Forget Being Powerless. Get in the Pseudo-Avatar Business Now
January 3, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I read “A New Kind of AI Copy Can Fully Replicate Famous People. The Law Is Powerless.” Okay, okay. The law is powerless because companies need to generate zing, money, and growth. What caught my attention in the essay was its failure to look down the road and around the corner of a dead man’s curve. Oops. Sorry, dead humanoids curve.
The write up states that a high profile psychologist had a student who shoved the distinguished professor’s outputs into smart software. With a little deep fakery, the former student had a digital replica of the humanoid. The write up states:
Over two months, by feeding every word Seligman had ever written into cutting-edge AI software, he and his team had built an eerily accurate version of Seligman himself — a talking chatbot whose answers drew deeply from Seligman’s ideas, whose prose sounded like a folksier version of Seligman’s own speech, and whose wisdom anyone could access. Impressed, Seligman circulated the chatbot to his closest friends and family to check whether the AI actually dispensed advice as well as he did. “I gave it to my wife and she was blown away by it,” Seligman said.
The article wanders off into the problems of regulations, dodges assorted ethical issues, and ignores copyright. I want to call attention to the road ahead just like the John Doe n friend of Jeffrey Epstein. I will try to peer around the dead humanoid’s curve. Buckle up. If I hit a tree, I would not want you to be injured when my Ford Pinto experiences an unfortunate fuel tank event.
Here’s an illustration for my point:
The future is not if, the future is how quickly, which is a quote from my presentation in October 2023 to some attendees at the Massachusetts and New York Association of Crime Analyst’s annual meeting. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Good enough image. MSFT excels at good enough.
The write up says:
AI-generated digital replicas illuminate a new kind of policy gray zone created by powerful new “generative AI” platforms, where existing laws and old norms begin to fail.
My view is different. Here’s a summary:
- Either existing AI outfits or start ups will figure out that major consulting firms, most skilled university professors, lawyers, and other knowledge workers have a baseline of knowledge. Study hard, learn, and add to that knowledge by reading information germane to the baseline field.
- Implement patterned analytic processes; for example, review data and plug those data into a standard model. One example is President Eisenhower’s four square analysis, since recycled by Boston Consulting Group. Other examples exist for prominent attorneys; for example, Melvin Belli, the king of torts.
- Convert existing text so that smart software can “learn” and set up a feed of current and on-going content on the topic in which the domain specialist is “expert” and successful defined by the model builder.
- Generate a pseudo-avatar or use the persona of a deceased individual unlikely to have an estate or trust which will sue for the use of the likeness. De-age the person as part of the pseudo-avatar creation.
- Position the pseudo-avatar as a young expert either looking for consulting or advisory work under a “remote only” deal.
- Compete with humanoids on the basis of price, speed, or information value.
The wrap up for the Politico article is a type of immortality. I think the road ahead is an express lane on the Information Superhighway. The results will be “good enough” knowledge services and some quite spectacular crashes between human-like avatars and people who are content driving a restored Edsel.
From consulting to law, from education to medical diagnoses, the future is “a new kind of AI.” Great phrase, Politico. Too bad the analysis is not focused on real world, here-and-now applications. Why not read about Deloitte’s use of AI? Better yet, let the replica of the psychologist explain what’s happening to you. Like regulators, I am not sure you get it.
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2024
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One Response to “Forget Being Powerless. Get in the Pseudo-Avatar Business Now”
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Mr. Arnold, Cheer-leading for A.I. displays you’re firmly tuned to the unfrequency (i.e., dissonance) while failing to recognize humanity’s own democide. Isn’t it enough that all our air, food, and water is poisoned?