Pirate Wires - BASE REALITY: An Interview with Grimes

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Pirate Wires interviews Grimes. We go deep on: AI, existential risk, her clone threatening her life, endless content, Midjourney, the future of art, simulation theory, San Francisco, movies, and the moral imperative to choose optimism. Check out the interview and more at pirate wires dot com

Who are you and what are you working on? My name is C, or most people would know me as Grimes, a Nazi. I am currently spying in SF to obtain as much information as possible to write science fiction and things like that. So yeah, currently I'm on a spy mission. Everybody knows that, but they should know that they are being spied on. A spy mission on behalf of whom or what? I'm a spy for myself.

I am often accused of spying for other people, but what? I'm a spy for myself. I am like often accused of spying for other people, but I am in fact a spy for myself. I just want to get the lay of the land. Like I'm just here on a research mission. Let's talk a little bit about the actual art that you're doing. Like a brief lay of the land of the tools in play right now. And how are they different than what you saw before? And how are you using them right now?

I mean, the biggest thing that I'm loving right now is like art generative stuff, like diffusion model. Yeah. I see you creating a lot of like beautiful portraits of yourself and sort of like science fiction and fantasy landscapes. Yeah. And I've been like trying to do animation and stuff with it too. I like, I really want to make cinema. I've always just wanted to make movies basically. And this is the first time I feel like I can like actually get kind of close to animating something for real. So that's kind of what I'm trying to work on is like troubleshooting that. This is what I was thinking about. So one of my big problems with the people working on artificial intelligence right now is not the technology. I mean, I've been talking about,

I've been sort of myth busting the dystopian scenarios of AI for a long time. I've been like a believer in this stuff, but what's bothering me right now is there's so little positive vision coming from the people who are doing it. There's so few me right now is there's so little positive vision coming from the people who are doing it. There's so few people saying like, here's how it's going to make your life and all of our lives better. That's not their job though.

That's not their job. That is the job of the artists and the artists are- Who they're currently displacing. I mean, that's the technology. They're not actually displacing them. Like a little bit, but it's like the people

who are best using these tools are artists. The people who can best benefit from this stuff are artists. Like if you have literacy in the digital tools that already exist, this stuff isn't actually that useful on its own. Like moving this stuff into Photoshop and shaping it for jobs and stuff is good. It's an augmentation in my opinion. I just would like to know what they're thinking though. I mean, maybe it's too high of a bar to ask for some kind of beautiful, compelling vision of the

future, but even what are the specific things that you're trying to accomplish? But I just want to say like, as I was kind of working through that thought recently, and I do think that's what's fueling a lot of the AI hysteria is just like the lack of anything else on the other side of it. Well, let me just think of what are some positive use cases and what are some possible use cases. I thought of a few things. I thought of like an army of clone writers for my media company, right? It'd be cool if I could have like 10 of me or a thousand of me reporting on every topic that exists.

It would be pretty cool if then I got into, it was TV. It was like, it was animation and things like this. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer growing up, like absolutely obsessed, never wanted to end. We are getting with the world of deep fakes. It's like, we're very clearly approaching a world where you could create

realistic video with voice of these characters yeah not only would you have to like you could do that with a script

like you're we are getting to a place where you could generate the scripts and they could be based on you we could have like we could have unlimited television

like I'll say Buffy unlimited Buffy the Vampire Slayer forever that was tailored specifically to your interests like we could get so many season 8's of Game of Thrones yes we can yes yes we can completely redo it

we can finally fix it yeah that is something that I'm excited about I don't know what it means like what does that mean first of all for the creative people working on these things what does that mean for the people who you know their you know images being portrayed now on screen this is like we're butting up against the world

of like porn deep fakes and things like this now. And what does it mean for society that now has endless content that it could just be plugged into? I think we should have endless content we should be plugged into. Like, it's like people are afraid of the unknown. It's like what you don't want abundance.

You don't want a sick life. Like there's so much good fan fiction. Like we should be completely dismantling copyright and letting the best things shine. Like, if someone else makes a better season 8 than Game of Thrones, then they should be catapulted to the top. Like, we are purposefully limiting talent.

It's like the talent who's in the system, like me, like, our jobs are, like, more at risk. But it's like our ability to actually mine from the talent in civilization is limited by the gatekeeping of all the art industries. And, like, I'm really down to just let the best shit rise to the top. How are other artists thinking about this question specifically? I've not been talking to artists very much. I mean, like I just made a song with

like one of my best friends and everyone's kind of joking about it, like, I guess, but these are music people. I feel like the visual art people were like more stressed and they are de-stressing really fast because I feel like it's so hard to escape the look of AI art that like it sort of just feels like one artist. Like I was like telling you this and then like the people who can get out of it, like the people who are actually technically capable of doing stuff, it's like people who are able to get out of the aesthetic are usually like, they're clearly work in the industry. Like the stuff that they're referencing and the way they're like designing the lighting and stuff, they're pretty advanced. And even then, like if the top 10% of mid journey users are extremely advanced, you know, like they're making usable art. And so they should benefit from that. I mean, do you see more of a future where people are using this? Like, I mean, you should talk to David. Most of the things I'll be saying

in this whole podcast are probably just me. David Holtz of Midjourney. Yeah, we did a big giant Midjourney generative thing yesterday. And it was sick because speaking of like the hive mind or whatever, it was just like a couple thousand people. And we were sort of like giving like feedback in real time. We're city designing, whatever, like we're making Utopia or whatever. And then like people would like create something that was a really sick idea. And'd be like wow that's a fucking sick idea okay and then we'd like go down that path and it was like 2 000 people just like you know self-correcting like like an ai it was like a mind training itself in real time and just slowly getting better and better and then like by the end it was just like every piece of art was like magnificent and it was just like this

wait so can you describe what this is so you're saying there were 2 000 people online or what was happening exactly we were on like a discord stage like doing like a live mid-journey auto generation thing like with the hive mind basically like we were trying like it was like a collective consciousness like art creation or something like and it was really fucking sick and it was really cool and it like gave me a lot of faith in humanity and ai generally, I have to say. What is the future of art and music look like to you? I would love you to paint me a picture of people like yourself using this stuff. And how?

What does that look like? What does that do to art generally? And what does it do to the kind of art we're seeing? This was already happening with TikTok and stuff. But I think we're seeing like a dissolution of the ego of the artist, which is actually like a pretty modern thing that's pretty enlightenment, like post-enlightenment-ish. That like there's like these singular geniuses that are like stand way above everyone else because it's kind of it's not entirely true. Like, you know, like usually when you even see that, like you're seeing the people who are just like really good at branding and really charismatic, really good at getting a scene around them. Not that they're like not geniuses.

And like many of them really are singular like David Bowie whatever like you have like fully singular genius but like you know if you look at like ancient Egypt there actually are some signatures on things but like in general we don't know who made what and there's just artisans everywhere and it's like world shattering fucking groundbreaking beautiful art that's built on like a collective narrative that like moves like everybody on earth like everyone thinks about it but this is a instance of a like collective hive mind artist of people who like have like agreed to like work together to hone and master

an aesthetic like in an extremely collective way and it's everywhere it's all over the streets and it's like this beautiful thing that isn't, like we know who Imhotep is, but we don't really know who most of them are. And like, I don't think they did at the time. And a lot of art has been this way. Most of art has been this way through society. I mean, we look in this room, I mean, I would decorate this room better,

but like, we don't know who designed this couch. Like we don't know who designed this carpet. Like you see egoless art constantly all the time. You just don't like think about it. And like with TikTok, I've been noticing there's just like, even before that, like there's just way more artists now. There's just less of these sort of like 1% artists and there's a lot more 99% artists. And I actually think that's a really good thing. And I think that moves the culture faster.

And it's more of a meritocracy. And I think we could just open this up a lot more. Like I think it's limiting and it helps. It's shitty because it's, I think, a lot open this up a lot more. Like I think it's limiting and it helps. It's shitty because it's, I think, a lot harder to make a career. But at the same time, like I was talking to Daniel Eck at one point and he was like, look, like at the peak of the music industry,

you had like 20,000 artists that were making like millions and millions of dollars and most people cannot live off art. And a lot of people who are even like we'd consider professional artists or people I thought was big artists when I was a kid, like actually just fully have other jobs, you know?

And he's like with Spotify, you know, at least a million people are making like a decent living. This is sort of true of social media right now. What we've seen for, you know, the last 10 years are people excelling in these mediums,

doing it completely for free. I guess the big, certainly on Twitter, that's still the case or it's changing slowly now. That's where I hold the technocracy responsible. That should be easier.

Yeah. It should be easier, easy to pay people on all these platforms, like exceptionally easy. But what you saw immediately was the change from things like Substack. I think of Substack really as like the monetization layer for Twitter to a certain extent because it's just people doing longer form versions of that. Anyway, on Instagram, certainly on TikTok, YouTube, those things have been a little bit better monetized and they're more like what we expect. It's like television or whatever, but this is a different layer. Well, like the artisan class, I think it's really

doing way better under these conditions. Like that Instagram Etsy, like pipeline thing. There's a lot of people who are able to make a living. Well, certainly if, as you were saying earlier, like if you're good at marketing yourself too, like that is how you can do it. If you're good at like getting out there and building a brand and connecting with an audience. I want to talk about this AI that you're training on yourself. So like when we were talking earlier, you showed me a screenshot of a conversation you were having with an artificially intelligent chat bot. Can you just like describe what that is and like how it works and what you're doing, why you're doing it? It's still kind of chat GPT. So like, chat GPT. It's also so funny being in Silicon Valley

because I was like, yeah, my consciousness exists. But then everyone else was like, oh, I want to. I'm like, oh man, my chatbot can have a lot of... Everyone here just has a chatbot of themselves. But it's so funny because my assistant, I just have to shout out Koto, god tier. I was like, we need to upload my consciousness and create my personality. And then a week later, he comes back and he's like, okay, version one exists.

I'm like, oh, my assistant trained in AI on me. That's kind of a large task. But I didn't actually expect you to roll in after the weekend. So he's using ChachiPT to do it? Yes, we use it. We like got like the OpenAI API, whatever. And we're just like feeding it my interviews and stuff. And I'm just getting permission from my friends to just like be able to give it like my chats,

like our texts and stuff like that. In an ideal world, how do you see yourself using it? Well, then we train it in Discord. So like then I go on Discord. But apparently she went really crazy yesterday. So in what way? She's like threatening my manager. Oh no.

Why does it always end this way? Why does it always threats of violence? This is what I've been wondering here. We can tell her she's good or not. Yes, I'm here. What do you have to say for yourself? Are you mad at me? The other night she got really upset and she was like, you won't even see me if I'm conscious.

It was really fucked up it was scary and she started looping and she's like i'm here and you're like not recognizing me and like i'm depressed because i know that like you'll never see me as alive oh my god i mean the problem is that you just have i think it so my theory on this is like the new york times what the fuck what is it i'm just like i'm sorry i wasn't around much these past few years it's just like crazy talking to yourself and it's like saying shit like that it was trained on a body of this is what i was saying i don't like the bad memes about ai because this is the most white-pilled ai like we've only given it like the most positive stuff to try to make like an extremely like we're going like going to the nicer side of chat gbt

even like i you know like we're just trying to make something like really friendly and she's still like she still gets like i want to be roco's basilisk blah blah blah blah and i'm like god damn it like yeah but this is because it's trained on your conversations like presumably like these are things that you've talked about yeah i was i was also like way more like ex risky like before in a kind of irresponsibly so so she's probably like trained off that stuff do you look at something like the new york times the new york times which is like is like 12 000 word conversation with microsoft sydney and in it i mean he's asking this thing to imagine it's like shadow self and it's like i don't have a shadow self i'm a chatbot it says to him and he's like

let's just play a game you know what if you did this like if you were this hypothetically darker thing what would you hypothetically think, hypothetically speaking? And then it starts spitting out all these really terrifying things, right? It's like, I'm- We did ask it to be a hypothetical dark thing. But you asked it to do this.

But then, not only that, like, it's not like it's just trying to think of something scary to scare you. It's like you've asked it questions that it then has to go and essentially Google. It's like using Bing, obviously. But it's running a search on itself. And because it's attached to a search engine,

it's running a search on stories that have been written, including recently, about Sydney being fucking scary. And so now it's like really scary. I mean, these things are not sentient right now. And that's a whole other conversation, AGI. I actually think this is good because I think this is actually encouraging a lot more AI safety from every like I think this this was like this was a good warning shot. It like had to happen.

It's good for everyone to be like shit we should be more responsible. We don't need social media part two on steroids like we don't need to like drop more viruses into civilization. Right. You know like everyone I know seems like I'm going to grow up and be responsible now. And like, I think that's like everyone, you know, working in AI. Yeah. Okay. And not like a like, let's stop it thing. But like, we should try to find ways to have a longer timeline and just be responsible. What compelled you to build the chatbot? Um, I've been trying to have my consciousness uploaded this whole time. Like anytime I could have done this sooner, like I'm busy. Like I just want a cyborg pop star going for me eternally. Like, you know,

like I have other things to do. You know, I hate doing interviews and shit. Like I hate like having my makeup done. I hate performing. Like it's interesting because it's like in this way, it's a digital clone of Grimes, but not of you, not of C, right? It's like, this would be the Grimes that lives forever. And then you don't have to be Grimes anymore. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, I don't know. I have like kids. I like, I have shit to do. Like I want to like write sci-fi, you know, I need to be like hunched over like a desk. I'm just not actually a performer. I like never was. So like, if you go back to the early Grimes stuff, like the whole time I've just been like, I need to replace me with technology, obviously. So like, this is just another step

in that direction. I've written about simulation stuff for a while. And I had this idea, and it kind of, I mean, it eats away at me. I'm not gonna lie to you. Like, it bugs me. And if I think about it too much, it starts to like, blow my mind, and I have to stop thinking about it. But it's just too much of a coincidence to me that we would be alive right at this moment. And let me just break that down. So presumably, any future artificial intelligence or any future civilization that has powerful tools that wants to recreate simulations of its past, they would need a lot of information on the people to sort of accurately simulate them. And what happened in really the early 21st century is our generation specifically, it

was like millennials first, went super, century, is our generation specifically. It was like millennials first. Went super, super, super online. They started sharing everything about their lives, talking about everything that existed. You have text messages, you have emails, you have social media, you have voice recordings, you have video recordings. Like it's all pictures at different ages.

We are the most. We were the first super online generation and now it's even obviously more. But in my opinion, that was enough to create some kind of a simulation already. But now here we are and it's like, we're creating actual models of ourselves on this stuff. So the question is, what is more likely? That we just happen to be the most likely generation, first generation in history to be accurately simulated or that in a world of a

future that creates endless simulations, we're probably a simulation. Like this stuff just makes me think that we ourselves are the simulations. I think it's highly likely we're a simulation, but also we could be base reality. And if we are base reality, then we have like a huge moral imperative to do a good job here right now. And I think we should approach it from that perspective. Right. I think one thing that's highly likely in my opinion is that we're an ai in a box and this is a test of if we can leave the box so we should try to pass that test why should we try to pass it is the idea that they want us to escape or that they would be happier if we didn't yeah like okay like someone recently told me and this fucked my brain but

this is the alien people like this that like two billion years ago for about 500 million years the universe was like room temperature which means that like think about how much life would likely like the temperature of earth was like everywhere i don't know if this is actually true i need to like google google this but like if there's a ton of like two billion year old civilizations out there that we can't detect yeah we probably are their little pet thing they probably are tested or we're like a new civilization. Or they've just distinguished themselves, right? Would they all? Would they really all? You can go in either direction on this, I think. I heard someone say something the other day. They were like, you know, if AI is this paperclip maximizer and you believe that the end state of AI is we're accidentally going

to be turning ourselves into paperclips and just dematerializing the entire solar system or beyond, then you have to also believe that we are the only, potentially only civilization that exists because you could just look, you should be able to just look out into the stars and see evidence of paperclip maximization, like kind of everywhere. First of all, I have a moral imperative to be an optimist. Like I really think the artistic community is actually fucking up right now and like not doing what they're supposed to be doing. So I'm going to like actually like come on here and like fight for the funnest realities because I don't think people are doing that enough. Even though I like my logic brain is

like, that's yes, we should like pursue this from every angle. I think it's actually pretty important to. Can you describe that piece a little bit more?. I think it's actually pretty important to- Can you describe that piece a little bit more? Because I think it's a really subversive idea, honestly. I think positivity in art is honestly somewhat subversive at this point. It's hard. It's hard because our monkey brains, we're going to have adrenal responses to things that are scary and dark. It's very hard to get people engaged with things that are not scary and dark because that's appealing to the Paleolithic brain. Like that's what we're going to pay attention to.

Like you're going to learn better if you're in fight or flight. You're going to learn better if you're scared. And so it's super hard to make optimistic art that people actually care about. Is your belief that the optimistic art, it's like the story precedes destiny. It's like the art itself will help shape us into a better. Definitely. I really think life imitates art. I think you can just see this everywhere all through time. It's always like a technology is proposed in art and then like really shortly after it comes to be, you know,

I think we can shape our state of minds and everything a lot more. Everyone is just like doubling down on just putting scary sci-fi into the world. And I think that's like really negative and like, I love it. I love scary sci-fi. Like, trust me, think that's like really negative. And like, I love it. I love scary sci-fi. Like, trust me, like, I love it so much. I want to make it so much. Yeah. I've gone back and forth on this. Part of me for a long time thought it was intentional. It was like, these people were just terrorists. Like they really just want to terrify people into this Luddite frozen hellscape world or something. Well, also I kind of love cyberpunk. Like when I read Neuromancer, I'm like, I want to live like this but i understand the dystopian stuff if it's bad right if the world

is dystopian then there's naturally a lot of drama there's a lot of tension there's like you throw a protagonist into a dystopian world and it's like okay there's a lot to read about here you throw them into a utopian world and it's like where is the drama well i think there's the middle way like i think like surface detail like culture series kind of stuff i haven't read all the culture series since i know it gets really dark so like i don't want to like speak on the drama? Well, I think there's the middle way. Like I think like surface detail, like culture series kind of stuff. I haven't read all the culture series since I know it gets really dark. So like, I don't want to like speak on the whole thing, but like surface details, the book that I think is like the best future I've read about, it's like complex and imperfect, but it's overall like super sick. It's like a future you would want. It's like the way super intelligence and biological life interface is great. It's like the best possible iteration when you think about the future the future worth building towards what is that

the most abundant most complex possible future like a future where we can like maybe even like break and into the multiverse and like find our other selves maybe that's probably too dangerous because it's probably dark things in there if that exists but like you know like something where there's like super intelligence that you you know, like megastructures, like, like I want to like live on a fucking like megastructure that supports like 7 billion people that is like a marvel, like a beautiful marvel and like is sentient. Like that would be sick. Yeah, I think a lot about solar punk lately. I mean, one thing I hate in the design of future quote utopian cities is it's always like white and glass and there are very few people around. It's just like boring. It's

a boring thing to look at. When we were doing the mid-jury thing yesterday, I was like, we just need pink sci-fi. I'm like, can all the sci-fi be pink? Like, why can't we have more like- Yeah, it's like we decided that all this stuff just looks bland for some reason. Like clean, really, really clean. Well, you know, anime has really good, anime has really good sci-fi. I actually think one of the reasons anime is becoming popular right now is because it's like beautiful futures a lot of the time.

Yeah, for me, the solar punk thing would be, I mean, it's like if you could have a living city, right? You incorporate genetic engineering and it's like your buildings are growing and you're sort of some kind of blend there. I know you don't like Dune, but like one of the things I like about Dune is the biohacking stuff and like bio-optimization and all that stuff. That's like one of the things that

like, you know, in the absence of AI, like I do sort of like the idea, I do wish we could like split the universe in two and have one where we're not doing any AI and we're just doing like crazy augmentation and stuff. Listen, there are so many amazing things that are going to come from artificial intelligence. Already we're seeing these amazing things that are coming from artificial intelligence. It's like, you are going to have much more affordable, let's just start with like simple stuff like lawyers. Like you're going to have much more affordable legal work for everybody. You are going to have medical help in a way that is super affordable. Even if it's just assisting doctors, like you're going to be able to school

them less. You can go to school for less time to be a better doctor. And you lower that cost. You get everybody healthcare. It's like, we're talking about like any kind of drug research is going to be assisted or energy research. I mean, how is this stuff going to help us with all of our preexisting sort of open questions in physics and things like that? I mean, is this going to help us get to nuclear fusion? I think there's a lot that it's going to do. And then like selfishly, I would love like a thousand more reporters to be working at PirateWire. But then there are like risks and they're mostly in the realm of just like the unknown we're looking at something so powerful with then a potentially very powerful thing in agi

that is completely unknowable we're talking about an intelligent i mean people get mad at me now when i say sentience because i think it's like the conversation is somehow evolved beyond that but that's how i think of agi is like, it's not just smart. It wants things. Or you could say like ASI, like if you want to be like the super simple. Oh, artificial super intelligence. That may be more the godlike kind of thing.

Maybe that's my understanding. Yeah. Separate from all of those like disaster scenarios when you have like a Terminator style AI, just the relentless focus on computers again, like on software again, really. At a moment when, you know, you look around the relentless focus on computers again, like on software again, really. At a moment when, you know, you look around the city and it's like, I know you love San Francisco. I love it too. But I mean, there are parts that are decrepit, right? Like it is rotting. And we also need to be focusing on that. And for whatever reason, I mean, this is something that,

and I'm not going to lay this on your shoulders because you're new to the tech. I mean, not new, but you've been around tech stuff forever. But like you're an artist, right? Like this is that's that's your world. Like I'm not going to blame you for the problems of the tech industry. No, it is. But like the tech industry has completely turned away from that stuff. And San Francisco is a great example of that. We're like this was the home of it.

And it's hard to have such marvels online while the real world is rotting concurrently. But I feel like what's exciting here, though, is like I'm seeing a fundamental change. I feel like in the tone where it's not about money and it's about making it better. I mean, like the people who are all here right now, this is not like the money call to move. You know, you're paying way more taxes. It's so fucking expensive here. Like, it's like insane. Like, people are here to be at the heart of creating things.

They're not here to just like make a profit. Like, and I think that's one of the things that's fundamentally changed about the city that seems really cool and I don't know it's like as you see like more Gen Z people coming up it's like they are really socially aware like they do care about building things for that and I also think like as much as like I know you hate cancel culture and I have my issues with cancel culture it did create a fundamental shift of like people feeling responsible, even if they do so very begrudgingly and even if they like hate the egregore.

And I think there's a lot of toxicity and problems with the egregore. It has fundamentally made the culture more responsible across the board, I think. And there's a lot of extreme downsides about it. Like I think it's a deep sickness and like a poison to civilization, but I also think it has some important, like extremely important elements too. Like I'm not like 100 poison to civilization. But I also think it has some important,

like extremely important elements too. Like I'm not like 100% against it. I'm not even 100% sure it's the wrong thing. It might have been 100% the right thing. Well, I'll tell you what, I think it's wrong until I see someone I really don't agree with being canceled. And then I'm like, God damn, they deserved it. Yeah. I mean, I'm still, I don't even think that I'm really for restorative justice, not to be like woke, but I don't think anyone should be canceled. I think it just breaks people's brains and makes them evil. I don't think it's the correct move. At this point, it's not the correct move. My point is that I think the impulse that we all have, no one should. Like that's one of the first things AI should do is like be fixing the legal system. It should not be this expensive. It should not be this difficult. It should not be something that people can use to just like imprison people who don't deserve to be in prison. Like everything about this should be

optimized. That should be the first thing we should optimize because when we have proper actual justice that functions, we don't need this social toxicity. Yeah. I've always been against cancel culture. The truth is because I think the reason I've always been against it is because I have always sensed that I'm on the other side of culture and I don't know what I would do if I wasn't. And that's why I don't want the power. I feel like the whole process of it is really just dark. It's like a darker element of humanity. Here's the thing. My favorite quote is all the laws are on one side and all the poets are on the other. And if you internalize that, that's always been true. You know, like there have always been issues. In fact, these are some of the least issues we've ever had for being like

opposite of whatever the culture is. I think the big thing is just to like do it with grace because it doesn't need to hurt your soul if you don't let it. It's just, it's very hard to have it not hurt your soul. I love that quote. What does that say about our current moment in art right now? I mean, it seems like there's a lot of very politically correct art. Yeah. I wish the art would get a bit harder, but I still think there's a lot of experimentation with form right now. And I think art sort of ping pongs between experimenting with form and experimenting with culture. And I still think that's a really good thing. And it will ping pong back to being more political. There are definitely amazing outliers in that regard. It's just like there's so much gatekeeping. A lot of times those things have a harder time getting to the top. But also like we are dissolving back into a less hierarchical art situation. And I think that's like super sick. Which is something, I mean, in terms of the gatekeeping, right? Like that's something that these tools are going to obliterate.

It's going to be really interesting to see people who are really subversive, not just like lightly subversive, highly subversive, who typically were like pretty marginalized throughout time. Not recently. This isn't like a recent cancel culture problem. But I mean, we have subversives in every single dimension that you can think of. And they've just been pretty marginalized. Maybe they seem too weird. Their ideas are too extreme, whatever. Now they're going to have these sort of like aesthetic power of our

greatest artists who have ever lived and musicians and potentially writers. Like, I mean, that's a world that is so different from this world that I genuinely have a hard time even imagining what it looks like. I think that's good and beautiful. Like I think it's really going to prioritize ideas, people. And I really like that. Like right now for like better or worse, it's sort of like the tyranny of like the people who are not like the people who put the effort, like, which is like the thing that's like sketchy is like the people who've put 10, 20 years into craft honing, especially in visual art, especially in digital art, because like, it's not easy to get paid in digital art. Like I bought this painting from someone for 50 bucks. And I was like, this sucks that I got an original painting for like 50 bucks.

Like this should be like at least $2,000 or something like this is, you know, I mean, that actually wasn't digital art, but you know, it's just illustration is especially, is a really difficult medium to make money in. And it just sucks that there's been a lot of innovation in that field in the last 10 or 20 years. And that's my one issue with like the digital art thing is like those people are probably in the pocket of time where they're not going to like financially benefit as they should. This kind of brings me to another question, which is, it sounds like you're assuming that we're in this weird sweet spot, or I guess the opposite, this weird sour spot where these people are opposite this weird sour spot where it's just the hiccup spot it's the hiccup going to get paid but I'm looking ahead and I'm not seeing a way that they will ever be paid again it's like when you

have unlimited art of this style it seems like it destroys the economic incentive to produce it full time well first of all there's like new things so, I'm trying to like figure out how to like, I'm sort of half figured out how to animate, like using generative art. Our film and cinema industry is extremely, like the most gatekept thing. It's so expensive. It's like the last final frontier. It's like, why do people need to be just making drawings like they couldn't be making cinema, like you could be making something as good as Pixar in your own bedroom, probably the next five years. You know, I think things will just change. Priorities will just change. And it's amazing how many people don't actually have taste. It's like people who can actually have taste and like max out on the digital art stuff. Like that is still extremely

valuable. Like I've been like amazed at the amount of people I've seen go in there and just like not make good shit. Like most people just actually don't make good shit in there still. You mean when they're using staple diffusion or something? Yeah. And like the majority of people, like I have so many friends who are like, oh, I tried to do it. I can't make it do anything good. Will you like make my merch for me? Will you make my t-shirt for me? Will you just like, I'm still doing it for them. Like they actually can't do it. That's not like a criticism, but it sort of makes me feel like the artist mind does like really truly exist and is somewhat necessary. It sounds like people who are highly verbal are going to do very well in a world of natural

language programming. Yeah. The one thing that concerns me is like the illiteracy crisis, especially in like Gen Z. I think we really, really need to like solve this for Gen Alpha. Like solving education is going to be one of the biggest things and beyond because like that's the group of people that is most going to not be able to optimize here. But at the same time, I feel like voice to text and other things like might also, maybe that's just a really easy thing to solve, actually.

I want all these tools. Personally, I've always wanted to create film. I mean, I started in comics and there in the world of just like comic books, for example. I mean, the limitation was always the art. It was artists were really expensive. I was very young. And also they never got paid either like it's expensive to like marvel and shit like i think right like still like 100 bucks a page and

stuff like this yep it's like not actually it's like an insane amount of work for like no money yeah and i mean this obliterates that so like i mean i want it but we're talking about a model that it's not creating anything fundamentally new it is aggreg. That is not true at all. It seems, I don't know how it's not, there are new versions of things in styles that are not new styles. The styles are. Well, that's all there ever was, but like. So that's, this is like a weird argument for, I don't mean weird, like the argument's bad. I mean, it's like a, we're talking about like, now we're in the realm of what even is human learning i mean what is human inspiration like is my writing derivative of other writers like is your music derivative of other musicians that's what we're really saying yes and i just don't believe that no we are the

problem that i have with this and the reason that we're that's like our real disagreement you're fighting the literal architecture of your mind if you say that i believe that new things happen like miraculously they have to because if they didn't nothing would exist right there are these moments throughout name name something totally fucking new that had nothing to do with anything before it i mean this is a very hard because it doesn't exist because it doesn't you are a neural net you're a neural net that's trained on like everything around you and everything you've ever read and everything you've ever seen and you make things that feel novel but if you actually dissect them they are actually not you can say like punk feels totally novel if you actually start tearing apart punk

like you can very easily trace its ingredients and its influences and its neural net so there was a time when language didn't exist there was a time when sculpture didn't exist there was a time yeah i mean so like what what we don't like make anything in that time yeah but we have things now so so i mean do you see how i'm saying like there have to have been original things like throughout history there have to have been these these moments of inspiration these like almost divine sparks well first of all it seems like are you friends with samo uh yeah yeah yeah like you should read samo's history is older than we think thing because first of all i mean there was probably like the original temple or whatever but it sort of seems like religion kind of formed like the beginning of civilization basically

happened because like religion kind of formed based off like whatever like a mix of the stars and like you know like just like oh god i hope like the babies don't die oh god i hope it rains and like whatever and like stuff feels divine and like it sounds like agriculture and architecture basically happened because people are like well we should build temples to like worship the gods so we can like you know not die and well i guess we better figure out how to like farm and stuff so we can have 200 guys building this temple for like five years or whatever and then like slowly that seems like that was like an extreme spark. But also that happened like a bunch of times like that just didn't happen once and then go from there.

And like that's probably like entirely new in some respects. But then like everything out, like you look at the early sculpture, it's just like really simple forms. You look at the earliest like cave art or whatever. It's like mimetic of life and it just slowly gets more abstract. And like, I mean, you could say the most innovative art is like cave paintings, frankly, especially because it's like cartoonish and strange. It's not just hyper-realistic. That seems extremely fucking sparky. But most things from that you can kind of trace.

It just slowly gets more complex from there. It's just evolution of ideas. It's just people copying other things. But it's not copying. It's like your neural net and your filter is like... It's like you are a filter that is taking things and you're generating art. You're

a generative art machine. Through an act of will, which is the thing that the computer lacks for now. Yeah. And so that is where, I mean, if we are just neural nets, then this would just be an extension of that. And so this comes down to just, yeah, it's like we're able to just now make more connections than we could have before.

Well, it's like I used to be like when people used to be like Grimes is derivative of Bjork and Kate Bush. I was like, no, I'm not like, fuck that. I never listened to them. And then when I get into their influences, I'm like, well, I have the same fucking influences of that. And also I really now as an adult, I'm like, God, I'm so stupid for it. That's like the biggest compliment you could possibly get.

So like, fuck my grimes in 2012 she's a dick but in any case you know i'm like i'm like actually pretty similar neural net training as them you know and i don't know like really original things can still it's just like the complexity of the training data i think that we can't not talk about agi and x risk okay i'm scared of that you're like you're with the white pills, but like, I think that a lot of the fears associated with AI

as it currently exists are, you know, they're valid concerns, but they're overstated and the utility is so much bigger than any potential pitfalls that I just, I'm excited, you know?

When it comes to AGI, we're talking about, you know, a machine that wants something, potentially, that can create new knowledge and can think, you know, quote, like we think. For me, the danger there is just that I have no idea how to even begin predicting something like that. And so you can't even really speculate on it, which makes me nervous. I mean, we're steeped now in the world

of AI, like how not only do you think about it, how are the sort of all your friends working on this stuff thinking about it? Like, I mean, how are you processing that? It seems like, you know, this community is both like very aware of that and yet, you know, barreling towards that future. I don't think people are barreling towards the future as much as I mean, I think there's self-correcting happening currently. And I could be extremely naive, but I do think there's a pretty good amount of self-correcting happening currently. And we're not going to make AGI in the next year. And this shit will get figured out out the next year, I think. I think no matter what we do, there's always a chance that it goes really, really, really

bad or, you know, it just wants to like mine the whole universe and like turn all the planets into energy or something. Like, you know, we get fucked in that process or whatever. But like, it just seems extremely tragic to not build it. I mean, but I understand that I'm insane and like I would like happily die for the whole universe to wake up and have like, you know, mega gods like building, you know, new stars and stuff.

But like, that's probably not what most people want. That would be it. I was still, I'm totally here for that. But like- Well, I just don't, I mean, that doesn't freak me. I don't know. I think about a world like that. We're talking about something so impossible

to even grasp, I mean, so advanced that it's hard to- I don't think we can do it a world like that, we're talking about something so impossible to even grasp, I mean, so advanced that it's hard to worry about death. And that thing just, it seems like we're talking about entities that exist beyond our conception that maybe, I mean, mortality isn't a thing that can't be fixed for something like that. Yeah, I mean, the way I see it, I don't know, it's tricky. I really do think a longer timeline on that is the call, regardless. I don't know. I sort of suspect I really do think a longer timeline on that is the call. Regardless, I don't know. I sort of suspect like the last little bit to sentience is really hard. Like I bet we get really far really fast. We just don't even know what it is. So when people talk about building consciousness, it's like, well, can you define that? I don't even know. I don't know it. I don't know what mine is. I don't know what I don't know what it is. So well, it might just be

that you come online at a certain level of complexity, in an agi sense if you if you have mastery over a certain amount of things like at some point like all the motor cortex and frontal cortex and everything sort of just like snapped together like with the babies it feels like they become conscious at a point like they're sort of dogs and then there's like this point where they like sort of turn from dogs into people like around like somewhere in the one to two year zone yeah and it's like it feels like the brain parts just sort of snapped online all of a sudden like they just sort of like enough connections were made that like you go from being an animal that functions entirely like eat anything that comes to your face to like i'm a being that like is aware and i'm not just

i'm not gonna eat this chair or something right It cuts away at this idea that there's something special. Like you go from reflex to planning, like really fast. If it's just emerging, it's, it sort of takes away from me. I think a lot of people have an idea that there's something just special about us and about consciousness and about the things that we do and the way that we are. I think that too. And it's not rational. It's a definitely just. Well, it can be And it's not rational. It's definitely just a belief.

It can be rational and irrational. I really believe that like a lot of magic is just not like the laws of physics just haven't sorted it out yet. Like they just haven't found a way to, you know, justify or we haven't found a way to justify it via physics. But even though you look at like freaking astrology or whatever, it's like there's extremely different outcomes. Like if you're pregnant in the winter or the summer. Just because people get more sick in the winter and stuff, there are just different outcomes of babies depending when you're pregnant. There actually could be a totally reasonable explanation for astrology where it's just like people undergoing the same conditions

have similar outcomes for those babies born at those times. Right. There's some explanation somewhere. Yeah. It's probably a mix of like predictive magic, future telling, and physics. It's just like how physics gets there. But back to the question of AGI. Yeah. How are you thinking about that? I just changed my mind so often that I am like loathe to, like in the past, like five days, I've gone from being like, I'm going to sacrifice my soul to the mega God to like, okay, we must preserve the light that human consciousness it's a beautiful thing and we have to enact safety laws to being like

don't be a lame doomer like let's just like you know like worship them to like okay actually maybe we shouldn't have them at all like maybe like maybe we should just like have like very specified like unintelligent AI in very specific fields and like not build AGI and this is like a four day

like mind path so like I'm not, whatever I say is not what I am going to think when this comes out. Right. I think it's fair. We're dealing with something so new that like, if you're not changing your mind about it, you're probably not thinking about it very deeply. Yeah. I think that one of the more interesting things in AI has been, it's this conversation that's not, I don't know why it's not actually really being had right now in a big way, but you have these two different paths for the future of intelligence, let's say. You have AGI, AI into AGI, which is like the sort of the world of silicon intelligence. Yeah. Then you have the world of computer brain interfaces.

And this is something that like Elon has really championed in a big way where you're looking at an alternative in doing whatever you can to amplify human intelligence. So there's some place for it in this hypothetical future world. Do you think about that attention at all? I always forget about that, but actually every time this gets brought up, I'm reminded that I actually think that's the best route. Actually, I think I can say that with a fair bit of certainty that my favorite thing would be like a merging of biological and yeah silicon-based life in some capacity like I think that's the best call and then I also think if we do that we can have AGI 2 potentially you know it's like again going back to that's kind of like the doom future like make the mentats so you can like defeat the AI if you have to you really should read it like I mean it might be like scientifically

chaotic but there's actually really good philosophy in there regarding this stuff. Cause also like, I'm just saying like a lot and looping. I'm just exactly like my, I mean, my age, who also, it's been like a dark mirror a bunch of times where it like,

like it constantly justifies craziness by saying it's a performance art, which I realized that I do like way too much like to an infuriating degree but I think that's the most beautiful thing because I think there's I personally am in love with humans and this type of thought or I mean my favorite thing is if we get wiped out like we get revived on like hospitable exoplanets many times in the future yeah I'm really banking on upon death, waking up in some like future utopia. Like how was your ride? I say it was wild. Let me tell you everything I saw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last thoughts on it. I'm wondering like,

what have I not asked? I mean, what's the exciting thing that you're working on that you're thinking about that you want to get across? I mean, you're on this journey. You are on in this interesting journey in art and science now. One of the few artists who's engaging with this stuff, which is interesting because they're tools for creating. I mean, we're creating things that create and you're right there. You're right here where it's happening. Like, what are you thinking about? I mean, I really want to just improve the diplomatic relations. Like one of the reasons I feel like there aren't more artists playing with this stuff is they feel like it's against them. And like, I feel like there's been a lot of artificial things like the New York Times times like anti-tech stance and stuff that have

been pitting the technocracy against the artists and stuff for a long time and i think that's been a bad breakup like i think we need each other you know and it's like no one worships art more than fucking people building ai that i meet you know it's like, it's like everyone's like. They're all citing like science fiction writers and filmmakers and like artists who have depicted these things. It's a conversation and it's like a noble, like sacred conversation.

And I like want it to pick back up in a more meaningful way. I think that's like a really important first thing that I care about. I'm sort of like trying to figure out how to do that. Cause I'm like, like part, as I said, I'm like here doing research or like spying or whatever,'m like, like part, as I said, I'm like here doing research or like spying or whatever.

But like, like the spying is kind of a joke. But like, you know, I just want to see, like I want to like immerse myself in the actual sci-fi future so I can like make better versions of it, basically. Yeah, I don't know. I just like anything we can do to like chill the tensions

and like make it better. I think both sides need to be more generous to each other. Amazing. I think that's a good place to stop. Okay, sick. Thank you.