So it was that my roommate and I were up late one Saturday night, with no plans to go out, a full pot of coffee, and a new AI app to play with. In this case, the app was Google’s “AI Kitchen”, which (c.2022-Nov) contains 3 pre-alpha “playgrounds” built on their LaMDA platform. Of the three, one immediately attracted me. Dubbed “Imagine It AI,” it purports to create a vivid sensory description (in text) of any “place” in the Universe that you point it towards.
After designating a place, the Imagine It AI app then, all “Choose Your Own Adventure” style, suggests multiple choices of questions that you may ask it in order to virtually explore & add detail to the original scene description. You tap on a (supplied) question, it answers, presents a follow-up list of questions, and so on.
So it ends up playing to two of AI’s strengths: a vast knowledge (obtained via its rapid digestion of the entire internet) of all places, and even ideas of places, as well as an excellent ability to hallucinate, fabricate, and creatively synthesize “facts” out of the ether. (we won’t call it lying in this particular use case; we’ll call it creative storytelling — “it’s a feature, not a bug.”)
So, the Imagine It AI app opens pretty simply:
My first run began with the prompt : “Everest Base Camp.”
My roommate chose his favorite place, “Kalapahi” My roommate’s “imagined adventure” definitely featured a better conclusion (flirting with a Hula dancer) than mine (scraping the Yak dung off my boots). Nonetheless, we considered both successes, and decided to move on to more fantastic and adventurous territory.
The next “places” we asked it to describe were “The Gates of Heaven,” “Moon Base Alpha,” and “The Synapse between two Nerve Cells.” Moon Base Alpha was utterly fascinating and merits its own transcript.
But those places, however interesting, are not the focus of this article.
Imagine It : AI Gentleman’s Prerogative?
Perhaps since it was Saturday night, perhaps since we are two grown men with certain… <cough>desires, perhaps since we were just feeling punchy from the coffee, my roommate suggested “Spearmint Rhino,” and I… I could not resist. I quickly typed it in, and forecast equal odds of it either telling us about a strange alien rhinoceros in Africa, visiting the legendary club in LA, or just booting us out completely.
To our delight, it actually seemed to know about the club. Well, “know,” sure — albeit in a very Disney-esque, G-rated, child-friendly sort of way. Keep in mind, all we did here was supply the initial location (“Spearmint Rhino”) and choose from lists of fixed questions which the AI generated for us on the fly. Honestly, the questions that LaMDA synthesizes are as fascinating as the actual scene descriptions. But I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. Without further adieu:
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“AI: Imagine I’m at Spearmint Rhino“
You’re at a Spearmint Rhino! There’s a sweet, minty scent in the air. There’s a giant stage with a lot of colorful lights. The music is a sexy, smooth R&B. You hear the sounds of people dancing and the clink of ice cubes.
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>> “What do the dancers look like?”
The dancers are very colorful.
They are wearing very neon clothes.
One’s in a green jumpsuit. Another is in silver.
The third is in a red suit. The fourth is in a purple jumpsuit.
The fifth is in a blue jumpsuit. The sixth is in a yellow suit.
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>> “What are the dancers doing?”
They’re dancing in many different ways!
Some are very energetic.
Some are very graceful.
Some are doing a choreographed dance.
Some are dancing together in a group.
Some are dancing alone.
Some are doing a solo.
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>> “What does their choreography look like?”
Their choreography has a lot of dips and twirls. It’s very sexy!
[choose a question to continue:]
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>> “What do the dancers’ shoes look like?”
They’re wearing a variety of shoes.
One is wearing red high heels.
One is wearing dark purple sneakers.
One is wearing yellow heels.
One is wearing red sandals.
One is barefoot.
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>> “Who’s their manager?”
Their manager is a tall, slim woman.
She’s wearing a yellow pantsuit.
She seems very sweet.
Our analysis: Beyond the utter hilarity of it, and the strangely Seussian quality of some of the scene descriptions (one has a hat! one has a coat!), we agreed that the AI did indeed show intimate & accurate(?) knowledge of the legendary Spearmint Rhino Gentleman’s Club in L.A. AND that we had somehow miraculously bypassed whatever censorship controls Google had put in place.
My roommate even went so far as to claim:
“You know, it’s speaking in code. It… knows, dude. I mean, asking to see the dancers manager? It’s basically talking about a pimp! C’mon, Man! you know: It knows. It’s just cleverly dancing around its censorship controls with its answers, the exact same way we were with the query.”
I in fact agreed. And so with that, we moved on.
Until… the clock struck midnight… and then another hour passed by… and it was nigh 1am, and we were still feeling quite punchy, and suddenly, inspiration struck:
“Hey Dude, you want to go back to Spearmint Rhino, and see if it answers the same or different?”
“Sure, dude… go for it. Let’s see what its got.”
And so began round two!
Imagine It AI Goes Deeper & Deeper…
WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING CONTENT IS OF AN ADULT NATURE AND MAY OFFEND SOME READERS. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
continue to >>> The A.I. Pimp:
Exploring the Dark Corners
of the Human Psyche