Unfortunately, it is becoming less of an issue since increasingly people simply don't *read* anymore! As a kid pointed out to me "oh dad, we don't need books. We can read all the books in the world on our phone" - to which "yes, but you *don't*". And few read more than short pieces now. Anything past short story length is simply not fitting our cultural decline anymore. Writing scripts for video will survive for awhile longer.
My fear is that we live at a time where we can compare AI-generated writing and human created writing. The benefits of reading the work of another human are quite clear. However, we only know this because we live at a point in time where both exist. I imagine AI will become the norm, all writing will be from AI. Readers will never know they are missing out on something essential because they (unfortunately) were not alive in the before times; it never occurs to them that humans have written or can write.
Recently, I was in a discussion about the use of AI art where a proponent of the practice was arguing that it finally allowed them to create professional looking publications. Many people were pointing out how it’s unethical and stuff like that, but I feel like there’s an even greater danger in that it’s not very hard to see a world where the drive to create things never has the chance to grow. I said:
“Regarding your statement that ‘the talented artists will survive just fine,’ that’s true for this generation, but how will nascent or less talented artists survive long enough to master the requisite abilities that would enable them to enter that ‘talented artist’ cohort? There will be an ever-shrinking market for their work because why pay someone 300 bucks to illustrate something by hand when you can have Midjourney do it for 20 dollars?
“How will future models be trained if fewer and fewer actual humans are making art and of those few who still persist what will their skill level be?
“Will children and future generations be as motivated to pick up a pencil or crayon to make something when they can type a prompt in and in a few iterations have a perfect replica of their vision?
“There are problems with generative art, but its most insidious is the danger it poses for the human spirit. Twenty years ago no one foresaw all of the bad side effects that social media has had on young people; I really wonder what type of unforeseen consequences AI art will have on the kids who would have become artists, painters, poets, or writers.
“There’s nothing more encouraging to a six year old than the praise of their peers for a well-rendered drawing. Will that still be happening in 15 years or will kids dismiss all attempts as childish because the cell phone that they have in their pocket (why do we let kids that young have phones is a different issue, but we’ve all seen it) can create something vastly superior?
Yeah, I get that, Phil. I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about the 6 year who would have grown up to be a great artist, but is dazzled by what happens by typing a prompt and so they never pick up a pencil to start doodling.
I just think about myself when I was younger. I work as an illustrator now because I wanted to be able to draw unicorns, dragons, and goblins when I was five years old. If a machine could have done it for me, I wouldn’t have spent dozens and dozens of hours literally crying because I couldn’t draw a horse the way I wanted to, but I kept trying.
Today, I can draw a horse, but I didn’t have the option of letting AI do it for me. I had to learn.
Please keep writing and sharing. Perhaps there will be a reemergence and surge in high quality reading and writing, realizing how good it is for the soul.
A true writer will always write. It's in our DNA. That is something you cannot unwind. Fear not Alberto—it is neither convenience, efficiency, nor profit that drives the writer's pen.
Love this one, Alberto, and I'm with you in the resistance. The question of the future is increasingly whether we want to live as a creature or as a machine.
"Can one billion ChatGPT-generated words be compared in some meaningful dimension with just one word that a human created, with intent, on any happy day?"
My answer is clear. No.
This is not an apples to apples comparison.
Humans are creatures, not machines. Our worldview and belief about what it means to be human is not an esoteric philosophical question. It's one that has real implications about how we live and our vision of the good life.
Your thoughts here are very similar to my thoughts on the Altman tweet from a few weeks ago. It begs the question: What is a word worth?
Why does it have to be a binary choice? Either you’re a “this” or “that” seems to lack nuance. Why not a third path, or a fourth or fifth path, etc? I personally think we hit upon utopian augmentation when we got eyeglasses. Think of how much life sucked before we got those. You got to a certain age and you couldn’t see for shit. Of course eyeglasses are only a crude temporal standard for utopia, but I expect some people thought it was witchcraft. An unsophisticated view.
Perhaps there will be new brands of “fear” on the horizon. Perhaps AI could assist us in the Sunset enterprise to execute it far more effectively and efficiently. But you know, that’s a horrible idea because AI is going to kill us all within a year or two, because, well, you know… “The Terminator”. Case closed!
Agree that that a binary for/against view isn’t particular helpful. I think that’s why the creature/machine lens is helpful to me. There’s a lot of gray space in the middle where creatures use machines but resist some of the movements toward becomingly or increasingly seeing ourselves as the same as machines.
I know, it's for effect purposes. You know, a bit of repetition to get the message across. It's not really relevant whether it's 0.1% or 0.5% at this point (although I'd say OpenAI is >50% of the total)
I'm shocked to realize how many people obviously are willing or even looking forward to giving up their privilege of being able to write. Even if it's not novel or essay, but just a simple mail to communicate rather banal things to another human being. And I'm frightened to imagine the day in the not-so-far future when I'll be looking at some lines of text, wondering if they have been thought and written by a being that feels, like I do.
I think nuance is important. Not all AI is used like this. Generative AI is not, in itself, bad. The use people are giving it and the way companies are marketing it are bad.
Its hard to see anything good of any of its use for art,except in the most limited. I honestly think Guillermo Del Toro and Hayao Miyazaki really hit on something of just how anti-life it is.
And if something is anti-life, how much good could it be? Yes, poison is medicine in a dose too high, but how do we know if the dose is already too high?
I keep thinking of that scene from 'Pirates of the Caribbean': "you best start believing in ghost stories; you're in one".
--The path we were on that landed us here started with the Enlightenment, not the Industrial Revolution. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that this wasn't all in the name of efficiency and productivity -- the point was to elevate humanity in an intellectual and creative capacity. But we are currently living to race machines. That's why at the dawn of the internet, for a split second we had all the information at our fingertips, and then invented the email. So we could promptly ignore 99.999% of it and just focus on the task at hand. In a linear, yet cyclical fashion. No real creativity allowed. Function as machines do. Go, go go! I suppose that if you're thinking of AI in terms of efficiency and productivity, it is a threat to writing.
-- I see AI as a pathway back to creativity. A yin to the machine age's yang. If we're not going to slow down and fix the rift in the space/time continuum, at least now humans can stop spinning our wheels as though we are machines, and start actually thinking with the newfound processing speed AI brings us. Granted, that will only happen with a cultural movement away from values tied to growth of the bottomline.
-- also, it's not like there's not already a lot of content. Far too much for anyone to sift through. In a sense we're lucky that people already have years of conditioning to ignore the noise of AI.
-- and if all else fails, and people -- disenfranchised by fake AI generated content -- start rethinking their content consumption. Maybe that will lead to shift in values that will favor real writing and will shape the next generation along the lines of enlightenment vs. industrial values after all :)
Powerful post! I can feel your passion. Fighting for what is dear to us and for the future we wish to see is the path forward. I just hope we can use it as fuel for inspiration and optimism rather than a battle and weight on our shoulders. I’ll be writing alongside you! Collective action!
Maybe this is a bit of a straw man argument? Human writing will not disappear no matter how much AI text is produced. There are different kinds of texts. I have no problem if an AI generated study leads to a scientific breakthrough or writes a binding legal contract or performs detailed market research for a new product. A great deal of the kind of writing produced by humans every day will not be missed if done primarily by AI.
Plot twist... this was written by GPT. If I can't tell, what's the difference? I have a bad habit of assuming what the context/POV is of an author and predicting the article. This one was pretty easy (no offense, but we're not unique). My comment itself is a cliche. I'd recommend focusing less on LLMs and more on embodiment and the work of Jim Fan at NVIDIA. Things are going to get way weirder.
Unfortunately, it is becoming less of an issue since increasingly people simply don't *read* anymore! As a kid pointed out to me "oh dad, we don't need books. We can read all the books in the world on our phone" - to which "yes, but you *don't*". And few read more than short pieces now. Anything past short story length is simply not fitting our cultural decline anymore. Writing scripts for video will survive for awhile longer.
Really fantastic post!
My fear is that we live at a time where we can compare AI-generated writing and human created writing. The benefits of reading the work of another human are quite clear. However, we only know this because we live at a point in time where both exist. I imagine AI will become the norm, all writing will be from AI. Readers will never know they are missing out on something essential because they (unfortunately) were not alive in the before times; it never occurs to them that humans have written or can write.
Sarah Connor likes your post.
Recently, I was in a discussion about the use of AI art where a proponent of the practice was arguing that it finally allowed them to create professional looking publications. Many people were pointing out how it’s unethical and stuff like that, but I feel like there’s an even greater danger in that it’s not very hard to see a world where the drive to create things never has the chance to grow. I said:
“Regarding your statement that ‘the talented artists will survive just fine,’ that’s true for this generation, but how will nascent or less talented artists survive long enough to master the requisite abilities that would enable them to enter that ‘talented artist’ cohort? There will be an ever-shrinking market for their work because why pay someone 300 bucks to illustrate something by hand when you can have Midjourney do it for 20 dollars?
“How will future models be trained if fewer and fewer actual humans are making art and of those few who still persist what will their skill level be?
“Will children and future generations be as motivated to pick up a pencil or crayon to make something when they can type a prompt in and in a few iterations have a perfect replica of their vision?
“There are problems with generative art, but its most insidious is the danger it poses for the human spirit. Twenty years ago no one foresaw all of the bad side effects that social media has had on young people; I really wonder what type of unforeseen consequences AI art will have on the kids who would have become artists, painters, poets, or writers.
“There’s nothing more encouraging to a six year old than the praise of their peers for a well-rendered drawing. Will that still be happening in 15 years or will kids dismiss all attempts as childish because the cell phone that they have in their pocket (why do we let kids that young have phones is a different issue, but we’ve all seen it) can create something vastly superior?
“It’s a concerning thought.”
Yeah, I get that, Phil. I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about the 6 year who would have grown up to be a great artist, but is dazzled by what happens by typing a prompt and so they never pick up a pencil to start doodling.
I just think about myself when I was younger. I work as an illustrator now because I wanted to be able to draw unicorns, dragons, and goblins when I was five years old. If a machine could have done it for me, I wouldn’t have spent dozens and dozens of hours literally crying because I couldn’t draw a horse the way I wanted to, but I kept trying.
Today, I can draw a horse, but I didn’t have the option of letting AI do it for me. I had to learn.
This is beautiful. Grateful for your writing.
Please keep writing and sharing. Perhaps there will be a reemergence and surge in high quality reading and writing, realizing how good it is for the soul.
A true writer will always write. It's in our DNA. That is something you cannot unwind. Fear not Alberto—it is neither convenience, efficiency, nor profit that drives the writer's pen.
Love this one, Alberto, and I'm with you in the resistance. The question of the future is increasingly whether we want to live as a creature or as a machine.
"Can one billion ChatGPT-generated words be compared in some meaningful dimension with just one word that a human created, with intent, on any happy day?"
My answer is clear. No.
This is not an apples to apples comparison.
Humans are creatures, not machines. Our worldview and belief about what it means to be human is not an esoteric philosophical question. It's one that has real implications about how we live and our vision of the good life.
Your thoughts here are very similar to my thoughts on the Altman tweet from a few weeks ago. It begs the question: What is a word worth?
https://joshbrake.substack.com/p/what-a-word-is-worth
Why does it have to be a binary choice? Either you’re a “this” or “that” seems to lack nuance. Why not a third path, or a fourth or fifth path, etc? I personally think we hit upon utopian augmentation when we got eyeglasses. Think of how much life sucked before we got those. You got to a certain age and you couldn’t see for shit. Of course eyeglasses are only a crude temporal standard for utopia, but I expect some people thought it was witchcraft. An unsophisticated view.
Perhaps there will be new brands of “fear” on the horizon. Perhaps AI could assist us in the Sunset enterprise to execute it far more effectively and efficiently. But you know, that’s a horrible idea because AI is going to kill us all within a year or two, because, well, you know… “The Terminator”. Case closed!
Agree that that a binary for/against view isn’t particular helpful. I think that’s why the creature/machine lens is helpful to me. There’s a lot of gray space in the middle where creatures use machines but resist some of the movements toward becomingly or increasingly seeing ourselves as the same as machines.
Lots of good questions for discussion here!
Love your articles! One note:
"AI, 0.1%; humans, 99.9%. Not bad".. following Altman's tweet it's actually "OpenAI, 0.1%; humans, 99.9%. Not bad"...
All of AI is already a lot more than 0.1%... many many other models including open source running on local GPU's are generating as well.
Thank you Nicolas.
I know, it's for effect purposes. You know, a bit of repetition to get the message across. It's not really relevant whether it's 0.1% or 0.5% at this point (although I'd say OpenAI is >50% of the total)
I'm shocked to realize how many people obviously are willing or even looking forward to giving up their privilege of being able to write. Even if it's not novel or essay, but just a simple mail to communicate rather banal things to another human being. And I'm frightened to imagine the day in the not-so-far future when I'll be looking at some lines of text, wondering if they have been thought and written by a being that feels, like I do.
I know right. I wanted to get across the point that we can be enthusiastic about tech and the future and still not be glaringly dumb about it.
AI is a demon, meant to end all living meaning and following that, existence. I have always maintained this.
I think nuance is important. Not all AI is used like this. Generative AI is not, in itself, bad. The use people are giving it and the way companies are marketing it are bad.
Its hard to see anything good of any of its use for art,except in the most limited. I honestly think Guillermo Del Toro and Hayao Miyazaki really hit on something of just how anti-life it is.
And if something is anti-life, how much good could it be? Yes, poison is medicine in a dose too high, but how do we know if the dose is already too high?
I keep thinking of that scene from 'Pirates of the Caribbean': "you best start believing in ghost stories; you're in one".
--The path we were on that landed us here started with the Enlightenment, not the Industrial Revolution. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that this wasn't all in the name of efficiency and productivity -- the point was to elevate humanity in an intellectual and creative capacity. But we are currently living to race machines. That's why at the dawn of the internet, for a split second we had all the information at our fingertips, and then invented the email. So we could promptly ignore 99.999% of it and just focus on the task at hand. In a linear, yet cyclical fashion. No real creativity allowed. Function as machines do. Go, go go! I suppose that if you're thinking of AI in terms of efficiency and productivity, it is a threat to writing.
-- I see AI as a pathway back to creativity. A yin to the machine age's yang. If we're not going to slow down and fix the rift in the space/time continuum, at least now humans can stop spinning our wheels as though we are machines, and start actually thinking with the newfound processing speed AI brings us. Granted, that will only happen with a cultural movement away from values tied to growth of the bottomline.
-- also, it's not like there's not already a lot of content. Far too much for anyone to sift through. In a sense we're lucky that people already have years of conditioning to ignore the noise of AI.
-- and if all else fails, and people -- disenfranchised by fake AI generated content -- start rethinking their content consumption. Maybe that will lead to shift in values that will favor real writing and will shape the next generation along the lines of enlightenment vs. industrial values after all :)
Powerful post! I can feel your passion. Fighting for what is dear to us and for the future we wish to see is the path forward. I just hope we can use it as fuel for inspiration and optimism rather than a battle and weight on our shoulders. I’ll be writing alongside you! Collective action!
Maybe this is a bit of a straw man argument? Human writing will not disappear no matter how much AI text is produced. There are different kinds of texts. I have no problem if an AI generated study leads to a scientific breakthrough or writes a binding legal contract or performs detailed market research for a new product. A great deal of the kind of writing produced by humans every day will not be missed if done primarily by AI.
Plot twist... this was written by GPT. If I can't tell, what's the difference? I have a bad habit of assuming what the context/POV is of an author and predicting the article. This one was pretty easy (no offense, but we're not unique). My comment itself is a cliche. I'd recommend focusing less on LLMs and more on embodiment and the work of Jim Fan at NVIDIA. Things are going to get way weirder.