AI is not a representation of humanity – 05/09/2023 – Tech

In 1970, a Japanese engineering professor named Masahiro Mori wrote an interesting scientific paper suggesting that a person’s reaction to a robot would change, from affinity to rejection, the more realistic the robot became. He described this phenomenon as the “weird valley”.

Children may love toy robots, which are difficult to mistake for a living being. But we are disturbed when we see physical robots – or, nowadays, digital avatars – that look a lot like humans and realize they are not human.

But what happens when our artificial creations become so convincing that they cross the valley of uncannyness and make it to the other side? For better or worse, we may find out the answer soon enough, at least in the digital world.

The release of powerful generative artificial intelligence imaging tools such as Dall-E 2 and Runway has made it possible to create some eye-catching synthetic videos starring fake humans, although they are still not good enough to be mistaken for real humans.

Take “The Frost,” a 12-minute experimental film about environmental catastrophes produced by Detroit-based video company Waymark. A human screenwriter entered a script into the Dall-E 2, which then generated all of the film’s shots. The result is an entertaining, if disturbing, film about explorers who end up stranded in Antarctica with no way to get out. It looks more like an animated film than reality TV.

Writers and actors are so concerned about the increasing use of AI that they are on strike across the United States, calling for restrictions on the technology’s use by Hollywood studios and streaming services.

But at the Runway AI film festival in New York this year, independent filmmakers raved about the possibilities of using interactive AI models to accelerate speed, reduce costs and expand the creative possibilities of filmmaking. “This is an incredibly exciting time,” said filmmaker Paul Trillo. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Creations reach from beer drinkers to Republicans

Despite recent technological advances, we are still a long way from the moment when generative AI will be able to create entire films like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”, hits this summer. But these templates are already being used to help create irreverent music videos and commercials for brands like Bud Light, Uber, Nike and Terry’s chocolate.

Some of them, like Synthetic Summer, a surreal beer commercial produced by London firm Private Island that became an internet meme this year, played on the technology’s bizarre imperfections, as beer drinkers’ faces merged with beer bottles. Exploring the valley of weirdness can be fun, especially when you’re drunk.

More disturbingly, some politicians are using generative AI to synthesize images. In June, the campaign of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis released a video with seemingly fake photos of Donald Trump hugging Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical adviser who was demonized by many Republicans for championing lockdowns during the Covid pandemic.

The costs of rapidly producing selectively targeted video on a large scale have fallen sharply. And the likelihood of this type of image proliferating during the US presidential campaign grew after the decision taken last week by X (formerly Twitter) to lift its four-year ban on political ads.

‘AI is not a representation of humanity’

Wasim Khaled is the co-founder of Blackbird AI, a New York state-based startup that fights misinformation. He told me that we are already through the valley of the uncanny in terms of still images.

A survey in Germany this year by the video company Syzygy Group found that only 8% of respondents correctly identified a photo of a real human face when juxtaposed with three other AI-generated images. It’s only a matter of time before moving images also pass through the valley of uncanny.

But Khaled suggests that the internet has been distorting our perceptions of reality for some time anyway. The images of people we see most often are probably photoshopped photos on Instagram or airbrushed photos of movie actors in magazines, and these photos are used to train AI models. “AI is not a representation of humanity,” he says. “It’s a representation of the digital version of humanity, which is an aberration or an exaggeration of what we are.”

This raises the possibility that we are entering a world where artificial versions of reality seem more real than reality itself. As alarming as this may sound, some artists would not find this strange. As Pablo Picasso once said, “Anything you can imagine is real.” And machines are relentlessly pushing the boundaries of our imagination.

Translated by Clara Allain