It’s been a long time since I was fully gratified by a film I had longingly wanted to see – A Complete Unknown, about the Nobel-prize winnin’, free-wheelin’ Bob Dylan.
The story was immersive. The actors were embodiments of the originals. And the music was real – no overdubs, no lip-synch, no AI.
Timothée Chalamet is an actor, not a musician. When he got the role to play Dylan, he knew a few guitar chords learned for an earlier film. And yet there he was on the big screen, convincingly playing guitar and harmonica, as well as singing 40 iconic Bob Dylan songs in front of live audiences, using microphones and instruments from the 1960s, unaided by earpieces or timing mechanisms.
The same was true for Edward Norton, Monica Barbaro, and Boyd Holdbrook, who mastered respectively the voices and strumming of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash for the biopic.
I loved the film for many reasons, but particularly because these actors were 100% committed to their characters. They melded newly learned musical skills to their acting skills, which took their performances to a very high level. They exhibited very human motivations to learn, to excel, to be true to the turbulent cultural milieu of the 1960s.
The Perfect AI vs The Imperfect Human
In a very short period of time, our communication channels have become flooded with content created by Generative AI, particularly images and video, text and articles, voice and virtual assistants, and robo sales.
While GenAI has enabled so many of us to be more efficient and proficient than one could have imagined years before, it has also overwhelmed us, leaving many of us highly indifferent or skeptical of the content, the products and the experiences we are exposed to.
So when we read, see or experience something we know to be the work of a human, we place greater value on it.
When 85-year old Paul McCartney performed at the 50th Anniversary of the US television program Saturday Night Live, trolls laughed at the cracking singing voice of the legendary Beatle. Fortunately, the trolls were far outnumbered by the people who shed tears in gratefulness for the privilege of still being able to hear Paul sing.
Yes, it’s cool to use autotune to stay pitch perfect, but it’s cooler to be authentic, to be wabisabi.
Psychologist, John Nosta, explained in Psychology Today that AI is numbing us to a world of perfection – of perfect pitch, perfect grammar, perfect color balance, perfect timing. And while we may accept it, we prefer the imperfection of humans.
…perfection may be AI’s greatest flaw. Human imperfection isn’t a defect—it’s fundamental to who we are. From original sin to existential struggle, imperfection has shaped our understanding of what it means to be human.
In response to a fan who sent him lyrics created by ChatGPT “in the style of Nick Cave,” the real Nick Cave, an Aussie rock star, eloquently gave his views on what it means to be human.
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
The Authenticity Economy
Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction.
OK, so societies don’t bend exactly to the rules of physics, but in 1986, when American food-chain McDonalds placed its first restaurant in Piazza di Spangna in Rome, Italy, Carlo Petrini had an emotional reaction, and he decided to fight fast food with slow food. Distributing plates of pasta in a celebration of Italian cuisine, Petrini protested the large yellow “M” in the Piazza, but more significantly, pushed back against the inexorable spread of modernity, efficiency and sameness in the world, sparking the Slow Food Movement.
I had to do something in reaction to the planned opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Adding a large, yellow “M” sign would have aesthetically disfigured this cultural and historic place, and public opinion opposed it. We decided to organize a convivial event distributing a pasta dish in the piazza, because pasta is part of Italian culture and tradition — the flavors and tastes of our memory — and symbolizes the resistance against homogeneous, “same everywhere,” fast food. McDonald’s opened anyway, but we achieved a compromise: the “M” sign was limited in size. After this incident, we resolved to create a movement to save traditional tastes and products all over the world. They are not only essential for the preservation of biodiversity on the planet, but also for our cultural patrimony and sense of identity.
Over the years, the specialty foods market, the sustainable foods market, even the slow cooker market have grown as people create space in their lives to eat more healthily and enjoyably.
We have entered the age of the Authenticity Economy – our subtle response to the optimization and homogenization of human existence.
The number and variety of craft beers has increased significantly over the past 15 years, where in the US, where every one in four beers sold is a craft beer.
Etsy, the online marketplace for handcrafted goods has also seen rapid growth in both number of active sellers and buyers, demonstrating a rising demand for “unique, personalized products over mass-produced alternatives.”
Authority Hacker, a marketing consultancy, ran a survey testing consumers’ views on AI-generated content. They found that 1 in 2 would not pay for an AI-produced music album or book. And even if they did pay for AI-generated content, they would not pay as much as human-generated content.
AI’s Gift to Humanity: An Imperfect Mirror
Let’s be honest – in most of the things we buy and consume, we want decent quality at the lowest price delivered in the most efficient manner. In those cases, we don’t really care about the stories of who made it, and how difficult it was to get it to my front door. We want our functional needs fulfilled with the least amount of cost, muss and fuss.
But when it comes to our experiences, our emotional needs, we care about the details, the quality of the product, the values of the company, the challenges that went into creating that service or item, the stories about the creators.
We buy Nike, Patagonia, Gucci or Lexus because we want to differentiate from the masses.
We drink Sour Me Unicorn Farts craft beer, to teach our friends how to appreciate the hints of sour ale brewed with cherries, tangerines, limes, and Fruity Pebbles cereal.
We listen to the album “Ghosteen” to, perhaps, understand how to deal with grief, as Nick Cave had to during the composition of that record.
And going forward, as AI algorithms predict token after token, based on the average of the entirety of knowledge currently sitting on the Internet, we will continue to get an average output.
We will be amazed at the speed, and unamazed at its originality, but hey, it’s far better than what you or I could do on our own.
But it will not be great. It will not be different. It will not be human.
And that is a gift. AI is holding up a mirror to humanity, and showing us what AI is, and thus who we are.
We will know Human when we see it.
It will be different. It will be unique. And it will wake us up.
What was it Johnny Cash said to Bob Dylan in the film, as Dylan wrestled with the decision to play a more radical type of music at a folk music festival?
Make some noise, BD. Track some mud on the carpet.
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