ChatGPT was released a couple of weeks ago and is stirring people up. For the first time, we’ve had a publicly available, fully accessible AI to which we can ask questions, and that gives scarily good answers.
I asked it about Bioenergetics therapy and this is what it wrote…
Pretty damn good answer, I’d say. Though I believe, through asking it other questions, that it has at times conflated the therapy “Bioenergetics” with the subfield of biochemistry that bears the same name. Nevertheless, I can see that my days as a writer on the topic could be numbered!
This leaves me with a question… “What can we write about that AI can’t do better?”
One obvious angle of approach to this question is to consider that the creators of ChatGPT expended no little effort trying to ensure that ChatGPT could never say anything offensive. And, of course, many first-time users spend their time trying to get ChatGPT to say something offensive! Some have succeeded. They’ve used subterfuge to get it to use sexual or race-based swearwords, or to tell them the recipe for methamphetamine.
However, the fact that ChatGPT is constrained in this way obviously is a weakness. Not because it’s good to offend people. But because in order to not offend, ChatGPT can’t investigate many fields in sufficient depth to flesh out the nuance that might exist underneath. It tends instead to simply avoid saying certain words and to rely on certain pre-set sentences, that “hedge” its statements, like the two at the end of its piece above.
AI works through its creators isolating one aspect of human creativity and articulating that as simple, logical principles. Once this is done, they can simply “scale” that aspect to the greatest degree that modern-day microchips will allow.
The effect of this over time will be to create “low-hanging fruit” - aspects of human creativity that AI can easily match or improve upon.
This is actually bad news for the more “normie” creator. If you write traditional romance novels or articles for regular media outlets, you probably should start looking to either retrain or to find an edge to your writing, one that ChatGPT’s self-censoring circuits can’t mimic.
Already the tech could I believe undertake 75% of the writing in say the New York Times or The Guardian, two papers known for hedging statements and avoiding creating offence.
In general, if we want to survive as content creators in this new playing field, we need to seek out and grab the high-hanging fruit. We need to go to the places that are both engaging for readers and inaccessible to AI.
I think this is a great challenge!
Great point. Clean AI leaves opportunity for dirty humans.
I really like the questions you pose that open doors to rooms that I like to contemplate in . The artist Vermeer , had apparently used a lens mirror system to get the hyperrealism that he painted . The precursor to the camera . Yet , does that eliminate his validity ? Then you have the photographer Ansel Adams , who had a female assistant who was not his wife , who encouraged him to push his images into severe contrasts of black and white , thus creating the look that his work encompassed , magical desert worlds . So in the one case , it was some additional technology , in the other case , another set of eyes and heart . The validity of the NFT art world , which is always using technology , even if it is a painted by hand and pigment image , it is imaged in pixels on a computer screen and signed by a non reproducable code . Eventually , the whole story gets to be more of the story , than the image seen . The essence of the science that you are developing - seemingly alone , I am sure on the backs of a few others , is in the story of your focus and the consequences . Just like Vangogh's art - the swirling skies and color contrasts , actually described math that was previously un interpreted , all art is truth seen by the artist , and contained in a stilled dimension , a mini museum - be it a canvas , a theoretical paper , or a dance move , until the moment when it can be discerned by a viewer , or by the collective consciousness . Practicing art is not about owning , rather it is about crystallizing truths so that they can be disseminated and at the same time remain complete . The beauty of a song or an image , is that it is at the same time held still , and at the same time radiated outwards . I believe that the AI description of your work that you put up in the beginning of this article is merely the trumpet announcing the masters work . AI is here to SERVE us , not to be served by us . We should never feel competitive with it . Keep doing your work - you are looking at something that is very important - Biological System Triggering and Harnessing .