InstaPunk Returns

There’s a serious article in the works on the current state of AI technology, but this post is mostly a fun way of showing how a sheaf of new apps are playing with its capabilities. It’s probably closer to Whwt most people imagine AI to be than the experts who are alternately promoting and fearing its life-changing potential. Not a bad way to prepare the soil for the planting of some new ideas later on. Saw the article posted above and was immediately reminded of a cartoon app I had used on the Fovernor of California about a year ago. I was happy enough with the result because it did resemble the Governor, but that didn’t stop me from using his name to open the post and make sure readers would recognize him on the steps of the Capitol. I made a number of cartoons for future reference, some of which I subsequently used when a given subject’s behavior was cartoonish enough. Why I have something like 65,000 image files It’s called exploring the technology. I do it all the time. I use what...

  RAV’s Frank Gaffney discussing existential crisis of AI  with statecraft guru Sam Faddish. What could go wrong? This, for one thing: He has his own gaggle of Chicken Little AI experts. And, inevitably, this: Me, when I’m not hiding my true self behind a photograph They’re all worried about AI. Terrified in fact. For different reasons. Bannon has some apocalyptic seer who’s worried about meta-humans replacing Homo sapiens. Gaffney and Faddis are fixated on the latest AI hot topic, “The Singularity,” that magic moment when a supercomputer becomes self aware and decides to exterminate mankind. How did we get here? The usual way. The movies. First, there was HAL: Then, just a quarter century later, after a decades-long detour through a dead-end time paradox called The Terminator , there came the monstrous harpy HAL, a transgendered terminator in a box, like we’d been brought up to believe in, including Gaffney and Faddis: Worried yet? Here’s her resumé and mission statement. C...

  Joe Allen, author of ‘AEon,’ on Steve Bannon’s War Room Facebook, August 24, 2023: Tired of all the blathering about the Great Sedate? Well, put up your feet and spend a little time with this post. It’s long, so make an appointment with yourself to read it. Or don’t. Your choice, as usual. Joe Allen is the author of a book called AEon that Steve Bannon has been pushing hard as the new Bible on Artificial Intelligence. The book is probably an excellent introduction to the technology itself. But I have now watched about three long interviews with this Allen on Bannon’s War Room, and I want to set the record straight about a few things. First of all, I have a bone to pick with Bannon. He insists on pronouncing the title as “AAy-on,” which is flat-out wrong. I understand the spelling on the book cover. The capitalized, run-together ‘AE’ is meant to reference the AI abbreviation of artificial intelligence. Does that. Clever. But Bannon’s insistence that his pronunciation is the histo...

  It’s time for me to do something I really dislike having to do. I need to write a book that will be printed on paper and will also consist as entirely of words as I can manage. It has been many years since I have regarded that as my preferred medium of expression. I find it confining, technologically and artistically retrograde, and I would avoid doing it if I could. Not that I can’t do it. I have done a huge chunk of work that way. But that aspect of my writing was supposed to be over nearly 30 years ago. The author of every creative project is a unique persona. He is the state of his consciousness during the period of producing it. What medium or genre he is working in. What his original intention was. What in personal life and in the world around him was drawing his attention at the time. And what was changing in him as he moved from intention to completed work. Instapunk is a persona, an artificially created one who started as a performative voice and became an alternative mo...