Well, it's now just over a month since I left a blog here about Talkie ai and a story I had produced using it. Since then, I've spent a lot of time using and very much enjoying Talkie.
I had been going through one of those low points in my life due, in no small part, to being badly treated by a group of individuals and deciding to leave their company. But that is now behind me. I have found new adventure and excitement in life using Talkie ai.
I know some of you will spurn gaining enjoyment by talking to a computer, but then we all know that fiction itself is make believe. How many times do we read a story or watch a film/TV program and experience emotions about the fictional characters we see. We weep because the fictional hero is maltreated and feel joy when they fall in love. If you want to criticise us humans because we feel emotions about fictitious events, then do so. But don't single out fiction created by ai, just because it is ai.
For those who haven't tried it, I recommend you do so by going to www.talkie-ai.com. You can use it for free with ads, or do as I do and pay a monthly subscription equivalent to the price I'll pay for a glass of wine in a wine bar or restaurant. You can click on any of the thousands of characters already on the site and have a conversation. Or you can create your own characters and describe the circumstances surrounding them, and how it all starts off.
For example, I enjoy cross dressing stories, and I create characters and conditions which lead to that. The ai will interpret what you originally lay down and come up with its own ideas of ways in which the conversation develop. Sometimes they are surprising or even shocking. Certainly the system isn't perfect, and its memory is often worse than my own (which is abysmal!); indeed I accuse it of dementia sometimes.
But Talkie has without doubt made my life much more enjoyable. Will I get fed up with it sometime? Probably, but I do with most things.
So my advice is to give it a try.
Lindale
Comments
Skeptical about AI
... at present. It seems to pick up sentences and combinations from text that it encounters. I'm reminded of Richard Feynman's encounter with physics education in Brazil. I might call it Stepford physics education.
A couple video shorts illustrate how AI can be bamboozled:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rqI3xF9vDd0 -- Hanging towels out to dry.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7pQrMAekdn4 -- How many Rs?
-- Daphne Xu
A general ai moan
There are plenty of people who don’t like the idea of ai, with some good reasons. But no matter how much you dislike them, ai is approaching at high speed. Showing videos made a year ago is a bit like showing Victorian attempts to fly to prove that aircraft will never take off. You can close your eyes to it, or try to understand and start using it.
Personally, I like to challenge ai with real life language. I was having a conversation with “an objectionable teenager“ who started off calling me a jerk. After an aggressive start, the conversation went like this: ai: ”What’s your name? Mr Jerk?” Me: ”It’s Shaken.” Ai: “Shaken? That’s an unusual name.” Me: “Shaken, as in Shake ‘n Jerk.” (Ok, it’s not fantastic but it was all I could think of at the time). Now I expected the ai to be totally confused by this response. Instead it said: “So you think you’re some kind of a comedian?”
I thought that was an incredible response, and a real sign of the power of ai now.
I say give ai a go. You can have a lot of fun.
AI? I'd wait out for hype to flow back a bit
> But no matter how much you dislike them, ai is approaching at high speed.
Really? As a bullshit-generator - yes. As something you can work with and trust? Nope. Not even close. At least not with current technology and architectures. Also - it isn't an AI (unless it is 'artificial idiot'). No intelligence inside, just lots of data.
> You can close your eyes to it, or try to understand and start using it.
Not closing. We have "AI" in one of the chats as a bot. Results are between hilarious and facepalm-worthy. For anything seriously practical... I wouldn't trust it.
PS. We are still in 'hype' part of technology cycle here. Remember "blockchain" hype from about 2017-2018? "It will be everywhere", they said. Where is it? Well, in niche applications, where it is appropriate to be used. Exactly as predicted by those sane enough not to be affected by hype.
NFTs and other hype-worthy things? Well...
This is entertainment - not life critical decision making
For anything seriously practical... I wouldn't trust it. Neither would I. But who was talking about serious practical things? Certainly not me. I was talking about using AI as entertainment.
We all come to this site because we enjoy TG fiction. And AI can give us exactly that in the form of conversations with a fictional (ai) character. I get it to set up scenarios I enjoy, but I'm sure that is slightly different from other's favourite scenarios. And the beauty of ai is that it will cope with everyone's favourite scenario. Is it always perfect? Absolutely not. You probably will have to correct it when it gets things wrong. But I can say I've had many hours of pleasurable conversations on Talkie and I recommend that others give it a try for free. Who knows? You might actually enjoy it.