Does ChatGPT lose its shit over the beauty of a white rose shivering in the moonlight?

and other peculiar thoughts about AI

Dear Reader,

Thank you for meeting 🪶 The Sensitivity Series so tenderly. I’ll keep taking a break from it now and then, as one might with sensitive matters, but I am excited to slowly build the series with you all. For now, sharing my curious thoughts about AI and ChatGPT. I would love to know your initial reactions to the new wonders of AI.

Does ChatGPT lose its shit over the beauty of a white rose shivering in the moonlight?

and other peculiar thoughts about AI

via GIPHY

1. Recently I met a poet in a peer support group online. She told me about a Poetry Exchange that happens on Clubhouse every week. She thought I'd like to join such an event, and she was right. Before I could respond, our mutual friend sincerely asked us, "but what if someone steals your poems?" We were stumped. Then from god knows where I blurted — "I'm okay with my poem being stolen, because..and this may sound cheesy…they can't steal the joy I felt when I wrote the poem.. that will always be mine."

2. I haven’t tried any AI models yet. I’ve heard about how ChatGPT writes almost like a human. I’m cynical. What use is the production of excellent writing if nobody feels any delight? Or sweat mixed with pride? Does ChatGPT jump up and down after writing a lovely piece?

   

   by Luis Ricardo

3. What ChatGPT doesn’t have is memory. It wasn’t bullied by classmates, brought to the circus by aunts and uncles, or cheated on by boyfriends. Does ChatGPT have no trauma? No desperation to prove someone wrong? Does it also struggle with political correctness?

4. What ChatGPT doesn’t have are senses. I don’t know the exact tech magic behind it but I’m assuming it is cleverly reorganizing the words and phrases already existing in the world, rearranging descriptions and plotlines penned by human writers. They say AI is challenging human creativity. But isn’t AI itself a child of writers, coders, and imagineers? Humans have always created something that can create even more. But this particular ‘more’ has a limit. Does ChatGPT lose its shit over the beauty of a white rose shivering in the moonlight? Does it get aroused when it sees a shirt lift up the waist by just two inches? Did it cry when Irrfan died?

5. What ChatGPT doesn’t have is a body. It has never tried to lose weight. It has never tried to lose the heaviest weight - the weight of all weight loss pursuits. It hasn’t returned home when sick, begging mother for soft rice. Thankfully, ChatGPT hasn’t been touched inappropriately. It has not been touched at all. It doesn’t have anything to write about without your prompt.

6. What ChatGPT doesn’t know is how sexy it feels to write with purple chalk on a vantablack board. It can’t imagine what it is to be criticised by people who have not written one heartfelt sentence in their entire lives. It hasn’t started planning what to write when its loved ones die. It doesn't worry about all the yummy books it hasn’t read yet.

   

   from Olobob Top

7. Is it whimsical? Mary Oliver wrote,

   Deep in the woods, I tried walking on all fours. I did for an hour or so, through thickets, across a field, down to a cranberry bog. I don’t think anyone saw me! At the end, I was exhausted and sore, but I had seen the world from the level of the grasses, the first bursting growth of trees, declivities, lumps, slopes, rivulets, gashes, open spaces…
   
   You must not ever stop being whimsical.

   When will ChatGPT start being whimsical? Can it write Nanette like Hannah Gadsby? ChatGPT has never lived with the resilience of Viktor Frankl, or the passion of Annie Ernaux. It has never lived life as Frida Kahlo did. ChatGPT has never lived with that kind of hunger. It has never lived. Period.

8. ‘It requires my humanness’ — Someone asked singer and songwriter Nick Cave what he thinks about ChatGPT lyrics ‘in the style of Nick Cave’.

   He said:

   Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become….
   

   … It may sound like I’m taking all this a little too personally, but I’m a songwriter who is engaged, at this very moment, in the process of songwriting. It’s a blood and guts business, here at my desk, that requires something of me to initiate the new and fresh idea. It requires my humanness.

9. One day I will check it out. It was my dream, no, my expectation, when I started writing, that writing will be instantly produced, without mistakes, with flourish and flow, paragraph after paragraph. I will feel quite jealous and furious the day I try ChatGPT. It, on the other hand, won’t feel anything.