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Last week, the board of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI fired its CEO, Sam Altman, only to reinstate him days later—an ouster/“inster” that left many questioning the leadership, safety risks, and oversight of the booming artificial intelligence ecosystem. This week, people called foul after Sports Illustrated published articles seemingly written by AI, and Merriam-Webster announced “authentic” as its 2023 Word of the Year, in part because of the rise of AI technology.

Last night, Zócalo, together with Arts for LA, ASU Narrative and Emerging Media Program, and LACMA, presented an evening asking the timely, urgent question: “Is AI the End of Creativity—Or a New Beginning?”

The event brought together a panel of creative workers and thinkers: LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab program director Joel Ferree, Concept Art Association co-founder and artist advocate Nicole Hendrix, Writers Guild of America AI working group member John Lopez, and interdisciplinary artist Sarah Rosalena. Curator, educator, and author of Use Me at Your Own Risk Anuradha Vikram moderated.

The panelists all agreed that AI technology could change the creative economy fundamentally, and offered takes on how artists might protect their work. The discussion touched upon the unique role artists have as critical thinkers in the face of expansive AI use, the opportunities AI presents for arts and entertainment, and ways that law and policy can ameliorate some of its risks.

But top of mind was AI’s effect on artists’ labor.

“We were acutely aware that we were the first labor negotiation happening in the age of AI,” Lopez said, speaking about this year’s Writers Guild of America strike and union members’ desire to instate meaningful regulation over AI. “No one was going to put rules or boundaries around this stuff if we didn’t speak up.” Discussions around AI were the toughest parts of the negotiations, he said. “This became the hill a lot of the studio negotiators were dying on.”

The fight, he said, is between the humanistic mission of arts and entertainment—“to facilitate communication … whether you’re writing a poem, you’re making a painting, or you’re writing a really dorky screenplay about talking dogs”—and the forces of industry.

Rosalena, who has been using AI in her own artwork, agreed, pointing to the extractive nature of AI models in taking artists’ work and creating other, AI-generated works from it—a value reproduced each time an artist’s original work is used in these processes. “I really admired the writers’ strike, and fully support people who truly understand the impact and how this could easily take over in an awful way.”

Hendrix grew concerned with AI companies’ tools like ChatGPT and large-scale visual databases when she started poking around in the repositories and found her own husband’s artwork, as well as images created by friends and colleagues, posted without permission. “The thought that their work was scraped without their consent, credit, or compensation—and that’s the foundation a lot of these models are built upon—just didn’t sit well with us.”

“What is most upsetting about all of this is the job replacement,” she said, citing examples of gaming studios in Texas letting go of their art departments, businesses contracting advertising agencies using AI-generated images in lieu of designers, and independent producers coming to meetings with pitch decks full of AI images. “Job loss is here, and it’s only going to continue to grow.”

Hendrix noted, too, a recent AI-generated Cosmopolitan cover. “A model … the photographer, the hair and makeup artists, the person that pulled the fashion, the wardrobe—all of these artists and true art and collaboration [are] replaced by one AI image. It’s a two-dimensional flat version of what art is, when art has so much depth, humanity, and soul.”

AI devaluing creative work and labor is an even bigger concern for younger artists who now must compete with AI as well as established creatives to rise in the field, Lopez said.

“But [AI] also takes your portfolio and makes you compete against your own portfolio for a job,” Hendrix pointed out.

So, what is the artist’s role in all of this?

“Artists really need to be aware and extra critical of images,” Rosalena urged.

Ferree empathically agreed: As a curator with sway over purse strings, he seeks to nurture projects that engage or critique technologies like AI. “Artists are probably the best people to engage with emerging technologies because they can be critical,” he said. “As these tools become more commonplace … The role of a curator becomes even more important, the same way a librarian is going to have a pretty big fight ahead of them. Because you are fighting for the sake of art history, for the sake of information itself.”

What do we need to do, then, to protect ourselves? asked Vikram.

Ferree wondered about using technology, such as blockchain-based watermarks or NFTs, to protect artists’ assets. Perhaps some form of digital registry could provide a record when an artwork is used somewhere else.

“What a lot of people found out, the hard way,” Vikram responded, “is that an NFT is not actually a legally enforceable contract.” In the online world, they added, people are abusing the idea of fair use and taking copyrighted material without permission. They are hoping to profit while the courts figure it out, they said.

Hendrix mentioned two defensive web apps that people can use to help their work evade algorithms contributing to AI databases—Glaze and NightShade. Hendrix’s organization has held town halls with the U.S. Copyright Office, and raised money to lobby on behalf of individual creators.

Throughout the evening, the online audience participated via a chat that was visible to the in-person audience and panelists. While most panelists spoke of artists fighting against AI, one online guest thought that AI could open up the art world’s gatekeeping practices. Another wondered if there was room for ethical AI in creative practice.

At the heart of the conversation were questions about our very humanity.

“We already have a lot of things in this world pushing against human connection,” Lopez said. “[AI] is not about human expression, but about amalgamating a whole bunch of people’s prior expressions and putting it into a data blender.”

“As artists, we are the bearers of humanity,” Rosalena said.

And, wrapping up the conversation, Vikram said, “AI is nothing without us. Human beings still call the shots. And let’s keep it that way.”

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Comedian Steve Martin once said that teaching is like show business. Keeping this metaphor in mind, I try to approach each of my lectures like a live set. The idea is to keep my students present and engaged so that we can learn together in real time.

But what happens when the entertaining professor gets upstaged by a chatbot that can produce the lecture as well as write student papers and take the final exam? Does the college class become a meaningless joke?

Well, no.

There are people who fear that ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI bots will let students outsource their own learning. But I teach media history. I know that new media technologies do not make people obsolete. Video did not kill the radio star.

So rather than slip some language about ChatGPT in the policy section of my syllabus about plagiarism (which won’t stop students who know about the apps that can rewrite papers to evade detection), my plan this fall is to focus on creating interactive lessons that incorporate chatbots directly into my teaching.

Instead of letting chatbots change the learning process, I’ll show my students that anything that chatbots can do, they can do better.

Many of my students were already trying ChatGPT out last year. Because chatbots can be especially useful for performing routine tasks, one student explained that she had started to use ChatGPT at her job in customer service to generate quick responses to complaints, which she would then rewrite to improve.

While chatbots are able to do that kind of task well, more complicated tasks, such as historical essays, can be a disaster. But these limitations also open the door to teaching exercises that show students how to utilize this technology in their work.

Professors teaching writing skills can have chatbots generate outlines, drafts, and other lists of ideas. Then, the professor can direct students to work in small groups to rewrite the text for greater originality.

Chatbots also offer an opportunity to teach critical thinking and media literacy skills. ChatGPT is prone to making up false information out of the data-driven cloud—a phenomenon its handlers euphemistically call “hallucinations.” This means that students have to learn how to check facts and verify information, using citable sources and databases.

Professors can also teach students to be alert to the systemic racism and sexism that AI bots can perpetuate and amplify because of the source texts they’re drawing from. I once asked ChatGPT to write a list of some of the leading scholars of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment. Its response only included white men—as if no person from another background, ethnicity, or gender ever studied the U.S. Constitution.

A solution to this problem? Show students how they can give the chatbot follow-up prompts that generate more complete answers—say, specifically to include persons of color, different genders, and diverse backgrounds. When I did this, ChatGPT readily listed Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ange-Marie Hancock, and other prominent constitutional scholars.

For my classes this fall, I’m also creating “AI Moments,” where my students will get a chance to see who does it better: the robot or the professor.

After I present a new lesson and talk about it with my students, I’ll prompt ChatGPT to give a lecture on the very same subject.

To test out this idea over the summer, I asked ChatGPT to rewrite my short lecture on the history of broadcast media. Unsurprisingly, the text it generated was horrible. Just one cliché after another. It was as cold and dull as that slice of ham still relaxing in my refrigerator from the Fourth of July. Now there’s an unexpected image for you—the kind of surprise turn that ChatGPT will never accomplish. The AI-generated draft also made bad word choices—replacing the word “media” with “platform” (not all media are platforms).  It also changed my question, “Did the emergence of broadcast TV mean the end of going to the movies?” and instead asked “whether the emergence of broadcast TV resembled the demise of cinema attendance caused by the rise of radio.” This word choice altered the meaning of the point, which is that new media does not replace the old.

When I recreate this exercise in my classroom, I plan to have my students search ChatGPT’s lecture for bad writing that they will rewrite, turning each cliché into original imagery and poor word choices into something more precise. I’ll also ask them to find and eliminate bias and fact-check for inaccuracies.

What I learned from my practice matches with ChatGPT is that I know more about teaching journalism, writing, and media history—even though the chatbot can draw from vast amounts of information on the internet. And more importantly, it cannot share ideas accurately or in a creative and engaging way.

This is the kind of realization I want my students to have this fall when we engage with the AI-generated text, openly and transparently. My hope is that they will learn to learn to use AI effectively since these tools will become ever more common and maybe even indispensable in workplaces and in education. But also that through this they realize that when it comes to the contest of students versus robots, they will always come out on top.

The post Anything ChatGPT Can Do, My Students Can Do Better appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The fight over Dianne Feinstein’s future is a foolish waste of time. Both sides in the controversy over whether she should resign her seat now, or serve out her term, seem to be missing the point.

Some Californians say our senior U.S. senator must step down as soon as possible so that Gov. Gavin Newsom can appoint a politician who is healthy and young enough to show up in person for all votes. Others say Feinstein was elected to the post, and is the best judge of when she should leave.

But this is a false choice. In fact, it’s easy to give both sides what they want. We can make sure California is always represented in the Senate, while Feinstein can remain in the world’s supposedly greatest deliberative body for as long as she likes.

How? Two words:

Artificial intelligence.

Yes, we now have AI technology more than advanced enough to do a senator’s job, and with far greater flair and efficiency than Feinstein, who turns 90 next month, or many of the other older politicians who occupy seats in the upper chamber.

Indeed, we could create an artificial intelligence based on Feinstein—DiFi—that could be just as moderate and maddening as the human original.

AI could easily handle all the fundamental tasks of a U.S. senator.

Fundraising? DiFi could reach more people in more places faster (without all the carbon pollution of airplane flights)—and write less annoying email spam.

Legislation? An algorithm could introduce sensible gun-control legislation that gets ignored by red state senators, way faster than the human Feinstein.

Voting the party line? So easy that your 12-year-old could build an AI to do that in just a few minutes.

And with some voice software add-ons, the AI could deliver the same meandering, repetitive remarks in committee rooms that have become Feinstein hallmarks.

But why stop at handling official duties? A DiFi AI could solve political problems far outside the scope of a living, breathing Feinstein.

Right now, Gov. Newsom has to worry about the tricky politics of whom he might choose to replace Feinstein if she leaves early or dies; the AI spares him that choice.

And in 2024, three Democratic contenders to replace Feinstein will raise tens of millions of dollars to spend against one another—money that donors instead could devote to beating Republican senate candidates in swing states. Better for Democrats to unite behind the DiFi AI and spare themselves the costly internal warfare.

A DiFi AI also could expand the power of democracy, in a historic way. Right now, we can only vote for representatives who are alive at the time the ballots are printed. But a DiFi AI would allow Californians to keep Feinstein, or at least her algorithmic essence, in office long after she’s dead.

Yes, there might be knee-jerk objections to letting the dead represent the living, but those objections are easily dismissed, especially in this country. The United States is so good at killing people before their time—endless wars, ceaseless gun violence, misinformation-fueled pandemic responses—that the dead really need more representation from their own.

And Californians can hardly object to governance by ghosts. Today’s citizens do less governing of our state than ballot measures approved many decades ago—like 1978’s Proposition 13—by electorates of voters who are mostly dead now. And attempts to alter such measures are routinely dismissed as politically unrealistic.

Of course, there would be some technical challenges. Replacing a human senator with an AI of the same human senator doesn’t conform with the outdated rules of the Senate. But it wouldn’t be hard to convince senators to change those rules. U.S. senators have huge egos and think of themselves as indispensable. They also are old: The average age in the Senate is 64. An amendment making it possible for them to serve long after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil might achieve rare bipartisan—even unanimous—passage.

Filling the Senate with AIs also might be good for the public discourse. After all, human senators are hard for constituents and reporters to get on the phone or text, but AI senators would only be a click away. Since AIs adapt to new information—unlike aging senators—AI politicians might be more accountable, too.

I’d benefit personally. Sen. Feinstein doesn’t talk to me—or many reporters—but, with some guidance from an AI-savvy friend, I recently asked the GPT-4 multimodal model, from Open AI,  to pretend it was a 90-year-old senator from California facing questions from a “provocative California columnist” about whether she should leave office and who should replace her.

Here’s a portion of the AI-generated chat:

Columnist: Could an AI replace you?

Senator: Replace me? Well, that’s an intriguing idea. Can an AI understand the needs of the single mother in Fresno, or the plight of the immigrant family in San Diego? Can it empathize with the struggles of the small business owner in San Francisco? Can it sit across a table from a foreign leader and negotiate peace?

Columnist: Well, with advancements in technology, they could probably do all of that.

Senator: But there’s a difference between doing and understanding. It’s one thing to process data, quite another to feel the weight of human experiences. And politics, my dear columnist, is not just about decisions. It’s about the people behind those decisions. AI may have my knowledge, but it can’t have my heart.

I marveled at the savvy of this DiFi AI. She seemed to make the case for human emotions—without actually answering the question. And she didn’t count herself out of the race, either.

Could the human Feinstein do any better?

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