Come make maps with us! Also, AI.

You recall that, a few months ago, we took responsibility of Placecloud.io, a platform for mapping short, location-specific, podcasts, augmented through Google Streetview.
After making a series of small adjustments, and opening up the platform, we hope that Placecloud is convincing enough for you to create, and make available, your own collection of location-based podcasts.

I recently used Placecloud to map almost two dozen narratives located in South America and Europe, related to two recent trips I made, and we're now working with Alban Low to put together a map of stories related to British jazz musicians who were in their prime from the 1930s onward. You'll recognise Alban's name, as he's the amazing illustrator for the chapbooks we put out in connection to our writing competitions.

So, if you're keen, or interested, to put together a collection of location-based stories on a topic you are fond of, go and check out Placecloud. And, if you would prefer working on these together with us, we're interested to collaborate. Just reach out and start a discussion.

My own series of viewpoints, I added as part of the project I worked on in northern Sweden, In which I go for a walk. One of the themes for that project was AR, Augmented Reality.
Just this week, Apple released the VisionPro. Though, for now, with a focus on media and business, the consumer market will, eventually, be taken by storm through its capabilities of delivering contextual AR, of which Apple has dropped a few hints here and there.
This superposition of the virtual on the real is the common understanding of what AR means, but reality is also augmented when creating more lucid versions of life, or its representations. Then, if done through the use of today's hot technological commodity, AI, Artificial Intelligence, not only is reality augmented, it's augmented by computers in a very similar way to how computers can superimpose the virtual on to the real in more 'classic' AR.

The two dozen stories I added to Placecloud all originated as AI-generated texts. However, as AI is known to hallucinate, that is, come up with plausible-sounding nonsense, while also being big on literary cliches, I had to heavily vet and edit the generated content, before I was comfortable with putting up these texts for the world to listen to.

Then, I used a synthetic version of my own voice to narrate the stories. That is, I had a computer generate a digital version of my voice, which almost sounds exactly like me, which I now use to narrate these stories. The synthesised voice is very similar to my own, though not quite exactly the same. But, more importantly, it's indistinguishable from a human voice.

All this to say that ethics required me to allow submissions to Placecloud to be marked as 'created with the assistance of AI', which in turn brings me to the ethics of AI in general.

It's likely you've seen the debate on the ethics of AI crop up in your favourite news source, recently. Depending on what level you're invested in the debate, your takeaway might be that there are plenty of voices from within the industry who are calling for self-regulation of the field, or, gasp, for government-initiated regulation.
Sam Altman, the guy who runs OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, the most famous AI text generator, even called for an international agency similar to the one that oversees nuclear energy, to be set up to manage the regulation of AI on a global scale.

This, and similar narratives, are constructed to create the appearance of responsibility, while also absolving the industry from both responsibility and the consequences of their actions.
The sole existence of OpenAI, and other companies like it, is to make money at any cost, as long as it's legal, and sometimes also by means that are not legal. The money makers will never pursue self-regulation, and will fight government regulation with tooth and nail, as Meredith Whittaker, the president of the social messaging app Signal, explained in The Guardian today.

The development of AI, or more specifically, Large Language Models (LLM), the technology underpinning what, not quite accurately, is called 'AI', is moving at an insane pace. And, the output of these systems will be ubiquitous in the months to come, or already is, as we speak, in some particular niche sectors. Worse, but also amazing, the output of LLMs will be indistinguishable from content generated by humans, and available in huge numbers.

You perhaps already see where this is going; at the mere touch of a few buttons, anyone, but with corporations taking the lead, can create huge amounts of credible, but fake, texts, images, videos, and more, to blanket all our personal experiences, in both the public and private sphere.
In the next few years, we will be inundated by nearly free, auto-generated, content, which can be tailored to every individual's personal tastes and preferences. Indeed, it will be the culmination of Debord's Society of the Spectacle and continuous manipulation as the consequence.
The Spectacle will not just be around us in the public sphere, it will be within us, on our cellphones, and beamed onto our retinas by products like Apple's VisionPro.

Or rather, you are now aware of what could end up being the worst possible timeline. You are now in a position to recognise the abuse that will come your way. Act accordingly.

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