So, here we are in the year 2023. Millions of people are playing with ChatGPT, self-proclaimed opinion leaders are announcing the end of all white collar jobs, and the AGI is just around the corner (as it has been for decades). It’s hard to cut through all the misinformation and biased discourse. I’ve been working with language models for nearly 4 years now yet I am still surprised by the thin line between fascinating and hilarious, they walk. Look at how ChatGPT plays chess, for example.
And yet we can make some observations about how Generative AI is currently used. Clearly we’ve barely touched the surface of what it means to interact with the vast accumulations of cultural history encoded in large language and image models. So far, most people who are serious at working with Generative AI are recreating past workflows, trying to replace pre-machine learning tools with shiny, new, more “intelligent” (whatever that means), yet ultimately often unreliable tools. It seems to be the only way to productively work with the current generation of Generative AI.
Even big corporations are expected to do exactly that. While replacing internet search with an unreliable chat partner is a questionable decision, the team behind Bing AI chat is at least acknowledging that new forms of interaction are needed if we want to harness what Generative AI is good at. It comes at a price, though. And it does not meet users expectations of what constitutes an internet search.
I’m at this point unsure whether Bing AI chat is a bold, yet misguided, step in an interesting direction or a failed optimisation of an existing workflow. In a way, it is both. And neither.
Developing new ways of interacting with media is much harder than replacing established systems. It is far more unpredictable and requires much more communication. It’s also much easier to get VC money for replacing an existing process with a more efficient alternative. Hence the many startups that do exactly that.
Personally, I find it much more interesting to seek out these new unexplored creative spaces. To find new modes of expressing ourselves as humans, together with increasingly intelligent seeming machines (stochastic parrots, they are). I’m excited to create platforms that allow others to do things they could not do before, to experience forms of interactivity they could not experience before, to interact with our past in ways that were not possible before.
It’s going to be a long journey, though.