It’s a very modern conjurer’s trick: create an SXSW chat out of thin air, with the help of generative AI. That’s what Whurley did this year in Austin.
A staple of the Austin tech scene, Whurley took nine weeks to create and prepare for a keynote address at SXSW 2018, where Strangeworks would debut, a quantum computing startup that he co-founded and runs. Five years later, the generative AI would complete the task in just a few hours.
And it was actually quite good. The 45-minute speech was comprehensive, engaging, and whurley-like in tone. There was a swear word (fuck) and a few jokes (including two from lawyers) that the audience laughed at. It seemed like the hardest part, at least while he was on stage, was reading the script the AI had provided him from his tablet. (Whurley is known for his easygoing style on the SXSW stage, where he’s a regular.)
The kicker? He waited until the end to give the shot.
“Everything today, from the slides to the speech I’m reading now, is created by generative AI,” he said onstage before explaining how and why of it all. A murmur of whispers, surprises and laughter spread through the room filled with hundreds of SXSW attendees.
Strangeworks could be the first startup to harness generative AI for all of its content on and off stage at SXSW. And while it’s a fun and novel demo, the experiment also illustrates the flexibility of AI tools and their growing popularity.
Why bother? Exposure and education, Whurley told TechCrunch this week after the event.
“We are on the brink of the greatest period of technological advancement in human history. I feel like people are not only unprepared for this, they are not even aware of what is happening. I wanted to put a spotlight on that,” he said. “We are going to see more change in the next decade than in the last 100 years. People can say all they want, but the technological change that is about to happen cannot be stopped. The convergence of quantum computing and AI will be a step function, if not several step functions, for scientific discovery and advancement.”
The process
The experiment began like many, with a limited scope. Whurley used generative AI in October 2022 to write a description of his SXSW talk titled “Quantum AI: why your future depends on quantum computing and artificial intelligence.” And no, he didn’t tell the SXSW organizers.
“This all started with a notice,” he said while onstage. “I said to write an 800 word South by Southwest summary. Here’s the concept, here’s a title I gave it and some points and everything you see on the South by Southwest website was created by ChatGPT. And I introduced it.”
ChatGPT is the image and text comprehension AI model powered by GPT 3.5 and developed by OpenAI. A new version of the underlying engine, GPT-4, was released on March 14.
His indication was:
Write an 800-word abstract for a SXSW keynote for a session called “QuantumAI: Why Your Future Depends on the Convergence of Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence” in which the speaker discusses advances in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, the challenges facing our species, and the inevitable convergence that may lead to quantum super intelligence that will forever change our world.
Just days before the SXSW highlight session, Whurley decided to go further. He asked the AI to use the summary to create an outline of what the presentation would look like. After some tinkering (or “redo,” as he calls it), the scheme met with his approval.
Your indication:
This is great, I need to present enough slides to discuss this topic for an hour. Can you suggest what a potential outline would be for a 1 hour talk on this?
Whurley shared it with his team at Strangeworks and they collectively decided to go all-in. “At the time, I told them that the plan was to start with everything needed for the keynote tomorrow at 11:30 am,” he told TechCrunch.
Strangeworks creative team Casey Barthels, Nicole Majeske and Ada Onyiuke used Midjourney, an AI generative art tool, to create the presentation slides and graphics. And then they upped the ante again by having Midjourney create the story and graphics in a seven-page print publication featuring Strangeworks mascot Schrody Cat. The publication was handed out to attendees.
Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec
“And then the night before last, I thought if I did an outline, the abstract and all the slides, why can’t we just put words in my mouth too?” he said. Whurley took all of his previous input and fed it into GPT-4, which launched Tuesday.
In other words, what would become the final script, graphics, and slides were created the morning of the main presentation. And they cut it close. “When we got to the hotel around 11 am sharp, I took the final version of the script, cut it and pasted it into the teleprompter software I had downloaded to my iPad,” he wrote to TechCrunch in a text after the event. .
“It’s certainly the biggest risk I’ve ever taken at SXSW,” he said.
Generative AI was also used to create whurley personal website, which debuted on Wednesday, blogging hundreds in Whurley’s voice. She worked with Big Human collaborator David Hudson on the blog project.
Those blogs were removed to make way for another project that launched Thursday. The Strangeworks CEO ran the notice through ChatGPT again, this time asking him to publish the website and blogs in 10 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Italian, and Arabic.
Whurley said the response has been overwhelmingly positive. She noted that some anti-AI/tech people have made snide comments or veiled threats via social media, but “once again, naysayers are few and far between.”
