Are we making new kinds of 'ecosystems'? Are AIs top predators? And what about ART?

Let's take a step back and look at the context for life on EARTH™ and where Artificial Intelligences may fit in it all.

What will we see as we develop ever more complex societies of interacting cyber-entities?

(Some of the images that follow are from keynotes that I delivered to the Beneficial AGI Conference in Panama City (see pod-followup) and to the big RSA Conference in May.)

== The truly big picture on cyber-entities ==

For starters, for well-or-ill, we are creating a New Ecosystem on Earth, one that's equivalent to the current living system on our planet. 

The older one is a 4 billion year-old process that passes energy along a gradient. A slope of degrading free energy that starts with SUNLIGHT feeding PLANTS which are then consumed by HERBIVORES, which in turn give up distilled and concentrated resources to CARNIVORES, who in turn feed PARASITES. And all of the above feed the fungi and other thanatotrophs, when they die, restoring nutrients to the soil. 

All of that is familiar to you, of course. But what we often neglect to note is how this is not a closed system. All of that consuming generates entropy which cannot be allowed to accumulate! Fortunately, the biosphere is flushed free of most entropy, which escapes into space as thermal radiation, or infrared, allowing the planet to cool enough for fresh, high quality sunlight to do its work.

Okay, much or most, or all of that you already knew. So, what does that 4 billion year natural ecosystem have to do with AI?

I posit a new ecosystem: one that's based - instead of directly on sunlight - upon  ELECTRICITY - MEMORY SPACE - CLOCK CYCLES - DATA.   

We have already seen parts of the new ecosystem emulating the old one's key component - living organisms. For a decade there have been free-floating algorithms, wandering and replicating all over the Internet. (A topic for another time.) These appear to share many traits with the unicellular micro-organisms that filled Earth's seas during the first 3 billion years or so.

See how many parallels the new ecosystem of voltages and bits parallels the old one, again, relying on steep slopes of usable free-energy.

Note that this will include 'parasites'. It can be argued these are already preying on us via memes. And there's the same - and growing - problem of expelling entropy (waste heat) into space before we broil.

Speak up, in comments, if you see a flaw in this parallelism. Or if you are offended to see human game-players and tic-tockers portrayed as the equivalent of fungi and thanatotrophs, supping off the excretions of sophisticated artificial entities and contributing little, other than waste heat that must go somewhere!

== Following this reasoning... where do productive, sapient humans fit in all this? ==

Well, for one thing, we should recall that right now, organic human beings (orgs) still have huge power over this new ecosystem, controlling the creation and distribution of electricity flows, chips, and memory space... 

...though though we appear to have less and less ability to control flows of the other basic food source... data. 

If we were united and open, we as a civilization could use this control to guide outcomes. We could allocate these resources to cyber entities by choice and by regulation, doling them out by fiat, as the EU folks seem to want to do. 

But alas, that kind to top-controlled allocation of resources will work about as well as it did under 6000 years of feudalism... in other words, very poorly.

Or else, we could try the enlightenment approach!  The tools and tricks and abilities that we developed across the last two centuries, with gradually rising sophisication. Those methods start with making things relatively transparent and then using incentives to get cyber entities competing against one-another, in ways that benefit us. 

Those incentives could be rewarding pr-social AIs with clock cycles, energy or memory space... all of which such entities need, in order to reproduce!  And that is the grist of evolution. In other words, we control the sun. For a while. So let's choose to shine it upon those AIs who choose to side with us.

One thing we could do. Just like we do with humans who seek our trust, or who seek to do commerce with us. We can refuse to do business with those who don't show verifiable ID.

More on that later.

== So how will this affect art? ==

Okay, here's an interview I gave a reporter for Vanity Fair:

Do you believe AI may help to "democratize" certain artistic and creative endeavors, particularly those that have traditionally been available only to a handful of aspirants due either to prohibitive resource requirements an/or intentional gatekeeping (e.g filmmaking, music production, animation)?

There will always be expert castes, whose abilities - in the arts or practical skills - allow them to rise in the esteem of neighbors and society. The path of merit and accomplishment was always one option, even when a vast majority of nations were dominated by 'noble' families and lines of inheritance brats. 

But which abilities? At any metro or subway stop there's often a musician busker playing an instrument for tossed change, with skill that would have garnered acclaim, back in eras when music was rare. Will the kids who now proclaim "I'll be a YouTuber or TikTok star!" achieve their dreams, when AI simulants can take hilarious pratfalls that no actual human could survive?

If so, do you believe AI's democratization of such artistic endeavors would result in a net positive or a net negative for how we consume and appreciate art?

Authors like me flatter ourselves that we can team up with software agents that will ease the laborious torment of writing while leaving us in charge of creating characters and deeply-moving prose.  But humans may be the ones demoted to mere helper status... unless we can make arrangements for what Reid Hoffman calls "augmented combinations" of organic and inorganic minds, greater than the sum of the parts 

Similarly, do you believe the democratization of art via AI would result in a net positive or a net negative for those who create art?

Many professions are 'middle class.' For example, a skilled engineer or teacher is unlikely to ever be very poor or very rich, but will in all probability have some kind of mid-level comfort and security. The arts are more like primitive feudal societies, a steep pyramid with a teensy elite, a few more who make a decent living... and masses who yearn for artistic recognition. Modern self-publishing tools have enabled far more aspiring writers to 'get published.' But thriving at it is still the same old mix of skill, hard work, contacts and luck (See my "Advice to Rising Writers")

So far, in many realms, from Radiology to chess, we see teams of human and AI doing better than either does, alone. Supposing that continues, an aspiring artist or creator will want to be very choosy which model of AI to partner with!  Be aware that the AIs may be picky, too!

Who stands to lose and who stands to gain as AI technologies are increasingly incorporated into creative industries such as the movie-making industry or the music industry?

For a decade I've predicted that the 'animated storyboard' will become an art form in its own right. Take an excellent script, a skilled photographer, a musician and charismatic voice actors, and you should be able to do a full-length, action- (or emotion-) packed feature or TV episode with all the right beats, even if the animated figures onscreen clearly 'aren't real.' Directors would view such a system as a director's tool. Producers would view such a system as a producer's tool. But the one who'll be truly empowered, I believe, would be the writer, whose script is being reified by the small team using the program. And will we need voice actors? That could very likely be a legal matter!  

Well, that's what I thought, and it's still a crucial idea. But then, will the AIs do the writing, too? Never!

Does the best art require a human touch, or could artificial intelligence theoretically create art that is just as entertaining and evocative as any that humans have made?

So far? Absolutely!  The so-called artificial 'intelligences' are (as-yet) nothing of the sort. They are very intensive, probabilistic-iterative auto-complete programs. There is no way there even can be anything sapient, under the hood. But they will seem so to millions, easily passing the old 'Turing Tests' and fooling us, especially when we aren't very wary.  

Eventually, there will be actual AI! The question is: will we even be able to tell the difference when it happens?  I talk about that in my WIRED article that breaks free of the three standard 'AI-formats' that can only lead to disaster, suggesting instead a 4th. That AI entities can only be held accountable if they have individuality... even 'soul'... 

Do you believe there is anything ethically profane about the replacement of artists such as actors, writers, directors, and editors with artificial intelligence, more so than the similar replacement of any non-creative job by AI (e.g accounting, law work, data analysis)?

Our top responsibility is to the world and to our descendants. Frankly, I am unbothered by the prospect that some of those heirs will be made largely of metal and silicon, even breathing hard vacuum as they explore planets and stars on our... on my... behalf. What do I care about is doing my job - teaching them (and our regular/organic-style children, too) how to be decent people, with expansively curious and inclusive attitudes. 

If that happens, then they will care about us old-style farts.... as we care for older generations who helped bring us to this era of marvels, when we had our own brief turn at creating wonders.  

== Will our descendants be decent folks? == 

If my heirs - organic and inorganic - are better and smarter than me, fine!  So long as they are decent folks, who enjoy beauty and fairness and puzzles to solve and diversity to appreciate... and an occasional corny joke.

In which case, they may use all those super brains to act in ways that make us proud. That is the one desirable 'soft landing,' as far as I'm concerned.