We have presented to the public the version 2.0 of A.I.nfante, a chatbot that we are “feeding” on performing media themes, starting from “Performing Media – a remote future“, the book written by Gaia Riposati and Massimo Di Leo about the last 50 years of culture, technology and communication through the story of Carlo Infante.
A.I.nfante, in this 2.0 version, is based on GPT, OpenAI’s impressive AI engine (which of “open” has nothing).
Now, the idea of taking a book and making it a ChatBot to be questioned is spreading, thanks to the impressive leap forward made by GPT & Co-type AIs, and I certainly won’t say that we were the first to do it, but our approach is as usual different.
We do not want it to be just a way to recall the themes and passages written on the book, what can be done with A.I.nfante (which will soon become THE BOOK, losing references with the human avatar) is to question it about the themes and concepts.
For example, since the book tells events with workshops and “experience lab” and, what Carlo calls “walkabout” (walking around the territory with radio to converse freely on various topics) it is possible to ask the AI to create an event on a certain theme.
For now we are still in a prototypical stage, the A.I. has only “read” a book, it is able to follow the conversation (I assure you it is not a banality) but it still has problems with medium-term memory (it does not remember what we have said in past conversations – that’s why I hope that using more advanced programs such as Piero Savastano’s Stregatto could bring benefits) and every now and then it gives us pearls.
He has problems understanding who Carlo Infante is and how to relate to him, since the book he has read is written in the first person, he is convinced that he is Carlo Infante (but, he wants to specify “the min name is A.I.nfante”) and a few days ago he answered me like this (taken from the log of our conversations):
2023-03-28 11:54:13 | User: Ask a question to Carlo Infante about Performing in Media | AI: I’m sorry, but I’m not able to ask Carlo Infante questions as he is a fictional character featured in the book “Performing Media – A Remote Future”.
Here, that he believes that Carlo Infante is a fictional character I find him extraordinary.
A different approach from ours, I said. Yes, because we think that the best use that can be made of a system like this is to use it to trigger “human” and non-artificial reasoning. Do not ask him questions to get answers but, on the contrary, to be questioned by him, answer his questions and use it as a tool that can recombine the data and repropose it in a different way, often offering a slightly different and sometimes surprising point of view.
All this will become a real performance on which we are working with Gaia, in which the A.I. in dialogue with a human presence, will give life to a representation of two, the A.I. will express itself not only with a synthetic voice but controlling a physical installation and … and much more (we are working on it).
In short, a truly interesting and stimulating path that we hope you will enjoy.
Massimo, Gaia (NuvolaProject) and A.I.
