DEEP SCRATCH

Tag: Markov Chains

  • Decentralized Cognitive Commons

    Decentralized Cognitive Commons

    Text graphic featuring the phrase 'Decentralized Cognitive Commons' and an illustration of a brain, attributed to 'Fly Agaric 23', with the website 'deepscratch.net' at the bottom.
    Graphic representation of a digital interface showcasing 'Twin Holographic Turntables' and details of a performance by Steve Fly. It features elements such as a cosmic background, turntable controls, and performance timings.
    A digital interface displaying information about 'Mycellial Dharma Super-Cluster' and 'Cultivating Super-Colonies', featuring a 3D network visualization, performance metrics, and instructional text on building cognitive ecosystems.
    A digital interface titled 'Decentralized Cognitive Commons' featuring sections on AI and digital feudalism, with interactive 3D elements and a percentage bar indicating progress.

    The original post by Ben is highly recommended and essential reading, before engaging with this remix (down to 18 steps, skipping 1 and 2). This here is the original recording from the original artist. Thanks Ben. https://bengoertzel.substack.com/p/beneficial-agi-in-20-steps

    Read more: Decentralized Cognitive Commons

    Thanks to Ben who, I hope, won’t mind too much in my remixing his words and ideas using the LLM’s he points out are limited, in some sense. What is to be done about AI, AGI, ASI and big tech? What can we the people do, where can we find agency, transform the planet, humanity and culture toward a utopian process of natural abundance, obviously and demonstrably beneficial to all? For example: clean abundant water for all. Adequate abundant and free housing and shelter for all. Free abundant health care and social care and medical assistance for all. Free comprehensive education, learning, and practical skills classes for all. Free inclusion and equal contribution to the allocation process of shared resources, governance protocols (both digital and non-digital) in local environments, for all. All to mean in the terminology of Buckminster Fuller: All-Around-The-World-Humanity. All to mean all, not some but not all.

    The Google Gemini Research paper I cooked up this morning (07/10/26), was a cheeky remix of something Ben Goertzel posted concerning 20 (non simple) steps to “to minimize pre-Singularity transition destructive-chaos and smooth our path toward an abundant and wonderful post-Singularity world for human, nonhuman and posthuman beings”. Amen to that. So my question in the form of a prompt was: “Help me create a communicable path towards beneficial and safe AGI, which the layman or average human being can contribute to. How can independent researchers, artists, poets, writers and musicians help steer this technology?” I made an executive decision to miss steps 1and 2 to produce 18 steps.

    The results of this Google Gemini Deep Research query, quickly kicked me in the nuts and inspired this call for an emergency meeting, or round table discussion about whether or not we wish to play, get in the game. How we might confront and steer the imminent technological singularity, for the benefit of all humanity.

    Like many of you reading this, I’m well over-saturated and fed up to the back-teeth with big tech and big gov and big men talking impassionately about how beneficial they’re technology is. Meanwhile demonstrably enshittifying everything. Yet, a new model for beneficial AI, safe, ethical, moral, altruistic, for the betterment of the many not the few, seems possible. At least, if you don’t believe much in that, then what about the tech bros? Surely not a dystopian entropic slow heat-death of humanity and the planet. Not on my watch.

    These honest questions are suitably naive in some sense, non-technical and aimed at producing something an 8 or 80 year old could understand. I’m talking about myself, a non-technical layman and self confessed musician-poet with a keen interest in technology and humanities.

    Also perhaps noteworthy here are my previous Gemini Research Papers and my publications of them, notably MAMMALIAN (31/08/25) and Between The Groove (01/05/25) Tail Ov Tribee (07/07/26). Between them these cover a lot of ground and provide my own strong suspicions about beneficial AI, AGI, ASI etc. Somewhat confusingly criss-crossing between fiction and non-fiction depending from where in spacetime you are perceiving the messages. These works are largely unedited Gemini Research papers, collected, introduced, titled and published with full disclosure about the AI used. The least amount of good-faith gesture I could pay and a demonstration I hope of my honesty, when it comes to the disclosure of where an idea originated for me, how I communicate it, and why.

    I mean to say, please visit the original 20 step outline by Ben Goertzel at his Substack. If you haven’t already, dive in and have a look at what he’s doing, how he’s doing it, and why. What I have done is simply ask a question to re-interpret these steps, for a wider audience of non-technical humans, and for independent artists, poets, musicians, and humanitarians, or those close to my own field of study, but not limited to.

    Finally I fess up that I produced a nice and terse remix of my findings in the form of a roughly two hour audio-visual presentation, I could get behind, with a little help from my friends. You.
    I’ve included the Presentation Doc, The Gemini Research Doc, and MAMMALIAN collection as exhibits for your consideration and added context, previous LLM collaborations..

    What am I asking for? Nothing but the continuation of what you’re doing. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’m just over here saying I see you, and I hope you don’t mind me adding you to a dream team of quality critters. Yes, I confess a vanity project, yet at the same time I hope a small contribution and explicit effort to steer ‘whatever the hell this thing is” towards the beneficial for all…side of technology. A truly decentralized, rotational, altruistic and without any shadow of a doubt, beneficial to all…super intelligence or technology or AI god whatever you want to call it. Human health, sanity, healing, climate renewal, tackling carbon challenges, protecting wildlife and human life, first. I think it can be relatively simple for a huge majority of humans on earth to agree, if only THEY could all be fairly and equally consulted.

    The global campaign to help people across all strata of society better understand technology, AI and how to responsibility, fairly and safely use it for their benefit, with trust and good faith in their local communities and as perceived internationally maybe the challenge of our times. Besides the actual engineering and eventual use of whatever goddess-like AGI ASI thingymajig gets cooked up, the interpretation and access to good balanced fair and factual information remains critical. We can agree. A good fair honest balanced media landscape, educational system and government and private protocol remains critical. Change now, or change later, but change you will.

    –Lotsa love. Fly.

    P.s Only two days after writing this I started my first Vibe Coding experiments, using the latest Gemini Aragon model. For the purpose of correspondences with this particular project, I helped steer the construction of the Decentralized Cognitive Commons web app.
    https://sites.google.com/view/decentralizedcognitivecommons/full-page-embed

    18/10/26

    https://sites.google.com/view/decentralizedcognitivecommons/full-page-embed

  • dj flai mix of original deep scratch music

    dj flai mix of original deep scratch music

    After nearly two decades under development, Deep Scratch is here/over there. The interplay of audio and text and image as I first envisioned it in the early 2000s. The audio side of this equation has been lacking due to various reasons, including limited access to instruments, equipment and recording facilities. New generative a.i., tools (Udio) have allowed me to produce music to precisely fit the narrative I have constructed in the novel Deep Scratch. A collaborative, self-replicating magical code that generates audio from text. This year, Udio made science fiction into fact.

    After constructing over 160 separate pieces of music, I mixed the Deep Scratch tunes together into 4 separate mixes, or audio chapters. Over 3 hours of original music that only exists here, a kind of science “sonic” fiction. Cuts selected from the Deep Scratch Universe, that reflect the sounds, styles and arrangements of classic DJ mixtapes and beat tapes from the mid to late 1990’s, and early naughties.

    (A third book in the Deep Scratch Universe will be released sometime during late summer 2024, further contextualizing and organizing the multimedia multiverses.)

    Thanks to everybody at my patreon page, who has stuck with me over the last 6-7 years as I’ve been going on and on about this Deep Scratch Universe, without truly launching any Deep Scratch Audio. Now, the soundtrack to the novel is established via a new series of DJ mixes (all add free).

    flai mix chapter one
    FLAI MIX CHAPTER TWO
    FLAI MIX CHAPTER THREE
    FLAI MIX CHAPTER FOUR

    The fourth chapter features raps, of which I’m conscious sound nothing like my own voice, and/or rap cadence or delivery. These are my own words, taken from my book of collected poems (to be published) spanning 2004 – 2024. As a fan of hip hop, rap and hip hop DJ styles and productions, mixtapes and live eclectic DJ sets, I’d like to give a shout out to all the artists, MCs and producers, that some of these tracks sound like (to my ear). That’s besides the thousands of artists and musicians who came before, those who innovated, originated and recorded the music: blues, jazz, soul, funk, gospel, rock and roll, folk, bluegrass, film music, classical music, vocal harmony music, world music, from the 20s through to the 2020s. All the music within the data sets or set (?) that the generative AI has been trained on. 

    Support your local independent musicians and music venues whenever possible. Respect your artistic ancestors and their struggles and sacrifices made to bring original art into the world. Try to keep in mind that generative A.I. does not sample the music in the conventional sense of that concept, although the process is a kind of sampling, these sounds are made from granulated probability functions, if I understand the process correctly. I hope the turntablist, scratch and juggle and cut-up approach of the eclectic DJ adds a new context to the use of generative AI, a part of the evolution of the art of the DJ and their place in between producer artist and audience. Perhaps better defined as curator, or boss of their own label or catalog of recordings, to be mixed and remixed, blended or released as an album or single. Also consider that all my music using collaborative AI did not use any artist names. Any likeness to artists living or dead is purely probabilistic coincidance.      
     
    In no particular order, thanks to: Sample Hooligans: Coldcut and the original 90s Ninja Tune artists, DJs and turntable journeymen. To Mo-Wax records, and the Psychonauts, and their DJ sets and productions. To the Bristol massive, purple penguin records, Massive Attack Soundsystem, Portishead, DJ Andy Smith (the only turntable artist included in a successful UK band), Melankolic records, Cup Of Tea records, and all that dub infused instrumental jazz tinged hip hop, Grand Central records in Manchester, Dorado records and artists, Warp records and artists, Aphex Twin, Square Pusher, Big Dada records, Acid Jazz records, Jazzman records, BBE records, 4th And Broadway Records, Two Lone Swordsmen, Sabres Of Paradise, Black Dog, Future Sounds Of London, DJ Krush music, DJ Shadow music, Invisible Scratch Pickle mix tapes, The Beat Junkies, Lauryn Hill, The X-ecutioners, Ohm records, Amoeba Record shop, Soulsides Crew, The Pharcyde, 3rd Eye Foundation, Hieroglyphics Crew, Del The Funky Homosapien, MF Doom, Wu Tang, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Bill Laswell Productions, Spectre, Lord Finesse, Rakim, Pharoah Monch, LEX records, Kool Keith, Public Enemy, Mr. Liff, Future Primitive Sound, DJ Z-Trip, The Nomadic Massive, We Funk, Funkmaster Flex MixTapes, The Roots Crew, Black Thought, El-P, Company Flow, Saul Williams, New Flesh, Juice Aleem, Rodney P, Scratch Pervert DJs, Jazz Fudge Records, DJ Vadim, Part 2, Invisible Spies, Channel One, Lee Scratch Perry, Ultimate Dilemma, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Roots Manuva, Courtney Pine, Talkin’ Jazz, Charlie Dark, UNKLE, Steve Task and Bear, Stump Juice Wolverhampton, The Steering Wheel Birmingham, Fabric, Cargo, Luke Vibert, DJ Food, DJ Spooky, J Swinscoe, Rockers Hi-Fi, Different Drummer records, Tempest Records, The Plastic Factory records, Swordfish Records, Eddie Otchere, Source Distribution, J Saul Kane, DJ Moneyshot, DJ Yoda, The Jazz Stage Glastonbury, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, Funki Porcini. And those I missed out.      

    For nearly 3 decades I’ve supported all of the above artists by way of buying their records, tickets to shows and speaking highly of them, turning on other DJs and audiences to their music. This does not necessarily give me any more of a license to use generative a.i., with a clear conscience, but…I’ve paid dues and can trace my evolution toward this moment via my 2 decade Deep Scratch experiment.

    The next step in the on-going process is to plan for some traditional analogue music recording sessions with musicians and vocalists and videographers, to take back control from the generative AI, bringing it back to the human community of creative beings. Easier said than done, and requiring resources and planning and work. This process hammers home the point that AI can be used to bring human beings together, not divide.

     —Steve Fly
    Amsterdam.

    https://deepscratch.net
    https://www.patreon.com/stevefly

  • Soulstice 22 With Stable Diffusion

    Since my previous post Felt Against The Machine, the text to image weak A.I.’s have made a large dent in the culture of art and creativity, the philosophy of art…what is good, what IS art? What is bad? Who can answer these questions.

    This latest series, which I helped birth in some sense, I put some effort into editing them slightly, framing them, naming them, but not really claiming them (these are collaborative generative waltz’s) in celebration of the Winter Solstice 2022. Enjoy. Wishing you a merry Solstice.

    –Steve Fly