Due to the overflow of false information AI is not able to tell the truth from fake news. Also everything one can find on the internet there is no way of verifying if it is true or not.
show this state with: news, AI reading it
a. the gov decides every AI will be m.AI (maybe beta testers)
b. people develop this and there is no choice but to use it because everything else is trash (no alternative)
c. the AI itself notices that users are more and more unhappy with its answer so it stops answering and starts questioning. eg.: FLO
-> in comes m.AI (maiuticsAI)
our chracters use it but are rather frustrated – they then try to turn back to the internet but are even more frustrated.
-> second try with m.AI
this time our characters really try and see the benefits and get a kick out of their learing expirience with m.AI.
-> resoltuion ?
a. the POV of the single screens merge – they stop talking to their devices and turn to humans for answers.
What kind of AI could help bring people together?
What kind of AI could make people see the value of learning and understanding?
What kind of AI could foster critical thinking?
What alternatives will we adapt to, in case of the death of the internet?
Visuals
our characters will be shown from the devices cameras perspective.
Characters
Hippies that revert to also only talking in questions
Strongly religious people that cannot stand the AI questioning their belief/god
Children Why? why? why?
Seniors not affine with any kind of technology
Single-parents
People falling into an existential crisis (maybe even suicidal)
Rebels
impatient/unwilling people that just want answers
Positive responders super efficient, super creative
Telling not showing ( so rather not): Vlog, YouTube-style videos, Chats or Online forums
Show not tell (better): split storyline/split screen, Device POV/ POV of the AI
Framework conditions:
The AI has to be invisible/”in the screen”/the eyes of the viewer (not showing some new futuristic device or an old thing like Alexa -> claiming that there is some new technology but not showing/predicting how it looks like)
The POV can be from the phone or Laptop but also other “smart AI-augmented devices”: fridge, car interface, smart lamps, door locks, Airpods
Scenario structure possibilities:
A look into AI training data centers -> dialogue with “test person” – stroyline – interaction fails somehow – on screen: “FAIL – ERROR – TRY AGAIN/NEXT TEST SUBJECT” Working like a speed dating process: some interactions work well/have good outcomes, some fail
Same scenario but the interactions start off good, and working well but get worse with time ending with people just flipping out/chaos and “FAIL ERROR”s all the time and switching clips faster and faster -> Disaster crescendo
Pro-AI commercial: begin with a pro-maieutic “this-is-so-great” advertisement clip, then there is supposed to be a “show of implementation in real life” -> AI-POV-dialogue scenes – interaction comes close to fail – scene is cut off shortly before the obvious fail (seeming like bad cutting but making the viewer understand what conflict was about to come up)
Groups (characters interacting with the Maieutic AI that could create a good storyline):
Hippies that revert to also only talking in questions
strongly religious people that cannot stand the AI questioning their belief/god
Children: Why? why? why?
Seniors: not affine with any kind of technology
Single-parents
People falling into an existential crisis (maybe even suicidal)
Rebels
impatient/unwilling people that just want answers
Positive responders: super efficient, super creative
Moments of “creation”: Big Bang (planet earth), first forms of life (bacteria, fungi), life on land (humans, animals,…), AI as transcendent life form
At what point is the AI not part of humans anymore?
Singularity:
“solved” world means no (immediate) extinction
Love Death Robots – Ice Age, Her – Samantha leaving
Science fiction: humans as protagonist: they evolve (transformers or hybrid creature), they endure (immortality) they reach new powers (superhero-stories)
Design fiction: what is the next likely thing to happen? AI developing quicker than humankind, the “end” of human evolution, replacement by AI-“organism”, detachment of both
Ach, da kommt der Meister! Herr, die Not ist groß! Die ich rief, die Geister Werd ich nun nicht los.
Ah, he comes excited. Sir, my need is sore. Spirits that I’ve cited My commands ignore.
J.W. Goethe 1797
Community
More-than-humanity as opposed to AI as transcendent “everything”
Values
= answer to the question “What remains if after the takeoff of a singular AGI? What is perennially human, what is immanent in nature?”
Values: Communication, empathy for the soul of everything, more-than-human connection (networks), care & engagement (+solidarity, empathy)
More-than-Human empathy
Object personification in autism: this paper will be very sad if you don’t read it
Rebekah C White and Anna Remington
Object personification, anthropomorphization = feeling sympathy for inanimate objects
Often occurs to individuals who struggle with loneliness or who experience social pain (increased in our imagined future)
Cast away – WilsonDimensions of Mind Perception – Heather M. Gray, Kurt Gray, Daniel M. Wegner
Friction/questions
What makes nature nature, what is the transcendent AI? What connects that, what do they have in common? What parts them, what is the conflict?
Is artificial superintelligence dangerous?
Will we live next to the AI or without it? How does next to look like?
Will the AI depart and “leave us behind”? Will it take all technology with it? What then? or: What remains? What is immanently human/natural? And what gives us a right to exist?
Is its creation a borer that humanity will now care to not cross again? “Progress paradox”
Do we describe the moment of detachment between more-than-humanity and AI or a storyline afterwards?
Storyline ideas:
AI as oracle – common truth
Humans as brainless minions for the AI – unknowingly building a rocket for expansion into space
AI is keeping humans stupid and unknowing, them finding creativity in randomness is a threat to the system
animism is often (wrongly) seen as the first religion while it is more of a way to view the world. Japanese animism: Shinto – souls/spirits/gods called kami -> reflected in many stories (ghibli movies, pokémon, yokai), shrines with one “go-shintai”, an object that can house a kami, also “kamidana” with Shide (folded paper strips)
community: could have digital shrines on major natural landmarks that work with AI translation. Like scanning a QR-code and then being able to speak to the river/tree/mountain-“spirit” about their emotions and health
From animism to religion: garden of eden
People living in interaction with plants, AI translating devices make a heavenly communal life possible, everything is over-the-top romanticised
Imagining the translation tool
AI permanently connected to the body, picking up VOCS (scents), ultrasonic sounds (cavitation) from the air. Other ways plants communicate: electric signals, and root signals (mycelium network)
Idea of plants communicating in emotions not words – a bit like babies who have different cries for different needs. Other option: musical communication like whale song. (logical error: if AI can translate their need into sounds, why not make it speech all along?)
scenario: human getting the translation device in hope of caring better for their “friend” pet plant but as soon as the speaking device is implemented, we can hear that the potted plant is screaming nonstop because it can never be as happy as living in the woods. The scene would be the emotional journey of the human from hope, feeling pity for the plant and trying to make it happy to being more and more annoyed and angry, eventually throwing it out because he cannot bear the screams and cannot turn the permanent device in his ear off.
New approach: Ecological consciousness as monetary value
economic system: for every product consumed that is categorized as “luxury” or “not necessary for subsistance”, one has to take in a seedling that equals the CO2 of the consumed product. They have to care for them and “breed” them until they are strong enough to live in the woods on their own, then they are “released into the wild”.
Plants integrated into housing situations in Vienna:
Alterlaa, Hundertwasserhaus, MA48-Zentrale
values/goals in this world scenario: less consumerism, community-oriented life, using new free time (no more jobs) to care about the environment, reach net-zero in carbon emissions
specific community possibility: “rich”, greedy, higher class community hoards loads of plants that they neglect and let die just to be able to consume more, living with a constant cacophony of screams in their ear translators, basements full of bio waste but flats full of luxury goods.
AI workshop film to represent the scenario:
Different approach: discovering new values in this post-work, post-capitalist economy
Data as Labour: Digital data as means of production and thus as a new source of income, question of who owns the access to AI-inputs? Data as new currency.
Work environment: Repair services for physical systems, care work, creative production
Shift in values, shift in status
Redefining meaning: care work, free time, creativity, and the common good (but -> UBI without enough social security, no possibility to save up), lifelong education
Care work: plant/animal/human, mechanical/haptic aspect and emotional intelligence
A healthy person has a thousand wishes, a sick person only one.
probably Confucius
free time: grindset is over, more value to “unemployment”, free time and sleep
common good: new value in community-oriented activities, intergenerational connection
lifelong education: keeping up with the new rapidity of technology; acquiring creative skills; learning about oneself
creative expression and production
AI made me believe in a human soul by showing me what art looks like without it
Some student on the Angewandte toilet
-> AI understood as a tool, not a living being. Through the soullessness of AI the path back to an animist world view is set. Slop and coldness of AI enforces the appreciation of life, helping society to raise value to: free time and boredom, non-entertainment, sleep, idleness, mental health, empathy, care
