Life is full of surprises but what I have to say on this subject probably won’t surprise anyone particularly considering the traffic these posts get…

Like most people I’m interested in artificial intelligence but I am so far agnostic about concerns that AI machines might take over the world and end civilization (see Bostrom‘s book)  versus the recently more prevalent opinion that AI may be wonderfully helpful, not just technically but potentially geopolitically and in other less mechanical areas.

Anyway I fired up Chat GPT the other day and asked it to write a thousand word critique of Charles Bukowski’s Women, which very human I had just reviewed. Within two seconds what I had requested appeared on my screen like the dginni out of Aladdin’s lamp. I read through it and my mood crumpled like Christmas wrapping paper as I found the AI version more interesting, nuanced, and enantiodromic (representing opposites) than my masterpiece.

I haven’t yet explored how university teachers are picking up on AI plagiarism but I think I will. One of the effects of widespread “creativity” deployed by machines could be fewer people taking the trouble and struggling to create something beautiful. A deep language intelligence seizing the internet and physical resources and killing us all is of course terrifying but many of the most potentially creative humans throwing up their hands and turning into mental and spiritual couch potatoes worries me too.