Never Before Seen
In the Alien: Covenant, the android, Walter, spells out that his motivation for human-alien experimentation comes from curiosity. You mix this type of animal with this alien goo and get this weird alien-human hybrid. Never quite worked out the aggression part, but still…
When I see people using Midjourney, I’m reminded about this curiosity and the quest to create something new and interesting that was never before seen. It’s a nonstop stream of people building new images, seeing which prompts might unlock the magic behind the AI.
The danger is that we might start to infer consciousness from this and similar systems. We might say that it has a particular agenda, that it likes a particular color, that it has feelings. However, in the meantime, this has become a new output for creativity and for some, I can imagine it’s addictive. One can sit for hours seeing whether new prompts get closer to something never before seen.
