A Philosophy of Blank - Ep. 88 of Intentionally Blank

[@benolsen3904]

To all the Bens everywhere, remember, they couldn't have done it without us!

[@ThatCosmereChick]

You finally got recognition for your input and it only happened because of AI 😅

[@BlueWhite_Phoenix]

😂

[@swordofnight1275]

As a Ben I feel so seen

[@groofay]

I'm gonna have to let all my Ben friends know, even though I'm pretty sure none of them know this podcast exists.

[@BenHazel007]

I'm doing my part!

[@snowleopard064]

My school is currently using an AI checker, and I tested it out. I wrote an entirely new paragraph and it marked it as written by an AI. Meanwhile I input a chatgpt paragraph in the same topic and it considered it human

[@gordo6908]

he's gone rogue!

[@mattcat83]

TFW you discover that you may have been the AI all along.

[@Osyrous]

A pregistoric fossil like me finds this entire experience of yours quite terrifying. In the grand scheme of things I mean.

[@althechicken9597]

My hs English teacher is losing her shit bc of this I just know it.

[@Dialethian]

Image checkers get tricked by the addition of a few bright/dark spots, I reckon the use of certain words or phrases dramatically alter AI confidence.

[@pseudopod]

Interesting point on copyright, you used to not be able to copyright any photographs until photographers were able to argue that they added enough skill in the use of the camera. So we may in fact see something similar with AI generated art.

[@Connor_Crain]

Brandon’s reaction to the outro killed me 😂

[@davidmorales-dm7xm]

The AI took longer than a couple of seconds to come up with a Brandon's new story and we already are at the stage where we think "it's being boring". This powerful tool and we are already treating like a broken TV you have to hit on the side to make it work.

[@ArifRWinandar]

You know what they say, what makes a technology interesting is not what it can do, but what it can't do.

[@Colaman112]

I asked chatGPT for topics for the podcast, but specified who the hosts were and it pretty much gave a list of Brandon's lecture topics.

[@Volactic]

And what happened?

[@myrojyn]

"Something went wrong try reloading the conversation" -Introverts Mantra

[@Florkl]

Pottery making was mechanized before I was born but I still buy some of my cups from a local potter who handmakes them because I prefer it and, while I can’t afford to buy a full set of tableware custom made, I can get a favorite mug and teacup. I think there will always be some humans that will be skilled enough in their craft to outdo AI at making art for humans, but the pool will be much smaller and more competitive. If you make your living selling handpainted vistas or writings epic series, you’re probably fine. It’s the other 95% of artists who make/ supplement their living on stuff like DnD characters portrait commissions or Kindle Unlimited smut that will need to look into a backup plan for their career/income supplement.

[@annmaries9084]

One of the best discussions of the implications of AI tech I’ve yet seen/heard/read. 👍

[@fakjbf3129]

I really want to see Dan bring up the San Diego zoo thefts and try to spin that as a food heist next.

[@guillermorelobalopez7553]

Hey, that's illegal! Protected species are not food unless they're eaten by other protected species.

[@Aldric524]

@@guillermorelobalopez7553 Wow, I didn't know they can only be eaten by protected species! So does that mean we have to kill or jail plebian animals like brown bears if they eat a protected species?

[@guillermorelobalopez7553]

@@Aldric524 That'd be animal cruelty sir. Animals cannot commit crimes. But to take your question seriously, at least in my country, the environmental agency is responsible for the well being of protected species in natural reserves and must do reasonable efforts to prevent their deaths, including population control on their predators.

[@pRahvi0]

@@guillermorelobalopez7553 I have a feeling any food heist might be at least a bit illegal...

[@guillermorelobalopez7553]

@@pRahvi0 Ah, logic. My only weakness.

[@coreystedwell4762]

Something I always say while programming, "If you don't care about correctness, I can finish whatever you want in an instant." AI meets that bar so far!

[@travissteadman5435]

Never have I ever wished my name was Ben more than in this very moment.

[@metumortis6323]

"Does sawdust become food when mixed In bread?" Cinniman is literally wood.

[@g.e.causey]

To my understanding it's the inner part of the bark of certain types of trees, but that's not exactly the same thing as sawdust, and one type of wood being good for eating doesn't make another type good for eating.

[@Belemrys]

The episode has just begun and I noticed different type of papers being signed...my sleuthing deduces it is for the White Sand Omnibus since there were a bunch of misprint issues!

[@anthonynatale8958]

I was just about to comment those are not Words of Radiance pages.

[@lauren7713]

He answered it on reddit, special editions being released in Taiwan

[@cyoung3216]

Don't know if you will see this, but thank you for writing Tress of the Emerald Sea! Just finished reading it to my wife, who loved it. This is a big deal since she has different taste in books than I do. Although, she did read and enjoy Rithmatist.

[@WillFredward7167]

The Deltalina DnD character needs to absolutely hate any monster or enemy that uses smoke or fire, and is comically over-the-top outraged whenever any Party member proposes doing so

[@agent0fartifice571]

I can understand why artists are concerned about AI taking some of their livelihood away, but they discredit their arguments significantly by trying to use some kind of moral high ground by saying it’s ‘stealing’

[@ununitedstates7550]

The reason I read books, the reason most people read books I think even if they don't realize it, is that they're kind of empathy machines. You open a book and you are transported into the dreams, the fears, the fantasies of another person, there's a strange kind of connection there. This is as true of genre fiction as it is for 'high literature', something I love about brandon's books for instance, is that you can see he interests and predilections of brandon. Stormlight's interest in the ecology of tide pools and tress's interest in fluidization convey an interest in those real things that helps make the worlds though fantastical feel both real and wonderful. The theme of mental health that runs throughout the cosmere is another thing that feels very specific to him. The exciting plots get you in the door but the personal touches are what keeps me there. If a book is written by an AI its not coming the personal interests of another human and I kind of don't understand what the point is. I would never read a book written by an AI because I value the perspective of the authors I read. Not saying it won't happen, but count me out!

[@madisonhays696]

There have actually been studies about empathy and how basically every genre will build empathy- except self help. But being able to empathize is an imaginative process. I find it interesting as we culturally squash imagination our tolerance levels also decrease

[@ununitedstates7550]

@@madisonhays696 totally agree and that bit about self help confirms all of my biases about the genre

[@strykerten560]

You mention a personal connection as being in favour of a human author, but I think you arnt looking ahead to where this technology is going. The AI will have direct access to us. It can ask us questions about what we liked and didnt like, and adapt to us, creating truly personalised books in a way a human author never could It could even give us direct, immediate answers to our questions. If you are feeling a bit confused about a new plot point, you just ask the AI and they explain it, and adapt to avoid that problem in the future. Hell if you look really far into the future, the AI could have direct access to our brains, viewing our neurological activity in real time. The AI could literally understand us better than we understand ourselves, providing us with new types of stories that we never thought we would enjoy. It could even do truly wild shit like understand if a reader is bisexual when the reader thinks they are straight, or aromantic, or asexual or whathaveyou, and through the personalised stories it creates, help the reader to gently come to understand themselves better

[@ununitedstates7550]

@@strykerten560 No offence but that isn't human connection. Human connection requires 2 or more people. What you are describing is a kind of solipsism having a machine just reguritate our desires for us. Having a connection with an actual human being requires that not all our desires be met. As for that last thing about AI making someone realize they're LGBT... Look I'm transgender myself and I'm gonna be honest that idea is completely repulsive. Some corporate product should not be digging around somene's brain to dictate their identity to them. It makes me very sad that you think this way. Please re-evaluate your life. I mean that with complete scencerity.

[@strykerten560]

@@ununitedstates7550 "Some corporate product should not be digging around somene's brain to dictate their identity to them" No reason it would have to be corporate. The program could be open source and entirely free, and honestly I think thats more likely in the long run I am also not talking about having an AI forcefully make you something you are not. You are what you are, but none of us no everything about ourselves Think of a simpler version. I use spotify. Spotify songs I like and listen to. Spotify uses this information to create a new playlist for you every month full of songs it thinks I will like, but have never heard before. Most of the songs it suggests I dont like, but each month there are a couple of songs I really like that I would have never heard without spotify suggesting them Did spotify "dictate my identity to me"? Spotify didnt change my brain. My brain was predisposed to like the songs I like, spotify just tapped into that to guide me to something it thought my brain would like "No offence but that isn't human connection. Human connection requires 2 or more people" I wasnt saying it would be human, its something different. It doesnt fit into any of our existing models, its entirely novel I dont think an AI would completely replace human interaction, I think it would be additive Also its worth considering that an Ai could be every bit as much of a person as a human can be. Thats not really what I was suggesting, but I dont think its right to assume that an AI is by definition not a person

[@TheMatSignal.]

Hey that's my food heist! (As in I sent the link, not as in I stole 20kg of ethanol soaked whitebait). Whitebait is a New Zealand delicacy and as Dan said is essentially baby fish. They are only about an inch long and look kind of like tiny tadpoles. You cook a handful of them in a batter to make whitebait fritters. There are strict regulations about when they can be caught and how much can be taken and they can be quite expensive to buy so whoever stole the 20kg from the university would definitely have been after them to eat or sell.

[@snowleopard064]

Thank goodness, I was dialing the NZ police before I read that line

[@wynq]

@matthewhenderson3533 How did you submit your food heist? I have one, but I don't know where to send it. Is there an email I should send it to?

[@warbrothers7745]

@@wynq you send it to Dan wells his email is on his website.

[@TheMatSignal.]

@@wynq yeah that's what I did (got email from Dan's website)

[@isaacshatford6777]

Kia ora from Canterbury, New Zealand, and what a veritable honour to feature in your legendary food heist segment.

[@jmwvirgil]

I asked chatGPT to give me a 'poem with an unusual rhyme scheme'. It gave me AA, BB, CC, DD. It assumed 'unusual rhyme scheme' was the topic, but it didn't have enough material to write more than 1 verse about rhyming, so every verse thereafter was about colours and nature.

[@OntheOtherHandVideos]

I love hearing the goofy shenanigans all the way to the very real/interesting conjecture on the nature of art, copyright, and AI. 10/10!

[@jjacks50]

That was a fascinating discussion. Good episode guys.

[@MattOwnby]

As a professional software developer, I'd be willing to bet significant money that computers will never write their own self-improving code in any meaningful way.

[@TheQndi]

I think the problem with the AI as it stands now, is that it's closer to tracing, which is frowned upon by artist, then full synthesis. The fact that you can see sometimes people's signatures in the ai art or exactly pin point from what painting an element came from

[@strykerten560]

You have to really fiddle with it to get an output image thats so similar it could be called tracing. You can use a specific set of sample images, and manually turn down how much the AI will deviate from those samples, but that doesnt seem like a problem with the technology

[@Iceey]

Regarding the AI art topic, I do recommend checking out these two videos for a bit more insight from an artists side: "Why Artists are Fed Up with AI Art" by SamDoesArt; and "The End of Art: An Argument Against Image AIs" by Steven Zapata. It's interesting to hear about how these image prompt algorithms are being trained and used in practice.

[@samuraichameleon]

Legal Eagle has a good video on AI art and the pending lawsuits against it as well.

[@g.e.causey]

I think Duchess Celestia's video on the topic is very good too

[@Domaik_]

the problem with people in the future having on demand shows is that they will be limited by their imagination of what they ask and they won't watch something out of their comfort zone as often, because if you have to prompt the AI to get the show, then you're limited to what you come up with for the prompt. I think watching something someone else has made will always be better

[@EastCoastArchMage]

As a Master's student, our professors are making the projects and assignments based on specifics we spoke about in class. So, they're using answers that are excessive textbook answers.

[@HobFoote]

This episode really shows how our definition of "art" is wrong and how we struggle to comprehend it. Certainly in current times - I couldn't attest to the past when I've not been alive - we define art by an object or production of some "thing". The painting is art, the sculpture, the music, etc. But when we can easily reproduce those "things" artificially, we suddenly protest that it's not art at all, then struggle to defend the position under scrutiny. It is because art is not something produced, it is the knowledge, ability, skills, knowhow, etc that is art. Idk if society could ever separate the concept of art as a "thing" from the word "art", but the ability of a person is certainly where the value is.

[@thegodofalldragons]

So, what I'm hearing from this AI is that it's really good at spitting out stuff you vaguely feel like you've heard a hundred times before.

[@ryanratchford2530]

I'm doing a PhD in Philosophy and teach undergraduates. So interested in learning your Philosophy of Blank haha

[@mattcat83]

So am I, what do you have in mind? In other words, were you to give your "Philosophy of Blank," what would that be?

[@allanc_me763]

I would love to see your conversation about it

[@Kevin2341]

Around 30:00 when Dan talks about putting in a prompt to create a show... we're already heading that way. There was a 24/7 Twitch stream going on with AI-generated scenes mimicking Seinfeld. Granted it got banned after it made some insensitive remarks, but it's absolutely going to be a thing in the future.

[@SophiaCapote]

I asked ChatGPT to write a poem about lizards wearing socks in the style of Emily Dickenson and my heart was warmed by the result. Then I asked for the same thing in the style of Edgar Allen Poe and William Shakespeare. I was also delighted. ChatGPT is very fun.

[@dylanhalifaux]

Dan! I just saw an article where a guy stole 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs!

[@biologist2be]

With AI chat bots, I like the classes that are flipped where students watch lectures on video at home then do the “homework” style work in class. Basically show what they’ve learned from watching the lecture which works better for students.

[@TheFisherhawk]

You guys need a food heist theme song to play before you do a food heist segment.

[@hallaloth3112]

Looking forward to next week's Interview!

[@lilacrimosa]

23:00 it's only open source and available to everyone if it was developed that way. It's still possible for a private entity to develop a private AI that not just anyone could use.

[@randolphchristensen6428]

thank you for the ChatGPT discussion!

[@raphaelreitzig5984]

Interesting perspective on the AI "hype" in there. I'd like to add: What should really stop us to think it not whether the AI can generate (original) ideas -- but whether it can write good first drafts based on human-written outlines, or do some amount of the busy-work involved in refinement and editing. 'Cause ultimately, _that's_ what earns the money, not having ideas in and of itself.

[@spencerurban1092]

Love you guys, love this podcast 👍

[@TheHonestLee]

Day 65 of asking for Dan to decorate his background like he said he would a long time ago.

[@rottenappple3716]

The Physicist one is from the alternate universe where Kaladin became a doctor.

[@gigaherz_]

Something to note about ChatGPT and similar technologies: they are text predictors. The makers gathered a database of texts, formatted in a specific way to fit the needs (for ChatGPT, this means it was trained on text formatted as questions and answers, for GPT-3 or such, on self-contained works which happened to include conversation logs), and it uses billions of texts to train a network with billions of mathematical weights. ChatGPT doesn't have access to the internet now, it had access during training, to whatever they scraped way back in 2021 or 2019 or whenever the dataset was compiled. So what the AI knows is how to complete a partial text. Imagine it has been trained with texts like: "Q: What is the color blue? A: Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model." it would adjust the weights such that when it sees "Q: What is the color blue? A: " as the input, it will be a little bit more likely to follow with "Blue is one of the ..." and once it has been trained, you input a question, it will go like "okay there's a 95% chance that a B goes after this, or a 2% chance that a T goes after this or ..." and it would just do a weighted random pick between those options. (this is very simplified and probably not the exact process GPT uses)

[@rio425ee]

As it currently stands based on the very very little precedent we have, in the example of an AI generating poems for the epigraphs in a human written book, the AI poems would not be copyright protected, despite the rest of the book being copyright protected. But that is based on basically nothing in terms of case law.

[@rio425ee]

Also you guys have to follow up on the episode where you guys ask an AI for prompts about a podcast about nothing, and talking about AI generating personalized movies and shows, by talking about Nothing Forever, which is a generative Seinfeld parody that was running a 24/7 on twitch...until it went full Kramer.

[@juliehartley3652]

That was a really interesting discussion, thank you. 🤖🖌😍

[@kendalldoer5466]

I think you might’ve undersold the second poem…idk if it was intentionally by the AI but using “deep thoughts” could very well be referring to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy supercomputer, which is honestly pretty epic

[@ViperRT99]

Brandon should make a series with a magic system based on alcohol. Sort of like kung fu drunken masters, but instead it powers magic. Maybe the powers are based on what type is in the person's system. The more you drink, the more power you can wield, but the drawback is you can get extremely drunk and thus you magic may get out of control.

[@WaitingForAMistspren]

Might work well with Roshar's wines of various colors.

[@ArifRWinandar]

Isn't that just regular potions with extra side effects?

[@ViperRT99]

@@ArifRWinandar Perhaps, but everything someone does can be boiled down to a simple concepts. I think of it more like mistings/mistborn, but with more potential powers and more drawbacks. My thoughts go deeper than just simple on power for one "potion". When you combine beer with whisky, you can access a different power. Of course everyone knows you shouldn't mix beer with whisky (or you can still burn them separately with both ingested). And the thought is that you are constantly drunk to that you can call the power when you need it. You can combine the different types (wheat, grape, barely, rice, rye, etc.) to maybe to unlock more powers in many different combinations. Not everyone has the ability to burn the alcohol in this way, unlike a potion might be used. It could lead to an exploration into whether ordinary people want you around or not and you can potentially mean to help them out, but ultimately lead to disaster, even if there is a clear villain to fight.

[@TheTrueGlaukos]

sounds like something you should write yourself. could be interesting.

[@cosmerejunkie7931]

Dan: Fish is a food! Brandon: But is sawdust a food?

[@joshuaharper372]

Fried whitebait is nice. They're sort of like less oily sardines. Had them in the UK at a pub.

[@chelrok8764]

What is Brandon signing in this vide? Because the pages don't look like the WoR Leatherbound pages he's been signing for the last few months.

[@bobbeast3067]

He's just practicing 🤣 maybe the skyward series is getting signed copies?

[@Avid_Reader]

I came here to ask this very question.

[@Colaman112]

I think I've seen those kind of pages before and if I recall correctly they were for some foreign edition.

[@Avid_Reader]

Maybe he's signing mouse pads for one of the year of Sanderson boxes.

[@crystinapierce6833]

There are AI out there that will write a product description in whatever voice you want with whatever parameters you need. It’s happening faster than we think.

[@BoMwarriorVlog]

34:54 I would like to hear Brandon & Dan's thoughts on such a device in the 1990s book "Eddie Fantastic" by Chris Heimerdinger. 🤔

[@lypreila7913]

The first thing that came to mind for 'whitebait' was a pumpkin spice latte sitting on the hood of an oversized SUV.

[@zenthepoet.]

Adoooonalsium

[@CerebrumMortum]

I love how Sanderson can just sail in his imagination to niche hypothetical legal cases...

[@DisneyBatchman]

12:01 "It tastes like burning!"

[@nightleopard13]

My father does copywrite law. What you're describing should be applied the same as Chattle. Meaning the person who owns the animal (bees, cows, etc) has the legal ownership of anything that animal produces; this used to apply to slaves. This is why contracts are written for animal breeding. AI generated work is default owned by the person who "owns" the AI, so the poems would be owned by the author of the book. Of course, legislatures are going to be debating these things for a while.

[@rmsgrey]

I gave Akinator a spin and completely stumped it. Not only did it fail to guess in the thirty or so guesses it allows itself, it also didn't have any idea who the character was. To be fair, some of the questions it asked didn't exactly have yes/no answers (for instance, as a recurring character in a long-running series, they are both an adult and a child, depending on which book you pick). On the other hand, I did pick arguably the single most significant character in the entire series, with the series itself being 38 books long (plus a bunch of side-series) and known as one of the Big Three in its sub-genre, so, while it is relatively obscure with most of the books having been out of print for at least 50 years (copyright expires in 2030 for most of the world), it's not like I picked an obscure background character from one book that no-one's ever heard of... For those who care, the character was Joy Shirley, from the Abbey series (by Elsie J Oxenham) - one of the big schoolgirl series from early twentieth century Britain alongside the Chalet School (Elinor Brent-Dyer) and Dimsie (Dorita Fairlie Bruce) books.

[@GoldenMechaTiger]

That one is just based on user input though it doesnt scrape the internet so it will have trouble with things that are not very popular.

[@thedmdidit9842]

Love A.I discussion.

[@mattthomas4024]

Akinator managed to guess “The Stick” after 35 prompts. Apparently 550 people have already tried it. 😂

[@groofay]

Darn, I thought this was going to be a deep dive into the worldview of Blank, the best side character/temporary statue in Final Fantasy IX.

[@AnathemaMysticalcel]

That suggestion where the host watch a bad movie and poke fun if it has already been done. Mystery theater 3000.

[@Flamminggoat72]

I want that hoodie Dan is Rocking

[@luciuscohen]

I'm using AI to write and it is a powerful tool, but it still needs the human creativity to produce your book. In the end of the day you will work like hell with AI as well as without it. It is an amazing tool to improve grammar, to enrich your texts and to feedback your texts in many ways, so definitely a powerful tool. As I write in Portuguese, now AI provides me an accurate translation, and unbelievable improvements.

[@cbpd89]

On the subject of bots helping students cheat: I think they'll transition back to doing more hand written stuff where it's much harder to cheat.

[@sanddanglotka]

I can't be the only one obsessed with that Shallan doll, right?

[@yremogtnomnad]

I don't think AI will ever be able to produce a novel with engaging, complex characters like a human author can.

[@andrewjennings7306]

Why not?

[@ACPritchard]

"alexa, write me a 500 page high fantasy novel in the style of Brandon Sanderson about two podcasters who fall in love using an interesting magic system."

[@ACPritchard]

this is such an interesting conversation with insane implications. RIGHT NOW writers can have ai give them prompts for characters, settings, really all the pieces required for art. i think we will see a gold rush of "assembly" writers, if that makes sense. have an ai quickly create large swaths of data for you to then constantly write about, faster and faster until one novel/year is a glacier's pace. thank goodness it's free because if only the wealthy had access we would see further bifurcation than already exists. good points about copyright and human intervention sir

[@ACPritchard]

IT EVEN NAMED THEM TIMEKEEPERS BRO

[@nathanharmon8971]

In support of the food heist: if they were soaked in ethanol, they are still edible and in fact the ethanol makes it so that the thawing and freezing is not a big deal. Ethanol is a wonderful disinfectant. Apparently someone likes their cocktails with a fishy taste.

[@reflexjat3822]

What are those grey papers Brandon’s signing?

[@ACPritchard]

starting off the podcast bating. love it.

[@YouWinILose]

Please technogods, no, AI can't replace a real human writer, if only because I/we have a suffering artist complex. 🙈 Writing is hard! It takes years! We torture ourselves to make a story and hope someone loves it! It'll just be sad if a program can bypass all that inner turmoil lol. Doesn't mean it won't, but many dreamers will just quit when they're outpaced like that, and I think it's worth keeping the dreamers dreaming.

[@cbpd89]

An AI can't have intent or meaning, so it can't add meaning to it's work. What the artist is trying to say and what it means to the audience is every bit as important as the technical skills the AI copies.

[@YouWinILose]

@@cbpd89 I agree! You can see Dan anthropomorphises the AI several times and he does so not getting that it's just pattern recognition and reproduction. But.... Humans are meaning making machines. Generative products like AI poetry/fiction may not inherently have meaning with intent, but meaning will still emerge because that's the human brain. We imbue meaning in everything we see. I want to believe that human generated works will be preferred for their human origin, and knowing there is a wonderful complex brain behind it. I'm pretty sure in less than a decade AI will be able to keep track of data points and write sprawling epic fantasy, but again I do hope we will prefer the authorial intent, the personality, the humanity!

[@pRahvi0]

Have you seen Brandon's lecture about "cook" vs. "chef"? "Cook" is one who does things because they are supposed to be done when making X. "Chef" is the one who asks why are those things done and whether they can be changed or omitted - or coupled with something entirely new - to achieve even better X. Bad writers who make generic stuff out of clichés are "cooks" by that definition. AI is also a "cook" (and will be in the foreseeable future), whilst an excellent writer (or whatever artist) is a "chef".

[@spunlines4557]

may want to check out the ai art lawsuits going on atm. artists are largely displeased with how their art is scraped without (explicit) consent. and there's a level of violation there when it targets a specific artist's style. i'm not sure what legal distinction needs to be made, but opting in to ai databases seems like a good first step. i'm not sure amount of effort is the crux of the issue. it's more the violation, imo. akin to tracing someone's lineart and calling it your own.

[@guillermorelobalopez7553]

Seeing as you may fall on the other side of the argument I do, what would you say is the difference in the violation between a human copying the style (which might be considered flattering, even if uninspired) and an AI copying the style from freely watchable art?

[@logikx1325]

Theyre already training a twitch streaming AI.....her name is Neuro-sama. Still early days so still says some strange things sometimes but it is pretty amazing how far it has developed in the time its been working.

[@georgeevans9044]

Check out Gen-1 Runway. As of yesterday, they are already letting you modify video in a lot of ways using AI (e.g., changing a live action video to claymation style, adding spots to a white dog, etc.) It was surreal to watch Dan talk about this yesterday then see it happen before my eyes today.

[@zack32460]

I did the character guesser. There were already 4 or 5 people who had put Tress of the Emerald sea, but it didn't guess it for me.

[@wylanvallotton4462]

I am still curious what the weird teal pigeon is about.

[@excaliburturkey8208]

3:49 "And I mean stealing from New Zealand" yeah? why would you steal from us ey?

[@Adam_okaay]

I wanna say "white bait fry" is probably white colored bait fish and yeahh theres something similar with anchovies, mackerel and sardine type fish and other oily bait fish.

[@tyranitanth6956]

I've found myself living for the next food heist......damn you Dan!!!!!!

[@Erectos1]

Heard a really great quote recently about ai taking jobs... don't be scared of ai taking jobs, the people that can use ai effectively will be the ones taking the jobs.

[@Osyrous]

"What do you think about the idea that ai has to scrape" other artists etc. How is that now how we learn. We are born, we are introduced, we are instructed, we regurgitate, we twist, we make our own (or we dont). Its ... not necessarilyscary. The printing press mustve shattered multiple economies, and peoples dreams.

[@Lobo2me]

Special shoutout to Ben!

[@Cole_1]

the guess the sound episode sounds funny... do it.

[@gseminario13]

If something is soaked in ethanol (since is a lab probably at least 70%) , I would assume it won’t actually freeze, since ethanol doesn’t not freeze unless is very very low temperatures

[@meraxion]

There are people working on more sophisticated "AI watermarking" techniques, see Scott Aaronson. There are also people 'including' the use of AI in their coursework - I've seen examples of a business/entrepreneurship course asking non coders students to make Web prototypes of their ideas, now that they don't actually have to code that themselves, but can ask programming AIs to do that.

[@currentlyprocastinating5334]

My guess around ai is that it will likely be comparative to what we already see in terms of subtitles and google translate. Companies figure out how to do something cheaper, stops giving a flying fuck about quality control and the consumer always end up with a lesser product. Not because the program is necessarily bad but because nobody cares (or gets properly paid) do double check and see if for example the doctor is “in surgery” because they are operated on or operating People tend to throw around words like accessibility there as well, which is true but only for stuff that would never have subtitles otherwise. Streaming services using it has in my experience done nothing but make series harder to watch since even if I happen to understand english and don’t need the subtitles, it is constantly distracting to see blatant errors or downright weird translations that nobody would use. The product doesn’t have to be good, just good enough that they can excuse it

[@brintonk7]

As a hobbyist writer, I am not so worried about artificial intelligence replacing writers as I am intrigued by the possibility that artificial intelligence could assist writers in delivering on their creative visions. In January, I outlined a novel with Chat GPT. I fed it ideas and asked it to use them to write an outline using "Save the Cat." I used what Chat GPT came up with to refine my ideas. Then I fed the ideas back into Chat GPT and had it outline the story again. After multiple rinses and repeats, I've got a good feel for the thrust of the book. I've got to say that, like Dan, I thought that the ideas Chat GPT came up with on its own were a bit superficial. But thinking about how I could add detail to Chat GPT's outline gave me new ideas I'm not sure I would have come up with on my own. More than anything Chat GPT helped me organize my thoughts. And so I am very intrigued by what it and the other AIs coming down the pipeline might be able to do for me as a writer as the technology improves. I imagine it as a kind of writing partnership where the AI does some of the hard parts of writing for me and I get to keep all of the creative control. Pretty sweet deal. As to whether we should be worried about AI replacing writers, here's my take: the loyalty readers develop for specific writers is part of what makes writing careers work. That there's a personality behind the novels is a key ingredient in the secret sauce. There are books I pick up simply because they were written by Brandon Sanderson. No matter what AI becomes capable of, I can't imagine that people will stop reading their favorite authors. But their favorite authors might start partnering with artificial intelligence to deliver on their artistic visions. Brandon and Dan, I'll be curious to see if and how both of you integrate artificial intelligence into your writing processes. When Brandon hired Dan, he said he needed "another me." I imagine Dan will be a big help. Maybe artificial intelligence will give him more of what he is looking for. Imagine Brandon being able to feed the Stormlight outlines into an artificial intelligence and asking it to write a chapter he isn't feeling excited to write. Or alternatively, Brandon writing a chapter and then asking the artificial intelligence to handle the revisions. Chat GPT is not yet where I want it to be to fully integrate AI into my writing process. The chatbot format doesn't lend well to writing long-form fiction. It's definition of "inappropriate" is very broad. There are violent scenes in the Stormlight Archive that it would absolutely refuse to write and it would scold you for even asking. Finally, I am not confident of my privacy when using Chat GPT. There is a warning that conversations might be reviewed by the folks at Open AI and so I'm hesitant to feed it anything proprietary. When I outlined a novel with Chat GPT, there were some ideas I held back that I will be adding to the version of the outline Chat GPT doesn't see. But this is just the beginning. This technology is just going to get better. There will probably be AI tools designed for novelists and I'm convinced that the use of AI will be part of the writing process for many writers.

[@andrewjennings7306]

If you use an ai to help write a book how much is that book really yours? Where's the point that the AI becomes a partial ghost writer?

[@brintonk7]

@@andrewjennings7306 This is a great question. Speaking to the outline I wrote with Chat GPT, I would argue that I should have claim to at least some of the ownership in that I wrote the prompt that was used to generate the outline and that I heavily revised and reworked the output Chat GPT gave me. Indeed, Open AI's current policy is that users own the input they put into Chat GPT and that they are assigned ownership of the output. In other words, if you come up with the prompt, you can claim what Chat GPT does in response. Whether this is the model that will govern copyright law and perceptions of ownership for content produced by artificial intelligence remains to be seen and will indeed be an important consideration in whether I fully integrate AI into my writing process. Assuming that artificial intelligence scales up to be able to generate full-blown novels that are actually good, we can expect the number of novels out there to rise dramatically. If you are able to claim an AI generated novel as your own because you came up with the prompt that generated it, it's not going to mean as much as having written a novel means today: having produced a novel will, in of itself, be a cheap experience. But I would argue that the creativity and dedication you put into crafting the prompt that generates the novel and the reworking you do to the output to bring the product in line with your vision is a manifestation of artistry. And the degree to which a writer displays that artistry might be one of the things that gives them a competitive edge in a heavily saturated market. I would expect AI to produce a better book in response to a detailed prompt filled with ideas that an author has always wanted to execute but has lacked the time and skills to do on their own, than a prompt that says "write a book." But even if that's not true, because, say, the AI has access to an algorithm that can determine what people want to read better than you can and your own ideas would just get in the way, you still have the book you have always wanted to see. And for me as a nonprofessional hobbyist that's what it's all about.

[@koltonkulis4763]

I have a few thoughts about ChatGPT in writing. Although it can write some interesting prose, the tech is just not ready for novel length work. In it's current form, ChatGPT's memory is limited. I was using it to create a post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG world. It had all kinds of cool ideas. However, there were many times where it could not keep the fiction straight. I'd tell it to name one of the moons something, and it would remember the main theme but forget the moon name and call it something else later. It just lacks consistency due to its poor memory.

[@DarkoMitev]

I agree on most points about AI but the 3D animation one is actually completely wrong. I am a 3D artist my self, and 3D animation works nothing like the AI prompts. Let me break down the process so you have a more clear idea on the whole thing: First, you get a concept artist to design your characters, environments, ever cup, and plate down to the pattern of the leaves on a tree. Then, you give it to a 3D modeler who uses modeling applications like Maya or Blender and or, a sculpting applications such as ZBrush to translate that 2D concept into 3D. After that goes to Texturing departments, and if its a character, to Rigging departments in the same time. Texture artists paint the model to be a specific material, and define the look of the surfaces, while rigging artists put bones inside the characters and defines muscles and range of movements. And on top of that they put controls for animators to use. After all that we go to animation, where animators use pose to pose or straight ahead animation styles to animate the characters from scratch. They film themselves acting out the parts to make references for animation and animate the characters making 24 poses for every 1 second of animation. When Animation is done, you go to effects, where simulation artists simulate everything from hair and cloth on a character, to water splashes and explosions. When all of that is done, Lighting and Rendering artists take the files and place lights, one by one, and lighting the shot as you would on a real life set. They tweak render settings, materials, etc. Final step is to go to compositing, where Comp artists will take the final renders, put them together, add more effects like Depth of Field and Motion blur and do other effects to finalize the look of a shot. So to say that 3D animation works similar to AI, where you put a prompt and it comes out with a final thing can't be further from the truth. I am sorry for the long rant guys, I do love you and your work, but on this topic you were quite far from the truth, so I had to comment and shed some light on the actual process. Thanks!

[@jonnnyra]

What was brandon signing? It didn't look like a signature from one of his books.

[@Blixthand]

I get that using AI and seeing what it comes up with is intriguing, and maybe someone who has a story or parts of a story in mind but who can't put it to paper themselves can put in certain prompts into an AI to get a finished story, but we already have more books than any one human could possibly ingest in one lifetime, so there would be no need to use AI to get new books.

[@ThomasValadez-tv]

"This is playing me like a fiddle"

[@narpassword0]

Shad Brooks used a physics-based magic system for his book.

[@citizensguard3433]

Have an episode where you go through the TOP posts from the subreddits and discuss the memes and topics.

[@weckar]

My main concern with the free accessibility of AI art is dilution. If anyone can ask for a Sanderson novel at any time, no two people will read the same novel anymore. That takes away something beautiful in terms of fandom.

[@Aldric524]

tldr version: Fandoms and the way people consume stuff always changes. I think there will still be fans and people talking about media. ------- That's sort of why they were talking about using AI engine ABC using seed 12345 to create X story. Then you can share that exact story with your friends. It doesn't address all of your concerns, it can address some. We already don't have the same kind of fandom that used to exist btw. People used to eagerly talk about an episode the day after a specific episode of a specific show came out. Now you can watch it all anytime, for the most part. Most commonly people marathon an entire season in one sitting. Nobody typically discusses exactly what they thought after an exact episode. The closest you get is when services artificially release things on a specific day. But that still only works on people who viewed it right when it came out. Things change, but people still like talking about stories.

[@nathanstruble8587]

Don’t know where ai will be in the future, but I’d like to point out that most of the advancements in the last ~10 years correspond largely to GPU and computer architecture improvements, and that is starting to hit a wall.

[@sanctus864]

Thoughts on Dark and Darker? It's blown up in the gaming world and hasn't even been released yet.