artificial intelligence

What is life’s purpose?

In her graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, Amy Kurzweil tackles many existential questions, framed around her father’s quest to resurrect his father using artificial intelligence. Kurzweil participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 12.

The purpose of life, of art, what it means to be human, to love and be loved, the value of relationships, our mortality. In a very personal story, cartoonist and writer Amy Kurzweil explores not just universal questions but the biggest of questions in her new book, Artificial: A Love Story.

Kurzweil participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 12 in two separate sessions: one about the choice of the comic form to tell a story, the other titled Art & Artificial Intelligence.

In Artificial, readers are invited into another part of Kurzweil’s world. Her debut graphic memoir, Flying Couch, was also family-focused, centring around her maternal grandmother’s story. As she writes on her website, “At 13 years old, Bubbe (as I call her) escaped the Warsaw Ghetto alone, by disguising herself as a gentile. My mother taught me: our memories and our families shape who we become. What does it mean to be part of a family, and how does each generation bear the imprint of the past, its traumas and its gifts? Flying Couch is my answer to these questions, the documentation of my quest for identity and understanding.”

image - Artificial: A Love Story, by Amy Kurzweil, page 21 — Artificial: A Love Story, by Amy Kurzweil, page 21.

Kurzweil continues to grapple with these questions in Artificial, this time from the paternal side. Her father, Ray, an inventor and futurist, is building an AI tool that will allow him, basically, to resurrect his father, who died of a heart attack in 1970, at the age of 57. Ray has saved letters, articles, music and other material relating to his father, Frederic, a pianist and conductor, who fled Austria in 1938, a month before Kristallnacht, to the United States, saved by a chance encounter. Amy is helping her father sort through boxes upon boxes of material and computerize the information. She even chats with “her grandfather,” as the AI program is being developed.

“My father taught me … that, someday, robots would be made of memory,” writes Kurzweil. Of course, the creation of a Fredbot has functional, ethical, emotional and other challenges, and Kurzweil – in words and images – presents them with sensitivity, intelligence and creativity. Each page of Artificial is attention-grabbing and the level of detail on some pages is remarkable. Kurzweil meticulously re-creates correspondence, typed and handwritten, newspaper articles and other documents, emails and texts, but she also captures, for example, the doubt on her father’s face during a conversation and the concern she has for her partner when he’s undergoing some medical tests. Readers learn about the people asking the questions, not just the questions themselves.

As for the answers? There are multiple ones. Of her father’s project, his quest to conquer mortality using technology, Kurzweil writes that her father’s definition of infinity is, “Computers become so small and dense that they become intelligence itself. Humans who do not grow up or grow old and seal our stories. Our stories wake up and keep writing themselves. This future sounds like liberation from the sadness of a story’s end. But it also sounds terrifying.”

That Kurzweil isn’t completely convinced of the merits of her father’s project, even though she loves him dearly and is helping him try and accomplish it, makes Artificial a satisfyingly complex and relatable story. It is a love story on many levels, and one well worth reading.

The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival runs Feb. 10-15. For the program guide and to purchase event tickets, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Consume responsibly

It is said that “truth is the first casualty of war.” There are two aspects to this truth – that the chaos of conflict makes it difficult to discern exactly what is happening, leading to what we might now call “misinformation” and, additionally, the tendency of governments to deliberately mislead their citizens and others for strategic reasons, better known as “disinformation.” Both aspects are very much in play in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.

There was a time when it was easy for governments to control information. At that time, also, there were editors and fairly clear and stringent (if imperfect) journalistic standards in place before a story would reach its audiences. The internet, among its good and bad characteristics, has eliminated almost all oversight.

Today, anyone with access to the internet has the potential to reach wider audiences than the most powerful person of a century or two ago – and to do so instantaneously. As a result, we are swimming in information.

In principle – in the utopian idea some may have had a few short years ago – this access to virtually unlimited resources would make every citizen capable of consuming the most information possible and empowering us to make informed decisions. This principle seems to have proved disastrously wrong. Instead of weighing the balance of opinions in the most vibrant marketplace of ideas ever imagined, many of us seek out only that information that reinforces our preexisting prejudices and fast-held opinions.

Moreover, bad actors – including governments – and unwitting innocents are purveying false information. We are manipulated by lies that are difficult to discern from fact and most of us are guilty of sharing false information without intending to do so.

We are facing the possibility of a “post-truth world,” exacerbated by technological changes and advances in artificial intelligence. Even given incontrovertible evidence, significant parts of populations choose to believe demonstrable fallacies – the most obvious one in our geographic neighbourhood being the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election. Even the universal availability of contrary proof does not preclude people from coming to the wrong conclusions.

Google News and many other agencies, to their credit, have begun aggregating fact-checks from verified sources that now appear at the bottom of many news feeds. Of course, these cannot vet the things that come through our email inboxes.

The advent of artificial intelligence is going to turn what had been trickle and is now a flood of misinformation and disinformation into an absolute deluge. In this issue of the Independent alone, by coincidence, multiple stories address the risks of what is occurring and the need for media literacy and critical thinking.

All of this relates, in a very specific if not immediately obvious way, to a more positive news story in this issue. British Columbia is set to become the second Canadian province to mandate compulsory Holocaust education in the school curriculum.

Ensuring that young citizens complete their education with knowledge of the Holocaust is vitally important. The Holocaust, since well before the internet age, has been the subject of both misinformation and disinformation. Comprehensive education may help people emerge from the school system with a baseline of shared information around a seminal event in human history.

But more is needed. The problem is so vast, a broad approach is required to ensure that most of us, young and old, can discern fact from fiction.

A “supply-side” response is not going to work. There is simply no possibility of stanching the burgeoning amount of lies and misleading content online (and elsewhere). Critical thinking, media analysis, information literacy – these are crucial skills for individuals and society at large. We are way behind the curve in delivering these through our institutions.

Confronting the tsunami of misinformation and disinformation is an intractable challenge. It seems, though, that democratic countries are on the right track: we are acknowledging that it is a problem. There are individuals and organizations – in the public, nonprofit and private sectors – working to bring reliable and trustworthy news and information to the fore. But we must do our part – think twice before you forward a link or email, do your own fact-checking, subscribe to a wide variety of respected publications or channels, be civil in your discussions. It may be a cliché, but it’s appropriate here: be a part of the solution not the problem.

Artificial just got real

Jews have been called “the people of the book.” It was the power of and devotion to the received and unfolding written word that ensured the Jewish people’s unity (and diversity) across almost 2,000 years of exile. But who reads books anymore?

If you are perusing these pages, you probably belong to what has become a somewhat exclusive club – readers. Beginning with the advent of radio, picking up speed with the development of television, then supercharging connectivity while reducing attention spans with the advent of internet and social media, books have, for many people, ceased to be the primary go-to source for entertainment, pastime, learning or self-improvement.

When social media took off, in the early 2000s, most people, experts and us ordinary folks, didn’t really fathom the impact it would have on our society or on our physiology. Now, a few short years later, science is demonstrating that the speed with which images and ideas flash into our senses may be literally changing how our brains work.

It may be safe to say that giant leaps in artificial intelligence just in the last few months will have at least the same breadth of impact on societies and individuals.

Skeptics among us, who have dabbled a little in public interfaces like ChatGPT, have come away gobsmacked by the capabilities we have discovered – which are clearly just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the most wondrous (and scary) thing about artificial intelligence is that it may represent the beginning of an exponential, self-sustaining explosion. The Industrial Revolution began less than 300 years ago. Every modern convenience – practically everything we have outside of turnips and animal-skin garments – is a result of that explosive growth in human capability. For better and worse. For all the incredible advancements we have made, the price we are paying appears to be the future of our planet itself. All this in a mere three centuries. Artificial intelligence, even if we do not understand it now, will likely speed up change in ways that make today’s offerings look like the cotton gin.

The written word is just a small part of what artificial intelligence can do. Because it is one of the easier things to access for most laypeople, this component of ChatGPT is the one that most of us have probably played around with. Professors, employers and others are suddenly confronted with uncharted moral territory in dealing with brilliantly written submissions from students, employees and other correspondents, any of which may or may not have been written by human hands and minds. As one professor commented in media recently, what tipped him off to the problem was how dazzling some of the essays he received were.

And the time-saving! Artificial intelligence can write a letter to a recalcitrant employee, a grandparent, an old friend or a government official in a tiny fraction of the time it would take the ordinary person to draft a letter of far lower quality.

But who is going to read all these words?

Already, plenty of people have largely abandoned books. Even Jews, the people of the book, find much to do beyond reading. Just a little microcosm in our own community tells us this. Look at the corners of the Vancouver JCC that are the busiest at any given time. History and stereotypes should suggest that the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library would be packed with people from morning to night. It’s got a devoted and steady clientele, do not misunderstand, but, judging by foot traffic, you might think 21st-century Jews would be better known as the “people of the gym,” “the people of the pool” or “the people who gab endlessly in the boardroom.”

The bigger issue is, at some point with the advent of technology that just keeps producing more words, we will reach a tipping point at which there are more “writers” (human or otherwise) than there are readers. If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody to hear it fall, it has been asked, does it make a sound? If words are put to paper (or screen) and never read, might it be as well if they had never been written at all?

Again: we use words as an example here because that is the field we know best. AI is set to upend almost every facet of our society. It feels like we are at a moment much more significant than that time 20 years ago when we first encountered social media, or 30 years ago, when most of us first ventured onto the World Wide Web. We can only barely fathom the good and bad (and indifferent) changes imminent.

Be in on the joke in AI

Hannah Everett, left, and Drew Carlson co-star in Artisanal Intelligence, at the Havana Theatre Jan. 14-18. (photo from Spec Theatre)

Drew Carlson and Jewish community member Hannah Everett are reprising their roles in Artisanal Intelligence, which again plays at the Havana Theatre, Jan. 14-18.

Written by Jewish community member Ira Cooper, the show had a limited two-show run this past July at the Havana; both of those performances sold out. It also traveled to a few Fringe festivals, garnering positive reviews.

Carlson plays Barry, a hipster customer-service robot who is filled with esoteric knowledge and mad skills. Everett plays Jane, the entrepreneur who created Barry.

“The content will be the same, aside from a few tweaks and tightens,” Cooper told the Independent about how the January production differs from the summer show. “One of the songs, ‘No Off-Switch for Love,’ will be fully orchestrated, as opposed to the passable version of it that I created on GarageBand with digital instrumentation, so that is exciting and new. I am hoping it will fill out the song more, give it its deserved panache, and get people dancing in and out of their seats. It’s a Boney M.-inspired funk track, so I am really happy that it will finally be given the backtrack it has always longed for.”

photo - Ira Cooper’s Artisanal Intelligence is at the Havana Theatre Jan. 14-18 — Ira Cooper *(photo from Spec Theatre)*

The idea for Artisanal Intelligence took a couple of years to develop.

“In 2017, I went to live in China for a year to teach at a Canadian high school abroad,” said Cooper, who teaches the younger grades English and drama at King David High School. “My partner stayed in Canada and so I was there, in a new city, in a massive apartment, concocting, creating and percolating thoughts, ideas, words and scribbles to fill a void. Artisanal Intelligence was my attempt to write an accessible Fringe show…. Hipsterism just has so much great material to rib and, being that I would self-identify as a ‘hipster,’ I needn’t go too far to do my research. And robots. And AI. All are distinct and widely known, relevant, partaken in and discussed topics, so it seemed like an easy fit with my own personal playwriting aspirations this time around.

“I do not remember much about the writing process for the initial drafts. Knowing myself, it was probably over a three- or four-week period. Then drafts. Collaboration is integral to everything I and Spec Theatre do, so, early on in the process, I had people reading the script and giving me notes. Then it was sitting down with the director, Bronwen Marsden, for more edits. Then with the actors. Then with my partner, who is also the artistic designer for Spec, Ruby Arnold. The more feedback the better. The end result is a deeply heart-filled joint-effort, which we are all proud of and which we all had a part in molding, from the very words on the page outwards.”

Cooper said Artisanal Intelligence lampoons and lambasts hipster culture, as opposed to critiquing it.

“The show uses a lot of recognizable hipster motifs, tropes and allusions, but the audience is consistently in on the joke,” he said. “The show is a discussion on identity, self-perseverance, self-reliance and the impending (or not) robot apocalypse, but in a soft and humorous way.

“I think the show actually exemplifies why culture can be important, how it can bind us to something bigger than ourselves. We are constantly looking for the ‘bigger than ourselves’ entities. And so, with the culture references, the clearly identifiable razzing and fun that takes place in the 55 minutes of Artisanal Intelligence, the audience, who get what the show is alluding to, are part of each joke’s equation – that knowledge links culture, the audience and the performers.”

The performances at the Havana in January will be relaxed, said Cooper, which means “the houselights will never fully dim and people are free, if they need or want, to get up, stretch, move, go for a walk, etc. We want theatre to be accessible to everyone and we respect, acknowledge and cherish the diversity of our audiences. Also, if you’re an artist of any kind, Spec Theatre is always looking to collaborate, to make unique, experimental, new things. Reach out!”

For tickets to Artisanal Intelligence, go to spectheatre.com.

Meet Barry at Havana

Did you know without goats, the coffee bean may have never been discovered? Are you able to recognize if the vinyl you hear coming from your neighbor’s apartment is a 78, 45 or 33? Do you type your university essays out on a typewriter? Barry knows, Barry can, Barry does, Barry will and Barry did. Introducing the next wave in AI customer service. Barry is the perfect fit for all your too-cool-for-school business needs.

In Jewish community member Ira Cooper’s Artisanal Intelligence, fellow community member Hannah Everett plays Jane, the entrepreneur and creative genius responsible for developing Barry, a fast-learning, curious and fashion-wise artificial intelligence customer service robot, played by Drew Carlson. Cooper describes his play as “not simply a form of absurdist, comedic, low-brow escapism as it may come across. It’s a conversation about identity, as most things are, and its tumultuous relationship with self versus societal box-fitting…. There are other dialogues, too; questions raised about creation versus intent versus audience response and who gets to create meaning. It’s also an affirmation of what love can be.” Artisanal Intelligence is at Havana Theatre July 5 and 7, 9:30 p.m. Tickets ($15) can be purchased at showpass.com.

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