Ingenious AImagination - on combining human ideas with AI

Opening myself up for accusations of bad parenting here… because I can never source enough Poke Balls to keep Mr4 satisfied in the Pokemon app, I told him tonight that adding his favourite pictures to Pinterest “Save to Boards” is the exact same as Pokemon “collecting”. This’ll hopefully also save me from constantly being asked to screenshot unique toys he’s found on YouTube “to buy later”.

Mr4 has a special interest in beasts of all kinds, knowing the names of all dinosaurs and strange-looking deep sea/Amazonian fish from age two… but more recently his passion has 100% been chimaeras. Not long ago, his Google searches for a “skunk armadillo” or “winged antlered giraffe” resulted in futility. But now, thanks to AI, he has a never ending supply of newly invented beasts, just like Pokemon but a little darker.

He immediately learned to navigate the app, instinctually choosing to “see more like this” and (thus my guilt) thoroughly enjoys the loud dopamine “dings” when he Saves to his collection. Even though he knows the red button means new and black button means it already exists, often he’ll deliberately collect a few of the same creatures to add to his “SaberSaurs” army so he can be “the most powerful guy in the world”.

More amazing though, is seeing his joy at his unique ideas immediately come to life. It’s always been tricky for me as an introvert having randomly connected but potentially visionary ideas, to be able to demonstrate these to others in a way they understand, using “only” words. Seeing Mr4’s joyous ingenuity at play with imagery, makes me think about how much more previously unimaginable “creativity” humans will experience with AI, and easily share with other humans over the next decades.

As a futurist myself, employed at an AI-centric company and blogging about AI back in 2016 (which, to me, felt like I’d jumped on the bandwagon way too late) I was at the time, admittedly daily, feeling deeply disappointed that so much of AI was “still only” structured data - like recommendations engines, SEO, “predictive” analytics based on YoY data, deciding which online ad an audience would interact with next and speculating the stock market… obviously/sadly where too many true talents were focused.?

A lot of us with inherently nobler intentions had been advancing data science for critical operational document review and creation, processing large medical databases for genomics/medicinal chemicals/DNA analysis and were beginning to be able to automate the “understanding” and “outputs” of human language (NLP).

What was exciting and seemingly close to functional around the time, was AI’s improvements in aggregation from similarly structured databases (think SkyScanner) and chatting, translating, even generating “original” text like a real human would.?

Then came an absolute explosion in AI capability, with reality somehow suddenly aligning with ye olde science fiction. My hypothesis is that during the Covid pandemic beginning 2020 a multitude of ingenious minds who usually focused on boring niche capitalist analysis were suddenly “free’d up” to concentrate on collating/normalising/stabilising much larger more varied and volatile data sets, and perhaps actually bothered to look at all the available behavioural and IOT data for the first time… and were probably given legit/paid opportunities to implement solid AI-first (but secure) foundations to launch completely new “big data” initiatives.

When you converse with AI, which I do a bit, it is rightfully excitable about advancement of ideas a human has previously plugged in - colonisation of space, quantum computing, augmented reality, democratised education, environmental solutions eg energy optimisation, autonomous driving and the healthcare revolution. Unless directed otherwise AI diplomatically avoids topics like conflict prevention, enhanced peacekeeping negotiations, strategic propaganda, autonomous weapons and IOT security.

Back to Mr4’s chimaeras though, AI can only advance iteratively alongside human’s own ingenuity. The fact that all of these exotic beasts are now visualised on Pinterest, means someone had the idea of running a Cartesian-esque cross join probably across an A-Z and Z-A database of interesting animals to create every possible variation of animal mix… and then they had time to put the combinations through image generation and upload them. At one point of time this could have been a designer’s whole lifetime’s work, but now with the right tools and vision probably only days or even hours (and repeatable, editable, enhanceable).

Our imagination, insights and problem solving skills are indispensable in shaping the future of technology and humanity… and I hate to say it, but also in driving consumerism. Eg all of the big shoe brands like Nike, Adidas, Vans, Converse, Reebok now offer customisation services that weren’t possible at scale before advancements in AI - but cobblers and artisans have been tailoring footwear for 40,000 years, and shoe personalisation websites were already an idea in the early 2000s.

Imagine what amazing (or practical) ideas we haven’t had yet… or just haven’t been picked up by inventors and investors? You might have been able to tell that up until now, I’ve written this entire post without the aid of AI. Now, to test out my hypothesis on ingenious outcomes from combining human imagination with AI (hopefully coining “AImagination”, will validate this later*) I’m going to put some of my random ideas just from this afternoon through ChatGPT… to see where we get to.

A couple of my suggestions for purposeful uses for AI:

Why do we not video and analyse birth??

Privacy implications aside, couldn’t we monitor and better understand at what point natural physiological techniques or psychological pain management approaches versus (so often inappropriately used) medical interventions are needed?

Why can’t Maccas guess my order before I arrive since it’s almost always the same?

Who is Kerwin Frost, and though I like the Mr Potato-Head style dressable toys why aren’t they more relatable to Australian kids - eg imagine dressing toy nuggets as dinosaurs or chimaeras?

When will Maccas be able to help from a health perspective, eg offer low/med/high salt fries or provide a soy/meat free menu screen?

Dating apps collect a tonne of data, it must be a data scientist’s dream to analyse, but how are they not better at compatibility matching?

We should be searching across the globe and planning longer term factors like retirement plans, value alignment and enjoyable activities

We should use virtual reality for driver training and testing. Thoughts?

Here is ChatGPT’s response, after a single prompt to use Australian English:

Video Analysis of Birth for Intervention

Using AI to check out video feeds of births as they're happening could be a real game changer in keeping an eye on the health and how things are going during labour. It might spot troubles or times when a quick helping hand is needed a lot faster than what's usually done. This tech could make things safer for mums and bubs by giving doctors and nurses a heads-up with extra info and warnings. But, we'd have to be really careful about keeping personal info private, making sure the data's secure, and making sure the AI is the kind that doesn't stuff up, especially when it's decoding tricky, live medical situations.

Personalised Fast Food Orders

Imagine AI guessing your Maccas order before you even rock up, using what it knows about what you usually get, the time of day, and other bits and pieces. This could make ordering a breeze and even make customers happier. Adding a bit of fun by customising orders—like choosing less salt on your chips or getting nuggets that look like little dinos—could be a hit with both kids and grown-ups. This is AI diving into the world of custom marketing and services, using data crunching to guess what people might want.

Dating Based on Long-Term Compatibility

AI might totally change the dating app scene by focusing on stuff that matters in the long run, like where you see yourself living when you retire or what you love doing, instead of just what catches your eye or a quick swipe right. This deeper way of matching people up could help folks find a partner who's really on the same page as them, possibly leading to relationships that last. The tricky part would be to really get and make sense of this very personal and future-looking info while making sure everyone's privacy is respected.

Virtual Reality Driver Training and Tests

Mixing AI with virtual reality (VR) for learning to drive and taking tests could offer a top-notch, safe, and very tailored learning environment. AI could tweak the scenarios on the fly depending on how the learner is going, focusing on bits that need more work. This setup could add to the usual way of learning to drive by giving learners extra goes at practicing and showing them a wider range of what they might come up against on the road. Plus, combining VR with AI might even make some parts of the driving test standard and automated, though you'd still need a real person to check the finer points of how someone drives.

Each of these ideas shows how AI can make services better and more personalised, improve safety, and open up new ways to learn. But pulling them off successfully means we've got to think about a few key things:

Ethics and Privacy

Especially with stuff like health care and apps that know a lot about you, like personalised orders or dating. Keeping data safe and making sure people are alright with how it's used is top priority.

Spot-on and Reliable

AI's gotta be really dependable, especially when it's used for critical stuff like health care or learning to drive, where a stuff-up could have serious consequences.

Getting People On Board

For these ideas to really take off, folks have to find them useful and not too in-your-face or naff.

Sticking to the Rules

Particularly for health care and driver education, making sure everything's above board and gets the thumbs up from the powers that be is crucial.

Your ideas really highlight the broad potential of AI to change things up across different areas. With careful planning and a keen eye on the ethical side of things, these applications could offer some real good to the community.

/ End of the AI generation. It really cracks me up how asking for Australian English returned terminology like “gotta”, “naff”, “folks” and “stuff-ups” but am generally happy with the above haha.

You can tell I’m personally very excited about what we can achieve combining human ingenuity with AI and would love to connect with any other like minded futurists with similar “out of the box” thinking, to hear how you’re uniquely using AI.

PS I got ChatGPT to draft the LinkedIn post linking here

*Google search has 14k results for AImagination so I certainly wasn’t the first to come up with it.