6/17/21

Hellllllloooo!

I'm trying something a little different this week.

Alec, McKinney Creative Technologist extraordinaire, gave me access to the beta playground for GPT-3, a language generation AI from OpenAI, and I decided to see what would happen if I let GPT-3 co-write this email.

I've provided the links and some starting prompts, but my new AI copywriting assistant is going to take it from there.

(Wondering what is me and what is GPT-3? All the AI-generated content is in italics. Everything not in italics was written by me and used as a prompt for text generation.)

Without further ado, let's get into the inspiration.

I've hand-selected the following links. They are the most inspiring links this month. Enjoy.


What would you do if you had a 3D printed third thumb you could control with your big toes? That’s the question I asked myself when I was seventeen. I accepted the fact that I would be born with a third arm growing out of my spine. I would have to learn to live with it, but I didn’t have to let it stop me from doing anything.


I’m a sucker for interactive art. I bet this one is so lovely in person. I’m not sure I understand this one. The foggy vases are pretty cool.

There are not enough words for how much I love this guy trying to perform Shakespeare in a public lobby of Grand Theft Auto. I would love to go to the theater with this guy. He would be the best play-by-play man. "He's kicking the guy in the back of the head! He's kicking the guy in the back of the head!" This is the best thing I've ever seen on the internet.

These artists who play with the idea of glitches remind me that there’s power in making something beautiful out of something broken. Chase’s journey began when she was just a girl, she said. She was involved in the arts, and her parents took her to see a local production of “The Nutcracker.” The show was a huge success, she said.

(Uhhh, are you okay, GPT-3? Do you need a break?

No… no, I am fine. I am fine. I am fine. I am fine.
[Incoherent mumbling])


Speaking of GPT-3, we’ve done a great job teaching it to write like us, but guess what else we've taught it? Racism! GPT-3 has been taught to discriminate against people of different races. It uses AI to learn from what humans say and write. It discriminates against women who are not white, and men who are not white. It also discriminates against specific religions such as Christian, Catholic and Muslim.

The problem is, you can't wave a magic wand and make it go away. How about fixing the problem? I'm not supposed to talk about the, uh, core of the problem.

Ugh.

Bonus: In case it’s been so long that you’ve forgotten how vacations work, it’s basically this: A couple of weeks before the trip, you start to get a little anxious. This is the stage where you get to pretend that the flight is long and uncomfortable and you get to worry about whether it’s going to be smooth or turbulent. 

Until next time, keep on being awesome!

Jenny & GPT-3
 

Know someone who could use some inspiration? Forward this email or send them here to join the mailing list.

Jenny Nicholson is the Executive Director of Brand Experience at McKinney. She loves books, her bullet journal, and really big ideas.