Creativity Squared: On Building the A.I. Future We Want

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

The mission of Creativity Squared is to envision a world where artists not only coexist with A.I., but thrive. Today, we have a visionary thinker when it comes to the economy, labor, and societal change: Sara Horowitz.

A labor lawyer, former chair of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, and recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Sara founded the Freelancers Union and is currently building the Mutualist Society. She joins us in Episode 15 for an enlightening, incisive, and thought-provoking discussion at the intersection of A.I., labor movements, and the power of community-driven change.

In Episode 15, you’ll learn more about the historical context of labor movements and how they relate to today’s culture, including the current writers’ and actors’ strikes.

Sara also shares her thoughts on the future of technology, including A.I. and DAOs (or decentralized autonomous organizations), and how we can harness this tech from a mutualistic approach that centers on collectivism, community, and building collaboratively. Explore Sara’s vision of embracing a mutualistic future that can bring about positive societal change and a better way forward — listen to E15. Sara Horowitz: How to Build the A.I. Future with Mutualism now.

It’s also that time of the year — I need your help to get my panel submission selected for SXSW 2024!

It’s quick and easy to vote: Create a PanelPicker account or log in, click the ⬆️, and please add a comment — it really makes a difference! Vote here: https://bit.ly/VoteSXSW2024

My panel, “Not Deepfaked! Digitally Clone Yourself & Own Your IP,” will explore the exciting future of ethically A.I.-created synthetic avatars.

I’ll be alongside tech attorney Derrick L. Maultsby, Jr. with Frost Brown Todd; hyper-realistic avatar researcher Jill Schiefelbein who’s also a Render Partner & CXO; a product executive from a leading avatar provider; and….of course, my custom synth, Helen 2.ODD, will also make an appearance!

In case you missed last week’s announcement, I’ve digitally cloned myself! There are less than a thousand known custom synthetic avatars in existence. Learn all about mine in episode E14. Not Deepfaked! I Cloned Myself. You’ll meet Helen 2.ODD, my digital double, and discover why and how I made my A.I.-created custom synthetic avatar.

Can you tell the difference between the two of us? In this video, we’re side by side:

🙋‍♀️ Want your own custom synthetic avatar? Creativity Squared is collaborating with our partner and sponsor Render to bring their avatar experience to Cincinnati, OH, on October 25 and 26, so anyone can digitally clone themselves. If you’re interested in this, let us know here, and we’ll follow up with more information.

Scroll on to discover:

• 🎧 More on Episode 15

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• ⛔️ Update on the Actors’ Strike: Has Body Scanning Already Begun?

• 💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits

• 💝 Milestone Rewards

We’re just getting started, and if you enjoy our content, I’d really appreciate it if you could share, review, like, subscribe, leave a comment, and help spread the word about Creativity Squared in whatever way you’re willing to. Your support is greatly appreciated, and the whole team looks forward to growing with your help. Thank you!

Here's to exponential possibilities!

Helen

Also Noteworthy:

🐝 We use Beehiiv for this newsletter and Riverside for recording podcast episodes, and recommend them!

🗓 The ArtsWave Truth and Healing Artist visual gallery will be at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati through September 10. As a proud partner, we interviewed all of the artists, and are excited to share the first batch of conversations released — check them out here. 

🎨 I want to live in a world where artists not only coexist with A.I., but thrive. And because it’s important to support artists, 10% of all revenue Creativity Squared generates goes to ArtsWave, a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 150 arts organizations, projects, and independent artists. Consider becoming a Premium Member today! 

🚀 Interested in becoming a sponsor of Creativity Squared? Reach out!

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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

Listen: E15. Sara Horowitz: Build the A.I. Future with Mutualism
Crisis of Imagination: How to Build the A.I. Future We Want with Mutualism from Freelancers Union Founder Sara Horowitz

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Sara Horowitz is a lifelong mutualist and is the founder of the Freelancers Union and the Freelancers Insurance Company. A labor lawyer, former chair of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, and recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Sara is currently working to build the Mutualist Society. She is also the author of the book "Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up."

Sara’s resilience, innovation, and unwavering commitment to creating a more equitable and inclusive labor landscape give her a timely and valuable perspective on the present moment, when technology is rapidly reshaping industries and economies.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn more about the historical context of labor movements and how they relate to today’s culture, including the current writers' and actors’ strikes. Sara shares her thoughts on the future of technology, including A.I. and DAOs (or decentralized autonomous organizations), and how we can harness this technology from a mutualistic approach that centers on collectivism, community, and building collaboratively. Explore Sara’s vision of embracing a mutualistic future that can bring about positive societal change and a better way forward.

Your A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

With all of the A.I. news flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered. News to check out includes:

• Grimes Wants to Be Less Famous (and Replaced by AI) WIRED’s Have a Nice Future — On WIRED magazine’s tech futurism podcast, Grimes (who now refers to herself as C) discussed her controversial decision to freely distribute a digital clone of her voice for anyone to create music with. She said how “moved” she was to hear songs made by other people using her voice that she wishes she could have made. C also addressed her plea for users of her voice to stop producing “toxic” content with it, the ethics of deepfakes developed with or without consent, and how she’d like to spend more energy on innovative projects rather than mainstream recording fame.

• Universal Music and Google in talks over AI music service Financial Times — Elsewhere in the music industry, fans may one day be able to pay to make their own tracks with synthesized vocals from Drake or Taylor Swift. The record company behind some of music’s biggest stars, UMG, is reportedly talking to Google about monetizing artists’ voices. It wasn’t long ago that UMG was scrambling to eradicate a boot-strapped deepfake song that used Drake’s voice. UMG isn’t alone either, the CEO of Warner Bros., told investors recently that the right framework could usher in a new wave of “user-driven content.”

• Famous Author Jane Friedman Finds AI Fakes Being Sold Under Her Name on Amazon The Daily Beast —Like a plot twist straight out of a novel, an author who publishes scholarly works about the publishing industry found out that books she’d never written were being sold with her name on the cover. Jane Friedman told the Daily Beast that she wasn’t surprised to discover A.I. was the culprit. Self-publishing options have made it easier than ever to sell a book, and A.I. has made it easier than ever to write a book, including counterfeit books. What’s more astonishing is the difficulty Friedman had in trying to get the illegitimate texts removed from Amazon, exposing a thorny copyright issue for book-sellers and authors to wrangle with.

• Google says AI systems should be able to mine publishers’ work unless companies opt out The Guardian — On the input side of A.I. ethics, Google is trying to leverage the “fair use” argument to convince Australian regulators that websites should be accessible by default for A.I. training purposes. Some content owners, like the media giant News Corp., are trying to negotiate pay-for-scrape schemes with A.I. developers. However, there’s concern for smaller players on the internet with less bargaining power. According to media law experts, an opt-out copyright framework would reverse the existing paradigm in many countries where a content owner must give permission for others to use their work for a commercial purpose. Google says that it wants its A.I. models to train “on a broad and diverse range of data.”

• Does Sam Altman Know What He’s Creating? The Atlantic — This sprawling profile of the most important person in A.I. is an insider’s account of OpenAI’s unlikely journey to disrupting the modern world. Altman alludes to the release of ChatGPT a “public service,” says he has no regrets, and discusses the geopolitical implications of powerful A.I. while globetrotting to evangelize the technology. OpenAI’s chief scientist also offers a layman’s introduction to the science of neural networks and machine learning.

• Nvidia reveals new A.I. chip, says costs of running LLMs will ‘drop significantly’ CNBC — Nvidia just upped the ante in the fiercely competitive market for superpowered computer chips with the announcement of their new GH200 GPU. A graphic processing unit is the critical piece of hardware necessary to support the huge processing demands of A.I. models. Nvidia says that the GH200 is purpose-built to support large language models like ChatGPT, by boosting their A100 chip with an additional 60 gigabytes of RAM and a 72-core processor. Meanwhile, Nvidia is also looking to protect their 80% market share in the chip market by agreeing to be the anchor investor in an upcoming initial public offering for ARM, which sells the blueprints that Nvidia and competitors use to manufacture their chips.

• Greg Rutkowski Was Removed From Stable Diffusion, But AI Artists Brought Him Back Decrypt — More popular than Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci among A.I. artists, Greg Rutkowski opted out of the Stable Diffusion training set. The community just created a LoRA to mimic his style. And since Stable Diffusion is open source, there's nothing he or Stability AI can do about it.

• ‘Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God’: Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the DoomerismThe Information (Subscribe with 25% off to support us) — The generative A.I. founder is adamant that his text-to-video service will save filmmakers time, not replace their livelihoods.

Read: Update on the Actors’ Strike:
Has Body Scanning Already Begun?

Concerns about how A.I. will be used to cut costs in film and television productions continue to fuel Hollywood’s longest labor dispute since the 1960s. The strike by members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, is now on track to surpass the longest strike in Hollywood history, which lasted 153 days in 1988.

What started as an effort by WGA to get its members a better deal from streaming services, has now become one of the earliest battlegrounds for workers fighting to protect their livelihoods against artificial intelligence.

One of the biggest flashpoints in the ongoing dispute is the idea that Hollywood studios might use A.I. to clone actors’ likenesses without the actor’s fully informed consent and for meager compensation. To be clear: we here at Creativity Squared do not support this. Consent and compensation are critical and, if done properly, can offer new revenue streams for actors.

Read the full blog post to learn more about actors’ concerns with A.I. regarding using their likeness and more.

Thank You to Render

Creativity Squared is supported by Render which provides Digital Likeness solutions for personal brand businesses, thought leaders, influencers, and business leaders who want to leverage their synthetic, A.I.-powered Likeness to communicate more effectively online and create audio and video content from anywhere without going on camera. Learn more by visiting: https://rendermedia.ai.

Interested in partnering with Creativity Squared? Reach out!

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