There’s an amusing moment in series two of the West Wing when Margaret Hooper, personal assistant to Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, says that she has practised signing the president’s name and can do it pretty well. The context is that the president is out of action following an assassination attempt and unable to sign for himself, so she offers to step in. Leo points out that the White House Counsel will probably regard this a coup d'état.
However, thanks to generative AI, Margaret now wouldn’t be needed. Though automated handwriting machines go way back into history, and computerised copying has existed for quite a while, current AI offers something extra. Today’s image creation models can reproduce – at very low cost – a person’s style of writing in a variable way so that the same handwritten letters of the alphabet look different from one another and, therefore, more human. Benj Edwards, AI reporter for ARS Technica, discovered this when he trained the Flux model, from Black Forest Labs, with his father’s handwriting (his father passed away a few years ago) and started producing new images with notes on them in his dad’s distinctive style:
Link: My dead father is “writing” me notes again
Handwriting is, of course, very personal to us and one can understand why Benj was delighted by his discovery. We see a friend in their writing, and graphologists claim to be able to read a person’s character from written samples. Though few, the Bible includes places where personal handwriting is noted (though, sadly, we no longer have a copy of the original script). Paul comments on his ‘large letters’ as he signs off Galatians (Galatians 6:11, presumably the rest was taken down by an amanuensis). And most famously we have the Lord’s own handwriting – or finger-writing – in the production of the 10 commandments on stone (Exodus 31:18). The personal touches give an added sense of authenticity and importance. But thanks to generative AI, that’s in danger of being lost as we further develop our ability to forge anyone, anytime, in any medium.
There is, however, a positive side to all this in that it encourages us to value all the more highly meeting others in person, and that’s good. The Bible commands Christians to do this (Hebrews 10:25). Yes, we can sit at home and read our Bibles and other Christian books, listen to Christian audio or watch Christian video. But there’s nothing like hearing the Bible read live, preached live, discussed live: people talking to people in the presence of the Lord (Matthew 18:20). As Christians we value in-person over other forms of learning and living. Indeed, the early church pastor Papias is even quoted as saying that he rated hearing witnesses speak of the apostle’s teaching above that of reading their words: “For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.”
Link: Eusebius on Papias
Meeting real people – you can’t fake that! Or can you?
Link: Sony patents a brain manipulation technology
Photo by Debbie Hudson on Unsplash
All posts tagged under technology notebook
Introduction to this series of posts
Cover photo by Denley Photography on Unsplash
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.