Synthetic Dirty Words
AI-George Carlin is a low point in mimetic AI.
I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! (George Carlin, Modern Man)
Some guys thought it’s a good idea to train a comedy AI-model on the work of George Carlin and produce a hour long comedy special. It’s not. Of all the bad choices you can make to resurrect the dead with mimetic AI, George Carlin is up there as one of the worst.
[update 13.1.24: And sure enough: George Carlin Estate Threatens Legal Action Over AI Special, as expected.]
[update 28.1.24: It’s a hoax: “Danielle Del, a spokeswoman for Sasso, said Dudesy is not actually an A.I. ‘It’s a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen,’ Del wrote in an email. ‘The YouTube video ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead’ was completely written by Chad Kultgen.’“]
If that synthetic George Carlin then also comes from a guy who not only calls his comedy-AI “Dudesy” but also writes edgelordy bro-lit to piss off feminists, you pretty much what you’re about to get.
You see, George Carlin is not just some comedian, but he’s maybe, together with Lenny Bruce, the legend of the artform, going to jail for his performance of the famed Seven Words You Can't Say on Television, inspiring and defining the whole genre of standup comedy since the seventies.
Comedy is famous for being an artform in which people sue each other for stealing jokes and routines, where IP and personal style is heavily guarded. To go into that segment of human cultural expression, suck in all the output of one of the most outstanding performers who died 16 years ago, who was especially an enemy of corporate power and an outspoken feminist too, and then you put it through an algorithmic meatgrinder nevertheless, which already is heavily critisized for being exploitive af, all without the consent of the family — that’s stunningly tone deaf to the rules and practices of the very cultural space you operate in.
If you must, here’s the AI-mimetic “comedy special”, and here’s another hour of the “Dudesy”-makers Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen discussing their “creation”.
It’s all pretty horrible, and i’m just sad that the name George Carlin get’s tainted by figures like this, who claim to be fans but don’t seem to get that Carlins unique brillance didn’t come from him using tons of swearwords or being provocative, but that he balanced all of his ten thousand fucks per minute with subtlety and poetry.
For every “I’ve been tempered in raw shit” you always got “I worship the sun and pray to Joe Pesci”, for all the “fucking psychotic hatred” you got tons of rythmic wordplay and poetic interstitials. From the dudebros’ AI-Carlin, we get tasteless jokes on mass shootings.
This is not the provocation these edgy AI-comedy-dudes aim at — this is just a low point in mimetic AI and synthesized sadness.
In a short piece on AI-actors from beyond the grave i already mentioned that applications of AI like these are a sign of “a shrinking culture in regression; this is about nothing less than a decline of the arts. As a society, we must ask ourselves if we want to live in a world where the same hundred dead actors play in the same movies for eternity.” In Blade Runner 2049 we get a glimpse at such a world when K fights Harrison Ford in an Elvis Presley-holo-show, and we’re heading right into that future, where Abba and Kiss are performing ad infinitum as AI-driven avatars.
But one of the key differences between Abba or Kiss and George Carlin is that, while the real life versions of Abba and Kiss already played with artificiality, using pompous glitter and make-up to hide their true identities and become a living stage act of a mask. A performer like George Carlin and comedy as a whole are very different and their cultural performance is about, unlike pop music, “telling truth to power” and “sticking it to the man” and “being real”.
And synthesizing the dead king of comedy to produce some joke wurst for the uncomfortable amusement of a clueless class of techy dudebros is very much anti-comedy.
The point of comedy is not the production of jokes, albeit that’s part of the job. The point of comedy, historically, is to have a human slip into the role of a jester, who exists solely to be excempted from moral judgement of society and the ruling class, so that he is free to tell the emperors that, indeed, they have no clothes, when nobody else is allowed to mention that.
Automatizing and outsourcing particularly this job to a machine means giving up on sticking it to the man by telling the truth through mean, biting jokes, and the social-psychological immensely important role of the court jester is dead, killed by some idiot AI-bros.
A democratic, liberal, free society may survive with synthetic infinite pop-music and blockbusters, but i don’t think it can survive without authentic ritualized comedy, where our laughter about the truths of the rich and the powerful, where this institutionalized “soft struggle of class” has been synthesized away.
George Carlin loved people but was very wary of collectives and groups, a stance that i share with him. In an interview with Charlie Rose in 1996 he said:
I found a very liberating position for myself as an artist: I sort of gave up on the human race, and gave up on the American dream and culture and nation, and decided that I didn't care about the outcome. And that gave me a lot of freedom from a kind of distant platform to be sort of amused, to watch the whole thing with a combination of wonder and pity.
I guess, if Carlin would’ve witnessed his own resurrection from the dead by the means of exploitative AI-technology with the help of an unnamed AI-company, he would’ve shaken his head in a cynical laugh and said: “See?”
So, instead of ripping your hair out by watching a cringe synthetic dudebro version of a brillant comedian, here’s the original George Carlin and his poem on the modern man, a biting satirical take on the digital life that was only taking shape when he wrote it.
I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading.
I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond!
I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive.
Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar.A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder.
I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach.
A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial!
I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda.You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers.
I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last!I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail.
But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow.I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant.
I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore — no soft porn.
I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes.A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle.
I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity.
I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean!Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride.
Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose.
I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road.
I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time.
I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough.
Over and out!
Sometimes I listen to Game of Roses(a different podcast Chad cohosts about The Bachelor/ette, great if youre into that btw) and realized he is just very, unironically sci-fi-futurist tech pilled. extremely naive and very genuine. He also wants to get cryo frozen when he dies and thought owning a piece of decentraland was a good investment lmao. Tbh I don't really understand why this specifically has made so many people so upset(tbf, Im also not too familiar with Carlin)