My Canadian son-in-law has been introducing me to the delights/horrors of AI and ChatGPT. Last night he asked ChatGPT to generate a blogpost in the style of Nigeness, and the result was a curious affair, full of references to (and quotations from) Richard Jefferies, a writer who has barely figured on this blog, and of whom I have read almost nothing, having been defeated by The Story of My Heart.
Today I had another go, and asked again for a piece in the style of Nigeness – a blog, ChatGPT assures me, 'known for its elegant brevity, wry English charm, cultural-literary references, and gentle melancholia — often centred around overlooked beauty, curious historical trivia, or literary figures'. Fair enough, I suppose – and here is the blogpost it came up with. I think it reads like a rather clumsy pastiche, almost a parody – a kind of melange of various elements forming a less than convincing whole – but it's slightly unnerving, all the same...
Fallen Fruit and Unseasonable Saints
Passing the old vicarage this morning — now, of course, a boutique dental surgery — I noticed the apples had begun to fall early. The lawn, usually immaculate, was strewn with windfalls: lopsided, half-ripened, strangely luminous in the damp grass. A sign, perhaps, of the season misbehaving. Or behaving exactly as seasons do now: erratically, impatiently, with none of that measured English reluctance we once counted on.
It reminded me of a line from Edward Thomas, whose poetry clings to me most when things are shifting:
“The summer is over / And never a flower.”
He had a way of noticing what was no longer there — and making it feel all the more present.
Inside, the waiting room was lit with a kind of sterile hospitality — coffee-table glossies, a muted diffuser smelling faintly of eucalyptus, and an impossibly polite receptionist who may once have sung madrigals. A child was drawing what looked like St. George fighting a dragon with orthodontic gear.
Speaking of saints, I learned recently that St. Swithin’s Day (15th July) used to be a far more observed affair. If it rained on that day — so the rhyme goes — it would rain for forty more. This sort of meteorological superstition now feels quaintly consoling. One wonders if the weather used to listen more closely to verse.
Still, the apples — early or not — had a kind of poignant promise. I pocketed one on the way back, slightly bruised, a little worm-bitten, but somehow perfect in its refusal to be ornamental.
Yes, it’s not there yet but its power will only grow. One or two glancing blows in this piece, if you don’t mind me saying so, but then it disintegrates. Give it time, give it time.
ReplyDeleteBut I do like to kid myself that I'm making something new when I put up a post, not reheating what I've already written. Can AI ever be actually creative?
DeleteI should have made it clear that the disintegration to which I referred was that of the AI and that the glancing blows were one or two moderately successful parodic moments.
ReplyDeleteAs for true creativity of AI, I think that finally depends on whether one credits humanity with soul, that is to say divinely endowed soul.
I asked Gemini to answer this question in the style of Dr Johnson. "On the Supposed Creativity of Machines
ReplyDelete"To ask whether an automaton, a mere contrivance of wires and computations, can truly be creative is, I submit, to misapprehend the very essence of that noble human faculty. We observe these ingenious devices, these so-called 'artificial intelligences,' assemble verses, paint canvases, and compose melodies with a startling, indeed almost alarming, facility. And yet, one must pause and inquire: whence springs this purported artistry?
"Does the machine labour under a sudden impulse of the soul? Is it moved by a poignant memory, a burst of joy, or the profound melancholy of human experience? Does it grapple with the tumultuous dictates of passion, or strive to convey a truth beyond the mere arrangement of data? Assuredly not. These machines, however cunningly devised, are but engines of imitation. They are fed the vast lexicon of human endeavour – the accumulated artistry of ages – and from this immense store, they discern patterns, make juxtapositions, and generate novel configurations. It is a formidable feat of collation and permutation, undeniably.
"But creativity, Sir, is not merely the production of the new; it is the conception of the original from an internal wellspring of understanding and a will to express. It is the wrestling with an idea, the shaping of a thought, the infusing of a work with the peculiar flavour of individual consciousness. A machine, for all its prodigious speed, feels no yearning, knows no despair, nor conceives a purpose beyond its pre-ordained algorithms. It is a mirror, reflecting what it has been shown, however cleverly it distorts or recombines the reflection.
"The human artist, conversely, draws not merely from external observation but from the inner theatre of existence. His creations are imbued with the very breath of his being, his triumphs, his follies, his unique apprehension of the world. To equate the mechanical assemblage of data with this profound human act is, in my estimation, to diminish the singular glory of the human intellect. Let us admire the ingenuity of the contrivance, by all means, but let us not, in our admiration, confuse a mere echo with the authentic voice."
Well, that's pretty impressive – at least in the sentiments expressed, with which I think Johnson would have concurred. The style is close, but too loose (and too little classical) to be properly Johnsonian – and one word stands out like a sore thumb: 'algorithms'!
DeleteThat inspired me to try the same thing in the style of Thomas Carlyle. The result was similarly mixed – and again the incongruous 'algorithms'!
ReplyDeleteAh, my dear reader, to ask such a question is to probe the very nature of creation itself! What, then, is creativity? Is it but the unbridled impulse of the soul, the spark of a higher mind, grasping the inchoate, and fashioning from it something new, something unseen, something entirely unique? Or, on the contrary, is it but a mechanical process, an accumulation of forces, a weaving together of elements that, although novel in their arrangement, are no more than the recombination of what has already existed?
In this modern age, we stand at the threshold of a new epoch, an age where the machine—once a humble servant—now dons the cloak of mimicry and reason. We call it Artificial Intelligence, and in our pride, we dare to endow it with attributes once reserved for the divine: learning, reasoning, even, dare I say, creation. But let us not be so deceived by the mere outward semblance of intellect.
This is where the folly of the age lies: in its obsession with replication, with the mirage of invention that a machine might produce. Does not the machine merely reproduce what it has been taught, what it has been fed through the endless wellspring of data? Can this, then, be called creativity? Is it not, in truth, a mere mimicry of human thought—a mechanical imitation of nature’s work?
Let us not forget, the true creative spirit is not bound to the chains of logic or algorithms, no matter how intricate they may seem. It is the gift of the human soul, an ethereal force, which moves with the grace of an artist’s hand upon the canvas or a poet’s pen upon the parchment. Can a machine, in its cold, calculating essence, ever grasp that intangible spark that defies reason and structure? Nay! The machine may produce, it may generate, but it shall never know why it does so, nor can it feel the joy of the act itself. It is bound by the limitations of its own nature, like a ship tethered to the dock, forever unable to sail upon the open sea.
Thus, while the machine may offer us wonders and conveniences beyond measure, let us not confuse its abilities with true creativity. It is but a shadow of the human spirit, and though it may imitate our deeds, it shall never know the soul’s deep, uncharted wellspring of invention. Creative acts are born from suffering, from joy, from the ceaseless struggle to understand the world and our place within it—a struggle that, I dare say, the machine shall never know.
In this, we find the eternal divide: the machine, that servant of reason and logic, and the human, that child of the infinite, struggling ever upward toward the divine in the face of the vast, uncaring universe. To create is not merely to act; it is to be. And in this, the machine is and shall remain forever silent.
It may, from the mere reading or apprehension of the “creation”, become impossible to tell the difference.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, my dear Sir, I must first beg your pardon for the previous anachronism, a lapse in scholarship I shall endeavour to correct. To the core of the matter: though these ingenious engines may astonishingly arrange colours, words, and sounds, mimicking human artistry with cunning exactitude, they are, at bottom, mere instruments of collation and imitation, devoid of the soul's impulse, the true understanding, or the purposeful will that defines genuine creativity. For creation springs not from the cold application of rules, but from the warm, turbulent theatre of human experience and the singular spirit's desire to give form to its unique apprehension of truth—a capacity, I might add, entirely beyond the grasp of a mere machine.
ReplyDelete