Creativity Squared: On Human Empathy & A.I. 

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

Listen to a former marketing executive from YouTube, Spotify, Google, and Instagram on today’s episode: Ep8. A.I. Will Never Be Human: Discover How Language Shapes Our Reality & Why Empathy is Core to Human Connection with Eric Solomon.

Eric is a dear friend and brings a unique perspective to A.I., not only because of the roles he’s had at some of the top brands in the world but also because he was studying cognitive psychology with a focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence back in 1999 for his PhD program. That was the really early days of the application of language to artificial intelligence!

He discusses how language shapes our reality, his approach to the human operating system, the promise and pitfalls of A.I., the importance of intentionality, and how we need to remember that machines are not human and embrace human-to-human connection now more than ever.

Yesterday, I got to meet Chad Nelson, OpenAI Creative Collaborator and Creativity Squared guest in Episode 3, at the Tribeca Film Festival. Chad took the stage alongside OpenAI DALL·E engineer Joyce Lee and Native Foreign’s Co-Founder Nik Kleverov. It was such a treat to meet Chad in person and see his animated short film "CRITTERZ," the groundbreaking achievement as the first film with visuals generated entirely by OpenAI DALL·E, on the big screen! Check out Episode 3 to hear more about it.

Andddd….today I’m at the studios of Creativity Squared sponsor Render for the first step to have my custom synth made! Check out the episode with Jon Tota to learn all about creative and business use cases for custom synths! And stay tuned, as you’ll be seeing mine put to work as part of this project and we’ll also be hosting an event in October in Cincinnati for you to have one made too.

Scroll on to discover:

• 🎧 More on Episode 8

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 📖 Empathy and Storytelling: Connecting to Our Humanity

• 💎 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

ps. Next week I’ll be discussing "Perilous or Promising? What leaders need to know now about generative A.I. & emerging tech." I’ll be joined by Courtney Welton (Allstate Snr. VP, Law & Regulation; Chief Ethics, Compliance & Privacy Officer). Join me at 11am ET on Tuesday, June 20 as I take the virtual Zoom stage for Apochromatik's Focus Executive Forum — sign up for free here. 

pss. We use Beehiiv for this newsletter, and recommend it!

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 100 arts organizations. Consider becoming a Premium Member today! 

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

Listen: Ep8. A.I. Will Never Be Human
Discover How Language Shapes Our Reality & Why Empathy is Core to Human Connection with Eric Solomon

“I would love for people to approach A.I. with the intentionality of saying: how am I going to use this to augment my creative or human skill set? Not how am I going to offload this work to a system whose veracity I can't really count on. Or that that kind of steers me away from doing thinking that might actually benefit me and make me flourish as a human.”

In the latest episode of Creativity Squared, Eric Solomon discusses the importance of intentionality, transparency, and ethical considerations in our use of A.I. and why machines should never be mistaken for humans. He reminds us that A.I. can enhance human capabilities without replacing them and why critical thinking and a human-centric approach remain essential in our collaboration with A.I. Listen now!

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 $100K Grant! Democratic Inputs to AI OpenAI — OpenAI’s nonprofit organization, OpenAI, Inc., is launching a program to award ten $100,000 grants to fund experiments in setting up a democratic process for deciding what rules A.I. systems should follow, within the bounds defined by the law. We recommend participating!

• Big Tech Is Bad. Big A.I. Will Be Worse. New York Times — What I appreciate about this article is that it offers up concrete recommendations, including Congress protecting our individual data ownership rights, A.I. privacy regulation, and a graduated system for corporate taxes.

• Humans are Biased. Generative AI is Even Worse Bloomberg — Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image model amplifies stereotypes about race and gender — here’s why that matters.

• Bojan Tunguz, Ph.D. Machine Learning at NVIDIA — Gamers: Computex NVIDIA is bringing intelligence to non-playable characters (NPCs) through AI-powered natural language interactions which will enable much more realistically interactive virtual worlds and make the gaming experience tremendously richer and far more interesting!

• Sir Paul McCartney says artificial intelligence has enabled a 'final' Beatles song BBC — Paul McCartney said he’s created one final Beatles song — featuring the late John Lennon — by employing artificial intelligence.

• Why YouTube Could Give Google an Edge in AI The Information – “The video site, which Google owns, is the single biggest and richest source of imagery, audio and text transcripts on the internet. And Google’s researchers have been using YouTube to develop its next large-language model, Gemini, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.”

• Adobe Announces ‘Generative Recolor’ AI Feature For Adobe Illustrator Forbes — Adobe keeps rolling out new features, including a new A.I. Illustrator tool which will recolor your designs automatically.

• Meta open sources an AI-powered music generator. TechCrunch — Meta is getting into the A.I. music space with an open-source A.I. music generator called MusicGen which can create short music samples based on text and melody prompts, trained on a dataset of 20,000 hours of music. After streaming disrupted the music industry, generative A.I. is set to do the same.

• OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic to give UK early access to foundational models for AI safety research TechCrunch — Announced by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at London Tech Week, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic have granted the UK government early access to their advanced A.I. models for research and safety purposes.

• EU lawmakers pass landmark artificial intelligence regulation CNBC — EU lawmakers finally pass their A.I. regulations, leading the way again on regulating big tech.

Empathy and Storytelling:
Connecting to Our Humanity

While A.I. can amplify human productivity and creativity, it can never be truly empathetic. In this time when loneliness is becoming an epidemic, it’s more important now more than ever to embrace more human-to-human connection, build communities, and become more empathetic in how we connect with one another through the stories we tell, whether online or to each other in person.

Read this blog post for our take on empathy and its role in content creation.

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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