10. AI and the future of art. Feat. Steve Glashier, aka Midnite On Mars – Filmmaker and AI artist.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I think it's just a tool. It's like depending on what you do with all the things we've ever created as humans is... there are good and bad in all of it. We can do this, but this is sort of a side effect. It's us to adapt, to move on. It's the artist that need to use this as a tool where you can do it. You can use it as your sketchbook , but the main thing is ... what we're really looking at is a democracy of voices.
If art's about communication, that's all we're really doing is making it a wider conversation.
People will become more intelligent from tools and that's what our evolution is.
[00:00:44] Mizter Rad: Hello beautiful humans today. I'm having a chat with the one and only Steve also known as Midnite On Mars. Steve is a reknown photographer and filmmaker that not so long ago started creating stories full of color and surreal characters with the help of a AI. He calls his stories, adventures of the imagination.
Steve are you in already?
[00:01:28] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Easy. Easy. It's revolutionary. .
[00:01:30] Mizter Rad: Super easy, actually. It's just a click. Click away.
[00:01:33] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah, it's like really interesting. I've been listening to a few, but I sort of. I was like, how the fuck does that work? ? Like, but yeah, it makes a lot more sense than going to make a podcast, I think.
And can you download the audio after or something like that?
[00:01:48] Mizter Rad: Exactly, yeah. I download the audio and then I do a little bit of editing. Actually. I use a tool called Descript. It's AI based as well. So they have this cool feature, I think we talked about it last time, where you can basically convert text to audio in case you wanna edit something.
[00:02:09] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:09] Mizter Rad: Or overdub something. So it takes your voice. The system already learned how my voice sounds so I can literally just text, uh, write something, type something and then it would gener generate it.
[00:02:22] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It's crazy. Like I've just been looking at...
[00:02:24] Mizter Rad: it's crazy.
[00:02:25] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: So I'm gonna get like Dennis Hopper's voice and feed it all in and get a narration by Dennis Hopper.
[00:02:32] Mizter Rad: Yeah, that's crazy.
[00:02:34] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Uhhuh .
[00:02:34] Mizter Rad: It's amazing. It's amazing what these technologies can do nowadays. It's I think it's
[00:02:39] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: yeah, it just makes me laugh. It's fun. I come across a, you ever watched the show Seinfeld?
[00:02:44] Mizter Rad: Yeah.
[00:02:45] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It's like someone's made an AI 24 hour running AI Seinfeld on Twitch.
It's been run, it's been running nonstop since the 11th of December.
[00:02:57] Mizter Rad: Really? But is this like all AI recreated? There's nothing from the original?
[00:03:03] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It's just, it's just really bad sort of graphics, but these voices that aren't actually even them either, but there's something. Like, at first you're just like, oh, that's weird.
That's weird. And then there's sort of like an interesting thing. It's like, listen to a radio or overhearing people speak or something. I'll send you later.
[00:03:25] Mizter Rad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please do. Please do. But the, so the images, the of the video are not the actual characters of Seinfeld.
[00:03:32] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It's just like, it's a really sort of basic nasty graphics.
[00:03:38] Mizter Rad: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:38] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: and it just rero, appropriates these images around things maybe to who's speaking and has random little shit, but it does all the cutaways and there's a little bit of canned laughter there. And then super surreal, super surreal. But people are sitting there on Twitch watching it.
[00:03:55] Mizter Rad: There is a, there's this episode like fictitious. Is fake as a, it's a fake episode where Joe Rogan interviews Steve Jobs.
Okay. I don't know if you've listened to it. It's an audio file and basically it's also AI generated made by this, I think it is Italian, I'm not sure. And so it's like a, I don't know, I don't remember. Maybe two hour conversation. Joe Rogan conversations are super long and it's, it's exactly their voice of Joe Rogan and exactly the voice of Steve Jobs.
And it's just an actual it conversation makes sense. Most of the time. It's crazy if no one knows that the, actually this didn't happen and it's just a computer, it would be hard to tell.
[00:04:37] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:37] Mizter Rad: It would be hard to tell.
[00:04:39] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It was a TV show years ago called 30 Rock with Tina Faye.
Mm-hmm. And basically they do this like thing in the second season where, They made a show called Seinfeld Vision where basically they've got, because they own all the rights to his old, like show, they start putting him in the station's new show. So he is appearing on Jeopardy and things like that. And they're just getting Seinfeld vision.
It's like, and we are there now. We're actually, that's where we're today. It's like mad.
[00:05:14] Mizter Rad: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy how it's getting harder and harder to really determine what's made by AI and what's maybe not...
[00:05:24] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: but I think it's a lesson.
[00:05:25] Mizter Rad: I don't know if that matters in the end, but...
[00:05:27] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: no, but there's also a lesson. Cuz you know, that's what advertising's always been great at is that. And you know, that's why we have plastic surgery.
That's why we have this. And you know, when you make an advert, it's all faked. If that's like, it's not really that thing that you are seeing. Like if you're looking at a nice hamburger, that's not how your hamburger is gonna look when you buy it.
[00:05:50] Mizter Rad: If you look at it from that perspective we've been in that already.
We've been, we've been deceiving ourselves in many, many ways.
[00:05:58] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: We're probably closer to the truth now, by understanding...
[00:06:01] Mizter Rad: How is that?
[00:06:02] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I suppose, in that way of where you sort of have the experience. I suppose it's Wizard of Oz, it's sort of like you believe everything you're seen and then someone pulls away the curtain and there's a guy behind there just pulling all these levers and making everything happen. And it's like, and then you sudden.
Oh, it wasn't real all along. And I think maybe this is the first time we've looked from that angle and gone. All right. Yeah.
[00:06:32] Mizter Rad: So we're living in a delusion, in a...
[00:06:36] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: in a, in a mass state of delusion because we're all complicit in it, really. Even if you are a creator, I think the most interesting thing where you, which you've seen is like the, there was a documentary and it talks to all the people that had sort of been instrumental in creating like sort of social media culture and the like button and all that.
And none of the kids were allowed to have a phone or an iPad. And you're just like, oh yeah. Right. Yeah. That's, that makes sense, doesn't it? And, and, and that's it. It is like, you know, like some people will probably who own a farm are probably vegetarian or own a company that makes meat products.
They're probably all vegetarians get in that. I'm really sorry.
[00:07:18] Mizter Rad: It is a very complex world and, and life is kind of hard to, to grasp and to, to define in a way. Because it's hard to tell, you know, if someone is playing a game with us or not. In the end. If we're just like, being remotely controlled in a way. If you're part of a video game, sort of...
[00:07:39] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: yeah, totally.
Like that's the purpose of your existence is, you know, that's why they always freak out about population and that sort of thing. Because there isn't enough people to keep the money flowing to the people that need the money. Cuz they're, they're taking so much, you just squeezing it and que Oh no, we run a bit more than that.
And then you think of how many people have the wealth. You know, we're, that's that little video game. We're just characters in that and everyone has to go to work. But you know, for me there's something in the AI for that. Like, I'd like AI to be giving everyone a four day week, but for five days money. You know, that's where AI should be going.
Not everyone works a lot harder for less money.
[00:08:23] Mizter Rad: And how do you see that happening? How do you see this? The computer is helping us get to the point where we say, you know, computers or robots go to work...
[00:08:33] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Well, I think it's like...
[00:08:33] Mizter Rad: we humans stay doing whatever we want. It's going to the gym swimming and,
[00:08:38] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Mizter Rad: Enjoying life.
[00:08:39] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Well, I think automation is always, you know, from the Ford car factory with like, okay, that's gonna work a little bit and you're taking the back breaking workout of, a lot of it is a lot of, you know, if you are creating image or rotoscoping images all day and you're sitting there like manually and every time we've sort of played with technology, it just assisted us a little bit more just to take away that, you know, you're probably like digging with a stick at some point. And then someone worked out. If we put an end to this, then you might be able to shovel out more. And in the end someone puts a machine at the other end of it, but someone still has to actually manually be there unless it's in a confined space or a factory line.
So I think there's interesting bits all through things that just make life easier. We can have more, you know, the idea that we can, anyway.
[00:09:34] Mizter Rad: It's super interesting, actually, that you mentioned that. About 10 years ago, I read a book called the Energy of Slaves. I think the author is Andrew Nikiforuk. He's a Canadian journalist. And he talks about the evolution of energy and how it started with pretty much getting energy from the human bodies, which was called slavery back then. And it was definitely slavery. And then as we developed, as, so as society, we changed the source of our energy into maybe fossil fuels.
And now we are going again through another big transition, I guess. But it's interesting that you mentioned that because yes, we'd started with a stick. We started working on the soil and it was very physically demanding. And now you have big tech people and super, uh, Philosophical thinkers nowadays saying, you know, the fuel of the future is actually your mind, your imagination.
We're not longer done, or we are, don't. We no longer required to be working on the land necessarily. Cuz the machines are getting better and better at that. But we will still be relevant in terms of our imagination. So why don't we take it from there, Steve or Glashier or Midnite On Mars. How do you want me to call you?
[00:11:00] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: You call me Steve.
[00:11:01] Mizter Rad: Steve, okay, cool. Cuz I actually found you on Instagram on your Midnite On Mars profile, which caught my attention. And then for those listening and tuning in now we met in a cafe last week here in Berlin. And we started having a super nice conversation. And what one of the things that caught my attention was your insistence, persistence on the word imagination.
We touched different topics, but then you always came back to imagination, human imagination. That's our main tool. Why don't we start there and why don't we start by telling our audience a little bit of your background on how you use imagination to go from being a filmmaker, photographer to a synthographer if you wanna call it like that.
[00:11:51] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. Oh, actually I'll go back a little bit further. Like, cause I've always been obsessed by it. I am totally dyslexic. I probably have ADHD. And a few things like that. And a real struggle at school to sort of learn in a traditional environment. And so I was staring out the window, everything would sort of literally be in my head and like I create that and you know, that might manifest itself in just causing trouble or something else, or something to pass the day and you know, so I sort of always had that sort of wanting to do something with my imagination.
And I think it was like I started like putting on parties a bit later than that, and then festivals and then some sort of music videos and photography and that sort of thing. So that was my sort of journey, but, and I always knew the worth of the imagination, but he was always serving somebody else as a commission to make a music video, or everything has to align with the artist, the music, the record label. What is in fashion or what wasn't done last week. So there's a lot of weighing up to sort of do, but still an enjoyable thing to create something and see it at the end. But you are always on someone else's money. And I think when like Midjourney come about, I could understand, I could make things like, like the stupidest ideas in your head.
You could actually just go, that's funny. And especially on version two, it was very rudimentary, very abstract, very interesting. And like I, one of the first things I'd done was I created this museum of Donald Trump artifact. Just for a little project or something to do. So every day I would create another thing to go in a museum.
And I created a story of the museum. It was in this little made up country of Nana Stan and all these artifacts or paintings and like things would all be from different artists. I'd make the name up and the thing and the curator and have this weird sort of view of it. And then people, Trump followers would follow me and it was like, wow, this is weird.
And like, you know, it was sort of, you know, I think I sort of took it as far as I could because of the limitations of two of me trying to make it realistic. And then three come version three of Midjourney come along. Didn't really get on with it. I could do a lot more like, but there was something that wasn't quite gelling.
And then four and I was like, in a couple of days I was just like, oh, I can get my traditional film photography pretty much spot on in this. But it felt such a waste. I'm like, You know, and that goes back to the imagination. Okay, so if, what do I wanna do? What do I, how do I test this? How do I make this interesting for myself?
So I'm not like just replicating photos exist. Cause that's, that been our problem through the internet and what we've been in the last 20 years is in this repetition. I like that. I'm gonna do a, a version of that. Like, you know, everything that I've probably created before in the last 15 years has pretty much been copied by other people.
Like from my early videos to my photography influencing new directors. And you know, as flattering as that is, it's not helping us push forward into something else. So when you are faced with Midjourney and like, what do I do? You, it feels like you're asked something quite big. You're sort of like, oh, okay.
And so you see a lot of fanfare around, think everyone's on Midjourney, it's gonna take all these jobs and... it just isn't. Cuz it's nice and it's organic and the people that can really make it work are actually artists as they move into this. And I think what I experienced for myself and what I enjoy seeing in others is the things we can't create, the things we wouldn't have budget for.
The personal project that needs to be so huge to get it across, be it that of people like automation and things like that, that have created this world's fair of everything and is somewhere between, yeah, world's Fair and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And I just, you just, the strength of these people's imaginations is brilliant.
It was one that popped up the other day and it was like the artist Aphex Twin and he'd re reimagined the whole of Aphex Twin as two, two brothers growing up, making music. And you're just like, shit. That's just so good. It's so pointless. There's no reason to do it. But you had the idea and like, it's like that thing where, oh yeah, I could do that, I could do that when people look at modern art and that sort of thing.
But you didn't. And I think ... it's that when you, you get to that modern art, I like, I don't, it is the, the imagination and the tool in front of you that there isn't a barrier between us here having an idea and this image engaging the world. And that's what I'm seeing doing such immediate effect where I see the joy, like from people making art.
And I don't think I've overly seen that as a movement ever.
[00:17:33] Mizter Rad: You touched a lot of different topics that I wanna break down. But let's start with the one that may be a lot of my friends and my network would point out when talking to someone that is working or creating art with AI. I imagine you have the same experience, and I think we talked about it last time we met.
I imagine you have a lot of artists, friends and colleagues, maybe designers, visual artists, actors, that are worried about, maybe AI killing their jobs or they staying unemployed because AI is gonna make all the job, all the work, the creative work now, and their, they're irrelevant. What do you tell them when they tell you this?
What is your counter argument?
[00:18:10] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I think, you know, historically we've had that for a hundred years with every move of technology. I think, you know, the black and white film camera was gonna be the death of the portraits. This was the color photography, death of something else. Computers were gonna be the death of everything and Photoshop and this and that.
And there's never been any proof in it at all. We just sort of keep moving forward. If you, you imagine that like, you know, they're all really fancy things, but you just go back to like the things like, like CAD drawing for planning and that sort of thing. And you'd have these massive warehouses with all these guys in shirts in the fifties and sixties doing technical drawing for everything.
And we just put that in a computer in the end and all, there wasn't this like mass loss. It was just, they could do it in less time. And again, it is just about automation and having more time for, to be more creative, to try and maybe more ideas at the front end of it. So we are not like, so, you know, even if it's a brainstorming machine, you know, I don't think we're gonna.
There's a hard and fast way to use it. I think it's just a tool. It's like depending on, you know, what you do with all the things we've ever created as humans is there are good and bad in all of it. Like, you know, we can do this, but this is sort of a side effect. It's us to adapt, to move on. It's the artist that need to use this as a tool where you can do it, you can like use it as your sketchbook and, but the main thing is it's sort of what we're really looking at is a democracy of voices.
If art's about communication, that's all we're really doing is making it a wider conversation.
[00:20:09] Mizter Rad: And so in your opinion, anyone can do art at the moment. AI art?
[00:20:13] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: No, I think, okay. No, no. It's not like I roll in and press a button and I go, I want a really good picture. It's like...
[00:20:21] Mizter Rad: that's what a lot of people think.
[00:20:22] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. A lot of people, again,
[00:20:23] Mizter Rad: that's why I ask,
[00:20:24] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: you know, like the turn prize every year people ignore. That's rubbish. I could have done that. Yeah. But, it's about implementation application and having the idea in the first place. Is we all look at things and gone you know, everyone's watching a film and they're suddenly the director, it's like, you haven't got all the things and you watching in hindsight. They don't rec, they didn't record the thing that you have in your head today.
And that's where the problem is when we perceive art like that is that you, you are like at the mercy of everyone looking and you just need to have an idea and move forward. And if you really, really have something that is something, it is real, it goes, back to the randomness of, someone the other day made a intergalactic funk band, junk band type thing, images a gig, and like that sort of set like Facebook a light, and that's what you need going in.
You need the thing, it's like you go to Dalhi and a lobster on a phone and you're just like, wouldn't it be funny? We look at that as probably quite high art, but that's just a bunch of drunk people probably in a room amuse each other. I think humor and all these, and the flippancy and the throwaway is sometimes is really important to nearly cleanse the palette of the starness of what we've been stuck in for so long. We don't get to this position unless there's a vacuum. You know? This is what art does, this is what it will navigate, what its own route like because of,
[00:22:08] Mizter Rad: what do you mean with the vacuum? What do you mean...
[00:22:10] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: there's nothing new?
When like, when we seen something interesting. When are we hearing different voices? We're in a system perpetually of gatekeepers. Stopping people. Financial people just going, whoa. Yeah, we liked your idea. They're
[00:22:27] Mizter Rad: trying to restrict, restrict your imagination, restrict your development.
[00:22:31] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I'm totally understandable.
It's a financial thing. We can't afford to do your crazy art stuff, right? So calm down, we're gonna do this. And you have to meet somewhere in the middle and come up with something that generally no one's happy with. But it fulfilled a brief and we got to the end and we didn't.
[00:22:46] Mizter Rad: I agree. Absolutely.
[00:22:47] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: And that's sort of that level of homogenization that becomes incredibly boring.
And I, I'm, so, I'm, I'm totally off my original Instagram at the moment and only on the Midnite On Mars one. And it's so nice. It's so refreshing. I will see a world or worlds that I've never seen before.
[00:23:12] Mizter Rad: So for people that are listening and since this is an audio podcast, I it's hard to imagine what kind of creations you're talking about.
So maybe it would be fantastic if you take us through your process of creating what you're creating on your Instagram account. Midnite On Mars. People, if you want to check it out, is what's the handle? Midnight Mars again? Steve.
[00:23:33] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Midnite On Mars.
[00:23:34] Mizter Rad: Midnite On Mars. M i,
[00:23:36] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: yeah. M i d like n i t e.
Like not with a G basically.
[00:23:42] Mizter Rad: So how do you go about the process? You have an idea and then you go to Midjourney and start typing, or I think it was, that's what I would imagine.
[00:23:49] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I'll tell you back to like the, my initial involvement with version four. I was testing to see how close I could get, like my actual photography the same. So I was going, oh yeah, that's a good portrait of someone. And it was like a bit flat and it was purposeless we were talking about before. And then...
[00:24:12] Mizter Rad: Sorry to interrupt there. But, so for people that didn't get it. There are different versions of Midjourney.
[00:24:18] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. So like...
[00:24:19] Mizter Rad: exactly.
[00:24:19] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. So we're on version four at the moment. I come in on version two. Version four is pretty much the first time we've being able to get photo realistic stuff. It's, the leap is massive between each of the versions and yeah, I think once I could, I knew, I could see the images that I could take and they were okay, that I'm pretty much sold. I'd be happy if that I've took that as a photo and I've already had to travel through the uncanny Valley area a bit. So I'm probably less perceptive to little inconsistencies really that I would usually see in things. And I think that was sort of, you know, you have to go through that or you are sitting there analyzing it too much.
It's like with sci-fi. You just have to believe sometimes as soon as you're, through a period of time, you can accept what you're seeing, like maybe too many fingers or a wonky eye now and then. And like it's easy to get a portrait and then what I wanted to do to make this different. And I sort of like just was like, okay, let's put this into a setting.
And I like the idea of like, , we've been hearing about Mars and this with Elon Musk and all these ideas of colonization. So I sort of just went with that sort of idea that there are a bunch of people that have ended up on Mars so they can be a bit alien likelike, and that there was maybe different billionaires like from all over the galaxy.
It sort of aimed towards Mars and at some point it all crash, landed there and created a society. So it's like a very pastoral backdrop, somewhere between like maybe Burning Man and something a few people have mentioned. Uh, it's quite festivalish, but then the sort of city grew a little bit and in more, I sort of had skills to control sort of like more Midjourney skills in version four.
And I could like, yeah, I could create more. And it was, it was interesting. You sort of get into a point of storytelling. It was all organic. I wasn't sitting there going, right, I'm gonna do this. And I think...
[00:26:48] Mizter Rad: so you didn't have a plan, which is it just, it was flowing basically.
[00:26:51] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. Well I was doing some stuff and I posted it to my normal photography account just in the stories and it went really badly.
Like photographers and people that followed.
[00:27:04] Mizter Rad: What do you mean? Ah, people are hating on it.
[00:27:06] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I lost 2000 followers in three days and I've got...
[00:27:10] Mizter Rad: oh God.
[00:27:11] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I've got, I've got friends of 20 years not talking to me over like AI art at the moment. So
[00:27:17] Mizter Rad: Oh wow.
[00:27:18] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I'm like, sort of, you know, and this is six weeks in now, so I'm a veteran of being hated on, on a daily basis.
It... it's interesting.
[00:27:28] Mizter Rad: Is it, is it because they feel like they, they feel maybe threatened by the idea that anyone can do AR eh, sorry, AI art now or is it, is your experience that actually the ones the guys or the people doing AI art are also artists already?
[00:27:45] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I think it's a mix of all of it. And misinformation.
Lack of understanding. There's gotta be a bunch of people, and general trolls that like, have just joined a group to hate on everything. I have no intention of doing it. No understanding in not changing their minds. Which I find, you know, I'm pretty good at. I can take it, but there's some people that in the sort of community that it's really hard on, like, you see how upset they are.
You see the friction from their friends, from their peers in traditional art forms that are pressuring them, that are like, this is bullshit. You know, it's that sort of attitude. And some of them, yeah, maybe scared for their jobs. Maybe they don't have the strength of imagination. Maybe there's a little go and come up with nothing. Cause they just, you know, staring at a blank page ain't easy.
And this is where...
[00:28:35] Mizter Rad: you think that, yeah. You think that those artists that are maybe scared are more those kind of artists that are more technical. That kind of follow some instructions in, in their art form that don't leave room for, and maybe do a lot of briefing work, but don't leave space for their imagination to just flow and, uh, be crazy.
[00:28:55] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. I don't think some people have ideas. I think as you see in like, let's say 95%, it's not more of the AI being produced today that it's just people copying the same prompts and trying to go for some endorphin rush as they make something that someone else has made, but they feel there is ownership.
So this is all the misinforming part of it where you know, if you look, yeah, I, so many people, it's so weird because so many people come to me and go, oh, it's all crap and yours is really good. And it's like, I think that was one of my pushes to do the guides, to show people what I was looking at as well and how I see it.
And you know, I think, listen, it is not a massive world movement. There's probably like 30, 40 people doing this that well. I know Twitter's a little bit different and there's a lot of communities on here that are sort of NFT based and that sort of thing that are more driving at that. But I think what I'm fascinated with and what my project's about is, is about the future is about where we are heading.
It's about people that are building worlds about, that's what we're gonna be in habit. There is a sense of, we're used to gaming and these sort of things and going to places and I think the pandemic's made people may be a little bit more aware of environments and times and spaces and a retreat from Earth, I think.
And I think that's why looking at the images from these people's imaginations is inspiring for some people. And why it's doing so well is because it's like, oh that's really nice. That's different. And that's this and that's, and like people are writing little stories. So these are coming from, people that are only like text based. And being able to compliment what they're writing is with the characters that, there's like a few people that are genuinely just, I want to tell stories, but I need the image to go with it cuz we're living in a visual world.
[00:30:56] Mizter Rad: Actually talking about that, do you find it challenging that, or you encounter it as a challenge that sometimes you don't find the right words maybe to describe what you have in your head? And do you see a space soon where instead of having thoughts to images, sorry, instead of having text to images, we would have thoughts to images?
[00:31:17] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah, I think when you look at, when you look at the difference of between the 3 GPT chat bot and Midjourney, like how expressive it can be in chat in comparison with the layman's terms of what Midjourney has to be. But I think, there is, even the hierarchy of words is really interesting.
And, it's, you have some similarities in Chinese language and that way it's sort of, it's about what is next to is its importance. So just move.
[00:31:52] Mizter Rad: So the order of the words matter. To get a specific result.
[00:31:55] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: And that's when we start talking about craft. And that's, you know. Like that's talking about prominent, interesting.
That's talking about things and leading things. And you can put more weight in certain things that you want it to be. And they're not the things that people are doing when they're copying stuff and just banging out a load of stuff. We've always had that, right? These are people that are learning a craft and how to talk, you know, like with machine learning.
But we, we've gotta learn how to communicate with these, with our language. This isn't binary, this is, it's learn our language. We have to learn what it understands from our language. And so using the hierarchy and certain weights and that sort of thing is really interesting. But again, you, while the people that are really good at the moment are good is because they all have a 15 year background in it.
They've done art. They know how to look at something. They know. When you get these first four images on Midjourney, it's, it's the process you go down. And that's just another little step of like, of thought. If you're writing a story, you Oh, and he turns left here and this is what happens. They're then points and they're the points your intuition as an artist has to take you beyond the point when you initially had the idea. You know, those, these, you know, to keep fulfilling these ideas, it would burn out incredibly quickly.
[00:33:23] Mizter Rad: When you talk about, artists learning the craft of communicating with the machine, I think that's very powerful and interesting.
I never heard that, or I never thought about it like that necessarily. I think, like you said it is a matter of trying out and maybe following your gut, following your intuition.
When you first started or in the beginning of your process, or do you actually still do the following? Because I know a lot of artists that paint canvases or walls, for example, that they paint the first line, the second line, the third line.
Maybe they have an idea of where they're going, but they like to leave a space maybe 1, 2, 3 days, one week in between to then come back to the wall, to the canvas, and keep working on it.
Does it happen to you, something like that in the process of making AI art as well?
[00:34:17] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I think for me, I am, I really enjoy street photography and I find I have a relationship with it in that way where I've created a world and a context and these characters that I can wander around with my camera and take snapshots of, and they're sort of thought, oh, I like the look of that, or I have an idea and I put that in that and like mine's sort of at this point a little bit, sort of, of a general type thing where I'm not trying to like on this project make a certain I am to some degree. I think what I'm trying to do, I'm really interested in trying to make it as real as we can imagine and, and like, you know, trying to get moments between like characters.
I think that's my drive is where I can hire the gaps That where I feel things don't look real or real to, I think at least it needs to feel like it's outta Star Wars film or something like that. That's valid to that point.
[00:35:25] Mizter Rad: There needs to be a connection.
[00:35:27] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. Then you're just like, one I've done probably like just before the weekend was really interesting, but the closest I got to a, a genuine interaction between people and a lot of my time is spent doing that. And I would say there's probably 500 reiterate iterations before I get that. And, and that's between a person and a pet and like between...
[00:35:51] Mizter Rad: so you do around 500 iterations for one result in photo, for example?
[00:35:56] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah, I would like, it's probably not as high on most things. Like probably around a hundred to get one. And, and that's very, very, very time consuming. So, you know, but like pushing out. I haven't been able to get too humans to interact in the right way yet. I've got bits and pieces. Like I can get a creature and a human really easily now. I can't get two humans to do it.
[00:36:24] Mizter Rad: But why is that waiting? What do you mean you cannot get two humans?.
[00:36:27] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: So like this is another thing that from using the data set to create things like I can see what the strength is in the data set more than like, you know, there's, what I see in the data set from my work and what all the iterations I go through is half of Facebook's in it.
It's like, it's such normal pictures of everyday lives. What is default position is is nearly to line a bunch of people up, like they're having a photo taken. So you, it's not art in there. Like, that's like such a small percentage is life that's in there. It's our shared lives that we all uploaded and we knew when we pressed the button this was gonna get used at some point.
So no point worrying about it. If you put someone on social media, that is what the datasets really running on, you know? Cause that's generic. That's just what makes up all that thing. And that's why it can't do hands is cause of it can't see everything. Hands aren't in front of people, but it will default line up like your photos of holiday.
[00:37:42] Mizter Rad: Do you mean it cannot do hands yet?
[00:37:44] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Not really.
[00:37:45] Mizter Rad: Like hands, human hands?
[00:37:46] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Think about like the complex. Well if you're looking at hands, like in an image, it's like they're always holding saying behind something. They're never the same. There's not enough information it can do with hands. You just don't know.
That's the thing that's on the end of your arms. .
[00:38:02] Mizter Rad: That's interesting. But do you think as we evolve. As technology evolves and grows. And we have stuff like biometrics measuring your, i your iris in your eye. Or understanding what's the shape of your fingerprints. Or your palm prints. Or actually your hand shape. All this data that is coming, it is not as old maybe as Facebook on a massive scale, but that is definitely becoming a, a normal in our day-to-day life. When you go to the airport, you have to get scanned your face or whatever your palm, your fingerprint or on your phone actually to open to unblock it. You use your fingerprint nowaday. So you think all this data is coming into the machine that is feeding, feeding the machine...
[00:38:44] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I think that's just like, they're very different things.
That's a problem with civil liberties, I would say. And, governments should protect from that level. That's giving it all your, all the health records of the country and they are, when you talk about that, that's in a country. Or it's apple giving away fingerprints and, but I'm sure inside Apple when, when you look at like things like a AR kit and things like that, that run the button, which they're using on an open source, like to basically run like facial recognition.
Yeah, actually, yeah, you're probably right. There is actually something in this, it's come from somewhere. There is some biometrics in there somehow.
[00:39:26] Mizter Rad: There must be, I mean, uh, I'm not sure how, do you know how Midjourney gets fed actually? If you, if we think of as Midjourney? Midjourney as a pig.
As as a cow, yeah. What is the cow eating? ,
[00:39:38] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: as I said, I think it's a lot of Facebook. It's a lot of traditional images. I think there's a lot of flicker in there maybe, and things like that. And then I think it's just fed with all sort of traditional stuff. I think maybe there's a lot of general Google images, right, that just finds this way, like early stuff maybe that was just like hanging around the internet.
And then, you've seen a lot of people sold their sets of images over like without the right permissions and that sort of thing.
[00:40:08] Mizter Rad: How much do you think of your creations is how would you, how do you see this, how much of it is human creation versus machine creation?
How do you see that?
[00:40:19] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I, I don't understand the difference. I, I set myself a bunch of rules that I was only doing images for this project that were physically things that I could take with my camera in the real world. The only difference was gonna be, was cast and location.
I wanted it to, you know, that was my route in, was emulating something Id done, you know, I didn't wanna, this is on this project, so later on I might change my mind about that as a thing. But like, I liked the idea of having rules cause I think that's important in art and, I don't, but then that's me because I'm not pulling from anything.
And I think if just do pure data prompts and I've done a couple of my own images using image prompts from my own photography and use that, and I wasn't that impressed. I think it, it's better with text to be honest. I got. Yeah. I,
[00:41:12] Mizter Rad: I've tried some tools you know, upload an image here and transform it.
And the quality is not impressive.
[00:41:18] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. I just think it's just like, I don't really, I don't, I didn't really see a point, I could just describe what was in the image and got it better. It was the same and I didn't see, I didn't see that person in there. Definitely. They weren't present in the image at all.
So I think if you're writing in, I want a Dalhi picture of this. And like this and that, or in the style of. It's fan art, you're just making fan art. You're not doing anything. It's just the modern fidget spinner where people have got something to do and they want a little you know, take their mind off something or I don't see any harm in it.
But people have always drawn their own backman or something, I assume. You know, like, and yeah, if someone's going, oh, I want a Warhol doing this, and then they're selling it as a Warhol, that's just fraud. That's, we have laws, we have all that's already in place, so there isn't, yeah, that thing isn't an argument at all.
That's just somewhat like a point that some people on art station wound everyone up with and informed, you know? And we live in a world where journalism is somewhat, nearly non-existent on that sort of level. So it's just people want to write click bait, and everyone reads that top line. And that's how informed everyone is about AI.
[00:42:41] Mizter Rad: How informed they are about everything or we are. That's I include myself. What about, you were talking about, I'm experimenting with Midjourney and I go there and I say give me a Warhol doing this on a motorbike, whatever someone drawn or painted by Warhol on a motorbike that if someone else comes in with the same keywords, would they get the same piece?
[00:43:03] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: No. Literally no. Could I think it changes on the time of day. I really, that there is, it's just so
[00:43:10] Mizter Rad: on the second...
[00:43:11] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: it's, it's so random. And again, it might be the difference of the order of words going back to the hierarchy of it and that, and like, yeah, it, like we've, I've managed to like do it once, like me and someone else got pretty much the most similar image we could. And this was probably on version two, where the day set was a lot, lot smaller. And yeah, there was just like an image of someone walking along a path by a river there and the light and everything was there. So you could see it was pulling from something we couldn't back to find out where that image had come from.
But when you back engineer it in Google, it's like there's a lot of images like that walking along with about bit of reflection here. You know, it's, it's not anything anyway.
[00:44:01] Mizter Rad: It's very interesting cause it really functions as a human being. I mean, it's very hard to find two human beings that, yeah, it's like, speak the same, say the same thing in the same order.
You know...
[00:44:13] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: you get like, people all day are always just doing this, it's just stealing. Like I'm yet to someone to deliver me the thing. It's stealing. Show me the two things next to each other and you know, like someone yesterday done a, like a mask thing from probably thousands of years ago.
And a mask like that had been created through AI on one of mine.
And you like compar the similarities and you're like, literally, it's so far from that. And maybe the couple of thousand years that there might have been some other masks as well in that time. And you know, it's, you'll see what you wanna see and it's subjective at the end of the day. If that was the thing you see and it reminds you of something, oh, we did that all day long.
People remind you of someone else, and that's it. That's how the familiarity we have.
[00:45:09] Mizter Rad: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:45:09] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It's like. And it's that wide. Yeah. I'm not seeing anything. I will like now and then I'll see a faint Scarlett Johansson in some images. And that's about it. I would say you, that people are, it's not taking their job right.
She ain't gonna lose any work in war. I ain't, here's a state, I ain't gonna lose any money over someone making their own Warhol.
[00:45:32] Mizter Rad: So is your opinion that, there's some AI art out there that is good and some, or most of them...
[00:45:38] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I say in art in general... I think it's the same numbers,
[00:45:40] Mizter Rad: it's the same numbers.
Same proportion.
[00:45:42] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I don't see any different, I don't differentiate between the two. I think, you know, I, yeah, I, I would say yeah ...
[00:45:50] Mizter Rad: but how can you tell, because I've seen your Instagram and I know you create some guides and you, you curate some art that some other artists that are working also with AI are producing right now.
And I mean it's fantastic how you do it and the kind of artists that you post there, how can you tell that something is good from your point of view?
[00:46:12] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Taste? And I suppose again, like someone else will put their guides together totally differently and it's like there's a set equality in a level that I need to respect and I also need to know that that person is like genuine about what they're doing.
That it is an original thought. And I think, some people in them guide some, some of them followers have just done the one today. And some of them have got the followers of hundred 20,000 people and some have got 44 people following them. And it's not about anything other than. What I see is genuine.
I see that you believe the thing you are making, you are into that. And that's what I'm looking for in anyone's artwork is that you've not jumped on the end of a bandwagon. I'm copying something. I see my derivatives of my project all over the place. Like, oh, that looks like something that's doing well.
So people will copy. And the same for all of those artists. Like on there, there's like, there's a always a swarm of people following and that's how you feel. It's a movement.
[00:47:22] Mizter Rad: Well, that's a good sign. I guess if someone wants to copy you, that's maybe a good sign.
[00:47:27] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: You just, you gotta take it's flattery.
You're gonna get really upset if you take it as being ripped off or something.
[00:47:33] Mizter Rad: And is it my impression that a lot of the AI art that is being created right now looks gloomy maybe, maybe even with a similar lighting. Or am I wrong?
What is your take on this?
[00:47:45] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I think, is wildly different depending on what you're looking at. I think what you're seeing is like aesthetic people are drawn towards to tell their stories. You know...
[00:47:54] Mizter Rad: can you tell if something comes from Midjourney one, two, or three?
[00:47:57] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:58] Mizter Rad: Or four?
[00:47:58] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. That's, that's like me looking at years of cameras and what sort of stage we're at really, I think, I can definitely, yeah. I like, you know, there's still people that, you know, Midjourney, uh, Midnite On Mars might never move out of version four cause it just might not work in another version.
I've got like people, like one guy called Waxy Fruits, and he does all these beautiful textured sort of cushiony type creations. And Midjourney two is the only thing that gives him that real texture that like, you feel like you could touch that. You feel like that's real, like it's too synthetic for, and that's really interesting.
They will all exist and they'll always be worked in and, and that's part of the history of it. It's just moving so fast. We have a lot of it. And, you know, yeah. It will be tragic to, for all of us to get a new version and not be able to work in it with the thing we're working with.
[00:48:55] Mizter Rad: Right. So it, it sounds a bit like different versions of your iPhone camera.
IPhone six. Worse than iPhone eight.
[00:49:01] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Only if you're using that as an art thing and like you like that aesthetic so much and it just, it will produce a different image. The language is totally different. The iterations are wider. So appall from differently mine might work. Other people's really might not.
Some rely on a lot of future retro futurism and things like that that, might not be as interesting, and sacrifices on all these things. At the moment, you, it's hard to do really great char real life characters and really crazy complex backgrounds. You've got, like, you are compromising in China, always find middle ground.
And that's the artistic bit within all these is those choices what you want to show and they'll drive you in a direction that will make you become that artist or this project will be designed in that way. Really the tools are defining. I feel really quite held back in lots of things just with general AI where, your brain's working faster than the technology can keep up.
[00:50:05] Mizter Rad: And in terms of applications for the creations that you're making or AI art in general is there any other application for tools like Midjourney for example? It feels like there was a hype some months ago, when everyone was trying to go into the, in, into the Metaverse.
Yeah. And and now, you see more and more people trying out generative art. So what kind of, how do you see this, what kind of applications will we have for this kind of art?
[00:50:34] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It's only gonna become more powerful and more controllable. And it will just be flooded like every other medium that we've ever had by very generic, normal things, people like saving money, creating things where they don't need to do this, they don't need to do that. A l bunch of people jumping on the bandwagon to use the AI tag mark as a thing. And then you're gonna get a bunch of people that are really interested in as a medium, that are the pioneers that are testing it, that are putting it through its paces that show.
And in that process they're teaching something. You, some days you can tell that you are, you are, it feels like, oh this is, these colors are baked in today, even when you're trying to change to a different project to do some work, you're still getting this like little hangover of the colors maybe you were using earlier, like you had a dirty brush or something.
It's quite weird. So you, you know that it's picking up things and responding to you. And the same with like chat. I think, some days you have to clear the whole cache you're referencing because it's getting a little bit muddled up on the things. So I think more we all feed in more, we respond to it more it knows where it needs to excel in and where we'll use it in the strongest points. And when you get to application, I think it's just a tool. Goes back to the imagination. It's like allowing another voice. And that's what we need at this point. We just want a load more ideas, a load more things. We can't keep making the same films. We can't keep like holding up the Beatles. The fucking, the Warhols of the world. New Francis Bacon. They're all amazing, but let's just move on and create some more great things. And maybe, they're inspired by like these images. Maybe these are painters, like sketching, like we don't know. But maybe it allows something else.
Maybe there's a proof of concept in creating something like in Midjourney and taking it to someone and going, I've got this idea. If you are a film director and you can write it all in chat this year. Then you can create all your images and you can go to the studio and go look like, in a visual world they're aids.
Like we just need more things to put in front of people. Cause people are lazy. You can flick through some images and I'll tell you this story. And they go, yeah, I like that, imagine like using some executives that like main job is running a bank basically to use his imagination. They don't wanna take a risk, they can't visualize it, but suddenly it's there in front of you. And you see the people that are responding from like the art world to film world, to ai. Like the futurists, to monk them, get it. They understand that this is the way, it's not here to hurt anyone. It's just a tool like everything else we've been before.
[00:53:38] Mizter Rad: So in that frame of thought, in your opinion, what's the role of content creators or artists in the future? If for example, until now, the role has been, or it seems that it has been to create content and sort of feed the machine. Now the machine comes and produces the content for us because we're kind of feeding them with imagination.
[00:54:03] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: It doesn't, it's not. It's not an autonomous thing. It's not gonna like come up with the idea,
[00:54:09] Mizter Rad: no, of course you have to feed, have to feed them with some sort of world that is in your mind.
[00:54:14] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Like, you know, probably the best thing that can happen is we clear out the deadwood from the art world.
[00:54:21] Mizter Rad: What do you mean with that?
[00:54:22] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: From the art world, from the create, from these people that have put themself in these positions. From the gatekeepers, that we regard their taste of something because they have this. Like, if you can't do it, just move out the way. Cuz there's a bunch of people coming, that can do it. Make it more interesting, more engaging.
They don't need to copy the thing from last week. They've done quite well with posts. So let's do a version of that. Look at the regurgitation. Like all you've got is like 10 stories in a week going around 20,000 websites. Like by the time of the last one, they're posting a week behind and you're like, you look at people's feeds and you're just like. Is this even a thing?
How are you still on this? And someone will be out there today posting about the art station and AI come to get our jobs. And it's like, wow. Like it's just tired. What you need is, let's have new conversations. Let's have futuristic, let's use our imagination. You think how creative writing should be?
Journalism should be. Like the word content creation is so shit. It's just like it's, but he deserves, it's got the job it is because that's the people that make it. People like fill in sandwiches all day and just slapping them in there cuz someone's gotta eat something. It's like, let's take people on journeys.
When we talk about world building, it's because it's exciting. We wanna take some people to some other places and people have got ideas. Just embrace these things. We don't need another Avengers movie or whatever. All this stuff is, there's some great stories cuz what's the ro root of art? The moment where you get the woman that made like Nomadland and then she's making something that's, I don't know, it's some Marvel film or saying and you're just like, really?
Is that The trajectory of art ? Is like you only can get paid if you go and be that bad.
[00:56:14] Mizter Rad: When you talk about creating worlds. And you look at the worlds that are being created online, digitally, artificially, let's call it like that. Do you, don't you fear that people that are not so digital in a way or connected to the concept of the future of the internet or connectivity, et cetera are too far away from that idea?
Like they see that as something that is not real necessarily. If they see a photo of some AI world that is being created that looks beautiful on the picture, but they understand that is not something they can go into and touch. So far...
[00:56:56] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: that is, so far that is, it like lack of embracing.
When we look at like how fast we are moving, we look at like things like, Unreal Engine. It won't be long before I can like, play with this, taking this into Unreal Engine, my 3D characters would be auto rigged. And you'll put your VR headset on your Oculus and you'll visit that world.
[00:57:19] Mizter Rad: the first idea I had for my podcast was actually doing it in the metaverse.
I just didn't find the right tools.
[00:57:25] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: This is not there yet.
[00:57:26] Mizter Rad: So far. Yeah. I think to actually jump on a conversation in one of your worlds, for example and have there a conversation. My avatar with your avatar.
[00:57:35] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: And, but that's the thing now. That's the advert that Zuckerberg and META are trying to like, get across.
But, let's look at avatar building and this sort of thing. We look at like your avatar, your host avatar on this, and how rudimentary that is. Rudimentary that is at this point. It's sort of like, and I've spoken to a lot of things and I think, you know, and I think another thing within that, which you see is, it's not very tuned for ethnicity.
Like I think, you know, it like thinks everyone's faces are the same for some reason. And the data set is incredibly white. So middle class white, but I assume that's the main of the data set that's coming off Facebook or something like that. And we have to keep coming back to these things and steering 'em back in the right direction and understanding.
And cuz what we are talking about is people's heritages within these things and it's really, we have to make sure it's all balanced and that goes for the right.
[00:58:39] Mizter Rad: That's, that's, that's interesting. That's an interesting thought. I never really thought about dataset not being diverse enough.
[00:58:46] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: You have to nearly over egg it because of the, like the how small our history is.
So if we look at black history, every year it becomes more of it because it's been like, kept quiet for so long and like, you know. Especially I'm British, so like they don't really teach British people kids about like the bad stuff that England done. You're not sitting there having a couple of lessons on colonialism and album, if they mention it, they'll go, yeah, and we ruled the waves and some shit like that.
But this has to be fed in properly. And some of the interesting things that I've experienced by doing this project was using chat to write about this. And so I sort of feeding all this stuff in and it was like, and basically what chat fed back to me, I used it in a very conversational way.
Was that, yeah, like they've all gone to this other planet and because so like some of the context is like they've all arrived on Mars and this sort of thing, and there was a bunch of influences, which are these pretty people. But there was also a bunch of people that had to build the infrastructure that flew the spaceships and that.
So chat had realized there was a class problem brewing already. Like I said, there was something, I alluded to something, but it pulled out the parallels of we've just gone to another Planet, planet and done exactly the same.
And I was like, oh my God.
[01:00:11] Mizter Rad: Interesting.
[01:00:11] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: And I think when you respond to AI like that. As I start with, I'm dyslexic and that sort of thing, so I can use it to help me write better and more structure and that sort of thing, but to converse with the brain like that is amazing.
I hadn't come across it. And then you can react to that and then you can, you go back and forth. And when you use it as a friend. And I think, that takes us really close to Spike Jones', her movie and that sort of thing. That's months away. I can have that. Yeah.
[01:00:42] Mizter Rad: Does it go through your head sometimes that maybe there's some powerful people behind some of the AI data or the data that is being fed to some of, some part of some machines that are writing history the way...
[01:00:56] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: no...
[01:00:57] Mizter Rad: they want?
[01:00:57] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: I don't think there's any malicious intent.
I just think we are not understanding because we are only just using it now. This is the first time we are seeing people. This is the first time we're trying to use it as a writing tool. We know it has limitations. Both versions of chat and of Midjourney at the moment, like they're not pursuing. They're not gonna have an update of them cuz things are moving so fast.
We're just gonna skip to another version with that amount of more iterations. That much more exacting thing. And I think we just have to keep testing, testing. Going, yeah, this is fundamentally flawed in this way, but what we can do is just put the data in that we need. We need to even this out.
We need to make sure that's right, that's right, that's right. And we need it to have trusted sources and we need to be able to sort of move forward and this to have some, you know, if I want to write about something in there and I was trying to write some dialogue stuff and it gave me a lesson of oh, being rude. Maybe you could, like, they could talk about this in a different way. So, and like, so it has a level of etiquette, it has a level of politeness. And but it also has an overcorrection, which I saw someone the other day post something where like saying a funny joke about a woman and it was like it wouldn't do it.
And it was funny joke about the man and it listed 10 jokes about the man. And so you can see, the overcorrection in there. And again, we have these bias, we know what to address, but you don't think about it in an equal way. Which like with all these rules it becomes, could become homogenized as well.
[01:02:43] Mizter Rad: Right.
That's what I'm, that's what I'm thinking because it depends, I mean, you know, it's been said that those that are most powerful write history. Yeah. And it's kind of, when you look at history and like you were saying, if you're a British kid, you're not being taught the full picture.
So you're being just, fed with some sort of information. And that kind of, the information is the most popular information in the market, let's say. And so my question is, is the machine also being fed with that same bias information?
[01:03:13] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Like, like we can't say definitely not, but we, I would say there isn't that. And there is an effort to rectify these problems.
It'd be an open source, especially in chat. I think, you know, people will be able to train those models. You know, some newspaper. Murdoch's probably sitting in there and they've got some right wing views thing and it would just churn out stuff in a right wing thing. And you know you can, right, I can sit there and I can get it to have an argument with his self over right and left.
Mm-hmm. So he does understand it all, and I, we can test it in lots of ways. And people will constantly test it. People will constantly check it. And it will be, it's like Wikipedia that's probably better than just Googling something. But you still wanna check your sources.
[01:03:57] Mizter Rad: Absolutely. Yeah. I was talking, I was discussing this the other day and then a previous episode with Anett Numa, is her name. She's a cyber defense security advisor for the Estonian Ministry of Defense.
And we talked a lot about the role of media in in cybersecurity, cyber defense. And we concluded that, it's not about letting the government or institutions or corporations actually take care of it. Is also a responsibility of each one of us. Family members, leaders of small communities to actually be aware and teach people how to consume media. Yeah. Because it's not, you cannot sit down there and pro and passively consume whatever is thrown at you. But rather, you should look at news or pieces of information from different angles. Cuz the world like we started this conversation, the world and life is complex enough.
You cannot just settle for one opinion. You have to look at different multiple sides.
[01:05:03] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Oh yes. That's, that's what we've seen in the last, six, seven years with Trump and Brexit and all these things. That how Russian bots were used to control them, voting things and like stuff on Facebook and that. And Cambridge Analytica and that. And yeah, you're always gonna be at danger of that.
What we need to do is remove ourself from these, and this is where I think Singularity becomes a lot more tailored to us and what we like. And them things. And you know, like this, I don't, you know, as I'm part of this community that's getting trolled at the moment to this level, it's sort of like first time I've really experienced it like that.
And you just realize some people would like just hateful. They don't really have an opinion. They're just gonna wanna hate on someone. And you know, like I..
[01:05:56] Mizter Rad: Especially online, right? It happens a lot.
[01:05:58] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Even like, you know, I've got friends, a band called Dream Wife. And they really try to make their gigs a safe space because they're all female band.
And sometimes people become and behave in an inappropriate way. And that's how we have to start looking at something and the safety. And we have to, when we start building the metaverse properly and we look at them things. I think even in VR chat and that sort of thing, there's a lot more safety built in.
There's a lot more sort of things to be able to protect yourself from other people to opt out. And your, you know, a bit more like having a WhatsApp group with your friends and you all share and you hang out in that more than maybe public spheres all the time. And I think that's how we need to grow and goes back to that safety of them communities.
But back in school education and basicness and like education. And that's what, when we are looking at these things at the moment, we need to understand the educational, like aspects of it. We need to understand that there's professors go in, people should be allowed to use like chat to write things because, it's that it's teaching 'em to be better.
It's like how this could be this good if you understand this. That goes for me as a dyslexic. I think it's really important tool for people with disabilities.
That people that wanna express themselves, but you know, they can't do it in a traditional aspect with a paintbrush or, you know. So the democracy of that. And we've seen everyone in the last 20 years become a photographer by having a phone. And we can, I can pull up a couple of probably the best images of the last 20 years that have been taken on a mobile phone by someone that isn't a photographer.
The democracy of it is so important and it's goes back to what we started with the voices and respecting everyone's and maybe the roads gets narrower and we find, we never used to have a couple of thousand friends. When we build things in the future, we take numbers off things, followers and likes should never be there.
The people that created the things won't let their children touch those things. That's your lesson. They're just a marketing device that they've put in your hand so you don't have to look up at a billboard. We need to protect ourself from this. If like 20 years ago or 15 years ago, I said, I'll pay Facebook rather than them sell my data.
Someone giving you something for nothing is.. .When's that worked out for anyone? Just pay the money. Use the thing and they can't do anything with. It should be the rule. This, you know, why everyone's, being heard over these things and all your images are part of a data set because you came and saying, yeah, I accept your agreements, and they kept doing it.
My images were part of the data set, like my photography. They were getting stolen by people who were following me anyway. The concepts of my music videos were stolen, everything was stolen. It didn't matter. We all are in this position of shared knowledge of standing on the shoulders of giants, like, and your, you've just learned this thing's learning the same way we are learning how to use it.
We're learning how to express ourself and have different ideas than we've had before. People will become more intelligent from tools and that's what our evolution is.
[01:09:28] Mizter Rad: Well, that's beautifully put. I think that's definitely I would align with. I think we tend to live in a fearful state. Thinking that there is scarcity on everything.
And instead we can think of the world and life as a beautiful experience that we all here to share. And we can do that with a lot of love and empathy.
[01:09:54] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Totally.
[01:09:55] Mizter Rad: And I think that's the main point of this experience.
[01:09:58] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. Love and empathy.
[01:09:59] Mizter Rad: Steve, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time.
I learned a lot from you and I'm very grateful about that. I hope to see you soon.
[01:10:07] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Yeah. Cool. Thank you very much.
[01:10:10] Mizter Rad: Have a wonderful day. Thank you.
[01:10:11] Steve aka Midnite On Mars: Take it easy. Bye-bye.
[01:10:12] Mizter Rad: Thank you, man. Chao Chao.