Voltaire And Jelly Roll Show How To Create In An Age Of Fake AI Content
Dead internet, the ouroboros of social media miscreation, and the power of an interesting life
There’s a fear lately, residing deeply in all of us creators as we watch the AI revolution gather steam. It exploded in Hollywood not long ago.
In the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike in 2023, part of the dispute involved AI. The writers didn’t want to be replaced by tools like ChatGPT or have their material used to train similar technology. It’s only logical they were frightened.
IBM’s Deep Blue first beat a reigning chess champion in 1997. While this was newsworthy at the time, it was expected eventually. After all, chess is complicated but only has a set number of possible moves.
However, an event in March of 2016 truly shocked the world. An AI algorithm named Alpha Go beat the reigning Go champion easily. While chess has limited moves, Go gives you 200 possible moves per position and more configurations on the board than atoms in the universe.
Consequently, it was thought a computer could never outduel a human in this game. More fear spread in 2023 as content sites BuzzFeed, CNET, and Men’s Health also replaced writers with AI.
This has all creators rightly nervous, but we’re far from defenseless. A modern music star and a legendary Enlightenment writer give us a blueprint to fend off this algorithm army. But before we get here, I have some news for you, my fellow creator.
We may have already been replaced by a machine without us knowing it. In fact, some think the internet is dead.
The Dead Internet Theory
Technology researchers Jake Renzella and Vlada Rozova in an article in The Conversation investigated a strange Facebook fad involving “Shrimp Jesus.” If you’re not familiar, these are AI generated pictures of Jesus meshed with a shrimp body.
Suddenly, they appeared on the platform, generating tens of thousands of likes and comments. The authors believe it could be related to the Dead Internet Theory. According to Renzella and Rozova:
“The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents.”
If you remember, Elon Musk almost pulled out of the deal to buy Twitter because he thought twenty percent of the platform was made of bots. But this may only be a drop in the bucket.
Cyber security firm Imperva’s Bad Bots report claims almost half of internet traffic in 2022 was bots. Renzella and Rozova say bots posting on social media is only one part of the issue, because these artificial netizens eventually interact with each other. The authors say:
“Many of the accounts that engage with such content also appear to be managed by artificial intelligence agents. This creates a vicious cycle of artificial engagement, one that has no clear agenda and no longer involves humans at all.”
Add to this AI companies are then surfing the net for data to train more advanced algorithms, which may be sucking up these erratic interactions. So, what do all these false engagements get us? Well, historical statistics can show us.
Ouroboros Of Misestimation
Jacob Kuppermann at the Long Now Foundation says one of the hardest parts of studying history is estimating populations from the past. Going back 500 to 1000 years is a crapshoot, involving “a scattered assemblage of censuses, birth and death records, and other fragments of early bureaucracy.”
But in 1978, Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones created the Atlas of World Population History, which sought to record the population of every country in the world from 400BC to their present day.
Over the years it has been used by acclaimed scholars for lots of academic work for developmental economics, which has impacted government policies, and has even been used in long term climate change studies. But there’s a small issue.
McEvedy and Jones’ work is wrong. Kuppermann points out a study in 2023 by an economic historian at Yale showing just how wrong their information is. Even McEvedy and Jones themselves admitted that some data may have been guessed at. Although Kuppermann says much was guess work.
But not only is input data wrong, McEvedy and Jones make liberal use of rounding — rounding by a hundred thousand people or a million at times depending upon population numbers. Then, this wrong data is fed into further research, creating cascading waves of bad information.
Kuppermann calls this an ouroboros of misestimation, after the image of a snake eating its own tail — a symbol of circular renewal. However, here it’s a circular screw up.
Going back to our dead internet infested by bot termites, we can see a parallel. Let’s call it an ouroboros of social media miscreation.
So, what’s a creator to do in a world of dead internet, where bots make content for other bots, in a strange artificial self-licking ice cream cone of shrimp Jesus nonsense?
Chart-topping musician Jelly Roll and Enlightenment superhero Voltaire have a solution — live an interesting life.
Vol And Roll’s Power Of An Interesting Life
“I was a part of the problem. I’m here standing now as a man that wants to be part of the solution. I brought my community down. I hurt people. I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about.” — Jelly Roll’s Testimony Before U.S. Congress 1/11/24
Jason Bradley DeFord (Jelly Roll) testified before the U.S. Congress about the dangers of Fentanyl and opioids recently. It was something he knew well. DeFord spent much of his early life selling drugs and went to jail.
In fact, that’s where he learned to read. DeFord testified that previously he thought selling drugs was a victimless crime, until the mother of his child got addicted to those same drugs. He openly worries about having to tell his daughter those substances he sold finally killed her mother.
He changed his life after prison, and threw himself into music, selling mixed tapes from the trunk of his car. After twenty years, and gaining some notoriety in rap, he broke into country music scoring smash hits.
DeFord’s talent isn’t his voice; catchy hooks are also secondary. It’s the ability to tell a story and reach out to a world that’s suffering in their every day. This talent only comes from living and understanding that world.
Likewise, Voltaire spent time in prison twice. Historian Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy says the French writer had a wild youth “experimenting with the Commandments.” At twenty-one, his pen got him in trouble. The regent ruling France at the time sent him to prison for jokes at royal expense.
After spending a year in the Bastille and more time under house arrest, he penned a play which made him famous. But he never stopped criticizing authority, and got exiled to England for a time. Upon his return, Voltaire noticed a new fad in France called the lottery.
The French used to lottery to pay off national debt, but Voltaire and some friends noticed a flaw in the design. So, they rigged the game. Voltaire won so much money, he became fabulously wealthy and could spend the rest of his days writing, not worrying about work.
He had affairs.
Got into continuous trouble, being exiled from various countries.
He used his notoriety to defend those wrongfully accused.
Louis XVI also blamed Voltaire for bringing the French monarchy down with his pen.
The fuel of an interesting life powers both Jelly Roll’s lyrics and the immortal writings of Voltaire. It also shows creators how to deal with our AI problem.
If the internet is truly dead, and bots are building an ouroboros of social media miscreation, our replacement by AI isn’t damning. It’s an opportunity. Musician Nick Cave sums it up nicely:
“Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer…it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations…as it has no limitations from which to transcend.”
A bot can’t understand the fear Jelly Roll expressed about his child’s mother. It also couldn’t comprehend the disgust of Voltaire for being imprisoned in horrific conditions for penning witty remarks and running for his life from thin-skinned monarchs.
It’s not necessary to go to jail, die, or change the world. The unique lives we occupy are all different, and at some level, are of interest to others living in different ways. That’s our power.
We creators have something machines can never replace — our imperfection, pain, fear, and mortality. AI can’t live an interesting life.
-Originally posted on Medium 6/23/24
This reminds me of Cal Newport’s advice. On his podcast, he’s said that the key to being a good writer is to live an interesting life.
Seems like it's solid advice throughout the ages. Now if I could just figure out that interesting life part.