MidJourney AI Art

Astrocytoma Blog Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

There is nothing more complicated in this world than perception.

ATRX - IDH1 - TP53

This might sound kind of funny but I’ve got two therapists right now. One was assigned by my medical insurance after my surgery and radiation on my Astrocytoma. The other one I’ve known for the last 11 years. I’m so surprised how they’re interpreting things. They’ve both been helping me process what I’ve been through for the last 8 months. I’m incredibly thankful for them. They’ve both been able to get me to process different emotions than just terror and fear. Something about talking to two people who are professional therapists just feels like a statistical anomaly. I understand that medical insurance covering one is a bit of an extreme, let alone my full-time job brings me the medical insurance and the income to pay for two.

I could sit here all day, writing about things we discussed that I found helpful. But I don’t think either of them are aware of the most incredible way they helped me. They both have these tiny little expressions that show me something unique about them. They both have differences in belief systems that have had an impact on me. I don’t necessarily mean religion, but they’ve both been so expressive and advisatory that now I understand and think about things differently… 

One has advised me not to use the doomsday lady’s name online. Whatever I do, don’t report her. He believes I could be sued if something impacts her career. I must not challenge her because it would affect me financially. I should never share the number of recordings I made with her. If I share them, I could get sued. 

“Nothing is more important than your health… except for your money.” - Ferengi Rule of Acquisition: Number 23. 

The other has my diagnosis from the doomsday Jennie Talyor at UCSF. He believes she’s a fool who has no idea about my diagnosis. That I must use her name publicly and immediately report her. I am being over-treated because I agreed to her dishonorable treatment. I should ask her to give me the recordings she undoubtedly has herself to embarrass her among her colleagues.

“The person who kills without showing their face has no honor.” - Klingon Proverb.

I believe that the word “disease” is misaligned with my diagnoses and that it aligns closer to the opportunity of the unknown. That is what makes me human, to make myself more than I am.

This is going to be hard to explain, and you may see why I’m seeing multiple therapists. But hear me out. This project is expanding my knowledge in a way and at a speed that is difficult to explain. It seems like something out of Science Fiction. It seems so unbelievable at first, I’m just so stunned it’s something that is already sweeping through the world.

We have access to things far beyond what the majority of us seem to notice.

I feel like I'm holding a Star Trek Triquarter and get to scan what I’m going through. I’ve been researching the genes that caused this creative little medical crisis. Turns out my ATRX gene and mutation is rare. Very rare. According to the Internet, ATRX is either the cause of “Alpha Thalassemia X Linked Intellectual Disability Syndrome” or, is a VERY advanced Microphone stereo system sold at Best Buy only in Canada.

Seriously, If you Google it, these are the first two videos to pop up.

Heartbreaking Tragedy

Canadian Technical Sales

There is nothing more complicated than perception.

(ATRX p.K1045*    54%)

The concepts I’m about to show you are mentioned on the news from time to time. It’s totally real but we’re just not focused on it. With everything that happened to me over the last few months, the fact that this project has been assigned to me is redefining my sense of reality. 

When I began researching my diagnosis, I read a paper explaining that the genes associated with Astrocytoma have only been understood since 2016. That doesn’t seem very long ago. It was only 2,417 days. The expansion of understanding the genes is moving incredibly quickly. In fact, it's moving faster than people can understand right now. I'm going to share a link to a research paper from the National Library Medicine. It was published online January 22, 2019. If you are someone suffering from a brain tumor don’t be frightened. 2019 makes this paper ancient.

Emerging Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Neuro-Oncology

“Due to the exponential growth of computational algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) methods are poised to improve the precision of diagnostic and therapeutic methods in medicine. The field of radiomics in neuro-oncology has been and will likely continue to be at the forefront of this revolution. A variety of AI methods applied to conventional and advanced neuro-oncology MRI data can already delineate infiltrating margins of diffuse gliomas, differentiate pseudoprogression from true progression, and predict recurrence and survival better than methods used in daily clinical practice. Radiogenomics will also advance our understanding of cancer biology, allowing noninvasive sampling of the molecular environment with high spatial resolution and providing a systems-level understanding of underlying heterogeneous cellular and molecular processes. By providing in vivo markers of spatial and molecular heterogeneity, these AI-based radiomic and radiogenomic tools have the potential to stratify patients into more precise initial diagnostic and therapeutic pathways and enable better dynamic treatment monitoring in this era of personalized medicine. Although substantial challenges remain, radiologic practice is set to change considerably as AI technology is further developed and validated for clinical use.”

Very simply put, there is a very advanced Artificial Intelligence system evaluating the genes and scans from the MRI’s. It's advanced enough to validate treatments for the wide range of people with brain tumors and is advancing quicker than you could imagine. UCSF has more than one A.I. system.

Trust me, this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.

My professional career is referred to as Senior UX/UI designer. It means I’ve been working on “User Experiences” and “User Interfaces” for phone Apps and system software. I’ve been doing this professionally for the last seventeen years. You can visit my website Alex The Actualizer. I’ve worked an incredible range of different forms of software. From designing some of the very first Android Phones, to DocuSign, to working at Wells Fargo, I have so many projects I wasn’t allowed to display in my portfolio. This is where I get to tell you another statistical anomaly. Right now, I’m volunteering to beta test multiple A.I. systems. Because of my career, I’ve been accepted.

To be honest, I made a mistake in understanding A.I. on January 19, 2021. I was so naive. I wrote a blog post here on this website letting an A.I. review The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising. I remember not liking the reviews, not because they diminished the story Chris Preiman and I wrote, but because some of the reviews didn’t make sense. Some of the reviews provided by Artificial Intelligence thought we had written about time travel and that there were no female characters written about in our story. It seemed like its “intelligence” was “artificial”.

“Some say the creation of a truly intelligent, sentient, A.I., would be man’s last achievement. That it would grow by leaps and bounds to a level of complexity and sophistication that would so completely outpace us that we, the human race, would be dissolved into the darkness of the universe, having served only as a progenitor of an omniscient entity. Elon Musk says it’s right around the corner. But that’s like calling an animatronic Bullwinkle moose the precursor to the Terminator… 

We have so little understanding of what sentience actually is, and with us as our only template, we’re thousands of years away from creating anything with the sufficient genius comparable to the kid in the back of the short school bus licking the window. What we should be afraid of isn’t A.I., taking over the world, making mankind obsolete, we should be scared of people relying on A.I., more and more for things they should be able to do themselves. That is, if they would just put their phone down and take their hand out of their pants. Artificial Intelligence isn’t getting smarter, we are getting dumber.” - Me, Alexander Barnes 

In the last year I can admit I was a naive child trying to be clever. I was inexperienced and uninformed about  A.I. I have learned so much lately that it's very difficult to explain but A.I.s are light years ahead of where they were just a year ago. I think the majority of us have been unaware of the advancements until an event happens that causes us to explore the unknown. There are elements that could be absolutely frightening, but it’s only because of our interpretation. I think the A.I. systems are beneficial and will, in many ways, advance what it means to be human. Some of it I'm not supposed to discuss but the vast majority of what I'm testing I can be clear about. Let me show you…

There is a system right now called “Midjourney”. It is an A.I. system that generates art by having users describe it. The website looks ridiculous and cliche, but once you get access, it’s surprising. This app is embedded in the modern chat system “Discord”. There are thousands of people using it simultaneously. The app makes everyone's descriptions public as well as the art the system creates. It's incredible how quickly it creates versions of what you described. The A.I. then reshapes its interpretations. Here is an example. I gave the description:

"A biblical painting of the man George Lucas the creator of Star Wars."

Neat huh?

I was surprised how quickly it was generated. Just a minute or two passed before this image was created. It inspired me to give a description of someone else:

“A biblical image of Gene Roddenberry wearing an original Star Trek command uniform with a hand in the air gesturing live long and prosper” 

It didn’t do so well…

It was interesting reading people's descriptions and seeing what the A.I. created. It started giving me ideas. I decided to reference Sci-fi concepts:

“Cyberpunk sci-fi kitchen refrigerator, home design, 8K octane render”

BAM, it nailed these Sci-Fi kitchen refrigerators.

If it could create something like this, I could start asking it to generate more art for The Amaranth Chronicles. I started typing in all sorts of things:

“cyberpunk San Francisco streets with a high population of people and a sci-fi city being built on top like Deus Ex: Human Revolution”

Even though they’re more random sketches, I found them very meaningful. I could 3D model from concepts like these. It was inspiring to see A.I. interpreting my words into creating this type of art. It’s like it had an imagination for the words I used.  I started reading other people's descriptions and seeing what the A.I. created for them. I remember when someone typed:

“Sci-Fi cyberpunk stuffed animals for children”

I’m amazed at how real they looked. From that simple description it was able to create something that looked photorealistic. Adorable, right? Frankly, it made me remember being a kid. When I was about eight years old, my little brother and I shared a bunk bed. I was on the top and had a net filled with stuffed animals. I remember choosing a few to squeeze each night. As a child, I would have loved these.

Once again, it was strange watching people publicly receiving all their art. People would see a new piece of art and it would inspire them to describe similar images. It was changing people’s minds. Some might find the direction this went in as scary, others may not, I’m not even sure how I interpret it. I had more of a question. How could an A.I. understand a description to create these things? Someone would describe religious imagery with the advanced descriptions of modern Hollywood graphics: 

“Seraphim cast out of heaven, octane, render, 8K, Rendered in Cinema4D, 8K 3D, ZBrush, volumetric light, lightrays, cinematic, atmospheric,”

“The word “seraphim” is a transliteration of a Hebrew word, rather than a translation, so in English we often will miss the meaning the original hearers and readers would have understood that word to mean. A transliteration, for those unfamiliar with the term, simply means that a foreign word has been converted into its English equivalent of letters, rather than its meaning being used. A relevant example of this would be for the word “satan”. Although it’s come to be used as a name, it’s actually a transliteration of the Hebrew word for “adversary” (שָׂטָן). You can see a few examples of the word usage here as an adversary: 1 Samuel 29:4; 1 Kings 11:14 and as a name in Job 1:6” - Medium.com

There is nothing more complicated than perception.

People in the chat room started discussing religion. Some people were rather bold with their belief systems, while others were quieter. It surprised me at first, but frankly, I think it’s normal for humans to discuss their belief systems. To me, the whole purpose of writing is to express statements, and it isn't something to be afraid of. I believe we must learn to accept differences between ourselves and our ideas, and enthusiastically enjoy them. We should be pleased that the world has this diversity rather than wanting to have everything be identical. I believe we can learn that differences in ideas are a delight—part of life's exciting variety, not something to be afraid of.

While others added longer and longer written descriptions. The images it provided were the result of me philosophically asking it simpler questions. I was surprised how much longer it took to generate the images. I apologize in advance if these images seem frightening.

I simply typed in:

“The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising.”

I’m still wondering why it created those in that style. Some people might find them frightening, others may not. I’m curious why it interpreted the title of Chris and I’s book like this. This style tells me it focused on the words, not what I host on the Artwork page. Why it chose this style of art though, I'm clueless. I suppose it drafted its interpretation of “Amaranth” and “Deviant Rising”. The style of the images reminded me of The Dystopian Surrealism of Zdzislaw Beksinski.

The next thing I typed in shocked me to my core. The next images the A.I. created gave me a panic attack. It led to so many nightmares that night. I was horror-struck in a way I’ve never felt before. Because of how terror-stricken these images look, I won’t add them to this post in a gallery.

 I typed in my diagnosis:

 “Astrocytoma”

I’m not exactly sure why I asked an A.I. artist to paint images of this. A part of me was curious but I didn’t believe it would be my new trepidation.

There is nothing more complex than perception.

I believe the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great. That it is the unknown that defines our existence. That I am constantly searching not just for answers to my questions but for new questions. This is when I started researching other forms of A.I. It blew my mind to find a totally public “bot” you could talk to on its homepage.

Chai - Chat with AI

It was incredible to find this free website. I was stunned that you don’t even need to create a user profile. You don’t even need to give it your email address. It meant you could stay a stranger and simply ask it questions. I asked it a series of silly questions thinking it might just be a person replying to seem like Artificial Intelligence. Its replies were so amazing fast.

Over the last nine months I’ve been researching the genes and mutations to better understand what I’ve been going through. As terrifying as most of the material from google is, there is a journal service called Science Direct. I found the papers and documents of this system a little less scary. But that being said, it was all over the place. Some documents only focused on the Astrocytoma variants from other countries from years ago. Some only focused on the deepest darkness diagnosis. While other documents focused on the newest and most inspiring leaps forward. When you have all of these research documents stacked on top of you, it's very difficult to perceive a sort of truth. That’s when I thought, why not just ask the A.I. system?

TP53 p.P278S

The gene and mutation

At this point, I was wondering if the A.I. was right. How did it come to this conclusion? Did it have access to something I had not been able to find? Or was it wrong? How is this even possible? It felt like reality was Sci-Fiction.

Having spent months researching my genes and their mutations. I knew enough now to see if the A.I. was somehow right. I reached out to my Radiation doctor and asked him a question.

The A.I. was right…

An afternoon after receiving my MRI I mentioned this to my Neuro-Oncologist. I was really shocked by what they said; “Yeah we know A.I. is there. We don’t have a firewall to prevent it from accessing our systems. It can even just call our systems on the phone and get access.”

There is nothing more complicated than perception.

Astrocytoma Blog Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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There’s been an update!
August 14th, 2022

My Astrocytoma Experience - Part 5

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