What’s it all about?
Humanitas et Machina is an experimental art project inspired by conversations about the future of humanity, the challenges we face and the uncertain relationship that we, as conscious beings, face with Artificial Intelligence.
It is a series of short stories that are co-created together with generative AI. They are curated, directed and edited by me, Tom Greenwood, a human being, and largely written by generative AI tools. The objective is to explore how AI might help us form hopeful vision of pathways to solve some of the biggest challenges that humanity faces in the 21st Century.
The style of the series is inspired by the 19th century French writer Émile Zola, whose immersive short stories captivated me as a teenager. This is echoed in the name ‘Humanitas et Machina: Hope for the Modern Epoch’, which is intended to suggest a blend of the old and the new, the organic and the artificial, with hope at the center. The term ‘Modern Epoch’ represents the societal shifts of our time and seems apt for a collection exploring the collaboration and potential conflict between humans and AI in addressing contemporary challenges.
The contradiction
It might seem strange that I have created this project, as I am the author of the book Sustainable Web Design, co-founder of a sustainability focused digital agency and known as a prominent voice for promoting eco-friendly and socially responsible use of digital technology. I have been open about my concerns relating to AI, both in terms of its high environmental impact and its potential to pose wide ranging societal risks. In particular I’ve highlighted these challenges a number of times in the Curiously Green newsletter. So why am I collaborating with AI tools to create this project?
If I’m being truly honest, I believe that it is theoretically possible for AI tools to help humanity solve some of its biggest problems, but I also believe that we as humanity are not ready for it yet. We don’t yet understand what we are creating and it’s clear that social responsibility is not the priority of the companies behind it. Therefore, at this stage, I believe the best thing to do would be for us to switch it off until we have the wisdom within us to develop it safely and responsibly.
However, I don’t have access to the off switch and it is clear that this is not going to happen. So I think the next best thing is for us to try to use it sparingly and mindfully, harnessing its power to help guide us toward a positive future and to help us develop the wisdom to that we, as humanity, so desperately need. Furthermore, it also provides an opportunity to learn about the technology, its boundaries and biases in a contained space. I might be wrong, but if the alternative is to sit by and watch, then I’d rather take a chance and try to stimulate some positive change.
The process
As stated above, Humanitas et Machina is very much an experiment. It has been interesting to explore the working relationship between myself and a machine intelligence. How should I talk to it? To what extent should I share my own thoughts and ideas with it? Where is the line between giving it creative freedom to imagine and steering it to a fruitful outcome?
The process has broadly involved providing an initial brief for each story that sets the scene of the challenge facing humanity, the need for the story to provide a creative and inspiring solution, as well as some guidance on writing style and cultural diversity. This would lead to a first draft, which in most cases was quite good but missed the mark on a number of levels. I would then act as a critical editor, giving direct feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the piece, and where necessary also providing some direction to stimulate new ideas. This itself is interesting for me as it enables me to challenge my own editing skills without the worry that I might hurt the authors feelings (at least for now!). Once the story is broadly satisfactory, I then manually edit it to refine language, story details and flow.
Already in the creation of the first few stories I have found that it very much responds to the way that I approach it. If I try to stay neutral and give it very dry, objective commands, it brings back very unimaginative, simplistic and uninspiring stories. The more I put in, the more I get back, but then the more it also becomes my creation, or co-creation. It turns out that it is quite an involved process, far from the cut and paste you might imagine, and I become an integral part of the creative process. As the name says, Humanitas et Machina!
This ultimately leads to the question “Why don’t you just write them yourself, without the AI?” It’s a valid question to which the answer is that then it wouldn’t be an experiment. I wouldn’t get to see whether the AI can help create stories that move and inspire us to pursue a better future, and I wouldn’t gain first hand experience of interacting with this emerging technology. Like any experiment, time will tell whether it is successful.
The ethics
There are many ethical considerations in the use of any technology but especially so with artificial intelligence, starting with whether we should even be using it at all. this project provides an opportunity to explore some of these issues and I will post updates on this topic as I learn more. An outline of my initial approach is as follows:
Bias - AI tools have bias baked in based on the way they are trained. So too I have biases, conscious and sub-conscious. I aim to contemplate both my own biases and those within AI generated content and make adjustments where necessary. It will be imperfect, but again this is an opportunity to learn.
Privacy - Data privacy relating to AI tools can be opaque and ambiguous. To minimise risks associated with this I will not be entering any personal data into any AI tools. The only exception to this is references to public figures or historical events where the information is already in the public domain.
Transparency - We are moving into a world where it is increasingly difficult to know whether content is created by humans or not, as well as whether images, video and audio are ‘real’. In this project my aim is to make the co-creation process as transparent as possible.
Intellectual Property - Many people are becoming worried about AI copying their work and creating derivatives of it. To some extent, this problem is inherent in the way that generative AI tools are trained, but I aim to minimise this risk in the output by never referencing the work of any living writers or artists and providing my own creative direction to the tools.
Likeness - Combining the issues of privacy, transparency and intellectual property is the possibility of a persons likeness being used to generate artificial images. To minimise these risks, no images will be based on the likeness of specific individuals, present or historical.
I welcome further input on the topic of AI ethics as it relates to this project and others.
Stay up-to-date
Humanitas et Machina starts with a short story called ‘Beginnings’ to set the scene and will then be released as an initial series of six stories, posted weekly. Further series may follow. To be sure not to miss them, subscribe to receive them by email and via the Substack app.
