artificially yours
Let’s be honest about AI. It’s a shiny new toy that could make or break our view of what it means to create as a human being. Does the means of creation change the value of the thing that is created?
Any writer hopes to offer clarity on something in a memorable way. Writers are prismatic: we absorb the complex and abstract, process it, and transform it into something beautiful. We read, research, review, reflect, rewrite, and try and try and try to offer the clearest, most valuable perspective. And this process of transfiguring ideas into reality can take anywhere between an hour to a year. Sometimes more.
… ChatGPT can do it in less than a minute.
“So,” a writer might ask, “what is the point of me?”
Is there a higher value attached to something that is created and delivered quickly, or do human beings, in all their imperfect approaches, still count as the more valuable creators?
When I listened to Stephen Fry read Nick Cave’s letter about AI and human creativity in songwriting, I realised that AI tools like ChatGPT have evolved into creative structures unto themselves. And seeing as ChatGPT and other AI-based software can mimic my writing style — and potentially make me sound smarter and more aware of current affairs than I actually am — do I use it to make my unautomated labour more valuable?
Could AI truly replace the human writer?
My definitive answer: not yet.
There is one thing that AI has not yet been able to mimic: the spirit of creation — the “pneuma,” as Fry calls it. The intangibly palpable transformation that makes the written word perfect in its imperfection.
Every time we write something, we are transformed. And to write is to part with a bit of yourself. Blemishes, flourishes, old scars, and analogies only you can come up with. Each of these is erased when AI takes over. Writing becomes a little uncanny valley: too formulaic, too exactly-placed, too spotless.
Artificial intelligence cannot capture our seesawing humour, our scarred quirks, our deliberate irresponsibility with grammar, our intimate relationship with words. It can imitate us, but it cannot truly embody us.
But that’s not to say it can’t help us.
We can allow AI limited entry into our drafting process and have it weed out vague ideas. Its encyclopaedic value is immense, as is its systemisation. It can help us structure our thoughts so we can refine them ourselves and imbue them with the spark of our creativity. ChatGPT can inform rather than influence the written word.
When we treat AI as a writer’s tool rather than a writer’s replacement, both the writer and the tool add value to one another.
So, the question is, once again:
Do human beings, in all their imperfect approaches, still count as the more valuable creators?