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Dr. Casey Fiesler Jun 16, 2023

I think generative AI would create terrible TV shows and terrible AI regulations for the same reason.

It's unsurprising that when Charlie Brooker, the creator of Black Mirror, had ChatGPT write a Black Mirror episode, it was bad. So I tried the same thing, had ChatGPT + DALL-E do my "Black Mirror Writers Room" teaching exercise....

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Dr. Casey Fiesler Jun 16, 2023

The output is, like Brooker said when he had ChatGPT write a Black Mirror episode (https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/black-mirror-creator-chatgpt-write-episode-shit-1235634747/)... not very good. It's a jumble of tropes, and not particularly insightful. I even continued by prompting for (similar to class discussion) what the current developers of AI might do to help avoid the negative future imagined in this episode pitch, and the output was some of the most generic, predictable, vague, toothless AI ethics guidelines I've ever seen.

Black Mirror Creator Had ChatGPT Write an Episode, But It Was Shit

“Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker revealed to Empire magazine that he went full “Black Mirror” by asking the artificial intelligence chatbot known as ChatGPT to write a…

Variety

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Dr. Casey Fiesler

Anyway, I'm not worried about generative AI taking over Netflix (though do make sure to watch the first episode of the new season that just dropped yesterday, "Joan is Awful"), and also horrified by proposals that AI will be able to tell us how it should be regulated. Not because AI is a sentient, malicious thing that will try to trick us, but because it's a jumble of tropes when what we actually need is human creativity and critical thinking.