I go back and forth between “AI will never triumph over the human soul” and “AI will show us how puny our little souls are.” But either way, there really is a whole bunch of artifice leftover from the 20th century we have to confront if we are to confront AI even outside academia. If we simply are what we do, why can’t ChatGPT be a great novelist? If James Patterson is a “novelist” because he writes outlines and has a ghostwriter do the rest, why can’t a ChatGPT user be? If the fact that I can’t get a song out of my head is an indicator of greatness, as many poptimists seem to believe, well the AI programs are already better than Swift and The Beatles combined. If we are just “meat computers,” why not just build better ones and die?
Well if the poptimists are right, then the greatest song ever written is the Kars4Kids jingle (feel free to substitute your most hated commercial jingle).
But seriously: AI is something I'm grappling with at work, and I see no reason to be afraid of it (yet). I'm contemplating doing an essay on its inbuilt limitations, using David Hume's opening argument in "Treatise of Human Nature" on ideas vs. impressions, but I'll have to develop the idea further.
The biggest danger I can see at present is that people will regard AI-written texts as good enough for their purposes. This will have the effect of making verbal professions more elite, because AI will make the non-elite aspects of them redundant.
You're welcome! I might be a little more optimistic about the soul than you, but I share your sense that this might all reshape and expand our ideas about aesthetics.
I go back and forth between “AI will never triumph over the human soul” and “AI will show us how puny our little souls are.” But either way, there really is a whole bunch of artifice leftover from the 20th century we have to confront if we are to confront AI even outside academia. If we simply are what we do, why can’t ChatGPT be a great novelist? If James Patterson is a “novelist” because he writes outlines and has a ghostwriter do the rest, why can’t a ChatGPT user be? If the fact that I can’t get a song out of my head is an indicator of greatness, as many poptimists seem to believe, well the AI programs are already better than Swift and The Beatles combined. If we are just “meat computers,” why not just build better ones and die?
Oh and thanks for the shoutout.
Well if the poptimists are right, then the greatest song ever written is the Kars4Kids jingle (feel free to substitute your most hated commercial jingle).
But seriously: AI is something I'm grappling with at work, and I see no reason to be afraid of it (yet). I'm contemplating doing an essay on its inbuilt limitations, using David Hume's opening argument in "Treatise of Human Nature" on ideas vs. impressions, but I'll have to develop the idea further.
The biggest danger I can see at present is that people will regard AI-written texts as good enough for their purposes. This will have the effect of making verbal professions more elite, because AI will make the non-elite aspects of them redundant.
You're welcome! I might be a little more optimistic about the soul than you, but I share your sense that this might all reshape and expand our ideas about aesthetics.
What came to mind for me when reading all the quotes of James's Note was Swift line
“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”
They can’t see that the gpt cliches and mediocrity are in fact a good parody of what does get published
Exactly—and by definition, considering its sources!
Yes it really is a mirror
Per fn. 4: I'm 100% here for this. I just so happen to be about half way through the Hughes book, and I take this to be a sign from the gods.