A few months ago as a little experiment, I asked the artificial intelligence (AI) engine Chat GPT to create a poem, in Elizabethan sonnet form, describing a French horn player’s disappointment that his vending-machine coffee tasted vaguely of chicken soup.
The result was impressive. The poem was true to the format, rhymed appropriately, and contained one or two puns. I chuckled a bit and showed it to some friends.
I realized it was better than I could have done. But then I also realized: so what?
AI works by “scraping” everything it can from the internet: facts, ideas, even original writing. It is then programmed to interpret, select (steal), and arrange fragments of that material to accommodate a user’s request.
At its present stage, it is not a reliable source of information. It will give you what you want, or what it interprets as what you want, without much regard to truth. Anything published online as fact, it treats as fact—because AI does not have the capacity to distinguish what is true.
In the case of “art,” like my sonnet, AI is capable of superficially satisfying a requirement: nothing more. It has no feelings, no imagination. When I say the sonnet was better than I could have done, bear in mind that I am not a poet. It’s not high praise to say that the poem was better than I could do.
There are many useful applications for AI in just about every field: it is a shortcut around the drudgery, freeing people’s time and their minds to work on greater problems.
But it presents many problems of its own. It has an amazing capacity to create fakes, hallucinations, and outright lies. It assembles “written” materials that nobody actually wrote; these materials can then even be “read “ by AI. Millions of pages written by nobody, to be read by nobody, for nobody’s benefit, at incredible expense.
A department manager’s quarterly report has value because it contains the manager’s own thoughts and interpretations. A news report has value because it is (or should be) verified by people, for people to read.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are immortal not because they conform to usage, metre, and rhyme, but because Shakespeare imagined them and wrote them.
“It’s just a tool,” its defenders say, and they are right. It can be used as an aid to productivity, making room for creativity. But it will more often be used to alter what is real, to deceive and to manipulate.
It is a tool, much like a simple hammer. But we are not the carpenter, we are the nail.
The Horn and the Broth
Upon the morn, with lips yet numb from sleep,
He sought his solace in a papered cup—
That steaming draught which souls in traffic keep,
To lift their hopes and daily burdens sup.
With coin he fed the metal beast its due,
And stood with dreams of hazelnut delight;
But lo! what broth did strike his palate through—
A savory brew! O cursed morning blight!
"Thou mock’st me, sir!" he cried, cup held aloft,
"Where bitter beans should reign, thou pourest fowl!
What jest is this, so warm, so oddly soft—
A sip of barnyard 'neath a café cowl?"
Then with a sigh, he tuned his horn anew,
And played sweet sorrow to his chicken brew.