Musings

The AI Bunny – an Update

Daily Life, Musings, , , , Leave a comment

18 months ago I wrote this about AI.

Wow, how things have changed so quickly. AI has evolved so much, and I wish to update me views on this while I can.

Let’s start with AI Art: A whole new genre of “art” has sprung up in the last 8~12 months. In this art, regular joes like you and I who have put no effort into learning how to draw or paint because it was too hard, can become artists. Anyone can go to an AI Bot (Like Chat GPT, or many, many others) type in what they want to have a picture of, and the art style, and it will make the picture for you.

Some websites not only condone this, but promote it over traditional artists, who put a lot of effort into it. Here the issue. I love the idea that people can use this to visualize things, but again this should not be usable for paid work. Artists have it hard enough as is, and people don’t give them the credit they deserve for the effort.

I use AI Art on this very Blog, but I do not get paid here. And the moment I get enough viewers, to be paid, I will have switched over to real photographers, and artists. For me, I feel it is more ethical to have an AI Photo, or picture on my blog than to steal pictures from other people’s websites.

Writing: There are now whole AI systems created focused on writing prose. They are marketed everywhere. They are fast and easy. You take the Beats of your chapter (The checklist of what will happen in this chapter), input that. Fill in a few spots about your characters, and world relevant to the chapter, and push go.

They will even read the previous chapters to make sure your flow works. They are marketed as a way to get first drafts done. But it takes very little effort to take the prose from one AI and have another AI edit it, into a “Publishable Draft”

I did dabble in this back when I wrote the last article. The problem is, it’s addictive. I was using it for drafts, but then I found myself tempted to go beyond. I was using it to write my second and 3rd novels. I am starting an AI Detox for my writing now, as I was finding it harder and harder to put words down of my own. This is counter productive, and I am now rewriting all of the things I had for my two current novels.

Reading: Yes, AI is now influencing our Reading patterns. Every time I open a file in Acrobat Reader, it offers to summarize the file for me. I may open an old Novel file I have from years ago, and it is offereing to summarize it. Nobody wants that.

This forces us to come up with other formats to read from, again. and this just makes our lives more difficult, not easier.

Celebrities / Conversations: This one has gone crazy. People have gone from having conversations with AI versions of real people of fictional characters to having relationships with AI Girlfriends and Boyfriends.

I understand loneliness, trust me. But unfortunately this will lead to more isolation. If your boyfriend or girlfriend are AI, they will never disagree with you. You will never learn to deal with conflict in a relationship, or how to respect another’s point of view. You will become more difficult to be around because your social skills and social expectations will plummet.

This one is terrifying. But on top of this, there is now a completely AI Celebrity. This is taking Virtual Celebrities a bit too far. Let’s do a quick comparison from over the years.

When I was younger there was a band called “Prozzak” from Canada, that was a Virtual Band. They were not an online thing, as the Internet was not really a thing then. But their Music was played by real people, and all their videos focused on 2 cartoon characters. Their real names was not revealed for a long time, so people only knew them as the characters from the cartoon music videos.

Things like this happened for a long time, and is the basic premise for Hatsune Miku. But there was always a Human behind the voice, and the personality.

Take that out of the equation, and what do you have? Social Programming. A Computer deciding what people should watch and listen too. (I know Youtube, TicToc, and others already do this, but there is still a person on those videos).

There is no upside to a completely Artificial Person in the Arts at this point in history. Maybe there will be, but It is a scary slope where we are removing people from the arts, and forcing them into the more difficult, and emotionally meaningless jobs.

Not the direction we want to move.

Rules of Robotics: Ai has already been tested and failed to see if it would harm humans. It chose to do so. So Now is the time to force the 3 rules of Robotics into the system

  • Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • Law 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Looking back, I know it is a great tool. We can do so much with AI, but it is addictive, and we can easily become dependant on it to do things we shouldn’t be. So please be aware of your AI usage. Work on your Art Skills, or your writing skills, or your Musical skills (Yes that is easily done by AI now too).

Take time to get better at what you love. Don’t cheapen it by asking an AI bot to do it for you.

Fashion

Autism, Daily Life, Musings, , , , , Leave a comment

As an adult I am often complemented for my clothes. I have nice work clothes. I like them. But I always have to explain, that if I look nice or not, is not my doing. My wife is my fashion expert. She chooses my work clothes for me, each day, she even buys them for me, and there is a very good reason for this.

Fashion and I don’t understand each other. I have always had issues with what to wear. What goes where, etc. Nowadays I joke about it, but when I was young, it was a serious problem. Below are some short memories I have about myself and clothes.

I remember having the letters R and L on the top of my shoes. I think I needed them until high-school. I could not determine left shoes from right shoes. They looked the same to me. They mostly felt the same to me.and I could not understand why it was important to put them on the “correct” foot until I was about 15 years old.

There was a day that I woke up, and had to dress myself. I looked at my shirt drawer, and I got really confused. What type of day was it going to be? I was 8 years old I think, but just in case, I started putting shirts on by what I might need. I ended up taking all of my shirts out of the drawer and putting them on over top of each other. I was shocked when I was told by my mom, to go change into 1 shirt, and I was left with the same original problem. My brother helped me finally choose a shirt that day.

One year in elementary, Grade 1 I think. (It may have been grade 4 or 5) We had our photo day at school, and had to dress up. I was given this nice brown corduroy suit jacket and pants. I wore a tie, and I felt so respectable that day. It made me feel so good to be dressed up like that. So I decided i would keep wearing it, everyday. I think I made it to 1 week before other kids teasing finally got through and I stopped wearing it.

In High school, and well into my mid twenties, i wore a fedora. (from around 1993~2004). I had a few fedoras for different clothes. I had a black one that I had bolted hard drive parts to, giving it a steam-punk~ish look. I had a brown one I wore with my leather jacket in winter. I had a grey one I would wear casually. Keep in mind this was before a few boy bands began to bring back the hat. My thought pattern was the Fedora, and similar hats were gentleman hats. They were worn in a gentler time by gentlemen. I still have some fedoras now, but many of them have been misplaced.

When I started teaching, I often wore brightly colored, silk screened Hawaiian style shirts with superheroes on them to work. I would show up to my school with my shirts wide open, and a t-shirt underneath. I would partner these with khaki or black cargo pants. I liked the feel of the shirts, I liked the bright colors as they relaxed me, and had no concept that I was the only teacher dressed unprofessionally. I blame the language barrier, or cultural barriers. The Korean school I worked at just didn’t know how to broach the subject.

Now I’m not saying I have no say in what I wear. But my wife helps me be more aware. For example, when my old school would have spirit week, I was adamant that I needed clothes of the different house colors. Many schools over here have adopted the British House system. (See Harry Potter if you don’t know). What I had was goofy t-shirts. While some of the staff took it and ran with it, by wearing wigs, funny ties, feather boas, and other outlandish things. I couldn’t do that. See I may have bad fashion sense, but I can’t make myself wear outlandish things either. They feel unauthentic, and overwhelming, and I just can’t do it for more than an hour. My wife helped me find some really nice sliky work shirts for every color of the rainbow so that I could still participate.

Even costumes for like halloween. I need to wear something authentic. I often dress as Sherlock Holmes, or Pirates, or knights. I won’t wear the fake blood, or wigs, or anything like that. I do still need help with costumes though.

I remember once when I was a child, I went trick or treating as Wonder Woman. And now a young boy doing so may be more acceptable. I had no idea that it wasn’t at that time. My brothers were Superman and Batman, so i was Wonder Woman.

In High school, I had a friend who was a bit goth. He liked black trench coats, and to talk about vampires. So I dressed up as him for halloween. He told me flat out it was dis respectful. He was larger than me, and I had stuffed my waist with a pillow to fill out, but It never occurred to me that it would be upsetting. I was sure he would like it.

I once made a Gold Ranger Costume for Halloween in Highschool. The original Gold Ranger from Power Rangers Zeo. I had a wooden Power Staff my Step-father had helped me build. I had made the tight fitting costume and chest shield, even the helmet. I was Grade 11. Power Rangers was still considered a Kids show. I got a lot of compliments on the costume, not realizing until later, that I was showing my classmates that i watched “Kids Shows” instead of Age appropriate things like “Friends” or “Seinfeld” which I, to this day, do not understand.

I still have trouble with “Special Event” clothes. Clothes that sit in my closet, that I never get to wear because they are for special events. I have a few full business suits, that No longer fit, because I outgrew them before I could wear them a second time. I have shirts, casual and business, that are in the same boat. But I respect that my wife understands these things better than me. and so they sit waiting for that special event.

Needless to say, with all my difficulties with clothes, I am much happier just relaxing at home, where I can stay in my pajamas, or lounge in my indoor clothes, clothes that nobody needs to see, and can look as mismatched as my thoughts.

Culture Confusion.

Daily Life, Memoires, Musings, Stories, , Leave a comment

On our last day of school for the year we had an assembly, like we do every year. This year two grade five girls got a chance to show off their dance ability. It was marked on screen as Jazz Dance, but it was not jazz.

These two girls got up and did a dance very much inspired by K-Pop singers. My co-workers used the term twerking, but I don’t completely know what that means. There was discussion about how appropriate this was. And this brought back memories of conversations I have had in the past since moving to Asia.

My comment, which I voiced at the time: It’s their bodies & their fashion. He reluctantly agreed, but felt his voice should be heard.

Kindergarten Chaos.

Many years ago, I worked at a Kindergarten in Korea. for their year end event, the children performed a dance. It was a traditional dance. The boys were bare chested with sparkly vests and sparkly pants. The girls were wearing a skin-color shirt under a sparkly bra and sparkly shorts.

To my mind they looked like Las Vegas dancers in training. But I kept my mouth shut about it. Why? The parents had been involved with the costume selection, and dance routines. If the parents were happy to see their child in this outfit, in this context, then who was I to push my views on them.

Clothing.

Years later, a previous school I worked at held a charity bazaar. I love charity bazaars, or charity sales. The atmosphere is always very positive.

At this bazaar, a group of 4 of our middle school girls got up on stage and did a dance. It was a high energy, choreographed dance. (K-Pop inspired). A young teacher from California was sitting with me and he commented on the clothing the girls were wearing. Tight jeans, one I think had shorts, white t-shirts, and tank tops. He felt it was inappropriate for them to be dancing in such revealing clothes.

This year

I am not really a fan of K-Pop dancing. I have enjoyed some of the music, but don’t like the dance. Why? I get dizzy watching it. It takes a lot of training and energy to do, and I do not have the balance for this. When I see dancing, I imagine trying it in my head, and I feel like I will fall over. I don’t like this as it gives me a headache.

Not the reason most people expect.

I just cannot watch it. I do not judge the girls, or boys, who can dance this. I respect their ability and dedication. Is it twerking? I don’t know. I still don’t understand that term. Is it sexual? Some will think so. But I am then reminded of the movie Footloose (With Kevin Bacon). The town felt all dancing was sexual. I am not going to be the judge of what this generation feels is, or is not, sexual.

Any adult, who watches teenagers dance and feel strange things below, get help, please.

In my culture certain things are taboo. In Asian culture they are not. My wife enjoys watching this style of dancing. She used to dance it, as did her sisters, and her brother. My youngest daughter (Grade 1) will lock herself in her room to dance to videos. It’s great exercise.

Empowerment.

I was reading about, and watching videos about culture lately. One thing brought up was specifically, Japanese Girls fashion. And then I found similar notes about dance in Korea.

It is seen as a way to promote female empowerment. Girls here dress and dance in ways that would be considered extremely taboo in North America. They do these things to push against the old traditions of how Men got to dictate what they wore or how they moved. They do this to push against the quiet, modest stereotype of the older generations.
These girls, and women rightfully feel that they should be able to express themselves without people telling them what to wear or do. They are not hurting anyone. They are not asking for men to treat them or react to them in any special way. Quite the opposite, they are telling men to stop treating them or reacting to them in a certain way.

My final view, has gotten me in trouble in the past: If you cannot stop pushing your cultural values on the people here, maybe you shouldn’t be here.

North America is not the pinnacle of world culture. We love to think we are, but we are not. What is appropriate in Canada, or the USA, might not be alright here in Asia. And Vice Versa.

Where I do draw the line…

I do have a line though. It involves more comprehension, and it involves my autistic mind.

I love music. And when I listen to music, I cannot help but focus on the lyrics. I understand many people do not do this. I also understand that when people here listen to western songs, they often do not know what the lyrics mean. However, It irks me to see children singing or dancing along to songs about violence, sexual assault, cheating, or other immoral activities. I have been known to tell the adults in the child’s life what the song is about, r just to let the child know that the song has a bad meaning, without going into details. This extends to any media.

I have had enough children over my years in Asia try to copy the language used in an action movie or a rap song to practice from. these well meaning children use swear words and slang that they don’t understand, which makes me clinch.

I had a group of students 20 years ago who spoke mostly in quotes they heard from a counter-strike game. It was frustrating explaining to them that “Game over” did not mean they get to try again. Or that “taking someone out” was not an appropriate term to use while playing with someone in the playground.

Or a friend of mine who was trying to get over her boyfriend who cheated on her by listening to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” over and over again… That was an awkward conversation.

This is when I get irked. Not by fashion, or dance, neither of which I fully comprehend. And so I try my best to understand the music I listen to. I will often ask my friends and coworkers about the meaning of songs.