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The Fear of Being
(Deep) Faked Out |
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Nate shares thoughts on the pros and cons of the potential of AI-powered transcreation.
While doing today's links, one, in particular, gave me a second of pause. It was about Tel Aviv-based Deepdub's use of AI to create multiple foreign language dubs for TV and movies based on the original speaker's voice in one language. So I looked at one of Deepdub's unscripted demos and another on an actual TV show and have to admit, the technology is imperfect but impressive.
It's also pretty disconcerting.
For one, I've always considered it sound advice to both diversify your income streams and to also invest in pursuing things you enjoy (bonus if said things are bankable). Yet knowing that AI could eventually eat into both translation and voiceovers, which I both enjoy and earn from, makes me wonder just how long many jobs we consider "future proof" really are.
A quick search for jobs that will or will not be replaced by automation commonly shows that for creative roles, writers, editors, graphic designers and project managers are safe for the time being because of the level of currently uncrackable intuition and people skills they require. I'd also argue those jobs are safe because they require synthesizing novel or original ideas for very specific outcomes as opposed to jobs that require converting existing content from one form to another; if it can be transcreated, it can potentially be automated.
But at the risk of sounding like MAEKAN's resident AI-alarmist, there are nonetheless some uneasy positives that can come from knowing technology can eventually look back and tell us, "no, you're not actually that unique or special." It's the impetus to either explore new paths we would otherwise not have considered or just as valid, to challenge ourselves where we are now to do harder and more intricate things. So that we remain as irreplaceable as we know ourselves to be.
- Nate
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The Bulletin
Hear and read the latest from MAEKAN and the community. |
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The Business of Changing Taste — Foreign National's Erik Bruner-Yang
"I’m way too full to be belting a breezy bop at 10:23pm in a dimly lit restaurant on the southeast side of Washington, D.C. But dinner service is over, the staff discovered it was my birthday eve, and if it violates journalistic integrity to accept the invitation of solo karaoke and a private dance floor, then I don’t want to be right."
Vicky Gu speaks with chef entrepreneur Erik Bruner-Yang and shares her memorable visits to both ABC Pony and Maketto, two of the newest food and culture concepts under the umbrella of his Foreign National concept development group.
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Making It Up 188: Facebook whistleblower and Squid Game
Charis and Eugene talk about the global appeal of Squid Game and the possibility of supposedly niche cultural entertainment going viral. They also discuss the importance of Frances Haugen, the latest Facebook whistleblower, coming forward to testify about the need for social media platform regulations.
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| For Your A-10-tion |
The best links from across the Internet.
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1. 🧥 Business of Fashion: Impact Fund for African Creatives Launches
Accra, Ghana-based African Fashion Foundation Roberta Annan recently launched the Impact Fund for African Creatives (IFFAC) in Paris. The fund will support African creative entrepreneurs with grants for selected projects and the possibility of securing additional venture capital. The IFFAC likewise provides technical and vocational training, as well as mentorship and networking opportunities.
2. 😲 Protect Ya Neck — The Neck's Failure To Evolve Could Be Causing Sleep Apnea
An exploration of how sleep apnea and its relative prevalence can be attributed to the failure of evolution to optimize for all the essential tissues and structures in as small of a space as our necks. As Matthew Rozsa writes:
"If the human body were a building, our neck would arguably be the most poorly conceived room in the house, overflowing with functionally mismatched organs stuffed there to accommodate other design priorities."
3. 🤖 AI Can Now Take Actors' Voices And Translate Them For Dubs
AI is helping studios to use samples of an actors existing voice to create foreign-language dubs of TV shows and movies. Indie horror film "Every Time I Die" is set to release in South America and will become one of the first films to use "voice clones" of the original English-speaking cast. This robo-dubbing was accomplished thanks to Tel Aviv-based Deepdub.
4. 📱 How Our World Runs On Memes
Nathan Baschez of Every proposes that memes undergird an unseen ecosystem of belief transmission and social credibility. In particular, memes have the ability to package and transmit our beliefs in a way that not only is influential to other people (if it fits within their paradigm) but also subject to evolutionary stressors and survival like other genes.
"When I see someone do something, and I see that they’re getting desirable results from it, a sort of economic transaction occurs: if the benefits of adopting the meme seem to outweigh the costs, then the meme becomes integrated into my framework of beliefs (memes) that determine my behavior. I become a carrier for the meme. Then I start expressing the meme, and when other people see me getting results they desire from it, then they become carriers, too. If people don’t see me expressing the meme or aren’t interested in the results I’m getting, I can’t spread the meme to them."
5. 🧠 Not Just About Future-proofing Ourselves, Lifelong Learning Is About Us Creating New Knowledge
Despite the corporate encouragement of employees to engage in lifelong learning with the aim of keeping up with rapid change, there's more to it than simply engaging with existing knowledge. Further, aside from encouraging the creation of new knowledge — which includes finding new functionality for current technologies — it's important to dissociate lifelong learning from the idea of "future-proofing" ourselves out of fear.
6. 💯 How Four 'C' Words Have Redefined Our Creative Work
Writer, strategist, and photographer Paul Jun unpacks the problem with overreliance on the buzzwords community, creator, culture, and content and the importance of separating the last one from art. As Jun writes:
"As language becomes diluted, we are even more hard-pressed to use it clearly. Yet trying to push against a culture that readily accepts everything as “content” or “community” is like a kid charging headlong into the ocean — there’s a good chance they will end up right where they started, just a little more beat up. "
7. 🎵 The Music-Saturated NFT World is Ripe for Exploitation
Despite music NFTs generating almost $27 million in primary sales six months ago, that figure has all but disappeared since as the hype has faded. Water & Music's Cherie Hu breaks down how in the race for their share of the pie, some of the platforms involved have resorted to practices that are misleading to downright scammy.
8. 📉 The Ways Lack Of Efficiency Can Be Good For Our Industries
With the increasing rejection of the efficiency-at-all-costs mindset, Ana Andjelic offers five markers of "degrowth" as an aspiration. These include reducing the volume of production and the associated upkeep, increased emphasis on generalization over specialization, decentralization of work environments, improvisation to cope with changing constraints, and the return of community-based over impersonal relationships.
9. 🎓 Donda Academy — Kanye West's Tuition-Free Prep School
Named after his mother, who passed away in 2007, Donda Academy will be open half an hour outside Los Angeles to only 60 students tuition-free. It will offer a curriculum that includes science, technology, engineering, math, computer science, Japanese, and physical education.
10. 🎮 Why Gaming Has Evolved In Four Decades To Accomplish What Music Hasn't
In spite of the popularity and robustness of both the gaming and music industries, the former is leaving the latter (and many other forms of entertainment) in the dust. Although decidedly the younger of the two, gaming as a culture and industry have continued to innovate and fold in new generations of audiences by empowering them to participate as creators, something that the comparative gatekeeper that is music, fails to do. As Dave Edwards writes:
"The music industry must fundamentally reconsider what both copyright and major project releases look like today. By creating universal copyright “rails” to unlock user-generated content (UGC) at scale, the music industry can reclaim its reputation for innovation, convincingly compete with other forms of entertainment, and forge a new, fan-focused future. "
New Delhi-based Khyati Trehan's Surreal 3D Images
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