Deep Fakes, Authenticity, and History

I was reading a New York Times article about the "Last Beatles' Song" and pondering this new reality we find ourselves in, fretting over Deep Fakes and authenticity.  I share the unease that most do, but what I am understanding today is that we are just entering a new reality where, in the future, it will seem quaint and (perhaps) cool for live people to perform in front of cameras and create movies the traditional way. My first experience of this was was in the Star Wars Rogue One in which both Princess Leia and General Tarkin appear but there is no actor/actress alive to do that role anymore.  

In the distant past, the only way to get a story experience was to hear the storyteller tell the tale in your presence.  Then books were invented and it became a quaint and cool experience to have someone tell a story in real time straight from their mouth into your ear.  There is still a special joy to be had during these times, but it is not the usual way we receive a story anymore.  Music is the same way but an in-person experience is still highly valued even if it is by far the more rare way in which we experience music these days.  (I could argue that a lot of the appeal of going to live music is less about the music and more about the experience of the event, but I'm not sure about that so I won't).  We still go see and enjoy plays as well, but (again) not the standard way in which we enjoy performance pieces anymore is it?

So my prediction is that AI enhanced Deep Fakes will not replace music and cinema as we know it, but it will become the de facto production method in the future (or at the very least, a prominent element in the product).  We will, however, still honor and enjoy the quaintness of non-enhanced music/movies and, even more so, the occasional in-person live event. 

Unavoidably, future novels, music, and movies will all have AI written/enhanced elements to them unless it is marketed as an "organic" product as a novelty.  Perhaps future generations will look at this decade as comparable to the invention of the printing press or the record player.  The change in paradigm was not overnight but the societal impact was deep and profound.  Fear of the printing press was real and similar to fear of this AI revolution, but I'm guessing we will settle into a new normal and be just fine with it... 

So even though I am slightly put off with dead actors and musicians putting out 'new' work, I'm thinking I need to get over it. I'll try to acclimate by enhancing this 'organically' written post with some AI generated art:

AI generated from the prompt "Fear of an AI future"

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On the other hand,  Nick Cave says we should fight AI tooth and nail:

Visas, Bureaucracy, and Thinking you are smart...

 My brother just now mentioned that he was waiting on his visa for his upcoming trip to India and I said "Oh, I know all about that!"  I looked for the blog entry here that details that fiasco but it turns out, I never blogged it!  Here we go...

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As I have blogged before, in the mid-to-late 90s I worked for a company that flew me around the world doing some technical work for them.  One very memorable trip for me was to India. 

Before I left on that trip, I found out I would need a visa to travel to India.  Back then, formalities like this were just part of the landscape of life ("I'll grab lunch over there, swing by the Indian Consulate, and come back to work around 2PM); now I feel like I have to shut down an entire day to get something bureaucratic like that done.  In any case, the guy helping me with the visa pointed out that my passport expired later that year. I was like "So?" and he kindly explained that India does not let people in on a visa on a passport that expires in less than 3 months.  I was kind of incredulous as I had return tickets for one week after my arrival.  He shrugged and gave me my visa and I went on my way.

Fast forward to my actual trip: After a hop from Houston to Los Angeles,  I tried to check in for my flight to India and the lady wouldn't let me.  The reason: my passport was expiring too soon! What?  You mean the guy whose job it is to give out visas knew what he was talking about?  Who would've guessed? 

So, I talked with the check-in lady and she put me on the list for the last flight out that night (this was an early flight) and I went off to find the State department offices and beg for a new passport.  After a 15 minute taxi ride, I went in and pled my case.  Luckily I landed in the hand of sympathetic young guy and he rushed it through and issued me a new passport within a few hours.  I didn't even know that was possible!  To keep the visa, he punched a hole in my old passport and I carried both with me and had no further issues.  Honestly, I'm kind of amazed it all worked out.  Back then, I didn't know any better so I tried to make it work out and... it did!

Oddly, the taxi ride back to the airport was taking over 30 minutes and didn't seem to be traveling the same efficient path my earlier ride had taken.  I sighed loudly and, all of a sudden, the driver hopped on to an interstate and I was at the airport in less than 5 mins.  Strange how that happens, huh?  Only time in all my travels around the world where I felt like I was literally 'taken for a ride' by a taxi was here in the USA!

Note to self:  Don't try to out-think bureaucracy, just comply.

AI art prompt: travel red tape passport India

The Glory Gaussian Days

So, I wasn't a very good grad student.  My grades were okay, but I was a bit directionless.  On my way to my Master's degree in Physics (which was just supposed to be a waypoint on the way to the PhD but well, you know... stuff happens), I was mostly taking classes.  The thing is, I thought I would understand things better.  It turns out that the old adage "the more you know, the more you know what you don't know", turned out to be very true in my case.  I always felt like I was on the verge of learning/understanding something very cool about physics... but never quite arriving.

There is one glory moment that I like to relive though.  It was in Statistical Mechanics.  I was really looking forward to this class and it was taught by a relatively charismatic faculty member who was about to become the department head of the physics department.  Turns out, he wasn't a very good teacher (if I had a nickel...). He would assume we already knew stuff we didn't know and spend lots of time on something obscure that he found interesting and then he would give us tests that were only tangentially related to what we have been doing in class.  It wasn't just me, all of the students in that class were a bit frustrated with that experience.  (To his credit, after the class, he came by and asked several of us to tell him why it went so poorly so he could do better in the future!).

Since I wanted to understand what was going on, I picked up an old textbook of my father's (I just googled and found that it is still exists, but I'm pretty sure Amazon is making up this edition number!)

On one of the pages, the famous gaussian integral was introduced and there was a brief footnote where they outlined the derivation of this important integral (I can still picture the page and the format of it to this day).  I was fascinated and read it carefully and thought "Wow, this is cool."  Of course, I was still confused about how to apply it, but at least I understood the calculus tricks involved.  

Back to my glory moment (one of only two during my three years of graduate school) in the class:  One day, the prof wrote the integral from negative infinity to positive infinity over e to the ax^2.  He asked if anyone happened to know the answer.  I waited a beat and said casually (assuming others knew), "Yea, square root of pi over a."  He then turned to me in a swooping motion and said "BUT CAN YOU PROVE IT?"  His face lit with joy and anticipation.  My reading fresh on my mind, I responded without hesitation, "Yes, sure - you square the integral, change to polar coordinates, solve that integration over the plane, and finally take the square root."  He stood there and looked disappointed and sad.  He deflated and said "yes, that's basically it."  It was a strange encounter but I felt my fellow students were proud of me in that moment (pretty sure none of them remember it today though like I do !)

This memory triggered courtesy of my son, who does not know any calculus but somehow found this little video cool enough to share with me today after he mentioned the words "gaussian integral" and I said "what do YOU know about gaussians?".  Small world, huh?