Like many, I’m deeply ambivalent about artificial intelligence with all of its countless advantages and dangers, both the known and unknown. A.I. credibly threatens to disappear entire job titles without a clear pathway for their replacement. Human creativity is being actively coopted through unattributed imitation, if not blatant theft. We see the destructive capabilities of unmanned drones and other “smart” weapons on the battlefield. And it has enormous potential to invade our privacy through data aggregation and via hackers who use its awesome computing power, which is not the kind of productivity metric we generally desire. Pretty scary stuff, in total.
On the other hand, A.I. allows someone with limited graphic and artistic skill, such as myself, to realize a creative project in ways not possible without a time-consuming and potentially expensive collaboration. A flash of an idea in the shower can, within minutes, become a satirical cartoon, a mock album cover, or a visualized philosophical concept. Some are evident on these very pages (COVFEFE rules!!), which has been wildly fun and exhilarating. What’s lost, I’m not quite certain. There is the nagging sense that ChatGPT is simply ripping-off someone else’s similar pre-existing idea, such that any victory feels only partial. But in encouraging self-expression, it has been a resounding success. That said, I’ve been reluctant to allow it into the inner sanctum of creative outlets, those being my (mostly doggerel) poetry and (rankly amateur) songwriting. I’m in zero danger of making money in either realm, yet still I worry about the slippery slope of becoming too dependent on A.I. and losing my unique voice. Nick Cave, in his most recent Red Hand Files newsletter, neatly summed up his views on A.I. this way: “Bad for good songwriters, good for bad songwriters.” And fittingly, he gets the last word.
Great Exudations 