‘Artificial Intelligence?’ No, Collective Intelligence.

A.I.-generated art has flooded the internet, and a lot of it is derivative, even boring or offensive. But what could it look like for artists to collaborate with A.I. systems in making art that is actually generative, challenging, transcendent?
Holly Herndon offered one answer with her 2019 album “PROTO (open.spotify.com/album/29sozE...) .” Along with Mathew Dryhurst and the programmer Jules LaPlace, she built an A.I. called “Spawn” trained on human voices that adds an uncanny yet oddly personal layer to the music. Beyond her music and visual art (whitney.org/artists/t6310) , Herndon is trying to solve a problem that many creative people are encountering as A.I. becomes more prominent: How do you encourage experimentation without stealing others’ work to train A.I. models? Along with Dryhurst, Jordan Meyer and Patrick Hoepner, she co-founded Spawning (spawning.ai/) , a company figuring out how to allow artists - and all of us creating content on the internet - to “consent” to our work being used as training data.
In this conversation, we discuss how Herndon collaborated with a human chorus and her “A.I. baby,” Spawn, on “PROTO”; how A.I. voice imitators grew out of electronic music and other musical genres; why Herndon prefers the term “collective intelligence” to “artificial intelligence”; why an “opt-in” model could help us retain more control of our work as A.I. trawls the internet for data; and much more.
Mentioned:
“Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (open.spotify.com/track/1qlqqn...) ” by Holly Herndon
“xhairymutantx (whitney.org/exhibitions/xhair...) ” by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, for the Whitney Museum of Art
“Fade (open.spotify.com/track/4w9mte...) ” by Holly Herndon
“Swim (open.spotify.com/track/2MiZBQ...) ” by Holly Herndon
“Jolene (open.spotify.com/track/08miVI...) ” by Holly Herndon and Holly+
“Movement (open.spotify.com/track/1rBLFF...) ” by Holly Herndon
“Chorus (open.spotify.com/track/1xy53q...) ” by Holly Herndon
“Godmother (open.spotify.com/track/525KnX...) ” by Holly Herndon
“The Precision of Infinity (open.spotify.com/track/0KEkhp...) ” by Jlin and Philip Glass
Holly+ (holly.plus/)
Book Recommendations:
Intelligence and Spirit (mitpress.mit.edu/978099756740...) by Reza Negarestani
Children of Time (www.panmacmillan.com/authors/...) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Plurality (www.plurality.net/) by E. Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang and ⿻ Community
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [e-mail].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...) . Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-... (www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Jack Hamilton.

[@ili626]

It seems like she’s good at monetizing the novelty of all the weird possibilities generative AI makes possible, then moves onto the next weird novel thing, and this becomes a kind of “normalizing” or legitimizing of these new tech possibilities. But do these projects rely too much on novelty? How long will people be interested? What will happen to human culture in the longer run if every artist is quickly vacuumed up and replicated in infinite variation by generative AI, and novelty is attained with human artists?

[@lunazamoraart]

This is an excellent interview. Thanks! Music has always been at the forefront of new tools. Great work!

[@jmdz]

Can confirm, Children of Time is a great and truly unique sci fi novel!

[@ili626]

40:44 Any “backlash” in the media space will be subsumed into the collective dataset. Fast food vs artisanal food is another bad analogy. Nothing will escape generative AI’s ability to cheapen and in some cases, pervert, human artistry (see Udio’s “Delta Blues”). “Bespoke” art will be attained without human artists, and this atomization will upend the sociocultural relationships between teacher/student, inspired artists, and shared human experiences, by decoupling media from their social contexts and human processes. Holly Herndon is a musician steeped in tech, not a cultural anthropologist. Ezra would do well to interview some cultural anthropologists on this topic.

[@ili626]

About a month ago, I tried to engage Microsoft’s Copilot in a discussion about what Ezra broaches in the second part of this interview - how we’re all becoming training data (especially artists) - and the about the implications. I addressed the same exact problem about human capitulation to ‘X’ and Facebook etc. despite significant ongoing and widespread criticism. I also mentioned Suno, Udio and Eleven Labs (Suno being one of the tools in the Copilot suit), and Copilot responded with an excellent explanation of social theory and acknowledged the importance of this dilemma, then it crashed mid-sentence and never resumed or gave any explanation.. just froze mid-sentence… and actually mid-word - it didn’t even finish the last word it was typing. And that sentence was about to explain the solution to this human behavior problem. Copilot doesn’t crash like this. It may end an exchange with a polite explanation about its protocol and boundaries, but this was abnormal. And now it’s integrated with Windows 11.

[@MrCharkteeth]

Mine has crashed like this when I asked it if a banana in a hotdog bun would be a hotdog or a banana bread. I don't think it's indicative of anything other than technical failure. Both Occam's and Hanlon's razors.

[@newpilgrim]

Fascinating! Many thanks!

[@Edo9River]

Ezra, I would never have cared or known about Holly. Herndon, until you featured her. so i went to KZbin to see listen to her videos. I WANT A DISCUSSION OF HER VIDEOS

[@ili626]

38:40 But we aren’t situating all art in time and place. And confusing the Mona Lisa with a poster copy is a poor analogy and terrible reason not to be worried about artists being replaced. It’s a terrible analogy because most people consume and share media in a digital space, and they will confuse human artists with AI generated versions of media in their style.. And they will eventually come to suspect all human-made media as possibly AI generated. Even videos of artists performing “in time and place” will be suspect. It’s not the same as a world famous physical painting renown for hundreds of years that everyone knows sits in the Louvre

[@6000Chipmunks]

‘Artificial Intelligence?’ No, Collective Intelligence. NO, collected data. No intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Garbage in, Garbage out.

[@Edo9River]

Sooo there wasn’t enough time to get more from the samples. If you talk about the music you have to play it.

[@BrianSweeney1985]

Everyone should stop what they're doing and rewatch as much Star Trek as they can stand. These issues have been explored by science fiction writers for decades, and now we're really going to have to confront them for real and we all need as much preparation as possible.

[@GyandeepPLearning]

👌👌

[@digitaldemocracyai-rob]

Sound?