What I find uncanny about this is how closely this resembles random philosophical/artistic discussions one can find on YouTube - or even what I encountered in college dorm rooms.
It's in fact the illogic of the conversation that makes it more realistic. The reality is that in many deep conversations, people talk about a shared topic, and sometimes even make a coherent point, but also tend to frequently talk past one another and fumble with the thoughts they are trying to convey.
Even as as we listen, we don't focus on each word with the same degree of emphasis, but rather highlight those parts that are most salient to us while thinking of our own response.
In response to Herzog saying "I don't understand, what do you mean?", Zizek went into a bit about having sex with an alien.
Very uncanny.
I think AI-Herzog is getting tired of AI-Žižek's shit:
> OK, but there's something about this film that you cannot explain in the way you can with other films. Let's say, for example, that I were to take a knife and stab you in the stomach. You would howl and scream and you would look at me and say ‘Why did you do it?’ And you would look in my eyes and you would see something like an ecstatic convulsion of the soul and you would know why I did it. But you cannot say it. And yet we both know why I did it. That's why I think that all these different kinds of attempts at interpretation are a waste of time.
It seems that the conversations are recycled from a pool, because I've managed to hit the same conversation upon refreshing a few times.
A fascinating and hilarious conversation:
> SS: I know, but this is a problem for me because "porno" has no meaning, it's an empty gesture. This is the whole problem today. Okay, so tell me, what would it be like to have sex with a robot? Because in a way you are already having cybersex if you log on onto the Internet and watch all these movies of people screwing and so on. Now obviously you don't get the real thing, so you are totally abstracted but I think that for some men it is a new form of sexual enjoyment. So, again, we will encounter new problems: What are the limits? Will it be accepted that in a relationship with a human being, you can have sex with another person who is not there and so on?
> WH: I don't know. There's something I want to say to you first. We are both filmmakers, so we are working with images and with what lies beyond them. But you are more of a philosopher, so you are more abstracted than I am. In my films there is always something that lies beyond the images. Yes, there are always new difficulties, in particular with sexuality. I'm not saying this because of the invention of new media like the Internet but we are heading in that direction anyway.
> SS: I hate movies, but I love to watch porno. I cannot resist it. Yes, why not? It's far more interesting than these old-fashioned procedures.
> WH: I don't want to be too abstracted, so let me ask you a question: Is it good that young people are watching so much porno on the Internet?
> SS: No, it's terrible. This is my problem with the Internet: it delays my work. I don't have any time because, you know, as soon as I sit down to write a book I just open a window, and there are all these amazing things. So the problem with the Internet is not that it's too tempting. It's the opposite, I don't work. I have a problem avoiding opening windows. Yes, this is my big problem. Anyone who wants to learn something about the history of philosophy should watch porno. This would be a great way to get rid of all this bullshit.
> WH: I totally agree, because the more abstracted the physical contact between people becomes the more the inner life comes to the fore, especially in terms of eroticism. Sitting in front of a computer, you don't have physical contact with anything, it's all virtual. And yet, the eroticism that appears is enormous. It's parallel to the disappearance of physical contact. Yes, I think you're right.
Yo this over some lofi hiphop radio is like, the highest tier background noise I've ever heard. 10/10
Kudos. I'm astounded that something like this is possible. AI, while not AGI, is already capable of some things that I would not have expected to be coming so soon.
From the FAQ:
----
Isn't it bad to use someone's voice and have them say things they haven't?
Yes.
----
Kudos for that as well.
A marvelous work of interpassivity [1], I think Zizek might say! Now he can have AI perform his meaning-filled labor for him ;)
If you've never seen, for example, Zizek talking about "Children of Men" - you won't realize how remarkable this is. The dialog, the accent, and the timing is shockingly close... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MivWnmlyVlU
I just want to tell that author that, while I am ambivalent about many of the ethical issues around deepfakes, this project in isolation is really cool and impressive; maybe one of my favorite projects ever posted on HN!
One major bug in the virtual Zizek is the lack of sniffing, which completely ruined the believability for me. I do commend the author on getting 80% of the way there.
You must to fill the slavoj zizek gaps with nose cleaning sounds.
ŽIžek is a walking meme farm. I don't think you need an AI until you exhausted what the actual man says.
“Slavoj Zizek Coca-Cola commercial (2014)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiTy5-RC1-4
“Slavoj Zizek on the horror of tulips” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yoqjABeBM
Very dark:
"I'm not afraid of this word either. Yes, we should be prepared to commit collective suicide—but only if it's clear that we'll never be able to live safely on a planet which is habitable and ecologically balanced."
Omg this is amazing.
(Herzog) I do it all the time. I play. I have a soccer ball under my bed right now and I play when I'm alone, with the soccer ball. It's beautiful. I'm fifty-eight—but I'm very athletic, I can run rings around anyone my age. And I play a lot of soccer and badminton with my crew, they're all in their thirties. Yes, I play a lot.
———
This is indeed beautiful. God I love Herzog’s voice..!
Werner Herzog talking to Alexander Kluge in 1991 (in German):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiUaFw909I
He certainly has a way of talking that is quite easy to imitate. I like his work, but I am never sure whether he really is that brilliant, or just a phony.
This seems like a step closer to the 'Her' movie AI entity (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) , or more closely, the scene where she converses with a Alan Watts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exe7yup2Yu0 where in the movie did something that this inifiniteconversation has done in terms of feeding in a deceased philosophers works and voice to create an AI representation of the person.
You must add some Judith Butler and Peter Sloderdijk quotes and some Yugoslav army jokes.
This AI is far too coherent for Žižek.
So weird, but it's very funny. Do you have plans to expand on this? Maybe collect sound from other thinkers and have them debate?
Your robot sounds very scary by the way. Perfect for the Halloween-ish season.
This is fantastic!
I think the more someone bullshits and the more one engages in incoherent rambling, the more GPT-3 can be believable for long stretches of time :)
I have this strange sense of uncanny terror by relating to the output of an AI
Is this the future of podcasting?
I encountered a weird, butt maybe hilarious bug running this on the Brave browser in iOS. I closed the tap, but the dialog kept going. Only when I went to three webpage again and this time paused it, did the audio stop. Truly infinite conversation. I'm almost sad I was able to turn it off at all.
> But, my God, let me tell you one typical story and maybe it will help you to think about this. One of my closest friends is an older Slovene poet and I respect him very much for his efforts to save poetry and so on. And at some point in our friendship, without any reason, he told me that I spoke like a madman. I said, “What do you mean?” He answered, “You know, when you talk to people you speak with such conviction that it sounds like madness. You must be very careful, because this can become dangerous.” And he was right as he usually is.
Very recognizable. If you ever took an art course, you will so recognize this rambling.
I got this quote:
I think that, even in this context of crisis, I see at least a certain redemptive hope in the fact that there is so much bluff in Hollywood productions: that they are so artificial and so empty.
Very true.
Just as satisfying as the git man page generator https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/
It's like sitting in a mental ward and listening to two very potentially intelligent schizophrenics or dementia patients chat. Interesting at times and confusing most of the time.
If it's intelligible, the AI is not working.
What was used to do the voices here? It's very well done and according to the FAQ it's using only open source tools.
This is so amazing, thank you!
Probably the best thing since Werner Herzog "Travelbug", a comedy podcast segment (two actually, it was remade) that can be found on YouTube or possibly podcast app, but this here is of course also technically very impressive.
Any follow-ups planned? Schwarzenegger v. Maggie Thatcher? :)
I found it hilarious that Herzog will just go on and on, just like he does in real life.
Also, this bit:
The question is always: What does it mean to be something what is this identity? In Europe, we don't ask these questions. We have no difficulty identifying ourselves.
This is incredible what great work, already at least 3 good belly laughs offa this thing.
I love this so much. This is great "white noise" to work over too! I wonder if in the future people who love podcasts will simply have infinite conversations between their favourite synthethic humans run in their headphones.
Can somebody please tell me: is Zizek actually smart? I bought his book “Philosophy for the end times” and only remember understanding a single concept. How is this man comprehensible? What is he respected for?
I really hope Herzog is aware of this. He would absolutely love it.
Žižek maybe not so much.
and so on and so on
But for the voice filter, this could be used to build a cultural studies grad student dating simulator. Why would anyone do that? Many ask themselves that same question to this day.
Data science is a complicated profession, wouldn't you agree?
The second thing Žižek said was
"I hate movies, but I love to watch porno. I cannot resist it. Yes, why not? It’s far more interesting than these old-fashioned procedures."
Incredible conversation.
Wow, good work.
Zizeks bits didn't seem to go together as well, there were fragments of sentences that had one tone that went into another.
I feel like Will Self would work well in one of these.
Do Jesse Jackson next! ;)
AI-Zizek takes less brain power to get then the real one.
an infinite conversation is such a brilliant angle for how to get at some of the heart of the reality of AI intelligence (always on when the power is on, nearly infinite, ...) vs human... and especially eerie and thought-provoking when you get a feeling for how accurate/similar the generated text is to those people. i am so impressed and jealous. wow. brilliant.
Astonishing and compelling in equal measure.
Sadly audio doesn't channel through headphones on mobile: Pixel 6, Android 12, Pixel Buds A-series.
They don't make Europeans like these guys anymore, more than happy to seem encased in AI immortality however incoherent
This will sound like a daft question, but this discussion will be completely different on every reload correct?
Well well well, that certainly gives a new meaning to his book title "Hegel in a Wired Brain"
It's pretty good, but what a lot of what AI ŽIžek says isn't purposefully obfuscated.
I want this as a never-ending scene in Seinfeld. Laugh track included
The voice of zizek is very well done, it just lack sniffs
This discussion is already in the library of babel.
Next, do this for pairs of major politicians.
That’s not a conversation or a discussion…
M-x psychoanalyze-pinheadThis is quite a bit incoherent. I've been listening for about 5 mins, each side had quite a few turns but Herzog almost invariably talks about how he's not a Marxist, and Zizek almost invariably talks about how cinema should be an open question mark. Like every single turn they rephrase this in some other way. Did I get a particularly bad seed?
Werner: I am not a Marxist
Slavoj: You are a bit of an anti-Marxist
Werner: I am actually sympathetic
Slavoj: Ah, good to stay away from -isms
Werner: Yes, also the cinema is showing us that our problems are not as easy to solve in the upcoming decades.
....
It took an odd turn, I don't really know what he was getting at, and i don't know if he is a marxist or not 0.0
This really shows that there is no actually useful substance in their talks.
This is amazing
So so good
this is a work of beauty
This pairing is easy mode though.
HERZOG:
I have had a dream for many
years now, ever since I was a child.
I don't know why, but I always dream that there are giants
on a tiny island in the Pacific and we humans can't see them
but they are there, where the island is.
And then suddenly one of the giants throws a rock,
just like a child would throw a rock into the water
but the rock hits the mainland—the western
coast of North America—and creates a big hole.
A little later, another giant throws his rock and it creates another hole
and then another one, and another one.
This happens all at once, everywhere on the continent, every single continent—Australia, South America
North America.
And you wake up and think, “Oh my God, they are already throwing rocks.
undefined
Weird to see such universal support here for Zizek.
Zizek is most likely a three letter agency plant designed to destroy the credibility of the critical theory community. Look at how much Russians and other organization like "big think" give him a voice which includes advocacy for things like "don't act, think".
Buying into zizeks ideas means buying into serial policy failure, and it is a risk - Zizek has ran for office in the Slovenia
Hi there! "Author" here - glad to see this picking up. This was a fascinating project to work on and I learned a ton in the process. As it's often the case, I would do a lot of things differently if I were starting from scratch today.