Well, it happened. They finally invented the machine to do what an eighth-grade human male cannot do: Write a 2-3 page essay paper for his homework (or, a “Thank You” note). Of course, they can do much more. I’m talking artificial intelligence (AI), as in ChatGPT, ChatSonic, and Moonbeam. You might give it a go if you haven’t seen it or tried it out. It is about to alter almost everything. Tell the mechanized brain that you want no more than an 800-word story on how the Habsburgs were responsible for World War I, and right before your eyes, the thing will produce an article on your subject. True to its programming directives, the online AI content creator will write a suitable piece with a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion. If you try several topics, no matter how obscure or popular, you will begin to recognize the machine’s “style.” Of course, redundancies or other annoying “habits” will be spotted, and algorithms adjusted to make the style less predictable and more interesting.
Educators have every right to ask, “Will essays, for that matter, postgraduate dissertations, become as obsolete as an IBM Selectric?”
I am reading the articles about this latest gizmo in the London Sunday Times, the Spectator, and more than a half dozen of those “content creator” sites. You know, those take-offs on serious US News and World Report rankings that divert you from your legal research on tomorrow morning’s murder defense case. The titles are laughable, highly subjective, and, by careful design, highly enticing: “The Top Ten Worst Places to Retire,” “The Best and Worst Fast-food Joints for Your New Year’s Diet,” and “The Tragic Story of Amy Robach Gets Worse” (wait; sorry, that was a legit news page). With algorithm-grating efficiency, such pages host graphic-designed circus barkers to click on the image-rich affiliate links. So, at least, for these enterprising proprietors, the banners are unfurling: “Artificial Intelligence to set us free in ‘23.” Content writers, bloggers, and how-to authors, beware. On the next corner of the information superhighway (an AI machine-writer would never use the archaic, dilapidated word like “superhighway,” assuring us that mortal mediocrity will remain the comforting mark of authenticity) lies the less congested gaggle of educators, novelists, and print reporters carrying (handwritten) signs, “The End has come!” “Cometh the End?” and, my favorite, “Cometh the time, cometh the machine!” 'Tis a sad lot, that.
Educators have every right to ask, “Will essays, for that matter, postgraduate dissertations, become as obsolete as an IBM Selectric?” Sean Thomas of The Spectator wrote with typical creativity,
Putting on my pointy hat of pessimism, here’s how I think it will pan out. The machines will come for much academic work first – essays, PhDs, boring scholarly texts (unsurprisingly it can churn these out right now). Fanfic is instantly doomed, as are self- published novels. Next will be low-level journalism, copywriting, marketing, legalese, tech writing; then high-level journalism will go, along with genre fiction, history, biography, screenplays, TV drama, drama, until eventually a computer will be able to write something like Ulysses, only better. The only prompt will be ‘write a long amazing novel on whatever.
If Mr. Thomas has not read The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) he should. Ellul, like Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) and Neil Postman (1931-2003) after him, thought about the promises of technique in the service of “efficiency” (the essential existential nirvana of the digital age). Ellul, McLuhan, and Postman are indispensable as we move deeper into the secular age, an era advanced by the engine of technological wonder, the new magic. Ellul wrote,
“However, what characterizes technical action within a particular activity is the search for greater efficiency. Completely natural and spontaneous effort is replaced by a complex of acts designed to improve, say, the yield. It is this which prompts the creation of technical forms, starting from simple forms of activity” (p 20).
From Ellul, I read, “Make it faster with increasingly less human output, leaving time for—what?—leisure.” Remember going to the movies? How very anteCovidian. We can watch it at home—more entertainment, less energy.” Thus, one more community event is extinguished to light the eternal flame of privatization. It is”a thousand points of light” but without the compassion Mr. Bush imagined.
Ellul, McLuhan, and Postman are indispensable as we move deeper into the secular age, an era advanced by the engine of technological wonder, the new magic.
So, one of those activities, writing, is viewed through the foggy lens of the technological worldview. The conclusion is determined before the question is put. Everything must conform to efficiency. Writing is no different. AI may be the ultimate realization of efficiency. But can it satisfy the yearning for the personal, the authentic “I and Thou” (Buber)? We become “slaves” to the “technique” (Ellul), as we brag about our freedom, never considering the human cost of our newfound economy of thought, labor, and results without relationships. One has to believe, though, that at some time we will remember the value of the means and the human inefficiencies of “efficiency.” I believe such an epiphany is possible because we are made in the image of God. Thus, one day we (at least a few of us) notice a child playing. We take in her laughter as she tried to build her little doll house. No one dares to intervene so they could build the doll house quicker. Why? Because the means of building the doll house is as important as the end. There is an observed elegance in her childish inefficiencies. The laughter, curiosity, learning, joyful, and contagious humanity of a little girl is the miracle that is the means. It is gloriously uneconomical and magnificently mortal. What I propose is this: The image of God that makes us human will not ultimately tolerate the chains of technique, though we will lament losing the time we spent learning the lesson. In other words I have hope that some of, maybe many, will feel the loss that technology requires as payment for the efficient, though such realization will likely emerge after significant damage is done. In an act of pure rebellion from the many indignities of the inhuman non-economical, someone will, i.e., Shelby Foote, sit down in a public library and write—in slow, deliberate cursive, with a dip pen, crowquill nib, and a bottle of archival ink—a series of books on the joy of , e.g., “taking the long way home.”
From the bigger vision to the case at hand we turn. Mr. Thomas’ understandable anxiety notwithstanding, I don’t see us losing human writers to Artificial Intelligence. How do I know? It was easy. I fed the fearful prompt into the mouth of the AI beast and watched as the Invisible Man typed its response. And this is precisely how it responded:
AI has advanced capabilities in generating texts and writing, but it still lacks the human qualities of creativity, empathy, and emotion. AI can produce well-structured texts and stories, but it cannot match the unique perspectives, experiences, and human touch that only humans can bring to their writing. Additionally, AI lacks the understanding of social and cultural nuances that are important for creating relatable content. Ultimately, the power of human authors lies in their ability to connect with their audience and create meaningful, thought-provoking works, which is something that AI has yet to replicate.
I almost told the thing, “Thanks for that, big guy!” Then, I fixated on its last word: “yet.” Disturbing. There is a sinister warning coded into the machine’s reassuring reply.
Nevertheless, I do think the cute little algorithmic composite creature is on to something. If, for example, a second-year Stanford student freshly recruited from Bangalore (that is not intended to be prejudiced to the obvious mathematical genius of India, but self-deprecating for my own twenty-first-century Anglo-Saxon lot) determines to feed the writing style of, say, John Steinbeck, into the cavernous cranial canals of the pulsating AI beast, then, we will get countless words of encyclopedia articles that read like, Of Mice and Men (or, Travels with Charlie). Then again, we might get a million new novels that are all candidates for the Nobel Prize. Neither extreme is probable, though theoretically possible. But what will likely happen is that we use this new technology poorly and, sometimes, brilliantly. Our ethics for writing doctoral dissertations, Twitter updates, legal briefs, and cake recipes with AI will catch up with the robotics just in time for the technology to change again, ever zooming towards planet efficiency. In other words, the humans who make these things will falter, flail, fret, and fritter; do good, do wrong, use it wisely, miss opportunities, regret, and regale it. How do I know? Apart from Augustine’s (354-430 AD) brilliant survey of the moral agency of Man derived from the Scriptures, I just typed in a prompt to the AI thing to make meaning of it all. The machine hath spoken:
The phrase "There is nothing new under the sun" is a quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It means that all events and situations in life have happened before and will happen again, and that there is a sense of cyclicality and inevitability in life. The idea is that despite our attempts to create or discover new things, everything is ultimately fleeting and that all things eventually come full circle.
I have to admit, “Well said.”
Oh, and not to be rudely fastidious, but the reference you cite is Ecclesiastes 1:9. Just so you would know for the next time someone asks you, “What’s new?”
References
Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1937.
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1964.
Maxwell, Timothy. “The 3 Best Alternatives to ChatGPT,” in MajeUseof.com. https:// www.makeuseof.com/best-alternatives-chatgpt/
Thomas, Sean. “AI is the End of Writing,” in The Spectator. https://www.spectator.co.uk/ article/ai-is-the-end-of-writing/