Hallucinations of the Tempering — J. Fitzpatrick Mauldin

LEXI - LEFT (not AI rendered - stock photo + custom art) | THE TRANSCENDENCE CAST - RIGHT (AI rendered)

We live in strange times, things that were once sci-fi now reality. Looking back to Startrek: The Next Generation, the holodeck was more than capable of making something from nothing, presenting you with a world to explore after only a couple of prompts. But people still made art. People still painted and played music and sketched and expressed themselves.

Let me be clear on my stance here, AI art is not art. No offense to the creative minds who have had the vision to create something new and interesting, but its a cheat, and that fact that we live in a world where we feel the need to cheat, speaks more of here we’ve gotten than individuals using tools. The facts still remain, that these models were trained on mostly stolen data. Besides, I have found that working with others to create is far more rewarding.

Our business culture of profit at all cost has created a kind of pressure we were not evolved to handle, and so we did the natural thing, we looked for leverage. If corporations are to raise their profits year of year until infinity, we must become faster, smarter, stronger. But the question I always ask, is to what end? Why do we do these things? Do they create personal happiness and health and understanding. Do they give us a reward other than money?

AI is a symptom of a broken and manipulated chemical reward system in our brains brought about by the very things which brought you here, and I am not judging anyone for falling into the trap. We all I do. I am no better. But I think it’s important to understand how we got here. It’s important to have that awareness, not just be mindless NPCs.

So why use it to promote your latest book, you might ask? You’ll have to read the Foundry series to understand, especially the final book, The Tempering. In these clips I left all the strange inconsistences on purpose. The… hallucinations. This technology is dangerous not just from the perspective of its economic disruption, which will be dramatic, but from that which it cheapens the value of those who create true art.

As humans in this age, we drown in information, but starve for enlightenment.

Do the hard things. The journey is the destination. An instant result has no reward.

Was AI used in writing the Foundry series? That would be a big fat no. We did it the hard way, with notebooks and Microsoft Word. Why would I rob myself of the joy of its reward?