Part 1: https://www.tumblr.com/could-be-wolves/818057207735336960/transcript-colin-so-youll-talk-a-little-bit?source=share
Part 2: https://www.tumblr.com/could-be-wolves/818062113719320576/reblog-by-could-be-wolves-1-video?source=share
As I was listening to your amazing talks, I started to feel that familiar creeping up the spine of fear. The immortality that people are seeking is now so pervasive, I just wanted to ask, right at the end of your wonderful speech (speech?) you asked "fight it". And my first instinct was how the fuck do I do that. And the only way that I can do that is by not looking at my phone at the dinner table, right? I can write to my MP? And try to get some of these guard rails that everyone keeps talking about, around AI?
My jobs, I have a few of them,....
... is that the play off music? I feel like I'm at the Oscars, "that's my time, guys"....
... but all 3 of my jobs, and more jobs, are infinitely replaceable. You can now officially, I imagine this will be asked by the Hay Festival at some point on the website, you'll be about to take it, and you can do this now, and make me say anything. Absolutely anything. You've got my voice, my likeness. You've got a whole audio book of me talking this thing. And you can make me say anything.
Acting will be completely destroyed within the next few years, television and film in particular. It is my firm belief, streamers or what have you will have two sections of their website. One is real people, and, if you want AI, click that one. There'll be a little tag, and you'll be like, yeah, I fancy something AI tonight actually.
Same with music. You can plug in the music that I've created with my band or elsewhere and say: "make Joey sing this. Make the band... The band hasn't released an album in a while. Why don't I just make my own with their voices".
And then finally, books. I wrote for years, and this is the first book that's been published, and I feel like I've mistimed it. Because there's, we're trying, and a lot of the industry is fighting to ensure that writers, that AI can't draw on any writers. But it's only post-2016. So all that wealth of everything that's ever been written, and AI can come along and go "yeah, I'll write like that person". Yes, it's a bit shit at the moment, and we can see it, we can spot it, but that's only because we've only just noticed.
When was the first time you heard about AI? And I can promise you it was probably about a year and a half ago. When it really mattered. We talked about AI in sci fi. But really, the first time I started to go "oh god, it really is everywhere", was about 2 years ago.
So this book that I wrote is full of that fear. I first came to Bloomsbury with this book, and they said "well, what genre is it?". I said, "I don't know, what genre do you think it is?" And they said "...horror?". And I said "it's the closest thing". Because there's solkats and creatures in it. There's music and creativity in it. But the real fear, fear mongering of it, is in the filming of everything, and the being captured.
I said I wanted to talk about moment, and memory. I'm quite keen to hear, I'm going to ask you when I sit back down and say that I'm finished, how we're soon going to be able to preserve memories verbatim. But for now, and if we are going to attempt to fight this, and draw on the lessons of the past and these sins... I think yes, you're talking about 7 of them. But I think there's an 8th. And I think that's whatever is happening to us without knowing.
I think I'm done. Colin, what do you think?