 3: On Podcasting and the Future of Storytelling & Episode 4: (add ep 4 link)
BOB:
Hi Tanner! Okay, so what do Kim Kardashian and AI have in common?
TANNER:
I’m really reaching to make some very lame “dad joke” that plays off T.I., Common and Kanye...and it’s just not happening. Please put me out of my own misery.
BOB:
You might remember Kardashian began her rise to fame as a stylist for Paris Hilton. That was back in 2003. Today, Facebook, Amazon, Google and others are developing (and implementing) AI that can provide fashion recommendations. For example, Facebook’s Fashion++ can evaluate a picture of the outfit you’ve put together and make recommendations on how to improve your look. Basically it’s an AI stylist.
TANNER:
So if Kim had remained a stylist, she would’ve been fighting right now to keep her job?
BOB:
Well, not quite. But what’s fascinating about these efforts is watching AI move into areas we think of as creative. I mean, what’s more creative than fashion! The point being, it’s not difficult to imagine Artificial Intelligence -- or really Machine Learning algorithms -- taking on routinized tasks. Reviewing and processing insurance forms. Examining financial transactions for fraud. Reviewing case law to find precedents that can be used to strengthen legal filings. And so forth. But over the past few years, AI has moved into what is typically thought of as creative work. It’s both fascinating and a bit disconcerting to those of us who think of ourselves as creatives.
TANNER:
Oh, right. I remember a few years ago when the AP announced that it would be using “automated stories” to expand its coverage of Minor League Baseball. I suppose you could say that’s a positive because those stories probably wouldn’t have been written by a human staffer. AI is also writing certain business stories. According to the New York Times, Bloomberg uses AI for around a third of its stories. But it’s mostly summaries of quarterly earnings reports -- stuff reporters don’t like writing anyway.
BOB:
Exactly. That software has been around for a few years, and is getting better all the time. Even more interesting is that creators across a range of artforms are bringing AI tools into their own endeavors. Journalist and author Sigal Samuel wrote a story last August on Vox about how she was using the same AI tools news organizations employ to help her write her next novel. And the results were surprising. The program was really able to tune into the emotion behind the characters she was creating and write additional text in that same voice. Now, to be fair, Samuel says she doesn’t see just cutting and pasting the AI-written text into her manuscript; rather, she sees the tool as helping her extend her own creativity. Or as she says, the tool is useful as a “cognitive enhancement, a creative prosthesis.”
TANNER:
So, you’re saying we're at this sort of intersection of AI and Creativity, where creators are finding ways to use AI to enhance our creativity. I see that in my own work. Interviews constitute a large part of what I do, which means that transcribing is a CRUCIAL part of my business. I use an AI-based transcription platform. It’s not perfect (yet), so I supplement it with human transcribers to “clean up” what the platform produces. I easily gain twice as much time back. What I lose, though, is context and the ability to understand the tone of my interviewees. For example, in the midst of transcription, I often hear something in the playback that sparks a new idea OR, I’ll hear the interviewee hitch at something said, which I would have missed if I was just reading a printout.
BOB:
I like the way you phrased that, the intersection of AI and creativity. That’s precisely what’s happening. And it’s happening everywhere. In music, we see artists exploring how they can use AI to extend their creative process. Back in 2018, Dani Deahl wrote in the Verge about the future of music. She spoke with Taryn Southern, a pop artist who at the time was working with an AI music platform called Amper Music to create a new album I AM AI, the first of its kind. As Deahl notes, today, an entire industry has been built around AI services for musicians. Same with film. Last year, Clive Thompson wrote an article in Wired about a graduate student in computer science at Stanford who is developing an AI-based program that analyzes film footage and can put together an initial edit based upon parameters entered by the filmmaker. Basically it would eliminate some of the drudgery of finding the best shots in among hours of video or film.
TANNER:
So do you see this as a boon or bane for creatives?
BOB:
I’d put a lot of these innovations in the “plus” column. They help artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers and podcast producers be more creative or at least spend more time creating and less time on routinized tasks. Even the fashion tools are beneficial. I mean, how many people can afford a human stylist? Of course all innovations have both a light and a dark side. The same AI-news-writing tools that can write sports and business stories can also be used to write political news coverage, and in a time of highly polarized politics, the potential for abuse in that lane is very concerning.
TANNER:
But even for sports writing AI, isn’t it a short jump from AI writing about minor league baseball games to writing about the World Series? I suppose it’s a question of what are we willing to give up as an audience? Where is our bar, our standard? Will I miss not knowing how the grass smelled the morning of Game 7 if I ultimately just want the box scores? You could cut the entire sports beat, and just have an editor monitoring the AI-written stories. It’s all a bit depressing as a creative! I’m thinking in 5 to 10 years I could be totally obsolete...along with millions of other people.
BOB:
I wouldn’t get too worried -- yet. We’re probably many years away from AI programs that can create at a high level independently. But I think you’ve put your finger on the right questions: What are we willing to accept? Or, rather, what do we want? I mean you could argue that now is the time to take the opportunity to regulate AI. To put restrictions on what it can do. Personally, I don’t put much faith in governments regulating innovation. Just look at how well that’s worked -- or not worked -- for privacy. We’ve invited all these tools in our lives. We want Alexa and Siri and Cortana. We want Amazon to understand our buying pattern so it can recommend things we might like. Same with Netflix. We collectively decided we are willing to give up some privacy for personalized services. It’s just a question of how much, and how active a role we want to play in our own privacy. (How many people go in and adjust their Google privacy settings, for example, even with frequent reminders from Google?)
AI is happening the same way. Governments are way behind in terms of even understanding what companies and academic institutions are doing with AI, much less regulating them. So it gets back to what we want. When do we just want to be entertained -- even if that entertainment was created by a machine learning algorithm programmed by someone working for Steven Spielberg? And when do we want something written by a human being that is living in the world? What is the delimiter between those two things?
TANNER:
So the answer is, there is no answer?
BOB:
Yup. There is a line somewhere, and people are going to have to decide for themselves. It’s not something governments or regulators can decide for us. AI and ML technology will invade every profession. Even those we think of as creative. And one day, in my view, AI will be even better than humans. So when quality is no longer a determinative factor, we have to decide when we want something lovingly made by human hands.
TANNER:
And on that note, talk to you next time!