Week 8 Synchronous Session & Wrap-Up
Synchronous Session Questions:
Generative artificial intelligence looks radically different today than it did a year ago. And is exponentially more advanced than it was two years ago. GPT5 is imminent, as is MidJourney v6, both of which are promising category-defining leaps in capability. MidJourney is working on elements of text, video and the ability to create 3D worlds with prompts. GPT5, already the subject of concern in parallel with Sam Altman’s exit and return to OpenAi and Microsoft, is similarly promising greater leaps in comprehension and clarity of response. Questions of can and should are everywhere. Much of 2024 is already predictable. This time next year it is also likely we will be talking about GPT6+ and MidJourney 7+. Do you think generative capabilities have a point at which they plateau, as we’ve seen in search, social and mobile connectivity (and even with Standage’s telegraph), and if so, what does that look like? If not, why not?
I often think of the arms race around generative artificial intelligence in the context of winners and losers. I am particularly interested in the current moment around what’s happening to the movies. Outside of heavily promoted individual events (Eras, Oppenheimer, Barbie etc.), theater attendance is struggling to recover from the pandemic. The economics of production versus return are motivating a climate of less creative risk taking. Existing previously successful franchises are exhausted. Despite this, I believe we are nearing the first full-length generative film. It will be our generation’s Jazz Singer or Wizard of Oz moment. The nearest frame of reference I have is seeing Toy Story for the first time in the theater. It was spellbinding to see a fully computer-generated film. What do you think generative capabilities might bring not just to storytelling, but to the economics of the movies themselves?
Generative artificial intelligence is already being deployed in political campaign materials. Both in targeted execution and in front-end visualization. A year from now we will have seen much more of this after the conclusion of the 2024 presidential election, and it appears as if regulation of generative capabilities towards political ends is not going to be enacted in time to make a difference. Who bears the ultimate burden of responsibility for identifying and regulating such tactics? And who can do anything about it? Elected officials? The generative companies? Distribution platforms such as news outlets? The end user?
Course Wrap-Up
I am fascinated with the path of how technology innovation begets innovation, and how, unable to understand the change we are currently living through, we only really understand that path as non-linear in the present, and linear in retrospect. The case study of the history of glass, and how it motivated changes in literacy, working hours, and the breakthroughs of lens craft both micro and telescopic didn’t just allow us to see the world and the universe beyond it differently, but how it also changed how we see ourselves differently. That technology isn’t something that’s simply a tool for understanding the world around us with more efficacy, but also acts as an agent of change for humans. That we become different as a result of the technology we create.
This is present in Standage’s telegraph in the Victorian hopes and aspirations for a future of global unity as much as it is in the fear and consequence brought by social media and generative artificial intelligence in more recent times. New languages are created, new means of commerce and communication evolve, and the time and space between us collapses. How we choose to define the benefits and risks of engaging with these platforms often isn’t a choice at all, but for as much anxiety as there is about our relationship to technology, I am ultimately deeply optimistic about what the future will bring. In this, I am with science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who as far back as 1964, predicted that ‘the only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.’
I’m also fascinated by the idea that the more things change as a result of technology, the more they stay the same. And the cyclical ritual of hope and aspiration tempered by the valve of unintended consequence and anxiety we repeat with products hailed as technological panacea to very real human problems. Standage ultimately concludes on a skeptical note underlining the human appetite to pin hopes on new technologies ever since the telegraph. But I think the consistent repetition of these aspirations reflect a more optimistic and curious desire we have for our technology to succeed. For the things we create to actually solve our problems. And how, just like our experience of the course itself, in that deep curiosity we don’t always get it right, but we are never afraid to keep trying. We learn and improve under the banner of innovation, cumulatively, iteratively making improvements as we go. We make mistakes and try not to repeat them. With grit, we keep going. And that our relationship to technology, however flawed and contentious, is one of betterment and prosperity. I cannot wait to see what comes next.
