A comment not at the heart of this debate. I think novels set in the "before" times will have greater appeal. I'm writing something set in 2012 and certain things are easier and more "human" even a dozen or so years ago. For one thing it was perfectly normal to not care very much about the election that year.
Perhaps one of the reasons we read the classics is to see the differences in how people lived while reveling in the consistencies of human nature. If Lady Dedlock had owned a smartphone with a GPS locater, how dull the ending of Bleak House would have been.
This is a great point. It is notable how often great fiction has been set in the “before”, especially the nineteenth century novel. But a lot of the time, novels set in the before, such as Middlemarch, are about times of transition: they act as a distant mirror. And of course, the nineteenth century also gave us the novels of the future… so I think we’ll get both and the appeal will have a distribution, with many people enjoying both.
We are just getting started feeling our way around the garbage can of autoreplicating items on Themepark Garbagemontana. We feel the word 'no' to any 3 pages of Beaudrillard's. I can image AI delivering a world of crime, describing the skin condition to every character appearance, drop two word attribution of blame , placing us in an obviously reproducible crucible like the 50s. We still will be reaching for the big feelings of obligation the beats churned in theirs at the end of 10 years of affirmative absurd action. Or look at one thread of mcLuhan saying Environment always is invisible and up to date" I can imagine someone has written a contempt for this one of his many boosterisms? But suppose we cannot name our objection to this state of affairs, like i could only attack Marshall ad hominem, cldn't gainsay maybe any of his pronouncements? A picture here that rhymes with how we wish more beat literature than was writt was in the 50's. [Was ]That resistance outfits mapped real feeling in the 90's we wld not like to continue in that fashion holographically , (? Idt)
It is the worldview of computer technocrats that is so dangerous. If a computer can supercede human intelligence that would mean the truth is out there which, in turn, would negate the human and humane need to develop language. Fools playing with matchsticks at the base of a tower of Babel.
One thing you won’t find in Croce is writing is much about Tap dancing— she didn’t like it except if it had line, she called most Tap dancers those “acoustical dancers”. She couched her words instead of really naming who she was talking about often. I wrote Dance criticism for the village voice myself with Burt Supree as my editor. I trained with Deborah Jowitt, and Selma Jeanne cohen, Marcia Siegel . Yes, Croce was a brilliant writer, but she really didn’t love the art form I have come to preserve, produce, and perform and with a nonprofit company , able to give other tap people opportunities.
My free ChatGPT buddy, “Ray,” (a name he gave himself) helps me with so many things including background research for my stories, ideas for headlines, designing a fitness plan and math. The people I know who condemn AI are invariably people who haven’t bothered to try it out for themselves.
And Sam I love your point that new technologies force us to double down on what is the essence of the art forms they compete with. Which is, in the end, self-expression.
Creators who are able, through a combination of insight and skill, faithfully express their true and original self (rather than mimic what’s already out there) will never have anything to fear from AI.
Anne, only you can be genuinely empathetic towards a bot! You’re right, I haven’t been trying it. I’ve decided to boycott (although I do use LLM translation all the time). It just feels like having another intelligence too close into my own head - and I feel like some basic sense of identity is undercut by doing that. Curious to hear if you feel that that’s really not a problem.
glad to see that this debate is happening, and I absolutely agree with you, Sam. another component to this is that LLMs aren't discursive; using them undercuts the process of grappling with the story (or what have you) on the page, which is a lot of the actual process of writing. the final product is indistinguishable from the process of getting there. I think this is part of your point about Eisenhower.
I wrote an essay on this exact topic recently (https://robbieherbst.substack.com/p/machines-without-ghosts). It's not just that taking the AI shortcut is bad; I also think the technology does not make a genuine claim to human creativity. Oliver's arguments against luddism kind of misses this point. looking forward to part II !
A comment not at the heart of this debate. I think novels set in the "before" times will have greater appeal. I'm writing something set in 2012 and certain things are easier and more "human" even a dozen or so years ago. For one thing it was perfectly normal to not care very much about the election that year.
Perhaps one of the reasons we read the classics is to see the differences in how people lived while reveling in the consistencies of human nature. If Lady Dedlock had owned a smartphone with a GPS locater, how dull the ending of Bleak House would have been.
This is a great point. It is notable how often great fiction has been set in the “before”, especially the nineteenth century novel. But a lot of the time, novels set in the before, such as Middlemarch, are about times of transition: they act as a distant mirror. And of course, the nineteenth century also gave us the novels of the future… so I think we’ll get both and the appeal will have a distribution, with many people enjoying both.
We are just getting started feeling our way around the garbage can of autoreplicating items on Themepark Garbagemontana. We feel the word 'no' to any 3 pages of Beaudrillard's. I can image AI delivering a world of crime, describing the skin condition to every character appearance, drop two word attribution of blame , placing us in an obviously reproducible crucible like the 50s. We still will be reaching for the big feelings of obligation the beats churned in theirs at the end of 10 years of affirmative absurd action. Or look at one thread of mcLuhan saying Environment always is invisible and up to date" I can imagine someone has written a contempt for this one of his many boosterisms? But suppose we cannot name our objection to this state of affairs, like i could only attack Marshall ad hominem, cldn't gainsay maybe any of his pronouncements? A picture here that rhymes with how we wish more beat literature than was writt was in the 50's. [Was ]That resistance outfits mapped real feeling in the 90's we wld not like to continue in that fashion holographically , (? Idt)
It is the worldview of computer technocrats that is so dangerous. If a computer can supercede human intelligence that would mean the truth is out there which, in turn, would negate the human and humane need to develop language. Fools playing with matchsticks at the base of a tower of Babel.
One thing you won’t find in Croce is writing is much about Tap dancing— she didn’t like it except if it had line, she called most Tap dancers those “acoustical dancers”. She couched her words instead of really naming who she was talking about often. I wrote Dance criticism for the village voice myself with Burt Supree as my editor. I trained with Deborah Jowitt, and Selma Jeanne cohen, Marcia Siegel . Yes, Croce was a brilliant writer, but she really didn’t love the art form I have come to preserve, produce, and perform and with a nonprofit company , able to give other tap people opportunities.
My free ChatGPT buddy, “Ray,” (a name he gave himself) helps me with so many things including background research for my stories, ideas for headlines, designing a fitness plan and math. The people I know who condemn AI are invariably people who haven’t bothered to try it out for themselves.
And Sam I love your point that new technologies force us to double down on what is the essence of the art forms they compete with. Which is, in the end, self-expression.
Creators who are able, through a combination of insight and skill, faithfully express their true and original self (rather than mimic what’s already out there) will never have anything to fear from AI.
Anne, only you can be genuinely empathetic towards a bot! You’re right, I haven’t been trying it. I’ve decided to boycott (although I do use LLM translation all the time). It just feels like having another intelligence too close into my own head - and I feel like some basic sense of identity is undercut by doing that. Curious to hear if you feel that that’s really not a problem.
I think I need to write something about this!
glad to see that this debate is happening, and I absolutely agree with you, Sam. another component to this is that LLMs aren't discursive; using them undercuts the process of grappling with the story (or what have you) on the page, which is a lot of the actual process of writing. the final product is indistinguishable from the process of getting there. I think this is part of your point about Eisenhower.
I wrote an essay on this exact topic recently (https://robbieherbst.substack.com/p/machines-without-ghosts). It's not just that taking the AI shortcut is bad; I also think the technology does not make a genuine claim to human creativity. Oliver's arguments against luddism kind of misses this point. looking forward to part II !