Let's talk about AI
Welcome to my new stack about artificial intelligence in education, culture, and especially the creative digital arts.
Me: What does it mean that AI is unexplainable?
ChatGPT - 4 omni: AI being unexplainable means it’s like following a recipe where the ingredients and steps are hidden in encrypted code—you're just supposed to enjoy the dish and not ask how it was made. Deliciously mysterious!
Artificial Intelligence. It's a funny phrase the more you stare at it. Artificial Intelligence. Funny and terrifying. Not funny scary -- Ha Ha, but funny scary, I'm about to lose my mind.
Well, half of me is. I feel so divided.
One side of me loves the novelty, the possibility, the potential. That’s the writer of electronic literature. This is the side that wrote Hallucinate This! an autobotography of ChatGPT. Or the part that co-created the netprov writing games like Pr0c3ss1ng and the Grand Exhibition of Prompts. Or even the one who develops writing exercises for my Advanced Writing course.
The other side of me is terrified. Or at least highly suspicious. That side is the professor of (human) writing with a lifelong investment in software and critical code studies. The scholar collaborating on a book about ELIZA, the first chatbot, the one that made its creator Joseph Weizenbaum turn on the burgeoning AI field even in the 1970s. I’m part of the last generation to grow up without an internet, but the first generation to grow up with home computers, raised at the end of the so-called Gutenberg parenthesis, when books still reigned as the premier keepers of knowledge. The part of me that trained in critical approaches to cultural objects and learned to view all technology with a skeptical eye.
And both sides meet up in a little sidewalk cafe of “art-and-playful intelligence” which draws both upon critical AI studies, in the footsteps of Rita Raley, N. Katherine Hayles, and others, and in my creative artistic practice. Lately, I’ve been feeling a need to post some of the napkin notes from the coffee shop debates in my mind.
So, here’s a new forum, a substack listserv.
Here you’ll find notes from all the voices debating in my head and in the heads of others. Conversations I’ve been having with Jeremy Douglass, Anna Millls, Maha Bali and others. I’ll offer thoughts on the latest news and tools, share assignments and links, and also experiment with the tech. We’ll examine issues of bias and white supremacy, the transformation in the creative arts, and the impact on education.
Eventually, these reflections will go into articles. Maybe a book. Or a movie. Or a video game.
If you’re interested in AI as it pertains especially to art making and education, come along, sign up!
About me: I’m a Generative AI Fellow and Professor (Teaching) of Writing at the University of Southern California where I direct the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab. My recent books include Critical Code Studies, Hallucinate This!, and Unboxing. I am currently collaborating on a book about ELIZA. You can see more about me at my website: https://markcmarino.com