Creativity Squared: On Truth and Innovation

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Dear Creativity Squared Member,

You guessed it — today is the third and final installment of this year’s ArtsWave Black and Brown Artist program special series. Supporting this program and these incredible artists is near and dear to my heart, and I hope you’ve found them as inspiring as I have, especially listening to the diverse interpretations of this year’s “Trust & Innovation” theme.

For the second year in a row, Creativity Squared is proud to partner with ArtsWave to amplify the phenomenal artists and grant recipients selected for this year’s ArtsWave Black and Brown Artist Program.

Here are three ways you can check out and support the ArtsWave “Truth & Innovation” artists:

🤩 Be Still City-Wide AR Portrait Exhibition
🙌🏾   @i_woode
🗓  July 11 - September 22
📍   Outside the Aronoff Center for the Arts
🖥   http://BeStill24.com

🖼   The Visual Arts Exhibition
🙌🏾  @ehmomohara, @isitrevolutionn, @lisameridapaytes, @nawal.magh, @Saraherodriguez__
🗓   July 13 - August 8
📍   Clifton Cultural Arts Center 
🖥   https://artswave.org/truth

🎭 The Ravenside Occurrence
🙌🏾  @snowman353
🗓   Debuts this September
📍   Playhouse in the Park
🖥 https://cincyplay.com/tickets/Arts-Culture-Incubator

Today in Creativity Squared Episode 59, enjoy hearing about each of these artists’ performances and their interpretation of the theme “Truth & Innovation”:

• Jori An Cotton — project: “Voices of Healing: Connecting Back to Our Inner Girl and Finding Our Joy and Freedom"

• TT Stern-Enzi — project: “Stepping In (To Fatherhood)”

• Anupama Mirle — project: “DOR (Strings)”

• K.A. Simpson — project: “FLIPd: Cincinnati, Ohio's Historic Places, Spaces, Told through African American Stories”

• Margaret Tung — project: “Going Beyond Traditional Classical Music: Innovative Music for Horn”

The intention of these interviews is to give these talented artists another platform to share their art and the truth expressed through it, as you never know what ripples will turn into waves. If you’re interested in working with, featuring, or supporting these artists, please don’t be shy about it!

With that, discover what "Truth & Innovation" means to these ArtsWave Black and Brown Artists Program grant recipients.

Check out Episode 59!

A big congratulations to Dinesh Maheshwari and the team at Groq for their recent $640 million raise (at a $2.8B valuation!) to meet the soaring demand for fast A.I. inference! Stay tuned for the episode where I interview Dinesh, who’s a Humanist entrepreneur, Advisor to several startups, and Chief Technology Advisor at Groq. For this live recorded interview, I was joined by a special cohost, Creativity Squared guest Joanna Peña Bickley. You won’t want to miss this conversation when the episode drops after our upcoming data justice series from the Data 4 Public Good conference — stay tuned!

Scroll on to discover:

• 📷 Featured Blog Post: Tribute to Thomas Hoepker

• 📆 Calendar of Events: A.I. Conferences & Events Radar

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 🎧 More on Episode 59

• 👯‍♀️ Apply to Join the Clone Club

• 💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits

• 💝 Milestone Rewards

• ❤️‍🔥 Premium Members: Episode NFT

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

Helen Todd (she/her)
Human behind Creativity Squared
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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

🙌SUPPORT CREATIVITY SQUARED & ARTSWAVE

🎨 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!

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🖥 Need a new website or the slightest of help on your current site? Check out e9 Digital — they created, and help us host and manage Creativity Squared’s website! They know how to make accessible websites which I love. Mention Creativity Squared for 20% off too!

📆 A.I. CONFERENCE & EVENTS RADAR

SEPTEMBER 4-6: MidwestCon, Cincinnati (Speaker)

SEPTEMBER 10-12: Marketing AI Conference (MAICON), Cleveland (Speaker) - Use Code “Todd100” for $100 Off!

SEPTEMBER 17: CincyAI Meetup, Cincinnati (Co-Host)

SEPTEMBER 17-19: Columbus AI Week, Columbus (Speaker)

OCTOBER 8: CincyAI Meetup, Cincinnati (Co-Host)

OCTOBER 17: Illuminate: Together Digital National Conference (Speaker)

NOVEMBER 20: Columbus AI Summit by OhioX, Columbus

Interested in having me speak at your event? Reach out!

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:

OpenAI Co-Founders Schulman and Brockman Step Back Yahoo Finance — OpenAI sees more personnel changes. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, is taking a leave until the end of the year, and John Schulman is leaving for Anthropic, the latest in a year of significant management changes for OpenAI. Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever left earlier this year, along with multiple safety researchers. Brockman said that he was taking a break after leading the company since its founding nine years ago. The company looks significantly different from its early days, with only two original founders remaining. Both Brockman and Schulman received praise for their contributions, with Schulman being recognized for his work on ChatGPT.

Reddit CEO says Microsoft needs to pay to search the site The Verge — Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is demanding that Microsoft and other companies pay for scraping Reddit’s data, following agreements with Google and OpenAI. With endless amounts of authentic, human-generated content, Reddit’s data is valuable for developers building human-like intelligence models. The owner of the internet’s most popular forums updated its robots.txt file to block A.I. web crawlers from companies that haven’t reached agreements yet. Microsoft claims to honor website directions regarding content use, but Reddit accuses them of using its data without permission. Reddit’s strategy reflects a broader trend of content creators seeking compensation for their data being used to train AI models.

A New Trick Could Block the Misuse of Open Source AI WIRED — A new breakthrough could eliminate one of the arguments against A.I. that’s open-source. Researchers have developed a technique to make open-source A.I. models like Meta’s Llama 3 harder to misuse by altering their parameters to resist harmful modifications. The method aims to prevent A.I. from being repurposed for malicious activities, such as providing instructions for making weapons. The technique was developed by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, UC San Diego, Lapis Labs, and the Center for AI Safety. This new research could raise the bar for “decensoring” A.I. models, potentially deterring adversaries and encouraging further research on tamper-resistant safeguards.

What the Google Search Monopoly Ruling Means Scientific American — A U.S. district court ruled that Google violated antitrust laws by maintaining its dominance in internet search through illegal practices. Judge Amit P. Mehta concluded that Google’s contracts to make its search engine the default on Android and Apple devices were anti-competitive and illegal. The ruling is a landmark case, setting a precedent that big tech companies are not "too big to lose." Potential remedies could include stopping Google from making exclusive deals and possibly divesting its Android operating system.

Google is finally taking action to curb non-consensual deepfakes MIT Technology Review — After countless scandals, crimes, and calls for action from victim advocates, Google is implementing steps to keep explicit deepfakes out of search results by making it easier for victims to request removal and down ranking explicit content. Without strong legal protections, those affected by deepfake porn or intimate image abuse have struggled to get justice or remove images from the web. The UK and EU have introduced regulations to combat nonconsensual explicit deepfakes, and the US Senate has passed the Defiance Act to provide civil remedies. Despite progress, tech companies need to treat nonconsensual deepfakes with the same seriousness as child pornography to end the criminal trend for good.

Video Game Actors Strike Continues Over AI Protections Decrypt — SAG-AFTRA members are on strike over disagreements with video game publishers like Activision, EA, and Epic Games regarding A.I. usage in productions. Video game actors have been striking since last summer for broader protections against A.I., which currently only cover some actors. They argue that the offered protections are insufficient and contain exceptions that undermine them. Both sides have expressed willingness to resume negotiations, but no progress has been made yet. 

Elon Musk sues OpenAI again, alleging ‘deceit of Shakespearean proportions’ The Guardian — Musk has filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, claiming they manipulated him into co-founding the company and betrayed the original non-profit mission. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI’s shift towards a for-profit model and partnership with Microsoft breached their founding agreement and involved acts of wire fraud. OpenAI denies the allegations, stating that Musk supported the shift to a for-profit model and that his claims are unfounded. Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but their relationship soured over time, leading to Musk’s departure and subsequent legal battles.

Google pulls Gemini AI ad from Olympics after backlash The Verge — Another day, another A.I. marketing flop. Google pulled its “Dear Sydney” ad from Olympic coverage after backlash about automating human connection. The ad featured a father using Gemini AI to write a fan letter to US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone on behalf of his daughter. Some viewers, though, criticized the ad for missing the point of writing a heartfelt, personal fan letter. Google stated the ad was meant to show how Gemini can help start a draft, not replace human expression.

Listen: Ep59. ArtsWave Truth & Innovation” Part 3
Jori An Cotton, TT Stern-Enzi, Anupama Mirle, K.A. Simpson & Margaret Tung     

Apple | Spotify | YouTube | Pandora | Amazon | Google | SoundCloud | iHeart Radio

““Art heals. The creation, the participation, and just watching — either by performing or by watching — participation either way can be a healing, cathartic process.””

– Anupama Mirle

Episode 59 is the final part of our special three-part ArtsWave “Truth & Innovation” series. Creativity Squared interviewed the artists who are the grant recipients of the 2024 ArtsWave Black and Brown program.

The projects and artists featured in the episode include:

• Jori An Cotton — project: “Voices of Healing: Connecting Back to Our Inner Girl and Finding Our Joy and Freedom"

• TT Stern-Enzi — project: “Stepping In (To Fatherhood)”

• Anupama Mirle — project: “DOR (Strings)”

• K.A. Simpson — project: “FLIPd: Cincinnati, Ohio's Historic Places, Spaces, Told through African American Stories”

• Margaret Tung — project: “Going Beyond Traditional Classical Music: Innovative Music for Horn”

Here are each of their interviews as videos in addition to Episode 59 with all the vignettes from our conversations:

Who Is ArtsWave?

ArtsWave is a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 150 arts organizations, projects, and independent artists. Because it's important to support artists, 10% of all revenue generated from Creativity Squared goes to ArtsWave to support their Black and Brown Artists Program. The mission of Creativity Squared is to envision a world where artists not only coexist with A.I., but thrive.

The Black and Brown Artists Program supports independent artists of color in the greater Cincinnati area with direct grants of $10,000 each, as well as opportunities for mentorship, business skills training, and networking. Funded artists were selected by a panel based on how their proposal addressed this year’s showcase theme: “Truth & Innovation.” 

Be sure to check back next week for part two of this special series.

Check out Episode 59 today!

Digitally Clone Yourself!
The Avatar Experience Cincinnati

👯‍♀️ Ready to be digitally cloned? Get your own custom synthetic avatar! Creativity Squared is collaborating with our partner and sponsor, Render, to bring The Avatar Experience to Cincinnati, OH, on October 25 and 26 at ADC Fine Art Gallery (1013 York St. Cincinnati, OH 45214). Digitally clone yourself to unlock streamlined and dynamic video content — Book your cloning appointment today!

There are less than a thousand known hyper-realistic custom synthetic avatars in existence, so participants will be at the forefront of this groundbreaking A.I. technology. Custom synthetic avatars are part of a massive and growing digital avatar market and is projected to be $270B by 2030.

Custom synthetic avatars can be used for creating:

• Dynamic online course instruction

• Streamlined SEO video production of blog or audio-only content

• Turnkey social media and email marketing video content

• Engaging customer service messaging

• And more!

👯‍♀️ In case you missed the announcement, I’ve digitally cloned myself! 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.

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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At $10 per month or discounted to $100 for annual memberships, Premium Members enjoy other benefits too:

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There is also a VIP Founding Member tier for those who want lifetime first dibs and access to Creativity Squared content, events, and whatever we dream up!

Because it’s important to support artists, 10% of all revenue Creativity Squared generates will go to ArtsWave, a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 100 arts organizations.

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