Creativity Squared: On A.I. and Human Flourishing

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Dear Creativity Squared Member,

Wow — another wild week in the world of A.I. with OpenAI closing the largest VC round of all time at $6.6 billion, garnering a $157 billion evaluation! Check out the news roundup section for more. And closer to home, next week we’ll be celebrating the one-year anniversary of CincyAI, the largest A.I. meetup in Ohio I co-host with Kendra Rameriz! It’s really amazing being part of the grassroots Responsible A.I. movement here in Cincinnati and getting to share out the conversations and insights with you through Creativity Squared.

And on that note, I can’t wait to share today’s Episode 67 with two A.I. luminaries, guest Dinesh Maheshwari and guest co-host Joanna Peña-Bickley, who explore what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence. 

This interview is the show’s first-ever live recorded episode brought to you in partnership with Joanna’s Ai Design Corps™! Dinesh zoomed in and we recorded the conversation in front of a live audience at the most recent Future Frequencies Salon. These quarterly salons are designed to inspire resilience with A.I. among the intimate group of participants at Joanna’s design lab, Aurora 21, to the backdrop of the beautiful Hudson Valley just outside of New York City.

In today’s conversation, you’ll hear:

• Dinesh’s vision as a "humanist entrepreneur". 

• How Dinesh distinguishes between human and machine intelligence and the differences and importance of insight and intuition-based learning as compared to path-based learning. 

• What A.I. inference is, and why it’s important.

• His perspective on the four levels of human existence, and we also explore the need for the humanities and the potential for meaningful human interactions in commercial spaces. 

Discover Dinesh’s thoughts on how A.I. can unlock new value creation and free us from, in his own words, "productivity enslavement." 

You won’t want to miss his and Joanna’s passionate belief in embracing our human potential in the age of A.I.

Check out Episode 67 today!

Scroll on to discover:

• ✨ Featured Blog Post: Emily Dickinson: The Theoretical Physics of Consciousness

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

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 🎧 More on Episode 67

• 👯‍♀️ 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.

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🎨 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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📆 A.I. CONFERENCE & EVENTS RADAR

OCTOBER 7-10: StartupCincy Week 2024, Cincinnati (Speaker)

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

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

NOVEMBER 5: CincyAI Meetup, Cincinnati (Co-Host)

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 Just Announced 4 New AI Features, and They’re Available Now Inc. — OpenAI’s DevDay conference announced new features aimed at helping developers build mor powerful A.I. models. These updates include Model Distillation, which simplifies the process of enhancing smaller models using outputs from larger models, and Prompt Caching, which reduces costs by reusing common prompts. Additionally, developers can now fine-tune GPT-4o with images, improving its ability to understand and recognize visual data. OpenAI also introduced the RealTime API, which allows for faster and more responsive speech-to-speech applications by processing audio directly without needing multiple applications. 

New laws close gap in California on deepfake child pornography Los Angeles Times — California has enacted two new laws to battle deepfakes. One law updates the definition of child pornography to include sexual deepfakes of children. Until now, California prosecutors didn’t have clear legal cause to charge creators and distributors of nonconsensual deepfakes. The new laws taking effect next year prohibit the creation, possession, and distribution of sexually explicit images of minors, even if they are computer-generated. Another law would prohibit the sharing of election-related deepfake misinformation. That law was temporarily blocked by a state judge for being too broad. 

Google and Meta update their AI models amid the rise of “AlphaChip” Ars Technica — Google has updated its Gemini model lineup with two new production-ready models, Gemini-1.5-Pro-002 and Gemini-1.5-Flash-002, which show significant improvements in math, long context handling, and vision tasks, along with reduced costs and increased rate limits for developers. Meanwhile, Meta released Llama 3.2, featuring vision-capable large language models and lightweight text-only models designed for edge and mobile devices. The vision models excel in image recognition and visual understanding, while the smaller models outperform competitors on text-based tasks.

Snoop Dogg, Dave East, WHOISTEVENYOUNG - Love You More YouTube —- Snoop Dogg, who is already the inspiration behind countless A.I. voice and chat bots, rides a flying golden chariot into Paris in his latest music video. While amateur video creators have been making A.I. music videos on YouTube for some time, Snoop Dogg’s is one of the most mainstream examples of the trend so far. Some online criticized the video’s lack of human creator involvement and reliance on stunning visual effects, calling it merely “eye candy.”

Microsoft expands in Ohio with $420 million New Albany Data Center Ohio Tech News —- Microsoft is expanding its data center infrastructure in Ohio with a $420 million facility in New Albany, bolstering an already-growing tech industry in the state. The new center will cover 197 acres, generating construction and tech jobs for the region. The move is part of Microsoft’s broader strategy to meet increasing cloud demand. The investment is the latest alongside major investments from AWS, Google, and Meta, demonstrating the effectiveness of Ohio’s recent efforts to position itself as a national hub for A.I. and advanced tech businesses.

Meta confirms it may train its AI on any image you ask Ray-Ban Meta AI to analyze TechCrunch — Meta has confirmed that images and videos shared with its A.I. through Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses can be used to train its A.I. models. Photos and videos captured on the glasses won’t be used for training unless submitted to Meta AI. This raises privacy concerns as users may unknowingly provide personal data for A.I. training. Meta’s privacy policy states that interactions with A.I. features can be used for training.

AI-generated images can teach robots how to act MIT Technology Review — Researchers in London have developed a system called Genima, which fine-tunes the image-generating A.I. Stable Diffusion to create training data for robots. The system helps guide robots in both simulations and real-world tasks by using images to represent movements. Genima overlays data from robot sensors onto images and converts these into actions, achieving a success rate of 50% in simulations and 64% in real-world tasks. 

OpenAI is now valued at $157 billion Ars Technica — OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion in a new funding round, nearly doubling its valuation to $157 billion. This round, led by Thrive Capital with significant contributions from Microsoft, SoftBank, and Nvidia, comes with the condition that investors can withdraw their money if OpenAI does not transition to a fully for-profit company. Despite internal tensions and competition from other tech giants, ChatGPT’s brings in 250 million weekly active users and 11 million paying subscribers. The company is shifting its focus from research to consumer tech and enterprise revenue, driving criticism that the company is selling out on its original mission of improving human life. 

Microsoft’s Copilot AI Gets a Voice, Vision, and a ‘Hype Man’ Persona WIRED — Microsoft’s flagship A.I. assistant now includes vision, voice capabilities, and a more encouraging personality. The overhaul aims to make Copilot a more helpful and optimistic digital coworker, according to the company. The updates are powered by OpenAI’s latest models, enhancing Copilot’s ability to solve complex problems.

Listen: Ep.67 A.I. & Human Flourishing: How Do We Get Back to Human Beings vs Humans Doing? A.I. Luminaries and Humanists Dinesh Maheshwari and Guest Co-Host Joanna Peña-Bickley Weigh In

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"It is the time for us to be human beings again that is upon us, where we can use the machine learning tools to make it happen." - Dinesh Maheshwari

This episode of Creativity Squared features not one, but two A.I. luminaries, guest Dinesh Maheshwari and guest co-host Joanna Peña-Bickley.

Dinesh is a humanist entrepreneur, advisor to several startups, and Chief Technology Advisor at Groq. With a career across 9 startups, 3 of which he co-founded, Dinesh brings three decades of experience to the machine-learning space. He was part of the revolution in multi-threaded multi-processor HPC systems in the mid-‘80s; was at the forefront of the EDA software revolution from the late ‘80s to mid-‘90s; and was part of the revolution in optical communications and networking from the late ‘90s to early 2000s. He has also served on the Board of Advisors of several startups and Board of Directors of industry organizations and has been awarded 58 US patents with 23 additional patents pending.

Joanna,  who was featured on Creativity Squared Episode 4, is the Founder & CEO of Vibes AI, an A.I.-first hearable company prioritizing brain vitality. She’s also the Founder of Ai Design Corps™, a non-profit on a mission to embed resilience into the future of learning and work with infinite diversity in infinite combinations through publishing open-source A.I. literacy resources and hosting webinars and bootcamps all over the world. Known as one of Alexa's moms and the "Mother of Cognitive Experience Design," Joanna integrates psychology, human-computer interaction (HCI), and design to enhance human cognition. For over 25 years, she's launched visionary A.I. products for Amazon, AWS, Uber, GM, Citibank, and IBM, garnering patents and global acclaim featured in Time, Forbes, Fortune, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

Join this thought-provoking discussion where Dinesh shares his expertise, philosophy, and optimistic vision for the future of human-A.I. interaction, and we explore the answer to the question: How do we get back to human beings and not just humans doing?

Check out Episode 67 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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