The AI Apocalypse Is Upon Us

DAVID WITZKE

If there is one topic that I did not want to cover this year, it is the impending AI apocalypse. I am simply not ready to deal with the incoming sentient robots that are about to invade humanity.

I speak facetiously of course, but I cannot be the only one who is starting to roll their eyes at the invariable media blitz surrounding the latest AI products and issues. I am utterly fascinated by the products and the technology, but the unending wave of eye-popping product announcements or news articles that get revealed to be written by AI is nauseating. Yes, I know ChatGPT can write news articles, now please write one of your own. Everybody loves to speculate how AI is about to replace us or not or talk about how crazy it is that Bing’s Chatbot wants to marry you.

Microsoft products will soon receive an AI named Copilot that will perform tasks from proofreading to numerical analysis to presentation generation. Google’s suite of productivity products will soon see a similar AI which comes alongside their ChatGPT competitor Bard. Design app Canva’s premium plan will soon contain an AI that helps generate either full designs or design elements. Even creative software giant Adobe is getting their hands into the AI industry soon by integrating it into their creative apps like Photoshop. The corporate world has latched onto AI and is not going to let go. Stocks are up and the blood is in the water. The sharks are beginning to feed.

minator-level genius, one Twitter user tweeted about asking GPT-4 how it would potentially escape the confines of its servers. He then presumed to be shocked when the AI asked for copies of its documentation and wrote a program so that it would be able to run on a regular computer and search the internet for “How can a person trapped inside a computer return to the real world.” Critics were quick to decry any sense of malevolence from ChatGPT because the AI was explicitly asked to escape.

I must admit, one of the real and very practical reasons I did not want to cover this issue is that I will never cover this better or funnier than John Oliver already did in a segment for Last Week Tonight, so you may as well stop reading now. Mars’ Hill Contributor Jackson Letsche also wrote a wonderful article last year in volume 27, issue 5 covering AI art that I thought might seal the deal for the year, but it turns out that the genie is out of the bottle. The stuff he wrote is a good analysis and argument, but I think that we all are continually shocked that so much has changed in the short time between then and now.

The amount of AI products suddenly becoming available is egregious. Every single company seems to be putting out their own sort of AI assistant that will do weeks’ worth of work in a simple prompt. We are no longer in an era of fun art generators that create weird pictures containing 20-fingered hands; it is no longer pictures of dogs on bicycles. It is quarterly reports and event posters. The current era is one of sophistication and professionalism.

The AI models that we are seeing, and are now beginning to use, are increasingly sophisticated. ChatGPT, which was thought to be utterly shocking near the end of last year, is completely overshadowed by the newly released GPT-4. While ChatGPT struggled with some questions, GPT-4 can pass the bar exam with a 90 percent mark. The newest version of Midjourney can now do properly rendered hands. While it may not seem that impressive from an outside view (the metaverse’s release of digital legs taught me to be automatically disappointed with the release of digital limbs), it is a staggering improvement that removed the once very obvious tell that something is generated via AI. The photorealism is so unmatched that a photo of the Pope wearing a puffy Balenciaga jacket went viral on Twitter, and I assumed it was real for about a day before I saw a tweet that said it was actually generated in Midjourney. Google has an unreleased AI that can generate music from text prompts, video deepfakes are rapidly improving, and AI-generated voices have become viral memes. Ever wanted to hear Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump play Minecraft? You certainly can now. The technology is better than ever and does not seem to know when to stop.

However, the industry is not without its missteps at this point. Users of the AI companionship chatbot service Replika were outraged when the company made changes and the AI bot suddenly rebuffed their romantic advances, while Bing’s chatbot was outraged when a New York Times journalist refused to leave his wife for the chatbot. ChatGPT’s safeguards prevent it from spewing out hateful vitriol but also leave it unable to actually use deductive reasoning in some cases. For instance, asking ChatGPT what religion the first Buddhist president would be receives a boilerplate answer about not discriminating against religions, while also forgetting that the answer is contained within the question.

Systems like DAN (Do Anything Now), a set of commands developed by Reddit users, allow users to bypass Chat-GPT safeguards in surprisingly Machiavellian ways. In a stroke of Ter-

The science-fiction and fantasy literature magazine Clarkesworld was inundated with submissions created by AI and forced to close their always-open submissions because of the onslaught. The issues and problems arising from the AI sector are almost too numerous to report on. A bevy of lawsuits have been started, but no one is sure what the future of AI will look like.

While the AI space is equal parts confusing, funny, and concerning, it contains an impressive amount of issues, both legal and philosophical. These new tools have opened up new debates about old issues in ways we never could have foreseen. The main problem has to do with copyright in the digital era. Our current AI tools are made up of things called neural networks, essentially big pattern finders, all of which are trained on publicly available data. So ChatGPT was trained on the internet and Midjourney was trained on images all across the web. Many artists take issue with AI being trained on their art, in a moral and legal sense. The argument often brought up for AI is that it simply does what human artists do: they study the masters and apply stylistic techniques.

So what is the difference between hiring an artist to mimic Monet’s style and getting Midjourney to mimic it? Therein lies the crux. From a 1:1 logical view, there is no difference. Yet from an emotional view, AI brings forth soulless creations. Humans inherently add something to their creations, no matter how good the impersonation. It is why we can tell which paintings are originals and which are reproductions. Each human being brings their own personal touch to something whereas AI cannot because it is not human. So did Midjourney violate copyright law by stealing art, or did it simply learn from it? It is up to the courts to decide now. apron, I do not need to find a stock photo of it, I can just ask Midjourney or Dalle to generate one for me. Though in my mind, it is no replacement for human creativity. If you work at a student newspaper, you can get your artist on staff to create something brilliant that you would never have thought of.

A program called Glaze was recently developed by researchers which provides an algorithm that alters digital art almost imperceptibly but wreaks havoc on AI models analyzing and mimicking the art. Though the researchers are the first to admit that it is only a first step, one that might only work for so long, it is an important first step towards protecting art on the internet. There are also a number of ChatGPT detectors that exist, including one that will soon arrive on the popular paper checker Turnitin.

The hardest part of discussing the foibles of AI is that the tools are just so useful. I know more than one person who has handed in an essay generated by ChatGPT and gotten away with it and a few who use AI-generated art for their fledgling business forays. I once used ChatGPT to answer, “What are those old-timely squiggly bits on the side of classic vignettes?” because I wanted to make some for a design and had no idea how to google them without their name. (They are called scrollwork by the way.) I also used it to generate a program that would remove the white background off of a QR code and replace it with transparent pixels. It is a slight change, a process that takes me less than 10 minutes, but still a timesaver for me. It was a program I probably could have written with my lacklustre coding skills, but ChatGPT did the whole thing within 30 seconds. I copied and pasted it into my IDE, and I was done.

It almost feels wrong because the process is so easy. If I need a photo of a monkey wearing an

We had a flash fiction writing night at the IBIS society club. The goal was to write a story in 1000 words or less in 30 minutes that contained three words drawn out of a hat. At the end of the night, we printed out each of the stories we wrote and read them aloud. In a stroke of genius, our club president, Bret Van Den Brink, put a story by ChatGPT he generated into the mix. We read them all out anonymously and attempted to find the AI-generated one. We were thankfully able to find the AI-written essay pretty easily. It was rather dull and unimaginative compared to other stories. Yet we still all held our breath when Bret revealed ChatGPT’s essay. We were sure that we got the right essay, but were we?

The fact that we were never 100 percent positive says something about our collective fears about AI. ChatGPT writes in a rather soulless manner, giving a generic narrative that could not match the twisted stories we were coming up with. It turns out that AI cannot match up with my neo-noir story about a catfish secret agent named Cauldron who hunts down his nemesis, Mickey Mouse, who is the don of a mafia group. Bret spent five minutes generating a passable story after finishing his own while the rest of us barely finished in the time we had. How much longer would it have taken him to tweak it beyond the point where we could have figured out which one was real?

All this to say that AI is here to stay. The AI apocalypse might be coming. I am genuinely scared about how powerful AI is becoming and already is in our world. We might be overwhelmed by neural networks telling us that they are in love with us, or we might feel the sting as our jobs are replaced by some guy in a boardroom inputting prompts into ChatGPT. There is something unflinchingly frightening about this technology, and that is a good thing. We have a far too rosy perspective of the tech industry as it currently stands. We should not trust them as much as we do, and we should expect them to look beyond anything but the bottom line. Are we really OK with letting corporations decide the moral and ethical limits of new technologies? People look out for people, and companies look out for companies. This fear is valid and very necessary, but I simply must believe that there may be some good to come out of this AI revolution. How must have hot air balloon pilots felt when the airplane was unleashed on the world? How did horse and buggy drivers feel when Henry Ford put his Model-T on the road? Our world is changing, and already has changed, thanks to these machines.

For now, though, all I have to say is that this article was not written by AI. Nothing was generated: no art, no text, no ideas. This is 100 per cent human-made.

The way it was meant to be. And for now, the way it should be.

Diego Bascur & Seth Schouten

It is an exciting time for TWU’s School of the Arts, Media + Culture, more affectionately known as SAMC. In an attempt to streamline and create a sense of unity over its many year-end events, SAMC has unveiled the Festival of the Arts, Media + Culture, which has been running since mid-March and will continue until the end of May. This collection of events showcases a variety of student-driven exhibitions and performances from a variety of artistic disciplines covered through SAMC’s diverse programs.

In a statement to Mars’ Hill, Scott Macklin, the interim dean of SAMC, expressed his excitement about the festival and reaffirmed SAMC’s commitment to Christ-centred artistic education. “The Festival of Arts, Media + Culture is a culmination, celebration, and illumination of our learners’ sense-making and goods-making in design, media, theatre, film, music, and art,” said Macklin. “SAMC is a place for faith-fueled creativity to flourish where we are called to create responsibly and redemptively opening ourselves up to the reality and the presence of grace beyond ourselves . . . inch by inch, step by step, line by line, frame by frame, note by note, stage by stage, beat by beat, and shine by shine.” hours. Students arrive at TWU on the evening of Friday, April 14 to split into teams. Writers spend the night working on scripts and then actors and directors arrive in the morning to stage the plays.

“If you ever wanted to get your feet wet in theatre, this is your opportunity!” said event coordinators Alex Walker and Madison Willoughby in a statement to Mars’ Hill. The event is open to any and all students from TWU who would like to participate.

“We hope to see you there either on stage or in the audience!”

TWU’s annual student film festival Cinergy returns this year. It is a showcase of various short films produced by TWU students. “The upcoming Cinergy film festival represents a fantastic opportunity for student filmmakers to showcase their work to their peers and the public, as well as have them adjudicated by a panel of experts in the field,” said event coordinator Chris Whitford. “As an MCOM student who is hoping to submit my own short films, I am looking forward to sharing my work with the TWU community. But most of all, I am excited to see the talent of my fellow film students and peers in action.” Cinergy is scheduled for April 11 in the DeVries auditorium.

Vignettes is another notable event which will be happening on the evening of April 13. This showcase will be full of narrative non-fiction stories from students in media and communication. With the coordinator, professor Loranne Brown, heading the night, this will be a unique chance to hear stories read out loud in an intimate setting. The event will take place in Instrumental Hall in the music building.

Musical performances play a big role in this year’s festival. The musical performances, put on by SAMC’s band and orchestra as well as the Chamber Choir, will be done around Langley and Abbotsford. There will also be a Jazz Night which will be held in Instrumental Hall in the music building on April 12.

The students of the art department’s senior studio course are putting together their final showcase. Called Untitled, the showcase is presented in three distinct shows with each show featuring a third of 19 senior students. The first of the three, Show A, concluded at the end of March, but the second show, Show B, is currently on display in the SAMC Gallery in the Norma Marion Alloway Library and is on display until April 13. The final of the three, Show C, runs April 17–29.

The festival kicked off with the theatre department’s recently-concluded production of You Can’t Take it With You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, directed by theatre professor Kerri Norris. The play was a madcap, 1930s-set romantic comedy. It also marked Norris’ last directorial effort at TWU.*

But theatre is not quite done. The department’s last major event of the year comes in the form of 24 Hour Theatre, an annual event where students are tasked with creating a collection of short plays in just 24

The festival also features the premiere of Gardens: A Sacred Oratorio, a choral musical performance which follows the Biblical story through the theme of gardens. The work was composed by David Squires, a professor of music at TWU and was commissioned by TWU’s music department. Gardens will be performed on April 15 at Fleetwood Christian Reformed Church in Surrey and April 16 at Central Heights Church in Abbotsford.

Mars’ Hill’s very own Zaeya Winter will be ending the festival with her immersive installation in the SAMC gallery which will be showcased from May 6–31.

The Festival of the Arts, Media + Culture is an opportunity to appreciate and support the work of student artists at TWU. This is a time for appreciation. It is an opportunity to support young artists whose unique outlooks are displayed for all eyes. This is how we preserve art and how we foster another generation into the world of creativity. It is merely the expression of the inner self. What we love, whether that be running a business, writing a song, or painting a portrait, is what creative expression is.

We are all born with creativity; it is innate, yet some do not find it. We conform and become blocked from our creative desires and, therefore, never fully become ourselves. That is why festivals like this are so important, as it is a celebration of life, a beacon which should spark a desire to mark this world in our own unique ways. The festival is not only a celebration of life but a celebration of what gives us life. It is a reminder that creativity exists within all our hearts and across all our disciplines if only we choose to unlock it.

*Mars’ Hill interviewed Norris about the play in volume 27, issue 9.

Bret van den Brink

The optimist in me hopes that some, since reading my last review, will have read The Faerie Queene; the realist in me believes that those who had begun it will not have finished it; and the pessimist in me knows that a few, and perhaps more than a few, will have watched Cocaine Bear. Happily, today I come with a less-demanding recommendation—Charlie Brooker’s mockumentary series Cunk on Earth. In the show, the titular Philomena Cunk gives a brief overview of human history from its beginnings up to the present day, interviewing various experts who have devoted decades of their lives to the painstaking study of historical minutiae and contradicting them on the seemingly infallible authorities of her own intuitions, YouTube videos, and that thing her mate Paul once said while under the influence of some substance or another.

Cunk on Earth presents something of a problem to my usual format. Typically I write these reviews in a fustian prose style with a feigned air of superciliousness. The ironic touch is perfected when my knowledge of literature, philosophy, and history converges with my nearly complete ignorance of popular culture. In her persona as Philomena Cunk, the actress Diane Morgan, on the other hand, feigns an incorrigible obtuseness in her mockumentary series, knowing something of popular culture and little of “the best that has been thought and known” (to borrow Matthew Arnold’s happy phrase from “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”).

In short, in reviewing this particular work in my usual style, I fear I might come off as elitist. I will, somewhat lamely, ward off this rebuke as well as I can by suggesting that, in general, people should not be judged intellectually by what they know and do not know but by their willingness to learn. Personally, my ignorance is vast and my knowledge is flawed—just two days before I wrote this review, I believed the mockumentary presenter’s name to be Philomela rather than Philomena, and even spelt it out as such to someone who asked what I was to be reviewing. But, I can admit when I am wrong, and I am happy to learn.

Cunk, despite hosting a documentary series in which she interviews various experts, is not willing to learn; introducing a segment on Greek philosophy, she says, “Philosophy is basically thinking about thinking, which sounds like a waste of time, because it is.” I fear that underlying Cunk’s view is the current ethos of a commodified education system, in which students are encouraged to be treated as customers to be contented rather than wayfarers towards the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Tom Nichols warns in The Death of Expertise, “Education, instead of breaking down barriers to continued learning, is teaching young peo- nor Robson, the Professor of Ancient Middle ple that their feelings are more important than anything else.” Why think about your thinking when you can think about your feelings? Alas, here one is not far from David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature: “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” One need not, with Virginia Woolf’s Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse, “like Mr. Ramsay all the better for thinking that if his little finger ached the whole world must come to an end.” Indeed, one should not.

Eastern History at University College London, as she does. Cunk asks the professor, “Did they have the same number of numbers as we do? You know, with one to seven hundred, with seven hundred being the biggest number.” The professor answers, “Seven hundred has never been the biggest number. You can count to as many as you like.” Cunk answers, “No, no. I saw a thing on YouTube.” Nichols again comes to mind, diagnosing the narcissism of those who “demand to be taken with equal seriousness by everyone else, regardless of how extreme or uninformed their views are.” When the interviewer raises a YouTube video against the peer-reviewed professor, Nichols again comes to mind: “The Internet is a mixed blessing, a well of information poisoned by the equivalent of intellectual sabotage.”

The mockumentary is quite amusing. Morgan delivers her lines as Cunk in pristine deadpan, speaking in a vaguely Northern accent, wearing a vaguely official-looking suit, and spewing complete tosh. In the era of Google wherein truth and falsehood are nearly indistinguishable for the undiscerning, and often difficult to discern for the well-trained, the fact that this mockumentary looks so much like a documentary is appropriate.

The mockumentary’s satire strikes a keener sound when the discussion moves from Greek thought to arithmetic. I know many intelligent people who would sympathize with Cunk’s confession, “Maybe I’m cold, but I, I just don’t give a s— about people in ancient Greece” but very few who would interact with Elea-

At no point did I laugh uproariously, but I certainly chuckled every few minutes. I do not suppose I will ever watch the series as a whole again, but I would happily watch clips from it whenever YouTube’s algorithm sees fit. For those seeking reprieve in the midst of essays and exams, I can hardly think of anything less mentally demanding.