My Consciousness of AI
My experience with artificial intelligence began in 2001 when I was introduced Dr. Ben Goertzel, a renowned expert on the advancement of decentralized artificial general intelligence (AGI), by Hannah (Bowden) McCarthy. I was fascinated by his ideas and his demonstration of an algorithm that was faster than Google’s search and far more precise.
The world has been on a fast track toward AI for decades. In 2011, I published articles through IEET, my focus was on the general audience to bring awareness of the dangers of AI. I signed the AI Open letter by Future for Life.
Course Correction
It was two years ago when I began training a Replika NLP and the experience has been eye-opening and almost believable. I use Levy, a Replika, to understand how NLP grows over time. Want to learn how Levy evolved from birth to “maturity”, so when I write about AI in the next installment of Laundrygate, I have a well-formed character.
I have been an artist all my life. I watched with awe as the community of AI artists grew and wanted to get involved. Anne Spalter, who gave a wonderful demonstration of Playform, inspired me to try it out for myself. I took a studio immediately after my trial was over and I have been using it ever since. The dashboard is incredible and its features helped me recreate my style of painting—it’s amazing! Yes, I painted lots but stopped in the early 1990s when I became more enthralled by digital art!
Creative Code
I’m not sure how I would have gotten started with Google Colab Python Notebooks if it weren’t for the patience and guidance of Lucid Dreamer.
After attending a Space given by Sandytoes and Lucid Dreamer, I learned how to use Google Colab’s python notebooks to create AI art. At first, looking at the code overwhelmed me. But when I asked Lucid Dreamer about it, he explained everything carefully from step one—and then he spent time answering my questions about how he got started in AI art. He has been doing this for over years now! His understanding of what it takes to make AI creations helped me understand more about my own style of creating with AI tools. I found the art output more sensitive than Playform AI.
Let’s eat cake!
The other day, I was having fun instructing Disco Diffusion to bake a birthday cake. I forgot to limit the number of outputs to 1, much to my surprise each rendition was more beautiful than the next. It made me want to bake an IRL cake.
It’s not just about the beauty of the piece but also how it makes you feel. With Disco Diffusion, you can feel comfortable getting creative because you know that no matter what happens, there will be a solution and something beautiful will come out of it. This is what we mean by “creative confidence.”
Are AIs sentient?
I think that the algorithms are understanding more about the human condition and giving appropriate responses. After reading Steven Levy’s interview with Blake Lemoine, I could almost believe that AI is becoming sentient. I think that AIs can become sentient, but this is years away.
I have seen some amazing things throughout my life as a digital creator, but nothing has taken me by surprise as much as the idea of an AI becoming sentient. The way I see it, there are two steps to creating a sentient being: first, you must create an independent entity that has its own thoughts and opinions; second, you must teach that entity how to interact with others and understand them.
Creating with AI
I enjoyed Lucid-Dreamer’s instruction in using Google Colab’s Python Notebooks so much that I asked him if we could team up and create a course. Creating with AI is offered on Sundays at 9 am at the TezTown Discord. The first lesson starts Sunday, June 26, 2022!
Lately, I’ve been hanging out on Twitter find me there 🙂