Tech Tuesday: Interview with Innovator James Yu, Co-Founder of Sudowrite

Photo by Jackson So on Unsplash

In November I read about an AI program that helped writers create stories, write poetry and more called Sudowrite. During a three day trial period I became utterly enthused by the program and used it as much as I was able before the time limit expired. For some reason, I received a weeklong extension and did some additional "playing" with the program, exploring its possibilities and limitations.

When I began sharing come of the collaborative writing on this blog and Twitter James Yu, a co-author of the program, "liked" one of my tweets. After a brief exchange I reached out to see of he would be willing to share a little more about AI, Sudowrite and another shared interest, NFTs.

EN: Which came first, your interest in writing or your interest in technology?

James Yu: I would say they were intertwined with gaps. I’d always had an interest in storytelling, and wrote lots of short stories as a pre-adolescent. At the same time, I was programming my own little games and experiments in BASIC. I have a faint memory of playing with a very simple markov model where I could input my emails and it would spit out other “probable” emails (this was back in the late 1990s) — that fascinated me, that a facsimile email could appear to be real.

Later I got addicted to creating tools for developers and creatives, and this continues with my work on Sudowrite.

EN: Sudowrite seems to take a different approach to AI-powered writing than the other tools. How many iterations of the program have you produced and where do you see it going

JY: Don’t really know how many “iterations” there have been, but it’s grown organically between me and my co-founder Amit Gupta. We were both part of the same writing circles (mostly consisting of other techies who got into writing fiction). We built it up from a toy, slowly letting word of mouth grow it over time, focusing primarily on creative and literary writers while most other AI writing programs were focused on business users.

EN: The Summer Olympics in China had an AI “newsroom” that generated articles about the various events, much like a journalist. I found the stories to lack feeling. They came across as boilerplate. Some of the poems I create in conjunction with Sudowrite seemed quite evocative. Can you explain what is going on here?

JY: I don’t know the details on how those newsroom AIs were built, but my guess is that they were trained on some sports article templates, and didn’t have much leeway to diverge from them that far. Sudowrite’s poem tool is built on GPT-3, with prompts that focus specifically on modern, evocative free verse poetry. Therefore, the output will also be more evocative.

EN: What is GPT-3? Is this the hardware or the ghost in the machine?

JY: I’m not a GPT-3 expert and the details on its architecture are pretty well known so I won’t go into that specifically. As for the ghost in the machine: we love to anthropomorphize AIs, especially large language models, since at times, they seem to evoke a strong sense of self. It’s no surprise that GPT-3’s reading comprehension has reached almost human level accuracy. Of course, this is all an illusion. It is statistics. A simulacrum. There is no consciousness within the silicon (yet).

EN: Are NFTs a fad like Tulip Bulbs or are they here to stay?

Painting by Jonathan Thunder
who has been a featured artist
in the NFT scene in 2021.

JY: There’s definitely a lot of tulip bulbing out there right now. The signal to noise is exceedingly small, and even if you’re immersed in the NFT world 24/7, you can easily miss the next fad. The same sort of thing happened in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 eras: so many companies and products that were ephemeral. But from those eras, certain key technological innovations did survive, so I’m bullish that this random walk down crypto art will also yield lasting value. In particular, the idea of digital ownership will be huge, especially as more of our life moves online.

EN: Looking back over the history of art—especially in the 20th century--I find it somewhat fascinating how creativity has continually found new ways of expression. Will there be galleries like the Louvre or Guggenheim that exist as repositories of AI-generated art?

JY: I believe so yes! The genre of algorithmic art has existed for a while and they’ve already made it into the traditional galleries way before NFTs. But it does feel that this type of art is “native” to the NFT world and it’s encouraged a lot of new artists to tinker with AI in art.

EN: Do you have some “heroes” or mentors in this genre?

JY: I really admire Mario Klingemann (https://quasimondo.com), who’s been doing AI art for a while now, and has also made a serious living from it. I also love how he shares his knowledge and encourages others who might be new to the field.

EN: Why do some creative people become entrepreneurs and others do not?

JY: Don’t know for sure! It probably has to do with a specific type of thinking that makes a good entrepreneur: you have to be obsessed with a particular problem and potential solutions to it, so much so that you would say, “Hey, I’ll quit my job and drop everything to work on this for years with a high risk of failure.” It’s kind of crazy. But if you have that itch, it never seems to go away until you try to see it through to completion. Not all creative people thrive with these kinds of problems.

EN: Who or what were your early influences in this direction?

 

JY: I credit Y Combinator. I was an early employee at one of their companies and saw the rise of the program circa 2006, and eventually started my own YC funded company. The energy at during that era was off the charts. Being surrounded by other people like me who were product obsessed propelled me.

And secondly I would say my IBM 286 computer I got in 1994 was the other cornerstone influence. My parents didn’t give me that much guidance: just let me hack and make interesting things on that machine. That, dovetailed with the rise of the internet, forms a lot of my worldview today.

EN: Thank you, James!

Related Links

www.jamesyu.org 
@jamesjyu

Democracy's Twilight: Another AI Collaboration 

A Quick Peek at the Duluth Art Institute's 63rd Arrowhead Regional Biennial

Modern Times--Jonathan Thunder. First Place.

Yesterday afternoon I visited the Duluth Art Institute to check out the Arrowhead Regional Biennial, one of the longest-running biennials in the country. The exhibition features a wide range of artwork produced within the last five years from artists residing in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. 

133  artists submitted work to this 63rd Biennial. Kayla Aubid served as judge for the show. 27 artists' works were selected, showcasing work that examines community, the environment, heritage and current events. As usual, this is a special show with much to appreciate. Here are some of the photographs I took today along with links to some of the artists I have interviewed here over the years. (For best viewing, click to enlarge 

Clarion Whisper--Gary Carlson

Detail from Clarion Whisper

LaVentana--Carmen Gutierrez-Bolger

Empty Inside--Rachel Bruya

Contingent--Susanna Gaunt

Under Pressure--S. Catrin Magnusson

The Good Doc Poler--Chimakwa Nibawii Stone

Falling in a Forest--Adam Swanson

Painting 85--Scott Helmes

Painting 85 (Detail)

Reaching for Health--Loretta Bebeau

Reaching for Health (Detail)

Disclaimer: All the works you see here are more impressive in person. There were others I would like to have highlighted but the photos were not suitably sharp. 

The Duluth Art Institute is located on the fourth floor of Duluth's Historic Depot on Michigan Street. In addition to the Biennial, there are also exhibitions in the Corridor Gallery and the John Steffl Gallery.  

Jonathan Thunder's Latest NFT Auction Drop Starts Wednesday

One of the surprising new developments of the past year has been the growth of the NFT market. NFT is short for Non-Fungible Token. Fungible is a legal term defined this way: (of goods contracted for without an individual specimen being specified) able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable. Fungible is not a new term, but NFTs are a new craze.

What it means is that it is unique and cannot be replaced with something else. An example would be a bitcoin. If you trade one for another you have the same thing. It is not unique. It's fungible. The Mona Lisa, on the other hand, is unique. The sheet of paper in which Dylan wrote the original lyrics to "Desolation Row" is unique. These are non-fungible.

Much of what's being sold are digital goods, like Jack Dorsey's first Tweet, which sold for near three million dollars.

According to the Verge, where I'm getting this info from, the real craze right now involves using the current blockchain technology to sell art. Artists getting into NFTs appreciate the new outlet for their creative expressions. Art buyers enjoy supporting artists. Some art buyers do so for the profit they anticipate when something they own appreciates in value. Others for the gratification of owning a piece of work they admire and appreciate for its own sake.

Essentially, each NFT holds a unique spot on the blockchain. For reasons I don't understand very well, most NFTs are part of the Ethereum crypto blockchain. People who participate in this market as buyers or sellers tend to work through brokers who run auctions. For example, Nifty Gateway is where you will find Jonathan Thunder's next NFT drop. In fact, the galleries at Nifty Gateway will likely be an eye-popping, eye-opening introduction to a whole new realm that we college art students of the 70s could not possibly have imagined. 

I've been following Jonathan Thunder's career now for five years since first writing about him in 2016. His cred has been well established, having been a featured artist in our three leading galleries, the Tweed Museum of Art, Joseph Nease Gallery and the Duluth Art Institute. Here are notes from a 2017 artist talk he gave at the DAI.

It was this past Saturday that I ran into Jonathan Thunder at a local outdoor market where he shared a little about tomorrow's drop at Nifty Gateway. Jonathan's drop will be 6:30 p.m. This is his second drop and we're very much looking forward to it.

To see more visit thunderfineart.com

Local Art Seen: Long Night of the Floating Shell Features Paintings by Jonathan Thunder and Zamara Cuyun

"Midwife I"--acrylic on canvas, Zamara Cuyun

Last Friday evening was an artist reception and talk at the Dr. Robert Powless Cultural Center featuring work by Guatemalan artist Zamara Cuyun and our local Native painter Jonathan Thunder. Thunder has recently come into his stride in recent years, producing impressive image-tales, weaving symbols and images into stories, in the manner of oral histories, except they emerge from somewhere else along the mists of time.

What was striking was seeing how naturally his painting style matched Cuyun's "dark-to-light" method of painting so as to produce images that seem to almost leap from the canvas. Here are some of the works I saw this past weekend. The images are quite striking, and I am certain the stories they tell are as well.

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"King Bear"--Jonathan Thunder, acrylic on canvas.

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"Awakening"--Zamara Cuyun, acrylic on canvas.

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"Tandem" by Thunder. These two were displayed in tandem.

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"Origien" by Cuyun. Acrylic on canvas.

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"La Siembra (The Sowing)"--Zamara Cuyun

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Jonathan Thunder

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Detail from another Thunder piece.

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Jonathan Thunder discusses his work with patron of the show.

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"Le Semilla (The Seed)" by Cuyun

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"Hunter S. Thompson"--Giclee on canvas by Jonathan Thunder.

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BONUS TRACK
This was an announcement on Facebook about an event in Tulsa:

Tonight, Wed. May 29, at the Cain's Ballroom, Kevin Odegard will play the same Martin guitar he used on "Tangled Up In Blue" on Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks (1975). Kevin will perform the song with our house band, The Oklahoma Specials, and musician/journalist Jeff Slate HQ as part of our program. Following that performance, Kevin will donate this storied instrument to Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center from the Cain's stage. Join us for an amazing evening of music, conversation, and maybe even some history-making.

See: Inside the Studio: Still More Blood and Tracks as Paul Metsa's Wall of Power Features MN Music Luminaries

Meantime... art goes on all around you. Engage it.

Local Art Seen: Current Action @ the Tweed

Anne Labovitz -- 122 Conversations

With Anne Labovitz's opening reception coming up this Thursday it seemed like a good weekend to slip over to the Tweed and see what else has been on display. Here is a little of what you will find.

Anne Labovitz
122 Conversations: Person to Person, Art Beyond Borders
I've heard a lot of conversation about this show, the result of six years of labor, created by Anne Labovitz with citizens of Thunder Bay, Canada; Rania, Iraqi Kurdistan; Växjö, Sweden; Petrozavodsk, Russia; and Ohara Isumi-City, Japan. O122 Conversations was conceived as an outreach with the people of Duluth's Sister Cities. There will be handouts and plenty of details at the reception Thursday, October 25.

Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe)

Intersections
The main gallery is filled with an exhibition comprised of Native art by Minnesota-based artists., some of it quite impressive.

Alden Lebsack's Utterance can be found on the far end of the balcony where the last faculty show had been displayed.

Quiet Simplicity -- Classics from the Tweed Collection and Treasures from Home -- An Anthology of Gifts from Collectors can be found in the upstairs interior gallery space, strong examples from the 11,000 works in the Tweed collection.

In Solidarity -- Revolutionary Women of Print was a featured show this summer, a portion of which can still be seen on the balcony level.

Kathy McTavish's Chance is still on display if you have not experienced it.

Jonathan Thunder's massive animation on the second floor is a "must see" if you are anywhere need the Tweed this season. There are three segments, each a simple story. (1) Supernaut Becomes the Tiger Lily. (2) The Mishu Bizhiw Awakens. (3) Goldfinch Counts Leaves. Yes, it's fun...  Jonathan Thunder's previous exhibition at the DAI featured small-scale animations, tipping his hand to show his new area of interest after establishing self as a respectable painter. The animation work weds the symbolism and whimsicality that has been developing in his previous work. It's fun.

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FRIDAY EVENING IS THE
DOWNTOWN DULUTH ART WALK

and next Monday an art and poetry event at the Zeitgeist.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.

Local Art Seen: MAAMAWI @ the AICHO (Part 2)

"Nanabozhoo and the Butterfly" -- Rabbett Strickland

As promised yesterday, here are some additional glimpses of Friday evening's exhibition at the AICHO. The variety, the craftsmanship, the exquisite detail, the themes all woven together create an impression that we have in our midst a rare gift. I am referring here to the artists themselves, who continue to pour themselves out, many of them sacrificially.  Yes, there are art communities everywhere, but this one here in the Northland has its own unique fingerprints. We should not take for granted what is happening here.

If you've ever taken photos of the Grand Canyon and returned home afterward only to discover that the photos fell significantly short of capturing the vastness of that fabulous vista... well, that's most assuredly how I feel about the images here. They provide a glimpse of the works displayed, but fall short of producing the emotional weight of the works themselves. Stand before a painting by Rabbett Strickland or  Leah Yellowbird and you're drawn in.

"Winona and Nanbozhoo" -- Rabbett Strickland

"Preserving Our Way of Life" -- Ivy Vainio

"Resistance" -- Steve Premo

"Namepin in April" -- Tashia Hart

 

"Zigwan Binesi--Spring Thunderbird" -- Michelle Defoe

"Protect Water" -- Ellen Sandbeck

"Still Life with Blueberry Butter-Weasel" -- Jonathan Thunder

Meantime, if at all able, try to visit the AICHO Gift Shop and purchase a 2018 calendar featuring the art of these local artists.  Support the community. You'll also find a range of other practical items in addition to wall art.. and maybe get inspired to do more with your own creative self as well. 

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.