Category: philosophy

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philosophy writing

The AI Takeover of Art

How does one compete with a machine? My career has barely begun and there’s a chance it’ll be derailed already, by AI driven programs that can write content in a fraction of the time it takes me. Should I pack in my craft, go back to college and learn to be a plumber – or do I carry on, and instead of resisting the inevitable takeover of the machines, use them as an ally?

It feels like we’ve reached the point of no return with AI, websites like Buzzfeed are binning off staff in favour of machine-generated content, while the companies behind them feed them with more and more data. You’ve probably read articles in the last few months that were written by AI – and you may be none the wiser.

This feels like our generation’s industrial revolution, and we look back on those times and question why the luddites didn’t just learn how to use the machines they were given instead of fighting against them, as they were an inevitability. The same can be said too, for the cinema musicians who lost their jobs when the speaker was invented, as those establishments no longer required live music. It’s crazy to think about how that used to be a job title, and how many more musicians were around before the speaker was invented. Times change I’m afraid, and I doubt another self-imposed Dark Age is going to come around again.

I still don’t feel completely comfortable with the AI revolution, there is a massive risk of propaganda and exploitation if one or two US-based companies are the ones generating all of the content.

For example, I was trying to AI generate an image of a toucan and the Sputnik 1 satellite in space (just because I like crossing over my own books, okay), and for all the prompts I entered, Sputnik 1 would never appear. I don’t feel the need to speculate, but one would think if it was invented anywhere else, it may have loaded in, instead I received images like the below:

I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

The fact certain things can be programmed out, or blacklisted in code, means that they will appear less and less frequently in text and imagery  – this could also work vice versa. I’m not saying this is actually happening, more that the potential for it to happen is there.This dilution of content and art goes against everything art stands for, which is to challenge the status quo, to ponder new and old ideas, to think outside of whatever box the world is trying to put you in.

AI can, and will be, a fantastic tool to assist in tedious, boring tasks. It can reshuffle words around to break writer’s block, or take prompts and expand on ideas – just as talking to a fellow writer or artist can do. But these AI’s need prompts, I asked ChatGPT to create a synopsis for a movie where Prague, and an alternate, futuristic Neo-Tokyo spliced together in a time-altering event, and this is what it spat out:

“In a world where alternate dimensions exist, a strange phenomenon occurs when the ancient city of Prague and a futuristic Neo-Tokyo from an alternate dimension suddenly collide. The impact causes chaos and destruction, leaving both cities in a state of shock.

As the two cities merge together, the people of Prague and Neo-Tokyo find themselves in a bizarre, alternate reality. Prague’s cobbled streets and Baroque architecture now stand alongside neon-lit skyscrapers and high-tech gadgets. The cultural clash is palpable, with the citizens of both cities struggling to adapt to their new surroundings.

Amidst the chaos, a young woman named Kira finds herself trapped in this new world. She was born in Prague and had never left the city before the collision. Now, she must navigate the strange new world around her, filled with technology and unfamiliar customs. But Kira quickly discovers that she’s not alone in this strange new reality.”

Sounds cool right? I even generated this, interesting, looking poster to go with it:

I have no idea why it’s named the movie ‘Race’, but we’ll run with it. All that is well and good, but you try and get the AI to write the script, it’ll be incoherent garble. That poster too, looks like a fantastic reference photo to hand to an artist – but as a finished product? Nah. But you can 100% explain your vision better to a freelancer if you have some imagery to back it up.

Not just that, but a prompt was needed for all this ‘work’ to be generated, that prompt came from me. The moment AI begins generating its own creative prompts, and running with them is the moment I’ll start screaming, telling everyone to watch Ex Machina before things go any further.

The point is, we can use these to further push our own creative works, to break the hours of staring at the wall because the writer’s block has kicked in, to increase our own productivity – and really feel our ideas out, especially for those who don’t want the pressure of talking to others about them, because they fear their ideas will be stolen, or that they’ll be laughed at before they’re fully realised.

Are there limitations? Yes, those who want to write horror or gore fiction will be shot down at the first hurdle, as those ideas are too violent for the machine to generate. That’s probably a good thing though, we don’t want any AI getting too familiar with murder stories.

Does generating AI art make you an AI Artist, or an AI Writer? No, because that’s dumb. You wrote a few words down. But, if you take those, and use them for something better – like blueprints for a bigger idea, then that I can get on board with.

It does raise other ethical questions too, like ‘Does AI art plagiarise?’ I’ve seen compelling arguments for both the stealing, and inspiration, sides and fall directly into the realm of I don’t know. All I do know is that AI cannot figure out hands, just as starting artists can’t. So, all you graphic designers are still safe for now. My craft is writing, and outside of copy and paste, you can’t tell if your words have been taken and edited, as then is it just influenced prose, or straight stealing?

What is funny though, is that all these arguments about whether the AI owns its art, or the person that entered the prompt, could all boil down to a monkey from Indonesia, named Naruto, that took a selfie of himself on a photographer’s camera. Anime really is taking over the world.

Back to the point, we’re living through a time where we can throw a tantrum about the future, or pick up our tools and see how we can improve our own art by using them. Will machines and AI overthrow us someday? Who knows, but when something this earth shattering comes along and refuses to leave, we might as well all take advantage of it – or risk being left behind by doing things the old way.

Categories
philosophy

Optimistic Nihilism: Nothing Matters, Which Is Great

Have you ever made the mistake of believing that we are the main characters of the planet we call Earth? That every decision, mistake, or accomplishment you’ve ever made was your role in some divine Earth storybook that will be remembered for all time – where this planet and the rest of the universe is ours and ours alone for exploring.

Humanity as we know it today has only existed for around 200,000 years. Civilisation is even younger, an infant child in these gigantic milestones, being only 6,000 years old. Yet, compared to ourselves, aged below 100 in most circumstances, they are behemoths in time that we cannot comprehend.

Our universe, in comparison, clocks in at 14 billion years old. Our existence as a species is a fraction of a pixel of the 4K television screen that is our universe. We’re not even the protagonists of our own planet, if anything we’re probably the poorly received and short lived sequel a la Joey following Friends.

The dinosaurs dominated our planet for about 165 million years, a period which a lot of us are guilty of lumping together and assuming all of them existed at the same time. This couldn’t be further from the truth, for example, the Stegosaurus existed in the Late Jurassic era and had been extinct for 80 million years when the Tyrannosaurus (T-Rex) roamed in the Late Cretaceous era.

Dinosaur fossil on rough stone formation

Our Earth’s Mesozoic inhabitants only made way for us in the Cenozoic era after they were wiped out by a meteor that collided with Earth 66 million years ago, creating the Chicxulub Crater and kickstarting the age of the mammal – of which you dear reader, are a member of. Even before the dinosaurs, was the Palaeozoic era, an estimated 541 million years ago where arthropods, molluscs, fish, and amphibians ruled. They too only moved along after the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which was the largest extinction event in our planet’s long history – in which it took 30 million years for it to recover.

For both eras, it was only their destruction that gave way for the next wave to rise. As much as many try to fight it, the same will most likely happen to us some day. Whether our replacements are a master breed of self-aware baboons, another race of dinosaurs, or one of our own creation; such as mechanical robots or artificial intelligence, is for the historians of the future to figure out on their own. Maybe someday you’ll be in a museum like the Tyrannosaurus skeletons of the world, being studied by a race of silicon-based AI, that can breathe in the air we polluted our own world with. 

It’s all quite a lot to take in when you really think about it, that in the grand scheme of everything we’re an inconspicuous speck at a very high risk of destroying itself through nuclear war or greed before our era truly got under way.

I think it says a lot about the delusions of grandeur that our species has that we think we are so superior to all the other inhabitants that once called this planet home, a lot of this is down to our own intelligence, in which we are genuinely superior. However, I believe we’ve all lost sight of the point of evolution, it’s not about intelligence, it’s about survival. The dinosaurs never developed consciousness or brain power equal to ours because they never needed it, they were big and strong, and needed body parts that could either destroy their foes, or ones that made it easier to run away. Our intelligence developed because we needed it to survive, as I previously mentioned, the dinosaurs lived on our earth for 165 million years. We might be smart, but we’re only 200,000 years in and are already at risk of destroying ourselves, so in hindsight intelligence might not have actually been the best call.

You’re probably asking at this point – if nothing matters then why bother? If I am a pixel of a pixel of a pixel and my significance is so minute in comparison to the rest of time and space, then what’s my purpose? Especially if we’re on a one-way track of self-destruction. Why shouldn’t I just sit and watch TV until I die?

I've remade "Come watch TV" gif: rickandmorty
Source: Rick and Morty

It’s a valid question, and one that I hope I have the answer to. Coming to terms with the chaos of everything can be the key to unlocking your own potential, because you can write your own story, within your own scope of existence and enjoy this small slice of consciousness we’ve been lucky enough to receive.

Optimistic Nihilism. Life is meaningless and that's exactly… | by Neeramitra Reddy | ILLUMINATION-Curated | Medium
Source: medium.com

Every regret, every mistake, every time you’ve made an incorrect decision doesn’t matter in the grand scope of the universe. There will come a time where nobody remembers you or anything you ever did, whether you’re Kim Kardashian, George Orwell, Attila the Hun, or Ramesh from down the road.

On the other hand, you can set your own goals outside of societal norms, because if you’re living in a way you enjoy and you’re not hurting anybody else, why shouldn’t you? Time is finite, spend it as you wish. Nobody asked to be born, but we can choose how we get to live.

If your life goal is to have a family straight after graduating from college, or to be a receptionist for a doctor’s office, or to be an underground musician, or to never have kids and travel the world, or to gather the world’s largest collection of beer mats – nobody is stopping you. That’s your truth, your enjoyment, your life, live it however you want – the dinosaurs did without questioning their social status, or maybe they did, not knowing proves my point exactly.

If nothing matters then neither should anyone else’s expectations of you.

Now, this isn’t saying you should go and murder everybody you know, or steal everything they own. If anything, take this as a sign that I’m strongly urging you not to do that. We still have laws and punishment to keep everyone in line, and rightly so (when it works properly at least). We’re all here for a short time and not a long time, and if you ask me, we’re all responsible for everyone else’s speck of existence to be that little bit brighter too. Be kind, be true to yourself, and why not hold the door open every once in a while, it can really make someone’s day. Love who you want, love what you want, love how you want – just don’t stamp on anyone else’s good time.

Just because in the grand scheme of things we literally mean nothing, doesn’t mean our feelings of love, admiration, and accomplishment aren’t valid. If anything those sentiments are more valuable because they mean something to you personally. You are the architect to your own universe, in that regard this slice of the cosmos is all you’ll ever have, or be able to remember depending on what you believe. Nothing outside of your universe matters, and in the same way nothing that matters within it matters to the forever expanding mass of infinity.

We’ve all been conditioned with movies, books and video games that life has some sort of ‘end-goal’, that when we reach a certain milestone that we’ve completed it and nothing else matters. That could not be further from the truth. We’ve all been in the position of gaining something we want, whether that is a move, a material object or a career milestone, getting it and then feeling exactly the same – then looking at the next thing and hoping that it gives us the satisfaction we were seeking the first time. It’s a fallacy, life as we know it is more of a creative sandbox where we can play to our hearts content until the game shuts off. There’s no instruction manual, so play the game how you want to play it.

Nothing really matters, which means there’s nothing stopping you from being you.

Categories
personal philosophy

The Trials and Tribulations of a Life Worth Living

It is a funny old thing we call life. We analyse, we plan for the future, we attain qualifications and experiences for growth and a happy future we could only dream of. I’ve personally lived my life with an intentionally gung-ho attitude, with the mantra of every experience is worth experiencing, every job is worth your time, every place you visit should be explored like a tourist. All the people you meet along the way should be invested in; despite the amount of time you’ve known them. Everyone and everything brings something to the table of life. Big or small, rich or poor, expected or not.

Living life this way has led to one that has been emotionally, philosophically, and mentally fulfilling. In 24 years of I’ve lived in the English counties of Cheshire, Merseyside, Lancashire and Herts. I created a new home for myself in Catalonia and experienced the vote for independence first-hand. I volunteered in some of the poorest regions of Tanzania, sleeping in homes with no windows and bats that circled above my bed at night to aversely Airbnb-surfing through the various boroughs of London.

At a viewpoint atop La Seu Vella, Lleida. 2017.

These have been some of my life’s proudest achievements, but aside from my International Journalism degree from John Moore’s University, my ‘career’ thus far could and should be labelled as a flop. This website has been radio-silent recently as I’ve been working on a new novella when I’ve had the time to write. It has been something I’ve wanted to write for a long time, and should I complete it, it will be my proudest accolade as a writer thus far – alongside the founding of this humble site. Thank you to all of you that read these by the way, it gives me such purpose to finally write for an audience.

I preach to not live with regret. However, I let future prospects from my internship at the Liverpool Echo pass me by. I impressed with my writing and was told to keep in touch with the Sports Editor. I didn’t. This has been an increasingly difficult pill to swallow in the years following. So too the decision to abandon my craft for a time following university, and instead pursue a fruitless marketing career. This was something that in the end brought me great unhappiness in myself, especially as a born socialist and only acted as a reinforcement of those beliefs in the shadow of the wealthy families I worked to the bone for. Alas, with a Certificate of Higher Education with Merit in digital marketing and a lesson learnt to stick to what you love , I escaped from that world. Like most in the face of failure, I licked my wounds and carried on.

The Japanese Garden in Kensington, London. Now with added beard. 2020.

After that role and fleeing to London in the midst of a pandemic, the only goal was to experience the taste of life again, for it had grown stale and grey in the cold, wet hills of Lancashire. I stopped and looked around at the urban jungle around me. What now? I’d attained a role that could have been mine for life. It was secure and offered albeit minor career growth. In plain English, I’d gotten a big boy job. This was what I was supposed to do, according to society at least. Why did I hate it?

We live in a timeline where most of the well-paid, well thought of vocations have you sat at a desk. You partake in water cooler office gossip, you drink far too much English Breakfast Tea and you buy specialist glasses because you spend so much time facing a screen. Maybe you’ll even get a back support because companies never invest in decent office chairs. To phrase Dolly, what a way to make a living.

There are exceptions of course, but these are few and far between. Especially for someone who wishes to write for a living.

It’s an interesting place to be at mentally. I’ve shed my post-university naivete and dealt with the problems thrown at me along the way. After London didn’t work out permanently, a close-friend of mine hooked me up with a job in Hertfordshire where I’ve been since around August. I’m comfortable yet unfulfilled in my current role, but it’s not forever. The role itself is on a COVID-19 test site, so it should only last as long as COVID does – which is both a blessing and a curse.

Alongside my efforts at being an author I’m finally getting around to completing a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language Qualification) for when I fancy going abroad again and in the future I’d love to complete a master’s degree in Geopolitics to fulfil a lifelong pursuit of understanding the world around me. But that raises the point one more – will any of these experiences, qualifications and dreams ever line up into one coherent career? Or am I destined to be one of life’s ‘nearly-men’ who never lived up to their potential, despite some false dawns.

I guess the only way to find out is to keep living the life the way I want to.

I’ll let you know how it works out in the end.

Categories
philosophy

Don’t Pursue Happiness, Let It Come to You

The Declaration of Independence guarantees all Americans the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. Now, I am not at all American – and never have I desired to be. But having a right to pursue happiness appears to me like some sort of paradox. This is because, to me, happiness is not something that can ever be chased successfully.

By now we’ve all heard the age-old John Lennon quote, for the sake of inclusiveness I’ll paste it below for all eight of you that haven’t seen it regurgitated across the internet.

I tell you what, I’ll even post it how it looks when your Mum shares anything on Facebook. It reinforces my point.

Oh yeah.

It’s a lovely sentiment at its core and I do believe we should all aspire to be ‘happy’ in our own lives – of course I do. But I do feel quotes such as these are being misconstrued, making multiple generations believe that happiness is some sort of aspirational goal in a similar vein to a career, perfecting a craft or having children. I believe the act of pursuing happiness is in-fact making people unhappy.

Happiness at its core is not an attainable trait, it is a fluctuating feeling that comes and goes in fleeting moments. It arrives when you would never expect it to and aversely never appears when you think it’ll be there. Think of it as those little light specs in your peripheral vision that disappear when you look at them. Liberty and freedom can be achieved, but happiness? No – it is a side-effect.

Attempting to seek a consistently ‘happy’ state is foolish, in the same way that one cannot exist in a constant state of luck. None of us can decide to be luckier because our heart desires it. We can, however, seek contentment.

Being a happy person stems from the roots of appreciation. Instead of being envious of a colleague for their higher salary or their fancier car, realise that yours fulfils all your needs. Never look at another child and compare it to your own, do not strive for that even more expensive watch because yours is only a year old. Not only can living like this make you a more content human being, it pulls you from the material rat-race and saves you money by living through your own means. Spend the money on the things you want to experience. Nobody thinks about their designer clothes on their deathbed.

Actively pursuing material happiness is the best way to drive true contentment away. The moment you buy that new car, your eye is almost immediately on the next one and you think how much happier the other person with that better car is. This drives discontent in your situation once more, even though you longed for this car for a substantial period of time.

You’ve heard the age-old quote that money doesn’t buy happiness, and this is why. We’re using it wrong. I’m not telling you to donate all your money and live on the streets. Just reign it in a little bit.  While money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness, a lack of it often leads to unhappiness.

Money is your greatest tool to craft a path towards contentment. This constant strive for more is what makes the pockets of billionaire’s jingle.

Take note of what you’ve got around you, not your bank balance.

Close friends, a loving family, having new experiences or embracing your own creativity. Contentment comes from letting go of the idea that material possessions allow it to happen.

The U.S. may grant a ‘pursuit of happiness’ in its constitution, but I’ve spent time in some of the poorest areas of rural Tanzania and they are much happier than many people I’ve seen back on home turf.

Look internally, not externally.

Waffle over.

Categories
philosophy tv

Nick Miller: A Modern Example of Taoism

Jake Johnson speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.

After two months stuck in Coronavirus induced lockdown, I, like many others have binge watched the series ‘New Girl’. The series was long forgotten to my pubescent memory. As a 16-year old during its run, I saw the words; ‘Adorkable’, ‘Girl’ and ‘Zooey Deschanel’ and gave it a hard and closed-minded pass. Only for it to be pushed so heavily on the home screens of Netflix and Amazon Prime eight years later.

Succumbing to the corporate media machine, I decided to do as I was told. I ended up bingeing all seven seasons in a single week. My actual review of the FOX series could be a separate blog, but to limit the word count here – it is a fantastic show that deserves your viewing. I highly recommend it (Note: there are going to be some spoilers in this article, so here is a heads up if you’re planning on watching).

However, I’m here today to write about my personal favourite character, Nick Miller. Schmidt is a very close second, he is hands-down the best part of the first season. Admittedly, by the actor Jake Johnson himself, the character did not come into his own until the second season. This was because the writers weren’t sure how to write his character yet. But I digress. Outside of the kooky wackiness of ‘New Girl’, the character of Nick is an unorthodox and frankly great example of the effect that the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism can have on our lives.

“Excuse me?” I can already hear you ask through your screen. How is this relevant to Nick?

Taoism is a way of thinking about life that dates to at least 2,500 years ago. Tao is the name given to the ‘way’ or the force that puts everything in life and existence into motion. Words themselves are claimed to be unable to correctly describe what ‘Tao’ is. However, a key belief in Taoism is that of ‘flow’ – that actions should not be forced. You should not strive in existence. You should live with the least amount of effort, prioritising what you want to do and investing your all into it.

When we are introduced to Nick, his friends see him as a lazy, alcoholic law-school dropout working at a dive bar claiming to be a writer. He is not taken seriously and is seen as a bit of a failure. Nick is a character I am sure many, including myself, can identify with. That is the core pull of the show ‘New Girl’ – most people can see themselves within one the shows characters. Middle-to-late twenty somethings who haven’t grown up into stereotypical adults yet, without kids or a family and are desperately trying to find their calling in life.

Despite his perceived shortcomings and lazy behaviour, Nick is just following the ‘flow’ or ‘Tao’ of his own existence. He is not forcing the things that don’t come naturally to him so he can be perceived as more well-off or successful, if he doesn’t actually want them. Many people in modern society chase jobs that they don’t actually want deep down, they just want the finances and the status that comes with it. I don’t recall ever talking to a child who yearns to grow old and become an Investment Banker. They want to drive trains, write stories or fly to the moon.

Nick actually did pass his bar examination while at law-school, yet instead of dropping out because he couldn’t – he decided being a bartender was more ‘him’ and chased that avenue instead. After sharing this advice with his friends, Winston leaves his job at the radio station and eventually becomes a cop. Jess decides to stay on as a teacher instead of taking the fundraising position, even though it pays more. Schmidt even visits the Christmas tree farm that he loved working at before getting a career in marketing – which he only has for the money, status and power.

Nick Miller at Law School. New Girl. Clavado En Un Bar ( Series 3, Episode 11)

This is averse to what most young adults are taught nowadays. I’ve worked in retail and catering and actually quite enjoyed them. However, I have always been taught they were bottom of the food-chain, despite both my parents working for decades in these environments. The definition of success and status in the western world right now is wrong. We should be praising these types of character decisions, not looking down on them with a sigh and an utterance of ‘lost potential’ at a family dinner.

If you need another example, it is Nick’s writing career. When he is teased by his loft mates for calling himself a writer and not writing anything substantial, he forces himself to stay up for 14 hours straight and churn out the last half of his first err… novel, ‘Z is for Zombie’. In his book he misspells the word ‘rhythm’ no less than 38 times and adds in a wordsearch that does not actually have any words hidden in it to ‘subvert the readers expectations’. Winston dubs it the worst thing that he is ever read but is proud of him for finishing it.

There is an argument that the metaphor here is, your first draft is never your best, but you learn from it and try again. I am not fighting that at all. I truly believe this is what the writers were going for, but it is a testament to the show and its writers that we can look further into their work. Taoism teaches that the act of ‘flow’ is a means to all things. We should not focus on the end-product of our workings, nor the potential reward, only the act of enjoying the things we do.

“He gives but not to receive

He works but for no reward

He competes but not for results

He does nothing for himself in this passing world

So nothing he does ever passes.”

(Verse 2, Tao Te Ching)

Like an athlete entering the ‘zone’, Nick taps into his creative energy during his stay in New Orleans with Reagan. He claims that the city resonated with him and he was able to tap into something special. The result? As he claims himself in his third person ‘About the Author’ page:

“He has also lived in New Orleans, [although] that was mostly a frenzied barely remembered fever-dream, during which he wrote the majority of his magnu[m] opus the Pepperwood Chronicles.”

Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana (Mark Souther, Wikimedia Commons)

The accidental pre-teen masterpiece about a detective wresting with his inner alligator was not a forced piece of fiction. It is unique and he wrote it because he wanted to. Not because his actions were forced by external influences such as his friends or societal pressure. He pretty much let the book write itself and found success. This is because his end goal was not to write the book, it was to get his story out into words.

This can be seen again when he attempts to write a sequel to ‘The Pepperwood Chronicles’ in the final season. His publisher tells him in no uncertain terms that his new material is garbage. It is because it is forced, he is writing Pepperwood to fill the criterion of a book contract, not because he wants to – he’s going against his natural flow.

The point of this article? I think Taoism is more useful now that it has ever been. We all need to be more like Nick Miller. He disregards modern society as egregious and does his own thing because it makes him happy. Sure, in his case it is beer for breakfast and refusing to pay out for repairs of the loft, but he gets where he needs to through innately being himself. If we all just did what we enjoyed, we would all live much happier lives than we do striving for something perceived as ‘greater’ by someone else. The current COVID-19 pandemic has shown us more than ever that every line of work is important, we should be celebrating the character of the people we have become instead of the number on our payslips at the end of every month.

Check out New Girl on Netflix or Amazon Prime here:

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70196145

https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Girl-Season-1/dp/B00G11IHVQ

Or read the Tao Te Ching: