And now that the A.I. Chatbot – or ChatGBT -is freaking out universities, who are re-vamping curriculum to protect from this alien generator-of faux-human-prose, they have not seemingly comprehended that Chatbot cannot write “creatively” or with imagination. All analysis of the bot has centered on its ability to reproduce factual information, to answer questions plausibly, to organize somewhat detailed arguments. What it has provided, except when it “misunderstands” and gets a little surreal and therefore a little funny – is an ability to “write” like a very boring person. An imaginative human might be capable of writing something beautiful, a lyric poem, an eloquent meditation, an elegy, a dream of Truth and Beauty. All that we call original and inventive and anarchical – as in “the pure products of America go crazy.” This is what creative writing and creative writers traffic in: the inexpressible ambitiously expressed.
Yet the more critical issue remains: while neither sophisticated prose or aesthetically elegant language may somehow be “recognized” by the bot – who will teach it? Who will teach students not invited or assigned to read or acknowledge challenging texts – to ultimately attempt to emulate models of “great” writing? “Great” is a suspect word now – it may even “trigger” a reader who is leery of the depth and intensity of open-minded attention that is necessary to learn.
But what an opportunity for a thoughtful teacher: let students set their own writing “against” the bot’s. Let the limitations of the bot reveal themselves as the student learns to recognize and expand her imagination.
Will Chatbot improve its “savvy” in the realm of expressive possibility? Or will it choose to censor itself?
Will students improve – by reading and writing, without censorship? Without letting a bot set the standard. Or those in authority who think like bots and can’t tell the difference between the prosaic and the profound or poetic?
P.S. In the introduction to an essay collection I’ve just completed (entitled “Out-Spoken”) I mention my regard for the talk show “The View”, and for all of The View’s outspoken “hosts” -- especially Joy Behar, a comedian and former teacher, whose dry humor and edgy opinions I enjoy.
During a recent show, a Chatbot “valentine” was delivered to Joy at The View – a paragraph of Bot prose and a Bot poem, both flattering, which she graciously accepted and acknowledged as endearing. “It likes me” she said.
Nope. The Bot lacks emotion and even a glimmer of literary style. The paragraph was cliched and the poem was pure doggerel. In fact, Joy’s dog Bernie could have barked out better rhymes. (And Joy has quoted ,the great Spanish poet, Miguel de Unamuno, on racism on the air.)
The Bot is friendly but dim. No doubt it will improve over time. “To Bot or Not to Bot”? - what would Hamlet have recommended?