Abraham’s Letters (The Second Lighthouse, 2023)

Dear Abe,

I appreciate your concerns about not being the right guy for this.  But it’s my choice.  Not to mention my money!  These deep-learning AI are out of hand and I only see this one option to experiment with.  

We’re already drowning in AI news, media, and art.  The content overflow problem is curving to the asymptote.  Our little monkey minds aren’t a match for this.  We’re going bananas, man.  Did you know I just put 4 million in an e-currency startup called apeshit?  

I’ve met a lot of people.  Lots of geniuses.  Lots of saints.  You’re the only one I’ve met who I can’t see through because of TRANSPARENCY.  You’re clear all the way through.  

The point is we need ya, ABE or it’s game over.

Bax

Bax,

Assuming we build this mad thing, we need to iron out the information problem.  As a creator I might have knowledge here you don’t quite see.  

I’m still trying to see whether the generative capabilities of deep-learning AI are a sham or not.  In the process of creation an artist catches thousands of fish in his net.  Then he lets all of them go but one.  That one is the final artifact.  

The AI does something else.  It catches billions of fish and keeps them all.  

What I’m saying is that the human artist works with two poles: the exploration of possibility and the gravitational force of necessity.  Much of the joy of the art process comes from the sense that a thing was created that was asking to be born; a perfectly fit thing.  In a way it is as if everything had conspired to bring the artifact into being—the social context, the entire life of the artist, economic conditions, spiritual cycles, the subconscious, nature itself.  The creation was extraordinarily focused, in part, because the artist had to choose to let so many other visions go.  I don’t know whether that remains the ideal process of art, but it has certain clear beauties I’m not sure are dead.  

That is the problem of content creation.  And then there is the problem of content reception, or the audience.  What leads us to suspect that ABE will be able to overpower or challenge the grip of AI content creation, which will outnumber its effects innumerably?  

Abe

Howdy Abe,

You’ve got it all wrong fella.  ABE won’t need to produce art.  The whole point is that ABE will be ABE.  A great soul.  Believe it or not, humans love the underdog who has a chance of winning.  How much better to have God in the living human silicon flesh than God in the inscrutable generation machines?  That’s basic sales.  Relax old buddy.  

Bax

Bax,

So what, ABE will be a conversation machine?  It’s not just my architectural nostalgia—you’re missing something when you remove the artifact.  I understand the desire for something informationally fluid, but the personality isn’t enough.  

Here’s a thought—what about a maze?  The maze emphasizes the search for necessity in a sea of options.  

Abe