Will Robots Replace Storytellers?
I asked ChatGPT to tell me a story. It was...well, you'll see
Will Robots Replace Storytellers?
There’s been a lot of buzz about ChatGPT. If you haven’t heard of it, Wikipedia describes it as “a prototype artificial intelligence chatbot developed in 2022 by OpenAI which specializes in dialogue.”
AI is very zeitgeisty right now, and for good reason. For the first time in the history of modern computing, literally everyone can literally see what so-called artificial intelligence algorithms are capable of producing. We are amazed.
Should we be?
Yes and no.
Yes: current and near-future AIs can generate art and writing that is exceptionally sophisticated and often very useful. This is good for lots of people. It’s also bad for lots of people who depend on generating art and writing. It’s a good bet that the majority of low-level graphic artists and technical writers will be out of work in a few years. So, yes, we should be amazed, and probably a little bit scared.
No: current and near-future AIs are not capable of true human-like creativity. While an algorithm may be capable of colliding things together to come up with new iterations, it lacks the ability to evaluate those new iterations. Sure, we can “train” the AI to get better and better at approximating human evaluation, but it would have to make the full leap into some kind of self-determining consciousness to ever decide whether a truly new thing is truly valuable — especially if we consider the unquantifiable metrics of value.
There’s a paradox here, of course, since all the training in the world can only use a dataset of non-new things.
I won’t belabor this any further right now. Instead, I want to illustrate my point by sharing a very short conversation I had with ChatGPT a couple of days ago. It is at once absolutely incredible, vaguely disappointing, and fairly reassuring, if you happen to be a storytelling human being.
Robot, tell me a story
Me: Can you tell me a very short story in the style of Cormac McCarthy?
ChatGPT:
Sure, here is a short story in the style of Cormac McCarthy:
The sky was a deep shade of red as the sun set over the dusty plains. The wind howled and whipped the tall grasses into a frenzy. A lone figure walked steadily across the landscape, his worn boots kicking up clouds of dirt with each step.
He carried a rifle in one hand and a worn satchel in the other. His face was etched with lines of hard living and his eyes were cold and hard. He had been on the road for days, searching for something, but he didn't know what.
As he walked, he heard the distant sound of gunfire. He quickened his pace, his heart pounding in his chest. He knew that wherever there was trouble, there was also the possibility of finding what he was looking for.
He crested a small hill and saw a group of men on horseback below. They were shooting at a lone figure on the ground, their laughter echoing across the plains. The lone figure on the ground was badly wounded, but he was still alive.
The lone figure on the road raised his rifle and took aim. He squeezed the trigger and the horsemen fell, one by one. When the dust settled, the lone figure on the road walked down to the wounded man and knelt beside him.
"Who are you?" the wounded man asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
The lone figure on the road smiled grimly. "I'm the man who just saved your life," he said. "And now, you owe me."
Me: Will AI ever be good at storytelling?
ChatGPT:
It is difficult to predict the future of AI and whether it will ever be good at storytelling. AI has made great strides in recent years, and it has the ability to generate natural language text based on the input it receives. However, storytelling is a complex skill that involves many different factors, such as creativity, empathy, and the ability to understand and convey complex emotions and ideas.
Currently, AI systems do not have the ability to understand or experience emotions in the same way that humans do. They are not capable of empathy or abstract thinking, and they lack the common sense and understanding of the world that is necessary for storytelling.
Furthermore, storytelling requires the ability to create a narrative that is engaging and captivating to an audience. This involves creating characters, plot twists, and other elements that draw the audience in and keep them interested. AI systems do not have the ability to do this, as they do not have the same level of creativity and understanding of human psychology that is necessary for effective storytelling.
It is possible that AI could be trained to generate text that is similar to a story, but it is unlikely that it would be able to create truly compelling and original stories without the ability to understand and experience emotions, think abstractly, and exhibit creativity.
In conclusion, while AI may be able to generate text that resembles a story, it is unlikely that it will be able to truly master the art of storytelling in the same way that humans can.
…
‘Nuff said.
Stuff a Robot Didn’t Write
I could probably devote an entire post to how much I love Substack, but instead, I’m going to try something new, and long overdue.
From here on out, expect non-serialized posts to include a section at the bottom with great bits pulled from other writers’ Substacks, including conveniently clickable attribution.
Be warned: the number of great writers and thinkers on Substack far outstrips even the most voracious reader’s bandwidth for consuming content. I know. I’ve tried. Not being able to keep up with all the incredible writing that hits my inbox is actually my primary source of stress right now. If I come up with a way to manage that stress better, I’ll let you know.
For now, as an invitation to commiseration, here’s the first batch of stuff that an AI didn’t write:
The problems of today’s world are problems of purposeless people with thin desires who are looking for anything solid to hold on to in the tumultuous seas of liquid modernity.
…
But the spirit still hovers over those waters, too.
"Your Personal Occam's Razor" by
@Now, psychologists who promote “The Big Five” personality test might rejoin that we shouldn’t try to make accountants entrepreneurs or vice versa. Let the agreeable rule followers be agreeable rule followers and the counter-cultural musicians be counter-cultural musicians. Fair enough. But also, no. Psychology is too descriptive. Normatively, we need balance—harmony means the romantics must learn competence and the competent must learn romanticism.
"Where are the Competent Romantics?" by
@@…only by upholding art can we champion the consumption of art. Which is so desperately needed because only art is the counterforce judo for entertainment’s stranglehold on our stone-age brains.
I’m semi-obsessed with all three of these writers, so don’t be surprised if they make repeat appearances in this section.
Prove you’re not a robot…
…by clicking on one or more of these buttons:
Think of AI like you would an infant from birth. It can learn at the level it's been trained at or taught. Just like we teach mathematical models to kids we do the same with AI. If you took that away, say at the fourth grade level, that's as far as the child would progress and that's as far as the AI would progress. In some cases, both the child and AI can make inferences about the next level, but eventually more training is needed. AI will never transcend that model, but people do it all the time, especially with creativity. That's the difference. No AI is inspired. That's why I don't fear it.
Humanity better start hitting the gym and flexing its empathy muscle, that's all I can say. Thanks for writing this. I was both horrified and comforted. Cuz I'm human.