Mar 19, 2023·edited Mar 19, 2023Liked by Walter Kirn
1974 College Graduate here... passionate English major who pulled more all nighters than I can recall, amending umpteen rough drafts with sticky notes..oh wait, no sticky notes. Following an outline with critically placed index cards, finally ready around 4 am, caffeinated to the max to start typing correcting any typos with white out...oh wait, no white out. Twenty years ago while auditing a Renaissance Lit class at Drew University, I told my kids that a word processor in college would have set me free. Copy/paste alone would have saved hours. “My English papers could have been so much better! “ Big eye rolls at Nerd Mom. Thank you dear Walter for pointing out the uber obvious... we are now willing to use our brains less in the name of “ convenience.” With AI, the dumbing down of America just took a quantum leap towards permanent mediocrity. Everyone gets a C. Boo! Hiss!
It is the further devolution of the species formerly classified as Homo sapiens. Dumbed down, incurious, devoid of independent thought, pragmatism, commitment,intimacy or nurture. Dehumanized, unpersoned an ripe for Huxley’s “Brave New World” of technocratic transhuman serfs ruled by a megalomaniacal, psychopathic, self ordained overlords.A fiefdom.
Perhaps there would be greater pushback if millenials, Gen-Z and the self proclaimed geniuses of the pundit class and the pontificators left and right actually read the damned book.
Years ago, Gutfeld authored a brilliant essay, “ The War Of Two Ideas”.. Today it could be whittled down to the “ Battle Of Two Books”- Gender Queer and the Holy Bible. Both interpreted as all that is sacred by fundamentalist , ideological zealots. As the world burns.
Oh, I don't know, Squire. I've never read The Machine Stops (so many books, so few years), but Huxley may have gotten it right with the Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and Deltas being genetically engineered to have the least intelligence needed to perform whatever tasks they were set to keep society functioning, "efficiently." The efficiency of the slaves being the primary concern of the, "Lords and Ladies," who have been running human society for the past few thousand (and maybe longer) years.
I'm currently seeing a lot of the coercion of 1984 mixed with the hedonism of Brave New World. At least in the so-called, "developed," world. The WEF's, "You will own nothing and you will be happy," is certainly well aligned with Huxley's vision of the future. Don't forget to take your soma! Of course, coercion is going to be required initially because the brighter people in the world aren't going to be willing to simply roll over and surrender their humanity for the promise of mindless pleasure. Sadly, the majority of the world is not made up of people who understand the true nature of that exchange and most will go happily to the slaughter.
Vernor Vinge had some things to say about what happens to societies where the leaders try to enforce the kind of complete control that seems to be being attempted now. I think it may have been in A Fire Upon the Deep or the following novel in the same setting. Essentially, he says that that kind of control invariably leads to societal collapse. I have some doubts about that, though. People will tolerate an astonishing degree of lack of personal control if they are told they will be kept, "safe," in exchange. They will also emphatically refuse to see that the safety is largely illusory until it is far too late for them to do anything about it. As was so perfectly demonstrated recently all over the world.
Someone, I don't know who, once claimed that the written word was decried when it started becoming common for people to learn to read and write. The argument claimed was that it would destroy people's ability to remember.
Since the first time humans had the capacity to speak old men have been complaining that the world is, "going to hell in a hand basket!" The older I get the more certain I become that they have been right the whole time.
Every technological wonder humanity produces also reduces our ability to do things for ourselves. Frank Herbert was no fool and saw this coming decades ago.
Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Richard Mathieson, Anthony Burgess, AsimovMarshall McLuhan, HG Welles… they predicted the future. We’re now recreating The Island of Dr. Moreau, Faust, Frankenstein, Minority Report, AI,The Sound Of Thunder, Coma, The Prince Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, The Boys From Brazil and very soon, The Omega Man
I worry about what will happen in a few years when AI writers are reading AI writing, could create a recursive consolidation of language use towards ease of AI use rather than human.
And will we recognize that we are no longer conversing with the audience? Will we realize we are wasting time trying to understand the author’s message to us?
Many tweets are well below chatbot levels of intelligibility, which may be one testament to human uniqueness--a kind of eccentricity software cannot replicate.
I’m frequently disturbed by writer peers who provide the AI prompts just to delightedly mock the results. My policy is one of non-engagement but I worry that there are not enough hold-outs and the war is already lost. (Though, as you mention, maybe either way, composing my own thoughts with nary a thought to what the chat bot would make of me, I win?)
I remember when my junior honors classes turned in their Gatsby essays. I took all 75 of them home and began the process of correcting them. This was during the 80’s and 90’s. Cliff Notes were the AI of the day. My brain scanned for key words-- Daisy was “hollow.” That’s it! Plagiarism.
My daughter Sara, who may meet on the W.B. this summer, teaches Honors English now. She has given up assigning take-home essays because these unimaginative lazy kids are using ChatGPT. We are in a very bad way.
We got a letter from my kids’ school that they can feed essays into some program that identifies whether it was AI-generated and the student promptly fails the the assignment and faces all the ethics charges that go with that. My kids quickly told me how other kids try to cheat that system too.
One un/intended consequence will be the death of the metaphor. Since it is a given that allowing any chatbot to imagine its own metaphors will be like making a skyscraper out of meringue occasionally appearing attractive to the eye but incapable of fulfilling its most fundamental requirement supporting the floors above it, we can be certain that AI generated metaphors will be unable to perform their primary task of illustrating the situation they are meant to describe accurately & memorably.
It is bad enough on the net now where any type of apt metaphor is ruthlessly plundered by others for their latest tweet, once these chatbots swamp twitter and such posts will be repetitive cliche ridden facsimiles of communication which lower the intelligence of both the reader and the cbot.
I spend virtually no time on twitter so I have yet to come across ctbot product to be able to identify it on sight. I have no doubt that most of the emails that pollute my inbox will be cbot driven but I never read that dross either. What I'm trying to say is that it would be helpful to learn these identifiers but only if the indicators can be passed on is a way that doesn't alert the cursed linguistic analysers who would then alter their pets to conceal cbot product better.
The feedback aspect of it harvesting the work product of other AI runs introduces the possibility of instability due to a potential positive feedback loop. Kind of like a PA system if you turn it on with the mike too close to the speaker. Hmmm.
AI could never create the stark beauty of This House of Sky or the raucousness of Desert Solitaire. Or anything Hunter Thompson wrote. Or the quirky brilliant insights of the authors I published such as Victor Niederhoffer.
I'm not sure what AI writing is like, but I'll read Walter's superb writing anyway. Mencken would be proud.
1974 College Graduate here... passionate English major who pulled more all nighters than I can recall, amending umpteen rough drafts with sticky notes..oh wait, no sticky notes. Following an outline with critically placed index cards, finally ready around 4 am, caffeinated to the max to start typing correcting any typos with white out...oh wait, no white out. Twenty years ago while auditing a Renaissance Lit class at Drew University, I told my kids that a word processor in college would have set me free. Copy/paste alone would have saved hours. “My English papers could have been so much better! “ Big eye rolls at Nerd Mom. Thank you dear Walter for pointing out the uber obvious... we are now willing to use our brains less in the name of “ convenience.” With AI, the dumbing down of America just took a quantum leap towards permanent mediocrity. Everyone gets a C. Boo! Hiss!
Artificial Intelligence is subordinate to Human Ignorance. Your niche is secure, Walter. Write on!
For now.
Human arrogance, too.
It is the further devolution of the species formerly classified as Homo sapiens. Dumbed down, incurious, devoid of independent thought, pragmatism, commitment,intimacy or nurture. Dehumanized, unpersoned an ripe for Huxley’s “Brave New World” of technocratic transhuman serfs ruled by a megalomaniacal, psychopathic, self ordained overlords.A fiefdom.
Perhaps there would be greater pushback if millenials, Gen-Z and the self proclaimed geniuses of the pundit class and the pontificators left and right actually read the damned book.
Years ago, Gutfeld authored a brilliant essay, “ The War Of Two Ideas”.. Today it could be whittled down to the “ Battle Of Two Books”- Gender Queer and the Holy Bible. Both interpreted as all that is sacred by fundamentalist , ideological zealots. As the world burns.
I see the human race pro-regressing less towards Huxley's Brave New World and more towards Forster's The Machine Stops.
Oh, I don't know, Squire. I've never read The Machine Stops (so many books, so few years), but Huxley may have gotten it right with the Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and Deltas being genetically engineered to have the least intelligence needed to perform whatever tasks they were set to keep society functioning, "efficiently." The efficiency of the slaves being the primary concern of the, "Lords and Ladies," who have been running human society for the past few thousand (and maybe longer) years.
I'm currently seeing a lot of the coercion of 1984 mixed with the hedonism of Brave New World. At least in the so-called, "developed," world. The WEF's, "You will own nothing and you will be happy," is certainly well aligned with Huxley's vision of the future. Don't forget to take your soma! Of course, coercion is going to be required initially because the brighter people in the world aren't going to be willing to simply roll over and surrender their humanity for the promise of mindless pleasure. Sadly, the majority of the world is not made up of people who understand the true nature of that exchange and most will go happily to the slaughter.
Vernor Vinge had some things to say about what happens to societies where the leaders try to enforce the kind of complete control that seems to be being attempted now. I think it may have been in A Fire Upon the Deep or the following novel in the same setting. Essentially, he says that that kind of control invariably leads to societal collapse. I have some doubts about that, though. People will tolerate an astonishing degree of lack of personal control if they are told they will be kept, "safe," in exchange. They will also emphatically refuse to see that the safety is largely illusory until it is far too late for them to do anything about it. As was so perfectly demonstrated recently all over the world.
Or Soylent Green
Someone, I don't know who, once claimed that the written word was decried when it started becoming common for people to learn to read and write. The argument claimed was that it would destroy people's ability to remember.
Since the first time humans had the capacity to speak old men have been complaining that the world is, "going to hell in a hand basket!" The older I get the more certain I become that they have been right the whole time.
Every technological wonder humanity produces also reduces our ability to do things for ourselves. Frank Herbert was no fool and saw this coming decades ago.
Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Richard Mathieson, Anthony Burgess, AsimovMarshall McLuhan, HG Welles… they predicted the future. We’re now recreating The Island of Dr. Moreau, Faust, Frankenstein, Minority Report, AI,The Sound Of Thunder, Coma, The Prince Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, The Boys From Brazil and very soon, The Omega Man
Truer words were never written
I worry about what will happen in a few years when AI writers are reading AI writing, could create a recursive consolidation of language use towards ease of AI use rather than human.
same
Exactly, and we’re well up to our knees wading in the Rubicon.
And will we recognize that we are no longer conversing with the audience? Will we realize we are wasting time trying to understand the author’s message to us?
Ah, Walter, as long as you’re there to muse on over the changing landscape around us, I can take whatever comes next. Thanks, dear!
Many tweets are well below chatbot levels of intelligibility, which may be one testament to human uniqueness--a kind of eccentricity software cannot replicate.
Exactly this. AI is incapable of replicating the garbage levels of human experience because it, not being human, has never lived in a hobo jungle.
I’m frequently disturbed by writer peers who provide the AI prompts just to delightedly mock the results. My policy is one of non-engagement but I worry that there are not enough hold-outs and the war is already lost. (Though, as you mention, maybe either way, composing my own thoughts with nary a thought to what the chat bot would make of me, I win?)
Mine, too. See my comment re: ChatGPT below.
It'll be mediocrity all the way down.
The system selects for mediocrity. This is the newest iteration.
just like turtles
Hi Walt,
I remember when my junior honors classes turned in their Gatsby essays. I took all 75 of them home and began the process of correcting them. This was during the 80’s and 90’s. Cliff Notes were the AI of the day. My brain scanned for key words-- Daisy was “hollow.” That’s it! Plagiarism.
My daughter Sara, who may meet on the W.B. this summer, teaches Honors English now. She has given up assigning take-home essays because these unimaginative lazy kids are using ChatGPT. We are in a very bad way.
We got a letter from my kids’ school that they can feed essays into some program that identifies whether it was AI-generated and the student promptly fails the the assignment and faces all the ethics charges that go with that. My kids quickly told me how other kids try to cheat that system too.
Hard not to conclude that all is lost already.
One un/intended consequence will be the death of the metaphor. Since it is a given that allowing any chatbot to imagine its own metaphors will be like making a skyscraper out of meringue occasionally appearing attractive to the eye but incapable of fulfilling its most fundamental requirement supporting the floors above it, we can be certain that AI generated metaphors will be unable to perform their primary task of illustrating the situation they are meant to describe accurately & memorably.
It is bad enough on the net now where any type of apt metaphor is ruthlessly plundered by others for their latest tweet, once these chatbots swamp twitter and such posts will be repetitive cliche ridden facsimiles of communication which lower the intelligence of both the reader and the cbot.
I spend virtually no time on twitter so I have yet to come across ctbot product to be able to identify it on sight. I have no doubt that most of the emails that pollute my inbox will be cbot driven but I never read that dross either. What I'm trying to say is that it would be helpful to learn these identifiers but only if the indicators can be passed on is a way that doesn't alert the cursed linguistic analysers who would then alter their pets to conceal cbot product better.
Please write more, your words are medicine to me.
The feedback aspect of it harvesting the work product of other AI runs introduces the possibility of instability due to a potential positive feedback loop. Kind of like a PA system if you turn it on with the mike too close to the speaker. Hmmm.
What came to mind for me was the Austin Powers femmebots imploding on themselves
AI could never create the stark beauty of This House of Sky or the raucousness of Desert Solitaire. Or anything Hunter Thompson wrote. Or the quirky brilliant insights of the authors I published such as Victor Niederhoffer.
Hunter Thompson’s writing would def short circuit any AI, at which he’d shotgun the computer, grind it up, put it in his pipe and smoke it.
And bury it in his back yard with a proper gravestone!
Thank God for Walter’s writing!
Walter! It's robert porte
I love you man. And miss you.
Can I quote you? "The modern world is held together by fudge." I can hear you laugh.
I'm with you here. Hope to see you in tbe living stone soon.