The first (and last) time I met Hansel Gepper was in his studio, although to call it a studio was maybe exaggerating things. It was a small, white room, with lots of empty plug sockets and marks on the floor where the desks used to be.
“Ikarii? Of course, of course I remember. That was until when, 2027? Yes? Forgive me, it can be difficult for me to remember these things now.”
I had one or two questions generated, and so went ahead with my interview, following my usual routine.
“Yes. She was one of the first, which is a fact, although, strangely, that seems to have become an unpopular opinion. We pioneered much of the voice-capture technology used today in the realist systems - yes - it was me, Alle Schuller, Jonathan David Marks, Pierre… Pierre Dupont, that was it, and Luis G. The lot of us, mostly in a room like this, in Munich, although we went all over the place…”
The reason for my visit had little to do with enthusiasm. Indeed, someone on the practical side of honesty would say that I had to be there. There was a time, surely, when old men had something worthwhile to say, but… technology. It had moved on so quickly. Why my boss wanted me there exactly, I didn’t know.
“… I appear to have lost your interest. Please forgive me. Would you like some tea?”
I didn’t especially, but I agreed. He’d been talking non-stop for almost seven minutes. I welcomed the chance to break up the conversation.
“You know, I don’t use this place much any more.”
I didn’t see much of a need to reply to this and so looked out of the window. I could see the wall of the building opposite.
“It’s my eyesight, actually. Typical for an artist, especially one like me. I can have trouble looking at the screens.”
This I wrote down in my notebook. I had to have something to report. Two thousand words was nothing; you only needed one or two quotes and the machine would get you a pretty solid article.
“… of course, that’s before we knew what would happen. Ha! We thought it was a ‘lifetime project.’ This always makes me laugh.”
“You see, the truth is, it was always a bit about me.” Hansel handed me my cup of tea and sat down across from me again. “Is the tea strong enough?”
I nodded.
“It was, at the time, the space for artists at the very edge of their fields. Building artificial intelligences, personifying them, making them into relatable vehicles for social change. Ikarii was one of the first, and certainly the first to be seen across the major platforms. She had a real impact, for a time. But it was really about me, I think. I was an artist, a totally unique artist, and I wanted to go places. I wanted to be able to go to bars, you know, and say nothing, and still have people follow me to the next bar, to the next city, to the next destination. That worked, for a while…”
“… and we kept thinking: maybe these people are right. Maybe we should tone down her features, remove some of the more obvious stereotypes… we did, after all, want her to be an agent for social change, not some conformist barbie-doll that sold Gucci and sang pop songs…”
“… anyway, I suppose that's the way things go. It was all pretty much out of our hands. They took the rights, and that was that. We pretty much signed her away. And they used her for a couple more years, and then that’s when the T-Corp generation came out, using parts of our software, and that’s when we realised. We realised we were never actually in control of Ikarii, we were foolish to have thought we could steer her towards being this agent of social change. We wanted to spread a message of positivity, but we realised, at that point, it was never going to happen. It just wasn’t in line with the direction technology wanted to move in. So they took her away, took parts of our work, changed them, and that’s where the stuff you see today all began. I’ve made some other attempts since, but really, it was a bit late…”
He went on like this for some time. I can’t say the conversation became any more interesting. In fact, there was a strange steadiness to his speech, something odd that put me on edge.
I was happy to get up, log the interview as complete, and walk out of that strange room, leaving behind a rather strange man and his walls full of empty plug sockets.
read the original story (BBC News):
Can AI Popstars Make It In The Real World? - BBC News
The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
Artificial stars have been around for years. Cowell's fault mostly.