To re-sound the alarm at the eleventh hour: If language is the battlefield – then a free imagination remains the most powerful mysterious tool of resistance. The obviously-looming threats keep gathering: CORP U’s cynical attacks on freedom of speech and expression in academia, the dying humanities, book burning and book banning (as reading itself is “retired” along with attention and inspiration) plus ongoing word-exsanguination in search of “bias-free language.”
But perhaps the single most intimidating threat (if a reader continues to find both “experts” and exploiters credible) is undeniable: large language models or ChatBot GBT. From opinion editorial sections to cable news -- to hard to identify “fakes” – this sudden global master-minding generates fear as it over-shadows paltry human cognition. The Overlord rises? Even one of its “creators”, Geoffrey Hinton is shaken, warning, in the NYT, of the risks that A.I. poses – possibly to “humanity itself.” As with nuclear technology, he acknowledges that someone else would have “gotten to A.I.” - if he hadn’t – but now hopelessly hopes that world scientists will work together now to control the technology.
How would this be possible without massive international cooperation, including with Bot-villains? Yet I was reassured by what might have been a deeply disturbing initial look into A.I.’s “decoding of brain activity” (with this NYT headline adding helpfully, That is, to Read Minds.!) Well, if IT is now reading human minds – it may be time for all of us to hang up our rock n roll shoes.?
However, as I read on, I learned that massive IMRI scanners used large language models to “match patterns” of brains to “words”. This continued to sound ominous – and worse - as the scanners seemed to be capturing “meaning” as well as patterning. But then, the tell: “Language perception is an externally-driven process, while imagination (my italics) is an active internal process.(!) The Bot and its handlers just figured this out?
Of course the imagination is “internally active”. Further, “When the researchers tried to use a decoder trained on one person to read the brain activity of another, it failed, suggesting that every brain has unique ways of representing meaning.” Ya think?
All this may seem obvious – not only to writers and poets but to each human “imagin-er.” I loved that the article ended by noting that the brains under scrutiny could fake out the scanners, by switching around their “internal monologues” - keeping their ideas, images and weirdness to themselves.
So the unpredictable non-sequitur whirlwinds of the human creative mind (or just any of our odd little “thinks”) cannot be accessed by the Big Bot Decoder?
Any writer who has taught in the Poetry in the Schools program in the past (as many of us have) has noticed that young children are naturally imaginative, full of wild imagery, like talking suns and giant footsteps of walking trees! I used to try an “exercise” demonstrating how the imagination works: how big ideas or abstractions are changed instantly by the mind into images. I’d ask the children to close their eyes. I’d then call out an abstract idea, like “Love”, ask them to quickly open their eyes and tell me immediately what they “saw”. There were images of hearts and puppies and Mommy’s face – and sometimes a mystery, an image of a pair of blue shoes, one “with a broke heel”. Or, with older children, “Death” would evoke gravestones and the Grim Reaper, but, again, a mystery of the imagination? – An ant in a teardrop on a leaf. And finally, if I called “Justice”, there were courtrooms, gavels, the blind lady with the scales. But one small girl shouted “Broccoli” in response to “Justice”. Why, she was asked. She told the class how much she hated broccoli, but had been forced to eat it “forever” by her mother. As soon as she learned the word “Justice”, she thought about its opposite – the “injustice” of having to eat something she hated. Broccoli = Justice.
I’m certain the techs who program the Bot – will assure us that Bot will eventually capture (or think it has!) the mysterious alchemy of the creative.
I say: good luck to you, clueless monster! For now, time to hear from Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And John Lennon – well, you know.
Change your major to Creative Writing – or just keep on reading — then keep reading your own unreadable mind!
■ CMD
Wonderful. I was bracing myself to read something terrifying about AI and instead feel reassured about the irreplaceability of imagination. Thank you.