AI-Generated George Carlin Drops Comedy Special That Daughter Speaks Out Against: ‘No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius’::Stand-up comedian George Carlin has been brought back to life in an artificial intelligence-generated special called ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead.’
Y’know, I was a pretty big Carlin fan, I had a few of his albums and even saw him live in concert once. I listened to the whole thing while driving, and I thought this was okay. It’s obviously not George Carlin, but it sounded a lot like him, and I can imagine he would approve of many of the jokes. It wasn’t a laugh-a-minute, but I did get lost in it a couple of times and forget that it wasn’t really him, and I did laugh out loud a few times as well. (The joke about the best comedian for AI being Bill Cosby got me!)
Carlin’s comedy was very topical, which doesn’t always translate to today, so having new, up-to-date Carlin bits are actually cool. I can understand his daughter’s apprehension, but at least people are talking about her dad again, so I would think that’s a good thing.
People never stopped talking about her dad. This junk isn’t the boost to the real Carlin’s place in pop culture some are painting it as.
Of course they can’t. But they can and will exploit every single word he’s ever said. Then exploit every idiot who gives said AI product and sense of their attention.
Gotta be a dick here though. If they listen to the honestly lying charade running now then they didn’t hear him when he explained the first time.
This is bullshit, and it’s bad for you.
This is hilarious; everyone saying Carlin would hate this is essentially putting words in his mouth just like Dudesy did, but Dudesy put a lot more effort in.
No, they’re just extrapolating what someone’s feeling on something might be. That’s pretty different than creating an entire comedy special using the voice of a dead guy.
But what does the dead guy have to say about it?
Nothing, he’s dead.
Nobody knows, but he’d probably hate it. I certainly wouldn’t want to put any words in his mouth, then use a computer program to imitate his voice so it seemed as if he were saying those words.
I feel like as an anti capitalist (on the outside) nihilist anarchist insane fuck the world comedian, who is dead, he can’t care. If his daughter can’t sue then this is a circle jerk. When I die what my arrangements take care of is as much as I can control, after that who gives a fuck. I personally think he’d laugh his ass off.
Excellent point.
Literal ghouls.
The man was a genius for sure 100% I loved every bit of all the shit he said.
Honestly he’s a fairly offensive choice as a first target for this sort of venture, but I haven’t watched the thing yet. Doesn’t seem likely it’ll be full of the cutting political satire we associate with him, and the jokes I’ve seen posted from it are tepid af.
fightin’cryin’fuckin’dyin’
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“No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius”
OK, but it’s the closest that we can get at the moment.
Why do we need to get closer at all? He lived, gave us a ton of laughs that we can still enjoy, and died. Leave it at that.
Maybe some enjoy this new content, why gatekeeping?
Maybe listen to one of the many, many other human topical comedians out there today instead?
“Gatekeeping”??? The man is dead. That’s not gatekeeping. People don’t need more “content”, and certainly aren’t entitled to it over his family’s wishes. There’s gotta be a moral floor somewhere.
Because it’s a hot button topic and all the smart people seem to echo this same sentiment.
I listened to it and it’s genuinely not bad (on a content and voice synthesis level), to the point that I have a hard time believing it was entirely AI-generated. If it’s not a fake ghostwritten by the creators, it must have been heavily rerolled and edited to make it so coherent.
I listened to it and it’s genuinely not bad
Of course not. Its predicated on the collected works of a decades-long professional comedian.
If you re-mixed a new screenplay using the combined works of Shakespeare (and called it, idk, West Side Story or 10 Things I Hate About You or The Lion King) you could put together a blockbuster movie fairly easily, too.
If it’s not a fake ghostwritten by the creators, it must have been heavily rerolled and edited to make it so coherent.
The rise of ‘pseudo-AI’: how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots’ work
“Mechanical turk” jobs are way more hellish than any realistic AI dystopia, even though some AI developments use MTurks
Fully agree. There’s absolutely no way his whole bit about guns was generated from an LLM, while including the tangent about Japan. There had to have been a significant amount of leading prompts to get it to that point. At which point, whoever developed those prompts gets (at least partial) credit as a writer
Senior Prompt Engineer
This is in very poor taste.
This is some kind of bad joke right?
That or a lot of very, very bad jokes
Carlin’s entire schtick was anti-intellectual platitudinous. He reminds me of Trump with a sense of humor.
Which jokes of his are anti-intellectual?
For starters, his famous “think of how dumb the average person is, half of people are dumber than that.”
Only a small percent of people would be perceptibly below average. Like single digits. It’s circlejerk humor.
And as far as humor goes, I think he’s great. Just not a genius nor a prophet.
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In a scenario where the average IQ is 200? Do you understand what you’re talking about? You realize that the majority of people are exactly average, with a bit fuzziness, right? No? Then I guess Carlin is for you.
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It’s not though. But I like your take on it, except you butchered it lol
Or can you substantiate that claim with broader context? I can’t remember the setup to the premise.
I guess we could ask Carlinbot.
But how is that anti-intellectual? Maybe it’s literally saying most people aren’t intellects? But taking the literal interpretation of this joke misses the joke as the other guy pointed out.
I’m not reading into it literally, that’s the point. On the surface, Carlin “tells it like it is.” He says things that the people agree with.
You know what? Just look at the praise for Carlin. You’ll see things like “genius” and “prophet” or “brilliant insight.”
Then look at people criticizing him like me. Suddenly people defend his character by pointing out he’s just a comedian, it’s just jokes, judge him as a comedian, it’s not serious, etc.
He’s the Trump of his domain.
You didn’t really answer the question…
I don’t think he was trying to make literal statements with things like that. Yes, he used sociopolitical commentary as his medium, but he was still a comedian.
He’s not trying to convince his audience that everybody is stupid, he’s speaking to a feeling most of us have had when looking at what others are doing. Everyone sometimes feels like like everybody around them must be stupid, just like we all sometimes feel like we’re the only one missing something.
He’s beloved because most really talented comedians can derive humor from relatable or absurd situations and stories, but Carlin could make a rhythm linking broad abstract concepts of human experience to really specific examples.
He’s not a god, he was just a really talented comedian that had a unique style and medium.
If someone tried that with bill hicks we’d all end up in the matrix in a year.
AI can’t smoke cigarettes. So. We’re saved.
Yet.
