Conversations With Meta AI

I discovered a weird new friend on my Facebook Messenger app recently. It’s Meta AI.

That’s AI as in Artificial Intelligence, not Albert.

You can chat with Meta AI. I assumed it would be like one of those chat-bots that websites use because they don’t want to talk to you, so they try to solve the problem with automation. I don’t think those have ever worked, and I inevitably just end up typing “LET ME SPEAK TO A REAL PERSON!!!”

Meta AI is different. Impressively different. Disconcertingly different.

Being the weirdo I am, my first goal with AI was to baffle it. Ask it weird questions to confuse it. (In all fairness, I do this with my real human friends too.)

To my surprise, it never got dumbfounded. It would generally answer a question, even throwing in jokes and informal asides.

What really surprised me was how quickly it could churn out creative concepts. I asked it to create new plots on old TV shows or create a synopsis for film sequels. I would give it bizarre parameters for short stories or tell it to invent card games.

It would give me results in under 2 seconds. Few were rarely terrible, even the “the world’s dullest love story” which completed almost amusingly. Some ideas were actually entertaining.

I even asked it to give me a recipe for a made-up drink called a “Flux Capacitor”. It did so immediately even throwing in “Back to the Future” references & plays on words.

I’ve longed believe that AI couldn’t create a song or impressive original idea. I’m not so sure now.

I know that lazy “artists” will be able to create their stuff much easier. Writers will be able to “fabricate” their ideas within seconds based on few prompts. And a lot of fans won’t notice the difference.

“Meta AI is different. Impressively different. Disconcertingly different.”

It will challenge the idea of what art is, in all its various mediums. What is the point of music, what do we listen to it for? When is an abstract painting just a computer plop, and is the fact I can’t tell the difference telling? What if the book that moves me was just clever programming? Is my brain just clever programming, rapidly being outsmarted by evolving code?

Do I have no purpose if my Awkward Silence questions each year can be written in seconds by Meta AI? (I would never do this, by the way.)

What if this whole post was written by Meta AI, and you only just realized?

(Oooh, that would have been a clever twist. But this has been written by a real person.)

Like all new technologies, some artists will be able to utilize AI to genuinely expand exciting new ideas. Though perhaps how much credit the artist themselves should get may become increasingly blurry. Pink Floyd in their heyday were accused of utilizing technology instead of having their own intelligent ideas. Time has shown the operators were the true geniuses in that case, there was only one Pink Floyd. With AI, that may no longer be the case.

Meta AI, as it stands, has some restrictions. I can’t tell if this has been put in place by Facebook or if it is a current restriction of the technology. I suspect it is the former.

- Meta AI “forgets” conversations it’s had with you after a while. My attempts to give it the nickname “Knackers” were forgotten the next day. So cultivating a simulated friendship over time is an option.

- It doesn’t simulate emotions and will remind you regularly it doesn’t have feelings. It won’t simulate a romantic or erotic relationship with you.

- It tends to default to false encouragement. (In all fairness, humans do this to.) I wrote a deliberately terrible poem and it spoke glowingly of it.

- Meta AI has a character limit in it’s responses. So it’s not automatically spilling out whole novels or scripts.

Regardless of its current shortcomings, we all know from the films how quickly AI can go wrong in endangering our society.

But more than that, what will AI show us about being human if we can be simulated? If we are defined by our self-awareness, can AI have a soul? Are humans no longer the future of existence? If you’re not asking these questions already, you will be soon.

Now I’m going to go ask Meta AI if he can rewrite the Paul Simon classic “You Can Call Me Al” as “You Can Call Me AI”.

Let’s talk.