Pablo Núñez Palma

With the advent of high-quality AI-generated media and the soon-to-be reality of generation on a real-time basis, I'm seeing a version of the same type of questions going around: how will we be able to distinguish real from generated? I think that's the wrong question to ask. It's worth remembering that generated videos have been around for 60+ years. And we are all okay. We actually already have a term for it: computer-generated imagery (CGI). Most movies and shows you watch are partially or entirely generated. Remember those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park? Guess what? They are not real. (yeah, sorry to break that) But sometimes, CGI is harder to find. Look for David Fincher's VFX breakdown of The Social Network, for example. The best CGI is the one you don't notice. And society has been perfectly fine about it. Under that premise, then, the real concerns do not seem to be how to distinguish what is real from what is not, but what happens when everyone has the tools that a David Fincher movie budget has. What happens when everyone can create anything they can imagine. My long-term position is that what is needed moving forward is a focus on i) digital literacy and ii) social awareness. i) Digital literacy: you need to adjust your mental models for every new technology. We keep discussing how fast technology changes, but we rarely discuss how fast culture adapts. We tend to underestimate speed of cultural changes and human adaptability. The best way of updating a prior is to have experience and exposure. One of the earliest films ever made was “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” by the Lumière brothers in 1895. Legend has it that when the film was first screened, the audience panicked and fled the theater, convinced that the train in the film was going to burst through the screen and run them over. You can cure your fear of trains in films by understanding how movies are made. ii) Collective awareness: Social verification is key for any malicious type of content. We are already collectively good at sussing out malicious things that are trying to be passed as truth but are not. We get better at collective awareness by exercising more of i). The solution to potential challenges posed by ubiquitous access to high-quality content creation tools is not merely technological but also cultural and educational.

Not true. We said exactly the same thing about photoshop 30 years ago. When considering technological change, you should also factor in the human and social behavioral changes that come with it.

Happy to be of service! If you don't mind, let me add a few more thoughts: - "Art" is at its core a belief system and not a science - anything can become art if enough people believe in it. A belief system where nobody knows what is "true" requires priests and scholars that uphold the rituals and dogmas and who interpret the scripture. Critics are part of that caste and it is important that they are convincing and respected enough to make us believe that they know or understand the mysteries that we do not. And that is a vital role, since without some firm poles that hold this system together it could just fall apart. - Unlike religion "Art" is a very special belief system that is not static but in constant metamorphosis - I would say that it is its most important property. But this also poses a constant danger for the organism that is Art since any mutation could develop into a cancer that makes it unrecognizable or even life-threatening to the cells that at any given time make up its body. So in that sense critics are part of Art's immune-system that tries to protect the organism from harm. The problem is that many of those critics who over years rose in the hierarchy of that system and grew more potent are often trying to protect Art in the shape they knew to be the correct one when they were starting out - like 20 or 50 years ago. So they might only recognize the markers of those artists or movements they grew up with as "self" and can't help to attack those perceived as "non-self" as intruders or impostors based on the markers they are able to see. And of course they also have to protect themselves since if the organism evolves away too far from the shape they had perfectly adapted to they might end up as a vestigial body-part like the appendix or the tail-bone.

New Philosophize This! Episode #188 - Byung-Chul Han Achievement Society and the rise of narcissism, depression and anxiety Today we talk about positive power, neoliberalism, narcissism as a reaction to modern life, how technology makes isolation easier, and some tactics to find peace in the digital panopticon. Hope you love it and have a great rest of your week.  traffic.libsyn.com/philosoph… philosophizethis.org