Fabio Romeo

But why this pessimism all of a sudden? Mostly because I didn't bother with generative artificial intelligence tools, until the moment they stopped being an option.

Before, I needed to actively go after the tool, activate it and manipulate it to be able to produce something and get some result. Today they are spreading everywhere, in every tool, and I'm not exactly ok with that. Windows itself wants to make AI such a mandatory business that Microsoft created a button on the keyboard dedicated to its artificial intelligence, Copilot, which has become an increasingly mandatory part of the operating system, and began to demand all new computers that, to be certified to run Windows, they'll have to have the darn thing.

This bothers me, as I feel there is a very high chance of being violated by a corporation that only sees you as a number. On the one hand, I always wanted a decent search tool, which would actually find the files I needed just by looking at the context of the question. On the other hand, having all my private data and files - including medical reports, expense sheets, personal projects and even diaries - processed by a computer somewhere in the world, managed by who knows who, is giving away to  to a company enormous power over my life, since it will be able to analyze and draw conclusions (right or wrong) about everything I do or could do. And not only that, this "perfect" profile of my life and personality will be sold to those who pay the most, putting more advertising into my life. It's a Minority Report dystopia, but the precogs are made of chips instead of three humans in a bathtub, being used to sell Amazon's sheets and blenders.

It's bad to know that I've become the old man who shouts at the clouds and to have to say "in my time that didn't happen". It used to be that a computer was a computer, and an MP3 player was just an MP3 player. None of them monitored every click, every interaction, and every file I opened. An advance in technology was received with authentic enthusiasm from those who knew that life would really get easier.

Today, it's over. Every advance and every change is made to make people's lives worse, make things more difficult, and try to take every penny out of your pocket and send it to the companies' pockets. Everything is either a subscription, or changes for the worse with software updates, or simply cannot be repaired because it is cheaper to buy a new device that comes with even more strings attached. And with that, I'm becoming more and more of a Luddite, trying to keep electronics out of my life to have a more analogue life, because I know that I can use, repair and control it the way I want.

Let's see how far I can get.

I, in my naivety, did not expect to see such a strong movement to replace artists with AI tools. I still believe that they are fantastic tools that makes life a lot easier: boring tasks like cutting out a character or filling in an incomplete background have become much simpler. But seeing artists and writers effectively fired and replaced by these tools was something I didn't want to believe. We are heading towards a future where art, music and literature are being automated, leaving humans free to do bossy work, becoming stamp beaters.

There is at least one consolation: AI depends on content produced by others to function. There will come a point where AI will feed on art produced by AI, regurgitating content to the point where there is only garbage on top of garbage, incomprehensible and unusable, breaking the cycle and all AI companies along with it. Add to this the new tools for poisoning data models, protecting works from being absorbed by models, and perhaps this moment is closer than we think.

But of course, this could also be another naive thought.

WordPress announced that all of its sites will now serve as material to feed other people's AI bots, and it's your problem if you don't like it. Of course, for now they say that only blogs hosted on Wordpress.com will be processed and regurgitated, but I doubt they won't insert a clause in the future that rules the hosting system themselves. As they say, it's "money on the table", just waiting for someone to come by and take it. Now I'm here migrating my stuff to another system, and for now I decided to stick with Bludit, which is a lightweight, clean, and much more basic system than Wordpress for website management, which has its pros and cons.

The good thing is that it is quick and simple to edit, and I can read directly into the theme's code to tweak it the way I want. It's much easier to DIY the theme when I want something more different.

The bad thing is that it's a lot of work to edit things, and the code doesn't always do what I want the way I want it. In other words, strange things still happen here, like images that are cropped or squeezed when the site is viewed on a cell phone.

I'm adjusting and cooking everything over time. After all, this has always been a homemade, organic site, without dyes or preservatives.

Me: I swear to you, once I finish this postgraduate course I’m going to spend the next 5 years without studying anything and just enjoying life.

Also me: look, a course to learn 3D with Blender! *signs up*

No. Next question.

Wha? You want to know more? Sure, whatever. It’s been a while since I wrote an opionated text about art that would make people angry and pointing the finger at the screen.

Here’s the deal: Inhotim is an open air art gallery. A museum. Stylish, beautiful, full of scenery, but a museum. And one about contemporary art to boot. I personally love that place and want to go back whenever I get the chance, but at the risk of sounding elitist, it’s not for everyone.

And I don’t say that in the sense of thinking I’m intellectually superior to everyone (although… No. Stop. Get a grip, man), but thinking about the whole context. Inhotim is expensive, specially if you’re from Brazil. A can of water is six reais. Their buffet costs around 50 reais, less if you eat almost nothing. The entrance fee is 40 reais for students, 80 if you use internal transport (and believe me, you will want to use internal transport. Unless you’re used to walk up and down hills). Per day. And you won’t be able to see everything in one day, because the place is huge.

Of course, everything there is gorgeous: the modern buildings strategically placed in front of a water mirror, the bridge positioned in the perfect place to take photos, the impeccable landscaping. But all of this is punctuated, or tainted depending on your opinion, by works of contemporary art.

And that’s the thing. If you don’t like contemporary art, if you think it’s silly to see a ceiling full of styrofoam balls, or a wall with half a bus hangin on, or a colorful Volkswagen Beetle posing as a work of art, or if you don’t have the slightest openness to works of contemporary art, or even works of art in general, all of this will bother you and even irritate, ruining what would be a walk in pretty a botanical garden. You will be furious, thinking that you paid 200 reais per person to see a room full of broken glass on the floor.

Look, I’m not saying you need to like it, but you do need to acknowledge it. I myself don’t like several of the works there (the bus on the wall, for example), I love others (Desvio para o vermelho!), and I’m indifferent to some. But I know that’s part of the experience, and that’s why I go there.

Now, spending a lot of money to being pissed off while you walk will ruin your wallet, your mood, and everyone’s trip, just to say that you visited Inhotim. So save your money and go to the beach. You’ll enjoy it much more and you won’t need to complain about that hole in the ground being an art piece.

Specially when there’s new artworks to see. See it all on my gallery.

After reading this wonderful article from Ars Technica saying that chatGPT has end-of-the-year blues this is all I can think about:

The future won’t have Skynet, the robots will become human and spend the day watching South Korea soap operas on Netflix.

-Probability engine?

-IMprobability Engine!

-What?

-Like this: You use probability to travel. The less likely it is that you’ll be in a certain place right now, the quicker you’ll get there! They even wrote a book about the concept.

-That was a comedy with science fiction as a backdrop. With a robotic Italian cantina as the engine center.

-Yes, but the fundamental idea has been launched. Remember that science fiction has always been the basis for today’s reality.

-Okay, but this? How do you expect to get CLOSE to building something like this?

-Simple. I sit and wait.

-WAT?

-For real. I even thought about building a system based on probabilistic calculations for bingo and lotteries contained in a magnetic field, but I realized that it would be much more practical to sit and wait. After all, the engine runs with probability, right? The less likely an event is to occur, the closer it is. The probability of him appearing nearby is very small, which will bring him to me more quickly. Simple.

-…

-…

-That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Just stop it and put our car’s engine back!”, screamed Angela. Jeff, happy as ever, didn’t care. “This is science, woman!”

(…) people are less vain of their personalities than they are of their work. They feel in an odd way, I think, that they’re not irrevocably committed to their personality, that they can work on it and change it, whereas the work that has gone out – nothing can be done about it. But l’ve always hoped to find another painter l could really talk to – somebody whose qualities and sensibility I’d really believe in – who really tore my things to bits and whose judgement I could actually believe in. (…) I think it would be marvellous to have somebody who would say to you, “Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that!” and give you the reasons. I think it would be very helpful

From the book The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, by David Sylvester