In 1850, one of Russias great writers published a short story titled "The Singers". The story takes place at a scant watering hole, where an impromptu competition takes place. Two men take part in a singing competition as the patrons roil them up and the stakes are raised. The first to go is the favourite to win; he is the undisputed best in the village. He is pit against Yashka, the underdog. Yashka sweats as he watches and listens to his superior opponent belt a pitch-perfect song. There are no mistakes and the crowd declares the contest over before Yashka has even gotten the chance to sing. The barkeep insists that they give him a chance to try. He takes the stage and his voice cracks and trembles through the first notes. But as he sings on and on, his voice is so utterly beautiful and evokes such a quality that it brings the patrons into hysterics and tears.
Turgenev writes:
Many artists – writers and fine artists alike – have been feeling an existential dread since the release of larger, more powerful AI models like GPT3/4 and Midjourney. And rightfully so. How could you not? Imagine: you, an artist who is in the process of honing your craft or has spent a lifetime doing it, are suddenly and without warning usurped by a computer that can produce a great piece in a matter of minutes, seconds. Your mind starts racing, panicking. Where do I fit into this world? How will I survive doing what I love? Who would pay me for my work when they can get an AI do produce a piece comparable for just $20 a month? If a computer can create art, what does that mean for the future of art on earth?A warmhearted, truthful Russian soul rang and breathed in it and fairly clutched you by the heart, clutched straight at your Russian heartstrings. The song expanded and went flowing on. Yashka was evidently overcome by ecstasy: he was no longer diffident; he gave himself up entirely to his feeling of happiness; his voice no longer trembled—it quivered, but with the barely perceptible inner quivering of passion which pierces like an arrow into the hearer’s soul…
Earlier this month, OpenAI announced their next endeavour into the arts with a model poised for creative writing. You can read the piece for yourself. In the words of my partner, a fiction editor for an online and print journal, It's better than 95% of what's submitted.
On first read, the piece is good. The prose is clean, the metaphors are illustrative, and the story holds the reader. It’s a meta-fictional piece, where the author writes of a character Mila who is interacting with our AI narrator, grieving the loss of their friend Kai. It’s a compelling story and holds you.
But on a second read, something irks. The story isn’t really a story but rather resembles the concept of a story. A good story is asserted with truth, with conviction, with heart. The piece written by AI lacks these qualities; it lacks a certain depth and human experience. It's punctuated with brutal exposition about what makes a good story and then just hands you that thing, narrating the whole time. It reads as being written by ChatGPT.
Rather than continuing to critique the piece, I'd prefer to focus on the philosophical aspects and the repercussions of building a model like this.
With complete certainty I can say that bad actors will do the cheap thing and use this model to make a quick buck, pivoting from dropshipping junk to slinging AI generated slop on Amazon. These people are to be pitied.
While thinking about how AI is going to change our need for Art, I ask many questions. One question I pose to those who I discuss this topic with is, Would you read something written by AI? Yes, the piece from OpenAI is interesting, but it is only interesting because it is novel. Like when OpenAI first released ChatGPT and people were blown away by its capabilities, soon we became accustomed to it's ability to mimic a human. When reading emails, announcements, or watching your parents scroll on FaceBook, it's becoming easier to discern what is written by AI and what is not. Perhaps the creative writing model only appears good because it's regurgitating what other great writers have published.
It's this regurgitating and mimicry that makes AI so sloppy and lacking quality. The things that AI creates cannot be creative because all it knows is what it's been taught. True creativity comes from experience, from living, from trying and failing. It comes from grief, being wronged, heartbreak, oppression, love, bliss, our connections. Art is the product of experience and our environment. If you haven't lived, where does your creativity come from?
From this lacking that we know that AI cannot create art. When we look at a painting, watch a movie, or read a book, we do so much more than just stare blankly. We question the decisions. We ask ourselves "why did they decide to tell this story?" It's a much more active process than a passive one. "What is the artist trying to say?", we continue to ponder. Some art connects with us while other works don't. But there is always the attempt to connect between an audience, the work and the artist. And the quality of a work has little to do with its technicality but rather the imperfections that emphasize the work and tell us about the artist. A work without an author cannot say anything.
It's for these reasons that I think of The Singers by Turgenev. ChatGPT can pull beautiful words together from it's vast bank of training to tell a compelling story. But the story will not be true because the author cannot experience or empathize, if you can even say the work has an author at all. While the work may have all of the technicalities of a good piece, it continues to feel robotic. It lacks the imperfections that make something beautiful and moving. As a reader or a watcher, I can't engage with the work further; I can't dive deeper into other work to inquire further who the artist is and what makes them tick. For OpenAIs new model, the only ticking is the clock found in it's many CPUS.