Shift by Alberta Innovates

Exploring the intersection of art and artificial intelligence with David Usher

Shift talks with David Usher Season 6 Episode 11

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This episode centers on the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on creativity and society, featuring insights from artist and entrepreneur David Usher. 

David discusses the importance of understanding AI, its ethical challenges, and how it can enhance or complicate human experiences, particularly in the arts and healthcare.

• The evolution of AI and its relevance to creativity 
• Importance of educating oneself about AI technologies 
• Concerns regarding intellectual property rights in AI 
• The focus of Reimagine AI on entertainment and healthcare 
• Addressing loneliness in the elderly through technology 
• Challenges and considerations in developing AI companions 
• The need for a balanced approach to AI integration 

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

Jon:

My guest today on Shift is David Usher. Now we're going back a year to Adventures 2024, where I had a chance to sit down with David. He's an artist, best-selling author and a keynote speaker and a founder of Reimagine AI, so he checks a lot of those boxes that I myself and, I'm assuming, a lot of you, are interested in Entrepreneurialism, tech and creativity. Sit back, settle in. Welcome to Shift. Thanks for joining us, David. Can we start by having you tell us a little bit about how you got your start in AI?

David:

I mean, when I first started doing this, you know, my first project in artificial intelligence was with Google. We were working on something called Lyric AI, which was an AI agent that could collaborate with humans writing song lyrics, and that was before this newest wave of technological revolution around artificial intelligence. So the data sets weren't that good, the results weren't that good, but that experience really got me interested in artificial intelligence and I really felt back then this was 10 years ago that the interface between AI and the human experience was going to be a thing that needed to be solved and how humans were going to relate to artificial intelligence and what that interface would look like. And that engagement piece is a creative endeavor. So there's a million ways you can communicate and connect with AI. There's a million different applications and platforms, different ways that we can connect. So that's really what I built the basis of my company around, basically around virtual beings, but it's moved into all sorts of different things now.

Jon:

So what sort of negative effects might adoption have?

David:

I think there are good reasons to be fearful, for sure, but I really got into this. I used to do a lot of speaking about I still do about creative and innovation. But you can't talk about innovation to companies and institutions without talking about artificial intelligence, because it's a foundational technology that's coming in to change everything and I think, as you know as technical people, as technologists or artists, ai is here, it's arrived and it is fundamentally going to change the foundations of what we build and how we do and make things. So the question is, do we want to just accept everything and not understand the technology? Because if you don't understand the technology, it's really hard to comment on it and have critical thinking around it. So my goal is to have critical thinking around the technology so I can be part of the conversation, and there are definitely things, there are definitely incredible opportunities around the technology and there are big, big dangers as well. It's going to fundamentally change the arts, for sure, in many different ways.

Jon:

Can you tell us a bit about the AI that you're using?

David:

The language models that we were using. This is the project with Google. Google was very, very specific about the data that they would allow you to use and collect, and they were really, really reticent to put things out into the world. So, in other words, they were very careful. So the data sets weren't very good. Because of that, they weren't allowed to scrape the entire web, right, they were trying to respect rights back then, but as soon as Microsoft and OpenAI went and scraped the entire web, released ChatGPT into the world. Everything has changed now. Right, we're now in an AI space race where every single company is scraping everything they can, looking for the last piece of data to inform their large language models, right, so everything's now changed.

Jon:

So, from your perspective, then, what are the dangers of using AI?

David:

There's sort of two sides of this, right. There's the idea that I believe that the large companies should be paying artists and creators for the work that they scrape. You know, I believe that's copyrighted material and if you're using it to build your models, there should be some sort of rights organization, or some rights should be going back to the artists or the creators. But at the same time, I don't think that creators should hide in the sand and pretend this new technology doesn't exist. We have to. In many ways. I mean, it's like saying you know, I don't want to use the internet, I don't like the internet.

David:

Well, the internet is here. Everyone uses the internet. You have to know how to use the internet. We are now in a post-ai world where ai is everywhere. You're going to need to know how to use the internet. We are now in a post-AI world where AI is everywhere. You're going to need to know how to use AI. But it's not only artists. I tell this to everybody. You know if I'm talking to a group of lawyers or I'm speaking to basically any institution, you know every person in that company needs to understand how to use artificial intelligence and how to integrate it into their work just because everybody else does.

Jon:

What are the verticals that you and your team at Reimagine AI are working on?

David:

We focus primarily on two verticals. I put entertainment and retail sort of in the same bucket, okay, and we do a lot of different things. We're building something for Times Square we're all sorts of different things in that bucket and then we're also doing a lot of things in healthcare. One of our biggest projects is called Memory Care AI and that's building artificial intelligence agents that can collaborate, that we build a platform for the elderly and Alzheimer's patients. So one of the biggest problems for the elderly is loneliness and engagement, and our platform is meant to mitigate those factors.

Jon:

Tell me a bit about your thoughts around AI companions.

David:

A lot of people have tried to put a humanoid robot as a companion for the elderly. That's been tried many times. The difficulty with that is the cost. You have to look at cost when you're doing these things and then you're always trying to figure out. The elderly is a very specific population. They have very specific needs and the way they engage with technology is very specific. So those are always the problems when we're talking about robotics with the elderly. Is that will they actually? Is it too expensive? Will they actually engage? Will it help them?

Jon:

So how do you navigate some of those issues?

David:

That's what we're doing right now. We have a bunch of different clinical trials going on about how we can put virtual beings and engage them with the elderly. We've got one at the Sheldon Memory Lab at McGill University and then we're just moving into a whole bunch of different retirement homes dealing with patients.

Jon:

Well, thanks for taking the time to meet and talk with us today. Shift is brought to you by Alberta Innovates. We can be found online at shiftalbertainnovatesca or you can reach out and chat with us at shift at albertainnovatesca. Have a great day Until next time. I'm John Bye.

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