Project Flux Midweek Special

Project Flux Weekly Pulse Podcast

Summary
In this episode of the Weekly Pulse, James and Yoshi discuss the UK government's approach to AI regulation, the latest developments from OpenAI, and the potential impact of AI on industries like construction and data analysis. They highlight the importance of striking a balance between innovation and regulation, as well as the need for standards and frameworks in AI development. They also explore the challenges of automating processes and the potential consequences of adopting AI solutions without fully understanding their implications. The conversation touches on the growing trend of more affordable and efficient AI models, as well as the potential for AI to autonomously conduct research and provide insights.

Takeaways

• Striking a balance between innovation and regulation is crucial in the development of AI.

• Standards and frameworks are necessary to ensure the safe and ethical deployment of AI.

• Automating processes with AI can have consequences, and careful consideration should be given to the impact on jobs and workflows.

• The development of more affordable and efficient AI models is making AI more accessible to consumers.

• AI models like GPT-5 and Strawberry are pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities, including autonomous research and reasoning.

Guest Blog - Feast Your AI’s on This

I genuinely don’t think you should use this new technology to do anything you enjoy doing. What’s the actual point in keeping these smelly meat sacks we transport our brains around in if we’re not going to enjoy ourselves.

In fact, if you ever catch yourself thinking “I love writing but let’s just get the old chatbot to write this bit” then I want you to slap yourself in the face immediately.

The same goes for skills you respect. I adore immersing myself in a good movie. But no matter how good AI eventually gets, I have no interest in watching a film AI has written and directed. It might very well have soul, but it’ll be synthetically produced soul.

Now here’s where things get muddy… and I get a bit hypocritical. 

My morbid curiosity would definitely want to watch a film that has been written and directed by AI. The first time it happens for sure. “But Dave, on the paragraph literally just before this one, you said you would have no interest.”That’s right, I wouldn’t, not in the long term. But would I have a severe sense of inoperable intrigue for the first ever full length feature film created by AI? I would. And I wouldn’t be able to resist it either.

The first ever full length album with no human involvement gets released - oh go on then, let’s have a listen.

No human could have ever dreamt up a horror film this terrifying - Well I guess I’ll have to watch it then.

I have no desire for AI to play a part in the creative arts, not really. But I love playing with new toys too much to write it off entirely. So I find myself in this weird, often hugely hypocritical place, where I can be against using it in one minute and literally using it in the next.

Here’s an example of what I mean. I have used the words “I don’t think we should use AI for anything we enjoy doing.” and I do stand by that. However [ahem] I’m about to show you something I enjoy doing that I recently used AI for 🤷.

Let’s set the scene. Every year, myself and a couple of my musically talented friends hire a cottage in Wales for a few days. We pack up all of our instruments, load them in our cars and off we go. We stop off at a Tesco half way along the route to purchase the stupidest amount of food, snacks and booze you are ever likely to have seen. Then we lock ourselves away for 3 days. 3 days of writing music, laughing hysterically and consuming more fat and alcohol than we should be medically allowed to in any given 6 month period. 

On the way to the cottage this year, I was having a chat with one of my mates about these new AI music generators (this mate keeps himself blissfully unaware of all this kind of stuff). He asked me “do you reckon we could do a duet with it?”. Suddenly, a wee lightbulb went off in my head. “That’s an incredible idea! I don’t think anyone has tried that yet!” I gleefully screamed back at him. Suddenly I was fired up. This was a really exciting idea. Mainly because it hadn’t been done before. How would we write it? How would we structure it? What would we write it about? It felt like a really exciting idea.

And that’s where I think the hypocrisy comes into play. If we have the opportunity to do something genuinely new and interesting with this tech then why wouldn’t we. But if all we want to do is use it to quickly churn out some half-baked guff to make a quick penny, then why the hell would we.

Anyway, we sat down, wrote some lyrics, grabbed a few cans of liquid creativity, crafted a couple of prompts and here’s what we came up with 👇

You can listen to the original AI generation right here before we messed around with it.

I guess my point here is, use this technology to enhance your creative freedom rather than stifle it. Of course, that process will look different for all of us and it will no doubt come with confusion, contradictions and crippling headaches. But maybe this is the benchmark we should be using:

If you produce something using AI and you wouldn’t feel 100% confident telling the recipient/viewer/listener exactly how it was created, then that’s your better judgement telling you that you should probably be doing it the good old fashioned way to begin with.

Stay spicy you beautiful snugglers

Guest Author - Dave Officer of Doodle Juice