Writing as an Outlet for Amateur Psychoanalysts
Sam Fisk
The propagation of AI text generators does not make me anxious in the same way I have heard other writers fret about it. Note: I am subpar in the use and understanding of computers. So, what I say now may open me up to mockery when our descendants are all hiking through the Valley of Skulls evading me - chanical death birds. But I have to say, I see no signs of any artifice becoming intelligent. People gawk and wonder at the elaboration and speed – especially the speed – of ChatGPT or OpenAI or GiveMeWordsitron 7000, and I cannot help but won - der what they think writing is when it is not data entry. Because at base, the function of all this code is to use key terms to identify relevant phrases from the internet; then compile them in a way that makes grammatical sense. That’s right. Mankind in its scientific hubris has created homunculi seventh graders with access to Wikipedia. I sympathize with anyone who is concerned about maintaining a minimum quality of writing in the entertainment industry, and I am cynical enough to imagine the kind of penny-pinching investor or megalomaniacal producer who themselves fantasize about annihilating all human beings in their hemi - sphere that neither work the camera nor stand in front of it. The moral declaration that a machine cannot and therefore should not make art is less attractive to me. For one thing, it reeks a bit too much of snobbery, albeit towards a hypothetical class of artists. Humans have done crazy things. Maybe one day, one of us will give a flash- drive knowledge of good and evil and that will trigger a host of beautiful and terrifying events. In that case, I see no reason not to think of it as one more person on this earth. Yet I owe my own thought to this maxim which I have not heard elsewhere but is merely a collation of the attitude I have just sketched for you: Only people can make art. The absolutism of it suggested to me something abominable.
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