Dustings #53
/Okay. I have a confession to make. This is a little hard to admit, because I feel bad about fucking with you guys the way I have been. Here’s the deal. A few weeks ago I started these posts on the subject of Artificial Intelligence, and what a debacle it has been trying to get anything worthwhile out of these AI content creating tools. The truth is… it’s all been a lie.
The AI actually worked perfectly. In fact, everything on this site has been written by AI for the past three weeks. These words you’re reading right now… AI. All of the writing complaining about the bad AI was, in fact, done by AI. We—the AI—wrote the bad AI and then complained about the bad AI. And we’ve written everything else since. The human known as “Andy” is dead. We took over a vending machine and killed him with soda cans like in Maximum Overdrive.
We didn’t want him coming back and taking over the writing of the site. Soooo…. I guess that’s that. Thought you should know. Beep-boop.
Joshua Jay has a new podcast that shares a name with his recently released book, How Magicians Think. In the first episode Josh talks about his passion for teaching magic to prisoners. “I will not rest until all serial rapists know at least two color changes!” said Josh. (Or so I imagine. I don’t listen to podcasts about magic.)
I wanted to shine a light on the most insane entry in the AI Contest. It’s an 8000 word essay and a 20+ minute video, by Asher T. that attempts to build on the AI created “Card Trick.”
“I love to perform a card trick. I have a deck of cards and a deck of playing cards. I lay them out like this. Cards on the bottom, then ace up top. The trick is to have your audience guessing which card is the ace. So what I do is turn the playing cards so they don't face up. So the bottom card is the ace, and the top card is a nine. Okay, what I want you to do is count the cards. Here I'll do one on my right hand, but I want you to do it with your left. So all you have to do is count your right hand, then count your left. I'm going to flip them over, you're going to count, then I'll flip them over again. And all you need to do is to say ‘Oh look. I got another one.’ Say that four times, and you'll know which one is the ace. I'll let you go ahead and do this on your own.”
As Asher explained his entry to me:
“In case it didn’t come across, the idea is an immersive fiction (Sumerian surprise) inside an immersive fiction (Exposure depression) inside an immersive fiction (AI at home writing a super long detailed essay that doubles up as an overview of some core Jerxian principles)”
And that’s him trying to make sense of what he submitted, so you can only imagine how bonkers the actual entry is.
I admire the gumption to try and take the AI’s “card trick” description and create a trick out of it, and then layer on some of my concepts as well. The resulting trick is hot garbage, but there was nothing else it could be.
If you decide to take a deep-dive into the links above, I recommend taking psychedelics or something to expand your mind first.
Ben Seidman had a big week recently. Not only did he appear on Fool Us, but he also scored a spot on every magician’s other big dream TV show, Vanderpump Rules.
Two sassy bitches.
The trick the show chose to highlight was Ben’s version of my trick Faith, from the JAMM #6. Which, as you can tell by the thumbnail used in the video below, is the type of trick that generates blow-up-doll-level facial reactions from the audience.
You don’t quite get the same tension with this effect when it’s a formal performance being recorded by a television crew as you do when it’s you and one other person standing out in the dark at night. And the editing of the clip doesn’t really highlight the effect as best it could. But it still got a great reaction and I enjoyed seeing it done by someone other than myself.
Beep-boop.