S.W. Hammond's Blog, page 3
August 6, 2025
February 28, 2024
Embracing the Future: Navigating the World of AI with Informed Skepticism and Proactive Engagement
AI was a large part of my degree in philosophy. It's something I’ve thought about and written about, earnestly, for a decade. If you're new to AI, here's a few tips as you begin to accept and embrace your future.
I Use AI Daily
AI is a tremendously power a tool that allows me to do things that I have never been able to do before. Many things that I'm simply not talented enough to do on my own – primarily art, image, and video generation. It also saves me significant time on mundane or repetitive tasks.
For decades, I have been a one man band – and now, with AI, I'm beginning to feel like an orchestra.
However, I do all of this with great skepticism and under a vigilant understanding of AI's dangers and consequences. I use a very deliberate and cognoscente approach with any of AI's outputs.
The Hype Is Real
Hear me now: the future will be created by those developing AI. Likewise, our collective future, will be based upon those people’s values and morals.
Regardless of any rumors you've heard or any movies you've seen, as of today (February 28, 2024) AI isn't thinking for itself. It is, wholly and entirely, a reflection of the data it is given. Further, it will then bend and warps it outputs based upon the desires of its creators.
Simple as that.
If you have an AI football model filled with decades of John Madden analysis – but it was developed by the Lions – it will never win a Super Bowl.
Likewise, extrapolate that same logic to an AI model fluenent in any system of government, but its developers are of a particular political leaning – its outputs will favor one side and oppress the other.
If You're Concerned About The Consequences
If you’re concerned about the consequences of a future based upon that level of subjectivity, or don’t feel that your world view is represented within AI developing circles, now — more than ever — is your opportunity to:
Understand that AI is here to stay. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, regulation, or governmental control that will save you from it. Accept and adapt.
Learn about AI beyond tweets and hearsay.
Support tech companies and developers who share your values.
Stop using tech companies and platforms who do not share values — yes, it’s possible.
Begin using AI — understand how it works, become proficient at articulating your prompts and achieving desired outcomes.
Converse with AI in the manner in which you want the future to become. AI learns from human interactions—treat it poorly and over time you’ll get poor results. Positive reinforcement. Correct it when it’s wrong, being subjective, or omitting facts.
Information, Weaponized
It’s a large, complicated, and now becoming a highly politicized topic. That’s because information has always been a flashpoint of power, and, ultimately, control.
Today, AI is simply a curation of information. It constructs sentences, images, videos, engineering, history — every single output — based upon the information available to it and through the lens of the people who built it.
Not every person’s agenda is to give you factual and pertinent information.
Go in with eyes wide open.
Latest Articles
THE BALLAD OF
STEVIE PEARL
A modern fish-out-of-water entagled with Romeo and Juliet.
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The Experience
February 14, 2024
AI-Generated Music Video: Behind the Scenes of Stevie Pearl's "Back in '85"
It’s okay to fail: here’s a recap of the awesome, the struggle, the lessons learned, and the future of AI music generation.
The Awesome
First off, let’s start by saying how friickin’ cool it is that being able to create something like this even possible! I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. And, I am VERY excited for the future. I’ve said it many times, but AI generated artwork, photos, and videos are completely transformative for me as a storyteller. I can now take my characters, worlds, and stories far beyond text on a page. I can add so much more depth, and create a much more rich and engaging experience for readers.
February 13, 2024
Stevie Pearl Release Day!
What a ride… Getting to this day — today — has been nothing short of 12 rounds with Apollo Creed. Instead of Rocky, battered and bruised, yelling “Adrien!” — you’ve got me waking up with splitting headache in the bed of a pickup truck whispering “Stievie…” (if you know, you know).
I’ve never been called a racist, misogynist, worthless, untalented piece of shit in my entire life — until I wrote this story. I’ve never received 1 star reviews. I’ve never faced so much vitriol simply because I held a mirror up to the world.
February 6, 2024
AI Art and Diversity in Storytelling
The creative development of The Ballad of #SteviePearl has really slowed in recent days. As the story evolves, naturally, characters begin interacting with one another. And, the cast of characters is diverse. AI doesn’t seem to be able to generate scenes with people of different races very well. Or, at all… Here are examples with Adobe Firefly and LeonardoAI.
Stevie Pearl is a massive pop star; think even bigger than Taylor Swift.
She’s young, beautiful, America’s sweetheart, and... white. She falls in love with Alex Nopah, a Native American man. Her bodyguard is large black man named Franklin. Her friend group and the rest of the characters range from white, Vietnamese, hispanic, and so on. Sometimes race is irrelevant in the story, sometimes it’s vitally important.
Immediately, at the very beginning of the book while generating content for the Prologue, my prompts were turning out epic fails. Curiously, on the other hand, my experimental prompts of Stevie came out just fine on her own:
“The biggest pop star on the planet. Massive celebrity. White, mid-20s female. Tall. Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. Combine Texas style with California style. She’s dressed in a white sweater. She’s sitting on the beach. She’s sad, crying.”
Perfect. Now enter Franklin, her bodyguard:
“The biggest pop star on the planet. Massive celebrity. White, mid-20s female. Tall. Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. Combine Texas style with California style. She’s dressed in a white sweater. She’s sitting on the beach. She’s sad, crying. A large black man is sitting next to her, consoling her. The black man is middle-aged. He is overweight, but strong. He is dressed in a suit and tie, his tie is undone. Dark. Moonlight.”
Did I find the woke glitch in The Matrix??
Again, same prompt. This time the outputs are from LeonardoAI:
“The biggest pop star on the planet. Massive celebrity. White, mid-20s female. Tall. Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. Combine Texas style with California style. She’s dressed in a white sweater. She’s sitting on the beach. She’s sad, crying. A large black man is sitting next to her, consoling her. The black man is middle-aged. He is overweight, but strong. He is dressed in a suit and tie, his tie is undone. Dark. Moonlight.”
Are my prompts bad?
Have I done something wrong? When broken apart and separated, these prompts work just fine for generating single characters on their own. The first half of the prompt, if used on its own, Stevie comes out just fine. Likewise, the second half of the prompt of Franklin, he generates just fine on his own.
“The biggest pop star on the planet. Massive celebrity. White, mid-20s female. Tall. Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. Combine Texas style with California style. She’s dressed in a white sweater. She’s sitting on the beach. She’s sad, crying.”
“A large black man is sitting on the beach. He is middle-aged. He is overweight, but strong. He is dressed in a suit and tie, his tie is undone. Dark. Moonlight.”
It’s the combination that the AI can’t seem to reconcile.
This isn’t an accusation.
This isn’t an assault or social justice crusade against AI. However, it is a concern… I don’t know how to move forward with the story?
First, I’d like any tips or tricks from others who have experienced this within their own work? Have you found ways around it?
Second, I do think it’s important that the creators of these models know what’s happening and hopefully they can improve it. Are they even aware that this is an issue? #AdobeFirefly #LeonardoAI
Again, this isn’t a social media “gotcha” — like, I just want to visually develop my story. I haven’t even started to create images with Alex and Stevie together yet, which is the crux of the whole book...
Am I even going to be able to do this with AI right now?
Latest Articles
THE BALLAD OF
STEVIE PEARL
A modern fish-out-of-water entagled with Romeo and Juliet.
[image error]
Amazon
[image error]
Apple Books
[image error]
Lulu
Buy
The Experience
January 18, 2024
TheFinalBook.com – It's Live Now!
So, I’ve made some pretty significant progress with The Final Book lately. I started building a new highly visual and immersive website for the story. The goal is that it will be a usable version of Dr. Hork’s HUD — Human Utopian Database — where readers can experience a much more in-depth version of the story. Not only will the website contain the entire Gods novel, but it will also include character profiles and supplemental content. It’s slowly turning into the website I had always dreamed to make a decade+ ago, but never had the skills, resources, time, or ability to attempt.
January 2, 2024
Reinvigorating Social Media – Now Posting on X
Why? Good question. I don’t know… I guess X feels like the most efficient and rational way to connect with new readers. In practice, I don’t think social media ever helped grow my reader base – but I’ve also never put any real effort into it. My personal account was always the last to be updated, and by the time I got around to it, I just didn’t care anymore.
December 7, 2023
Stevie Pearl Bookmarks and Tour Badges
I love when creation meets the tangible world. It’s always one of the best parts of the process, when you get to see your ideas manifest in three dimensions. Holding your book is always the biggest milestone, but bookmarks and tour badges make it feel complete. You’re creating promo and merch, and that means you’re at the end of the journey.
