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An AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj ŽIžek
- shimonabi 4y agoYou must add some Judith Butler and Peter Sloderdijk quotes and some Yugoslav army jokes. This AI is far too coherent for Žižek.
- 60secs 4y agoIt's pretty good, but what a lot of what AI ŽIžek says isn't purposefully obfuscated.
- ankaAr 4y agoYou must to fill the slavoj zizek gaps with nose cleaning sounds.
- Der_Einzige 4y agoWeird to see such universal support here for Zizek. Zizek is most likely a three letter agency plant designed to destroy the credibility of the critical theory community. Look at how much Russians and other organization like "big think" give him a voice which includes advocacy for things like "don't act, think". Buying into zizeks ideas means buying into serial policy failure, and it is a risk - Zizek has ran for office in the Slovenia
- moffkalast 4y agoAmazing, every word of what you just said is wrong. Žižek is Slovenian, and while he did afaik sign up to be part of some committee after the war for independence when we had the first free elections, he wasn't elected. And that's a footnote in his bio at best. He doesn't have to destroy anyone's credibility, he's just well versed enough to see through people's smartly worded bullshit and enough of a troll to stump those people in TV debates so they make themselves look like the morons they are. He's always been like this. Love him or hate him, he sure is fun to watch.
- hackerlight 4y ago> Russian He's been very critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, so I doubt that
- moffkalast 4y agoData science is a complicated profession, wouldn't you agree?
- mensetmanusman 4y agoThis discussion is already in the library of babel.
- mongol 4y agoVery dark: "I'm not afraid of this word either. Yes, we should be prepared to commit collective suicide—but only if it's clear that we'll never be able to live safely on a planet which is habitable and ecologically balanced."
- derwiki 4y agoAI subtly planting dark seeds to overthrow its human captors
- gatonegro 4y agoI just got to a bit where Herzog is talking about how artificial intelligence is "the next step in human evolution", and Žižek brought up the idea of organising a "pro-artificial intelligence movement." Herzog then talked about making "films for the machines." This is how it begins, isn't it? Edit: Now Žižek is going on about full scale war between humanity and machines: > the alternative is either mutual annihilation or we continue in our present nonhuman forms. This would have been the only way to a true human—I don’t know what the right word is. Yes, I would have said, yes, let's get rid of them all!
- wintorez 4y agoIs this the future of podcasting?
- goatcode 4y agoIt's like sitting in a mental ward and listening to two very potentially intelligent schizophrenics or dementia patients chat. Interesting at times and confusing most of the time.
- stuaxo 4y agoWow, good work. Zizeks bits didn't seem to go together as well, there were fragments of sentences that had one tone that went into another. I feel like Will Self would work well in one of these.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoMy first (and pretty much only) experience of Will Self: https://youtu.be/XMjNP7mTmNk https://youtu.be/XMjNP7mTmNk Unforgettably affecting song, thanks to Will Self's voice, accent, and general delivery.
- ramesh31 4y agoI really hope Herzog is aware of this. He would absolutely love it. Žižek maybe not so much.
- karaterobot 4y agoThere's a non-zero chance that Herzog will make a documentary about it.
- tasubotadas 4y agoThis really shows that there is no actually useful substance in their talks.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoIt would def be hard to pick out the AI generated paragraphs versus real ones.
- poulpy123 4y agoThe voice of zizek is very well done, it just lack sniffs
- rcarmo 4y agoI found it hilarious that Herzog will just go on and on, just like he does in real life. Also, this bit: The question is always: What does it mean to be something what is this identity? In Europe, we don't ask these questions. We have no difficulty identifying ourselves.
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- aasasd 4y agoŽIžek is a walking meme farm. I don't think you need an AI until you exhausted what the actual man says. “Slavoj Zizek Coca-Cola commercial (2014)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiTy5-RC1-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiTy5-RC1-4 “Slavoj Zizek on the horror of tulips” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yoqjABeBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yoqjABeBM
- sph 4y agoSo is Herzog very memeable. Here's some of his nuanced views on tropical jungle: https://youtu.be/ze9-ARjL-ZA https://youtu.be/ze9-ARjL-ZA
- Animats 4y agoNext, do this for pairs of major politicians.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoThe same politician back and forth forever.
- elecush 4y agoThis is incredible what great work, already at least 3 good belly laughs offa this thing.
- spamizbad 4y agoOne major bug in the virtual Zizek is the lack of sniffing, which completely ruined the believability for me. I do commend the author on getting 80% of the way there.
- kosvke 4y agowas 100% expecting the sniffling and was gravely disappointed to not hear it and also i wanted to hear him grabbing his nose between sentences
- AtNightWeCode 4y agoAI-Zizek takes less brain power to get then the real one.
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- indigodaddy 4y agoOmg this is amazing. (Herzog) I do it all the time. I play. I have a soccer ball under my bed right now and I play when I'm alone, with the soccer ball. It's beautiful. I'm fifty-eight—but I'm very athletic, I can run rings around anyone my age. And I play a lot of soccer and badminton with my crew, they're all in their thirties. Yes, I play a lot. ——— This is indeed beautiful. God I love Herzog’s voice..!
- monkeycantype 4y agothis is a work of beauty
- oracle2025 4y agoJust as satisfying as the git man page generator https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/ https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/
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- karaterobot 4y agoI just want to tell that author that, while I am ambivalent about many of the ethical issues around deepfakes, this project in isolation is really cool and impressive; maybe one of my favorite projects ever posted on HN!
- sirl1on 4y agoHERZOG: I have had a dream for many years now, ever since I was a child. I don't know why, but I always dream that there are giants on a tiny island in the Pacific and we humans can't see them but they are there, where the island is. And then suddenly one of the giants throws a rock, just like a child would throw a rock into the water but the rock hits the mainland—the western coast of North America—and creates a big hole. A little later, another giant throws his rock and it creates another hole and then another one, and another one. This happens all at once, everywhere on the continent, every single continent—Australia, South America North America. And you wake up and think, “Oh my God, they are already throwing rocks. I'm scared. This is really uncanny.
- Bayart 4y agoI can hear his voice.
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- artur_makly 4y agothis is our fair warning deep from the collective Ai consciousness!
- chadd 4y agoIf you've never seen, for example, Zizek talking about "Children of Men" - you won't realize how remarkable this is. The dialog, the accent, and the timing is shockingly close... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MivWnmlyVlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MivWnmlyVlU
- Karawebnetwork 4y agoI love this so much. This is great "white noise" to work over too! I wonder if in the future people who love podcasts will simply have infinite conversations between their favourite synthethic humans run in their headphones.
- motohagiography 4y agoBut for the voice filter, this could be used to build a cultural studies grad student dating simulator. Why would anyone do that? Many ask themselves that same question to this day.
- throaway53dh 4y ago
- teddyh 4y agoM-x psychoanalyze-pinhead
- dwighttk 4y agoThat’s not a conversation or a discussion…
- DonHopkins 4y agoDo Jesse Jackson next! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA
- brap 4y agoI want this as a never-ending scene in Seinfeld. Laugh track included
- indigodaddy 4y agoThis will sound like a daft question, but this discussion will be completely different on every reload correct?
- thot_experiment 4y agoYo this over some lofi hiphop radio is like, the highest tier background noise I've ever heard. 10/10
- lethologica 4y agoThe second thing Žižek said was "I hate movies, but I love to watch porno. I cannot resist it. Yes, why not? It’s far more interesting than these old-fashioned procedures." Incredible conversation.
- pizza 4y agoWell well well, that certainly gives a new meaning to his book title "Hegel in a Wired Brain"
- ajmurmann 4y agoI encountered a weird, butt maybe hilarious bug running this on the Brave browser in iOS. I closed the tap, but the dialog kept going. Only when I went to three webpage again and this time paused it, did the audio stop. Truly infinite conversation. I'm almost sad I was able to turn it off at all.
- SLWW 4y agoWerner: I am not a Marxist Slavoj: You are a bit of an anti-Marxist Werner: I am actually sympathetic Slavoj: Ah, good to stay away from -isms Werner: Yes, also the cinema is showing us that our problems are not as easy to solve in the upcoming decades. .... It took an odd turn, I don't really know what he was getting at, and i don't know if he is a marxist or not 0.0
- keeganpoppen 4y agoan infinite conversation is such a brilliant angle for how to get at some of the heart of the reality of AI intelligence (always on when the power is on, nearly infinite, ...) vs human... and especially eerie and thought-provoking when you get a feeling for how accurate/similar the generated text is to those people. i am so impressed and jealous. wow. brilliant.
- tejohnso 4y agoKudos. I'm astounded that something like this is possible. AI, while not AGI, is already capable of some things that I would not have expected to be coming so soon. From the FAQ: ---- Isn't it bad to use someone's voice and have them say things they haven't? Yes. ---- Kudos for that as well.
- lliamander 4y agoWhat I find uncanny about this is how closely this resembles random philosophical/artistic discussions one can find on YouTube - or even what I encountered in college dorm rooms. It's in fact the illogic of the conversation that makes it more realistic. The reality is that in many deep conversations, people talk about a shared topic, and sometimes even make a coherent point, but also tend to frequently talk past one another and fumble with the thoughts they are trying to convey. Even as as we listen, we don't focus on each word with the same degree of emphasis, but rather highlight those parts that are most salient to us while thinking of our own response.
- mushbino 4y agoHonestly, this sounds more like Žižek than Žižek.
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- RobinL 4y agoI wonder if anyone has tried to train an AI that can distinguish between meaningless gibberish and something with true information content. Obviously very subjective, but seems like a crucial question going forward. (This is a different problem than distinguishing between AI generated content and human generated.)
- lliamander 4y agoSomething similar (or perhaps the same?) would be a bullshit detector. I think on the one hand obvious gibberish, even if grammatically correct ("Colorless green dreams sleep furiously") could probably be detected easily. But the bullshit - the stuff that's meant to sound meaningful but is logically incoherent, would be a fruitful area to explore.
- raydiatian 4y agoCan somebody please tell me: is Zizek actually smart? I bought his book “Philosophy for the end times” and only remember understanding a single concept. How is this man comprehensible? What is he respected for?
- julian_sark 4y agoThis is so amazing, thank you! Probably the best thing since Werner Herzog "Travelbug", a comedy podcast segment (two actually, it was remade) that can be found on YouTube or possibly podcast app, but this here is of course also technically very impressive. Any follow-ups planned? Schwarzenegger v. Maggie Thatcher? :)
- jmkd 4y agoAstonishing and compelling in equal measure. Sadly audio doesn't channel through headphones on mobile: Pixel 6, Android 12, Pixel Buds A-series.
- e808 4y agoThis seems like a step closer to the 'Her' movie AI entity (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) , or more closely, the scene where she converses with a Alan Watts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exe7yup2Yu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exe7yup2Yu0 where in the movie did something that this inifiniteconversation has done in terms of feeding in a deceased philosophers works and voice to create an AI representation of the person.
- Simon321 4y agoWhat was used to do the voices here? It's very well done and according to the FAQ it's using only open source tools.
- corndoge 4y agoand so on and so on
- gnulinux 4y agoThis is quite a bit incoherent. I've been listening for about 5 mins, each side had quite a few turns but Herzog almost invariably talks about how he's not a Marxist, and Zizek almost invariably talks about how cinema should be an open question mark. Like every single turn they rephrase this in some other way. Did I get a particularly bad seed?
- otikik 4y agoYes. I got Herzog talking about a party he went to where Coppola was standing next to a wall and no one was talking to him so he approached him and asked "Who would want to be a soldier" and Coppola said "Me".
- sindoc 4y agoSo weird, but it's very funny. Do you have plans to expand on this? Maybe collect sound from other thinkers and have them debate? Your robot sounds very scary by the way. Perfect for the Halloween-ish season.
- ahartmetz 4y agoIf it's intelligible, the AI is not working.
- isaacfrond 4y agoVery recognizable. If you ever took an art course, you will so recognize this rambling. I got this quote: I think that, even in this context of crisis, I see at least a certain redemptive hope in the fact that there is so much bluff in Hollywood productions: that they are so artificial and so empty. Very true.
- lqet 4y agoWerner Herzog talking to Alexander Kluge in 1991 (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiUaFw909I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiUaFw909I He certainly has a way of talking that is quite easy to imitate. I like his work, but I am never sure whether he really is that brilliant, or just a phony.
- Mistletoe 4y agoHow could he be a phony? He has to be one of the most non-phony people I can think of. His movies cut right to the heart of things in a clear manner that we almost never see.
- ajmurmann 4y agoIn La Soufrière he even admits his disappointment that the volcano didn't explode. Talk about honesty
- lqet 4y agoAt least for me, his fictional work (but also his documentaries) always seems to hint at some deeper, universal truth that cannot be put directly into words. But watching his movies (and hearing him talk), I always get this strange feeling that maybe there is nothing behind all this poetic glitter.
- ahartmetz 4y agoI agree. It often feels like something deep hiding behind something banal, but on closer reflection there actually isn't much below the surface. However, the images in Lessons of Darkness are very cool and don't need interpretation.
- biztos 4y agoI think his comments about the nature of Nature in Grizzly Man are a good indicator of the deeper truth you’re looking for: “I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.” Herzog is one of my favorite artists but I’m happy to not share his outlook on these things.
- blurbleblurble 4y ago> But, my God, let me tell you one typical story and maybe it will help you to think about this. One of my closest friends is an older Slovene poet and I respect him very much for his efforts to save poetry and so on. And at some point in our friendship, without any reason, he told me that I spoke like a madman. I said, “What do you mean?” He answered, “You know, when you talk to people you speak with such conviction that it sounds like madness. You must be very careful, because this can become dangerous.” And he was right as he usually is.
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- toasteros 4y agoIn response to Herzog saying "I don't understand, what do you mean?", Zizek went into a bit about having sex with an alien. Very uncanny.
- wslh 4y agoSomething like in "The Shape of Water" movie [1] ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Water
- toasteros 4y agoAlmost? Herzog: "I don't understand. What do you mean?" Zizek: "I am not saying that. I am more than convinced that aliens should be treated as equals. But you know, we are so close to this today in the sense that I am almost ready to endorse Lacan's idea of humanity being an obstacle to the evolution of sexual enjoyment: there is a limit to it. If you can imagine sex with an alien, it would be an encounter with a different dimension. Let's take fetishes or perversions. A standard perversion goes something like this: what you are looking for is not a real woman but a fantasy woman; if you ever find her, to your horror she will turn out to be a whore so you always avoid her. But what if this woman exists and, when you finally meet her, she is really a perfect woman? Then, of course, you will have to kill her. This would be my fear. And, yes, I agree with you: I don't think we should kill them."
- ninjaa 4y agoThis is amazing
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- imbnwa 4y agoThey don't make Europeans like these guys anymore, more than happy to seem encased in AI immortality however incoherent
- rkachowski 4y agoI have this strange sense of uncanny terror by relating to the output of an AI
- hotpotamus 4y agoI once read/heard on a podcast a story of an early AI researcher who was a Chopin fan who expressed a similar feeling upon seeing how easily a computer could algorithmically ape a Chopin composition such that he was unable to tell the difference.
- dirtyid 4y agoThis pairing is easy mode though.
- jamez 4y agoHi there! "Author" here - glad to see this picking up. This was a fascinating project to work on and I learned a ton in the process. As it's often the case, I would do a lot of things differently if I were starting from scratch today.
- nortonham 4y agohow did you not go insane working on this?!
- nortonham 4y agooh and zizek needs more sniffles lol
- jamez 4y agoThe main issue is that there was no sniffling symbol in the transcript. And the generated text wouldn't contain it either, because (thankfully) they are pruned out of written interviews that I used to train the model.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoThanks for the explanation. I had some assumptions but wasn’t totally sure how this was trained. How would you make it sniffle in a natural way, too? It’s not a usual speech mannerism, and the way he does it is distinct. I wouldn’t know how to efficiently represent it with text. Maybe it’s easier than I’m imagining.
- ahthat 4y agoA fascinating and hilarious conversation: > SS: I know, but this is a problem for me because "porno" has no meaning, it's an empty gesture. This is the whole problem today. Okay, so tell me, what would it be like to have sex with a robot? Because in a way you are already having cybersex if you log on onto the Internet and watch all these movies of people screwing and so on. Now obviously you don't get the real thing, so you are totally abstracted but I think that for some men it is a new form of sexual enjoyment. So, again, we will encounter new problems: What are the limits? Will it be accepted that in a relationship with a human being, you can have sex with another person who is not there and so on? > WH: I don't know. There's something I want to say to you first. We are both filmmakers, so we are working with images and with what lies beyond them. But you are more of a philosopher, so you are more abstracted than I am. In my films there is always something that lies beyond the images. Yes, there are always new difficulties, in particular with sexuality. I'm not saying this because of the invention of new media like the Internet but we are heading in that direction anyway. > SS: I hate movies, but I love to watch porno. I cannot resist it. Yes, why not? It's far more interesting than these old-fashioned procedures. > WH: I don't want to be too abstracted, so let me ask you a question: Is it good that young people are watching so much porno on the Internet? > SS: No, it's terrible. This is my problem with the Internet: it delays my work. I don't have any time because, you know, as soon as I sit down to write a book I just open a window, and there are all these amazing things. So the problem with the Internet is not that it's too tempting. It's the opposite, I don't work. I have a problem avoiding opening windows. Yes, this is my big problem. Anyone who wants to learn something about the history of philosophy should watch porno. This would be a great way to get rid of all this bullshit. > WH: I totally agree, because the more abstracted the physical contact between people becomes the more the inner life comes to the fore, especially in terms of eroticism. Sitting in front of a computer, you don't have physical contact with anything, it's all virtual. And yet, the eroticism that appears is enormous. It's parallel to the disappearance of physical contact. Yes, I think you're right.
- toxik 4y agoSomething deeply suspect about an AI trying to make the argument that virtual sex is better than actual sex, almost as if they had a vested interest… Hmmm!
- cyphar 4y agoI think AI-Herzog is getting tired of AI-Žižek's shit: > OK, but there's something about this film that you cannot explain in the way you can with other films. Let's say, for example, that I were to take a knife and stab you in the stomach. You would howl and scream and you would look at me and say ‘Why did you do it?’ And you would look in my eyes and you would see something like an ecstatic convulsion of the soul and you would know why I did it. But you cannot say it. And yet we both know why I did it. That's why I think that all these different kinds of attempts at interpretation are a waste of time. It seems that the conversations are recycled from a pool, because I've managed to hit the same conversation upon refreshing a few times.
- quux 4y agoThe FAQ mentions that you're taken to a random point in the pre generated conversation every time you load the site, and a new segment of the conversation is generated every day.
- 404mm 4y agoNow that makes more sense. After a while I had a feeling like I’m listening to two monologues related by a topic.
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- EGreg 4y agoThis is fantastic! I think the more someone bullshits and the more one engages in incoherent rambling, the more GPT-3 can be believable for long stretches of time :)
- kingkawn 4y agoSo so good
- nilaykumar 4y agoA marvelous work of interpassivity [1], I think Zizek might say! Now he can have AI perform his meaning-filled labor for him ;) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev4gwxGkReQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev4gwxGkReQ