The One Thing Of Value I Have

Everything below was originally written to help me come to a conclusion.
TLDR: Significant Digits (the unofficial but Eliezer-Yudkowsky-endorsed sequel to HPMOR) is now being turned into an audiobook by AskWho. You can hear it as it is being completed via a podcast feed, here:
Significant Digits audio
An AI clone of my voice will be used for much of it, with my permission (see below)
[Edit: appropriately, there is now an audio version of this post here, courtesy of AskWho :) ]

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No one needs anyone
They don’t even just pretend
- David Bowie, “I’m Afraid of Americans”

Supply of Infinity, or One

Authors are in a weird position. There are functionally-infinite stories out there. One can read every minute of their lives and not even make a dent in all the good fiction that exists. No author is providing something that isn’t available in limitless supply.

Except many readers don’t just want a good story, they want a good story by a particular author. And in that regard, every author has a monopoly. Eneasz Brodski is the only person that can produce an Eneasz Brodski story. (or blog post, or whatever).

I’m led to believe this extends to all artists. The supply of X-in-general is infinite, and everything you do to provide more of X is functionally worthless… until somehow, very rarely, you find yourself making This-X-in-specific, in which case supply is constrained directly to how many hours you are able/willing to make it, and is dependent entirely upon your single body.

Getting To One

Likely the most impactful thing I’ve done in my life so far is create the full-cast audiobook of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. In some very very niche circles I have a tiny bit of celebrity for this, and people actually know my voice! Only I could make Eneasz Brodski audio. That was my One Thing. While my One Thing is not in huge demand it does at least exist, and that makes me feel special and lucky.

Now AI can do all narration for almost no cost. This is OK with me, I don’t want to do most narration, and I haven’t done any in ages. But I had the comfort of knowing that at least I still had a thing that was special. Even if every text sentence in the world was made into audio, only my body made audio in my voice. I still had my One.

For a few months.

One + one + one… ad nauseam

Voice cloning doesn’t really threaten this. Right? Even though modern printing can make infinite Starry Nights, there is still only one original Starry Night composed of the pigments placed by Van Gogh’s hands on a physical canvas. A billion copies don’t replace that one canvas. Even if every text in the world was AI-read with a voice clone of me, it’s not a recording produced by me. The thing that makes audio narrated by me special is inviolable by mere mimicry. The sacrifice of human life isn’t present and that makes it fundamentally different, and non-rivalrous to the things I do that do sacrifice my life.

And yet. Things in my voice used to be limited to what my body could produce. Every additional piece of AI voice cloned content dilutes the concentration of actual-Eneasz works vs AI-content. When AI-Eneasz things out-number actual-Eneasz things 10 to 1, how valuable are the actual-Eneasz things now? What about 100 to 1, or 100,000 to 1? Why would anyone care about the things I can produce with my own actual vocal cords, when stuff that sounds like me is super-abundant? The one thing I had of value doesn’t feel very valuable anymore.

Sure, maybe when a new novel is produced with an AI Eneasz-clone everyone knows that’s not really an Eneasz artifact…. but mostly what people want in audio works is the sound of the voice. If they can get that without inconveniencing me, maybe that’s even better, actually. When people want Samuel L Jackson berating them from their phones, or Scarlett Johansson comforting them in their earbuds, they don’t care if the actual person said those actual words. They want to feel the emotions that come from hearing a particular familiar voice.

Don’t Be Gollum

How much poorer would the world be if reproductions of Starry Night were impossible, and the only way to see it was to go look at the original work, hopefully being held by someone willing to let others look at it? What is the point of hoarding something that can bring joy to so many? How much are we willing to impoverish the world to soothe the ego of one man?

Gollum just wants to possess his Precious and can’t abide the thought of anyone else touching it or having it. It is his. At least in his case he coveted a physical object which couldn’t be reproduced, it was literally only holdable by one person at a time. What if everyone could have a Precious at no cost, and feel all the joy of owning it? If people would have their lives brightened by hearing a fanfic of a Harry Potter fanfic read in my voice, why take that away from them? It doesn’t cost me anything, why am I snarling and scrabbling?

Just Take The W

Almost anyone else would be honored. People are literally made happy just by hearing my voice! I did that! It was due to lots of work over several years, I should be overjoyed that I can continue to bring more happy feelings without even having to do anything. Honestly I’ll now be reaping the benefits of adding more joy to the world via the efforts of someone else (the person doing the work of translating the text into AI-audio). Bonus value accruing to me, for no extra work.

Also, honestly, what if the AI-Eneasz to Actual-Eneasz ratio did get to 100,000 to 1? That would mean my voice was so pervasive that it had reached all corners of the earth. I should be immensely grateful to whoever made this happen. I’d probably be getting invited to all the best parties with all the coolest Harry Potter fanfic fans cuz everyone’s heard me so much. I’d ask someone to pass the butter and they’d be like “Woah… are you the voice guy??” and I’d have to be like “haha yeah that’s me, I did a thing once,” and it would actually be really awesome. If I actually put out a real-Eneasz narration of something I could advertise it as “Hear the real voice of real Eneasz as he actually reads a thing aloud for the first time in decades! You’ve heard his AI-reproduced everything, now hear the man himself!” and the audience excited for it would be, presumably, closer to 100,000x greater than now than it is to 1x.

So what is the hesitancy?

Alien Doppelganger

First, AI doesn’t make the same choices I make. It wouldn’t choose the same inflections, the same stresses, the same tempo and cadence. Not every time. The only way it could choose those like I would choose them is to have a perfect replica of me, in which case it would just be me (and I’m looking forward to that day! Life in digital at last!). So everything it produces will be slightly off. Alien. A changeling child swapped in by fairies. People who listen to enough of that won’t be listening to me, they’ll be listening to an alien. First, that feels like it degrades whatever tenuous parasocial connection there could have been.

But more importantly, it doesn’t reflect on the quality of my work. Yes, maybe the AI can do this even better than me! But I choose the Path of Cope by choosing to believe the changes will be a bit worse on average. If the people who currently like what I’ve done come to have the emotional reaction to my voice decline in joy over time, I’m losing some of what I gained over the course of that project. :(

Don’t Be Such A Precious Princess

Of course almost none of this is my doing anyway. All the heavy lifting is done by the extremely excellent source material. The only reason I’m anything is because HPMOR is that damn good, and I happened to be the first guy to go all-in on saying those words out loud into a microphone. My value-add is a tiny % here. What if Eliezer had been this precious about his words being turned into audio by someone who isn’t him, who interpreted and presented them differently than he had written them? Not only would there be no audio version, but I’d still be an alcoholic accountant in a Denver suburb.

And I’ve gained a lot from being a member of this community. It’s changed my life at least three different ways. Creating that podcast has opened numerous doors, from the first invitation I got to Burning Man, to meeting the love of my life, and a hundred things in between. I owe so much to the wider rationalist community, my life without them would be unrecognizable. The least I can do is not cling Gollum-like to a weird possessiveness of my voice. A thing that isn’t even that distinct, since the range of human voices is pretty constrained. (According to Zvi, a perfectly suitable voice-twin of me could be found in under 400 auditions). Just let the community cook! They freakin deserve it!

No One Needs Anyone

I think the thing I most fear is being useless. Everyone wants to matter. That means if you left or died, people would notice, and care, and be sadder. You do that by providing value. By being actually needed by your family and community.

Needing something is vulnerable. If you need something that you can’t do yourself, you now depend on whoever or whatever can do that thing. The worst idea in the world is to need your crops to come in every fall, because the year that they don’t everyone dies. The great project of modernity is to reduce what we need from others/the outside to as close to zero as possible so you are completely secure in your life. No one can take away the things you most need, because you don’t depend on anyone but yourself.

This also means that no one needs anyone. Sometimes they don’t even just pretend. When no one needs you, you don’t matter. We’ve created a society of ultimate stability, where all human life is secure and self-sufficient and no one matters. My One Thing was a thing I could do that that was valuable and that no one else could do. As long as I had that, I mattered. At least a little. At least to someone. And now that One Thing is being taken away. I just don’t matter, again.

Well, jokes on me. I never had that thing anyway. And joke’s double on me, it turns out some people value other people for stuff other than a Thing they can do. I guess? I know that I said in the future all art will by hyper-local. People will care about other people specifically, and what those people do, rather than something abstract like “an art” outside of a personal relationship. The future caught up to me, and I’m stuck on the side of the road, shaking my fist at the clouds because I can’t NOT shake, I can’t stop from shaking in terror, and at least if I make it look like that shaking is towards the clouds maybe people will think I’m confused rather than dying inside.

But the future is here, and denying it won’t make it not so. I can be obstinate and lose any good will I’ve built up and watch the world pass me by. Or I can accept that nothing will ever be the same again, get out of the way of people riding the cutting edge, and ride the wake waves for as long as my grip holds out.