In today’s scary AI-and-music news…
I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again over the weekend just to remind myself of what can go wrong with artificial intelligence. In the movie, the HAL 9000 computer was a giant thing entrusted with running the Discovery mission to Jupiter. Then it got paranoid and…well, it didn’t work out well for most of the crew.
New about developments in AI seem to be announced every day. (Check out this, this, and especially this.) Yeah, the tech is cool, but the long-term implications are scary. Humanity is being stripped from the arts. Deepfakes threaten to take disinformation to the next level. Real people are going to lose jobs to machines.
Think about it: When AI infiltrates so much of the economy and society, what happens to people?
Today’s news involves a new AI chatbot that mimics all sorts of characters, including Billie Eilish and Kanye West. Character-AI also lets anyone hold conversations with Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Keanu Reeves, Tim Cook, Queen Elizabeth, and (yikes) Elon Musk. (Side note: What are the licensing implications for something like this?)
It’s been values at US$1 billion by investors. Here’s a screenshot. Try it out. Jeezus.
