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AI tells me if AI will write novels.

2022-12-06 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Books & writing) · mode: Personal essay

John plays a ChatGPT-written vlogbrothers script assuring him AI cannot truly write novels, finds its reassurance and cliches unsettling, and says his deeper worry is not technology becoming like us but humans coming to see themselves as digital rather than as organisms among organisms.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — ChatGPT's King James-style vlogbrothers script on whether AI can write novels

  • ★★ The AI script says whether AI can write a novel depends on the definition: it could produce a lengthy fiction, but a novel is a story, a journey, a tapestry of words. (parody) — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ The AI script answers nay: AI cannot understand human experience or capture a writer's voice; writing is a uniquely human endeavor and always will be. (parody) — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Reaction: the creepy reassurance, cliche, plagiarism and writers' data sets

  • ★★ John reveals that the opening script, a vlogbrothers video in King James Bible style about whether AI can write novels, was written by ChatGPT. — 00:01:27
  • ★ John says it is not the worst vlogbrothers video he has come across; it even knew about DFTBA. (playful) — 00:01:27 · DFTBA
  • ★★★ John is super freaked out by the AI's attempt to reassure humans that they are unique, which he finds scarier than if it had boasted it would write the novels of the future. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John notes the AI relies on cliches like 'window into the soul' and 'tapestry of words', he thinks because they are evocative yet common enough not to be plagiarism. (hedged) — 00:01:57
  • ★★★ John says to be more specific and compelling AI will need less cliche and more unusual sentences, and the easiest way is to plagiarize or rely on particular human brains. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John says that as a novelist he too depends on the linguistic constructions and narratives he has met: all writers work from a data set. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John says humans have fairly sophisticated strategies for deciding what counts as plagiarism among people, but maybe not for AI. (hedged) — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Worries: arguing with non-people online, consciousness seen as digital; living as organisms; sign-off

  • ★★ John is freaked out that this technology means we are already having vitriolic arguments on Twitter and other sites with people who are not actually people. — 00:02:55 · Twitter
  • ★★★ John's biggest worry: computers are nothing like us (we are far more like kangaroos), and as AI improves we may see human consciousness and cognition as digital rather than organic, a big mistake. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says to be happy, and to create the word tapestries ChatGPT calls uniquely human, we need to live as organisms on a planet with other organisms. — 00:02:55

  • ★★★ John is not that worried about making technology more like us, but very worried about making us more like technology. — 00:03:43

    “I am very, very worried about attempts to make us more like technology.”

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says AI wrote everything from 0:11 to 1:34, a text-generation AI promising John it won't replace him. — video description
  • ★ In a channel comment John says he didn't change a single word of the AI's script. — creator comment
  • ★★ In a channel comment John stresses that the AI, not he, wrote 'it will always be so', which alarms him more; he doesn't think anything, not even the universe, will always be so. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: artificial intelligence · ChatGPT

Also: consciousness · DFTBA · King James Version · Plagiarism · Twitter

Also centred on artificial intelligence: Google in your Brain · Question Tuesday Except I'm an AI · Asking an AI Image Generator for Pizza Johns · Things are Changing Very Fast · After 12 hours in LA I'm a stand-up comic doing ASMR with a side gig as a music promoter · The Coming AI Invasion

Also centred on ChatGPT: Cat...I Farted.

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