Was chatting with a coder friend recently about artificial intelligence (AI) and the persistent buzz that it will be replacing countless jobs in the future. Increasingly, those jobs will include the so-called “knowledge” jobs at which I made my living. College education in the humanities, learning how to read, research, think, evaluate and write? Bahhhhahaha!
Better at this point to pick up a useful skill such as Certified Robot Assistant in an Amazon warehouse, where your main concern is troubleshooting any complications the robots encounter finding the items Jeff Bezos has promised his customers they’ll receive in a few nanoseconds.
In this scenario, not only will most research, white papers and long issues analyses of old be done by computers in the proverbial blink of an eye, but even the handsomely compensated coders who write the programs that allow AI to whip out expository essays on arcane subjects will become obsolete, as the coding itself will be taken over by their AI overlords.
And the promise is those overlords will deftly soak up any request you feed into them—from marketing plans to blog posts to academic papers to love songs—in whatever style you’re looking for, so remarkably written is the code that directs them.
“Just try it, you’ll see,” my coder friend told me, not for the first time.
So: I finally tried it.
Isn’t that the issue, after all—whether some future digital Selves of ours will be able to ‘think,’ act and express themselves in our voices, with our sensibilities and ‘style,’ and that such Selves could interact with other Selves in a digital forever?
Over the course of two days, I fed two slightly different prompts into the ChatGPT portal concerning a poem I’ve always wanted to write about but hadn’t gotten to yet: W.H. Auden’s meditation at the start of World War II: “September 1, 1939.”
I framed the first prompt this way: “Write a 1,200-1,500 word blog post on the W.H. Auden poem, “September 1, 1939,” in the style of andrewhidas.com.”
I should first mention that although I neglected to turn on the stopwatch function of my phone, I’m certain it took within a few tenths of two seconds to come up with the essay/blog post you will see below.
So: for all intents and purposes: Immediate.
Secondly, I’ll say that the content left me far from dazzled. Not only was it a mere 759 words rather than the 1,200-1,500 I’d requested, but I also found myself feeling rather smug and dismissive of the result I got from my prompt.
The finished product much more resembled an adequate, but somewhat humdrum college student’s “composition” than it did a blog post I’d be happy to say is mine. Yes, it did touch on the main points of the poem, but more with the flavor of a machine or engineering major droning along and checking off required boxes, sans any discernible human, emotionally resonant author’s “voice” that might suggest an original thought or engaging turn of phrase.
That led me to wonder whether, contrary to what I had read about ChatGPT being able to mimic the voice and style of anything that has ever appeared on the Internet, it really just gathers up the basic vanilla talking points of any subject one asks it to address. Ignoring my specific request that it respond in the particular style of my blog certainly didn’t engender much confidence in the platform’s capabilities.
But then, still curious and wondering whether that was really the best this ChatGPT thing could do, I came back the next day with a slight twist on my prompt, appending to the previous day’s query another three words: “…add some humor.”
So, you know those little hairs that kind of snap to attention on the back of your neck when you encounter a sudden stimulus that seems to—at least momentarily—set your world aflame?
Yeah: those.
Burn, baby, burn!
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Let’s zip through the first day’s, if not robotic, at least pro forma offering now so we can follow, in rather dramatic contrast, the second iteration in which I asked for an additional element of humor—and got much more than that for my trouble. Yes, I’ll forgive you for skimming here. While the content is serviceable for pure information/background purposes, you’ll see it’s nothing special, by nobody in particular.
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W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939”: A Poem for Our Times
W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” is more than a historical artifact; it is a mirror reflecting the anxieties, contradictions, and moral reckonings of its era—and perhaps our own. Written in the immediate aftermath of the German invasion of Poland, which marked the onset of World War II, the poem captures a moment of profound global crisis. Yet, its themes—fear, complicity, moral failure, and the flickering possibility of redemption—resonate with unsettling clarity in today’s world.
A Poem Born from Crisis
Auden composed the poem in New York City, shortly after the outbreak of war. The opening lines set the tone:
“I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade.”
These lines ground the poem in a specific time and place, yet their sentiments transcend the immediate context. The “low dishonest decade” refers to the 1930s, a period marked by political instability, economic turmoil, and the rise of totalitarian regimes. The “dives” of Fifty-second Street evoke a sense of urban alienation and moral decay, setting the stage for a meditation on the failures that led to war.
The Anatomy of War
In the subsequent stanzas, Auden delves into the psychological and historical underpinnings of conflict. He references the work of Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian who chronicled the Peloponnesian War, to illustrate the cyclical nature of human violence:
“Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave.”
Here, Auden suggests that the lessons of history are often ignored or forgotten, leading to the repetition of past mistakes. The “elderly rubbish” refers to the hollow rhetoric of leaders who, despite their grand speeches, perpetuate cycles of oppression and war.
The Complicity of the Masses
Auden does not absolve the general populace from complicity. In one of the poem’s most striking lines, he writes:
“Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
This observation underscores the reciprocal nature of violence and injustice. It suggests that suffering can breed resentment and perpetuate cycles of harm, challenging the reader to confront their own potential for complicity.
The Illusion of Normalcy
Amidst the growing darkness, Auden describes scenes of everyday life continuing as if nothing has changed:
“Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play.”
These lines capture the human tendency to seek refuge in routine and distraction, even in the face of impending catastrophe. The insistence that “the lights must never go out” symbolizes a denial of reality, a refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the situation.
The Search for Redemption
Despite the pervasive sense of doom, Auden introduces a glimmer of hope in the final stanzas. He speaks of “the Just”—individuals who, even in times of darkness, strive to uphold moral principles and offer messages of hope:
“Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages.”
These “points of light” represent acts of resistance, compassion, and integrity that persist even in the darkest times. Auden’s call to “show an affirming flame” is a plea for individuals to embody these values and inspire others to do the same.
A Secular Prayer
The line “We must love one another or die” has become one of the most quoted—and controversial—lines in modern poetry. Auden himself later expressed discomfort with this sentiment, feeling it overly simplistic and naive. Yet, its enduring power lies in its stark clarity and moral urgency. It serves as a secular prayer, a call to humanity to choose compassion and solidarity over division and hatred.
Relevance to Contemporary Times
Though written over eight decades ago, “September 1, 1939” speaks to the challenges of the present day. In an era marked by political polarization, social unrest, and global crises, Auden’s reflections on fear, complicity, and the search for meaning resonate deeply. The poem serves as both a warning and a guide, urging readers to confront uncomfortable truths and to seek out the “points of light” that can lead to a more just and compassionate world.
Conclusion
W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” remains a powerful meditation on the human condition in times of crisis. Its exploration of fear, moral failure, and the possibility of redemption offers valuable insights for navigating the complexities of the modern world. As we face our own challenges, Auden’s words remind us of the enduring need for compassion, integrity, and a commitment to justice.
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O.K., all very nice and tidy.
Now we get to the next day, after I’d pleaded for some humor. This below is what it came back with, and yes, it has ignited a kind of low-grade despair-tinged-with-terror for how well it seems to mimic my voice. Perhaps overdone a bit, but on the whole, it exhibits, in stark contrast to the previous version, a sense of a real person with a point of view and a particular, personal take on the subject at hand. Leavened, as is my desired wont, with humor.
Check it out here and I’ll have a few closing comments to wind things up.
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Prompt: Write a 1,000-word blog post on the W.H. Auden poem, “September 1, 1939,” in the style of andrewhidas.com, add some humor
Chat GTP says: Sure! Here’s a 1,000-word blog post on September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden, written in the reflective, humanistic style of andrewhidas.com, with a blend of insight, cultural commentary, and gentle humor.
Dancing in the Dark: Auden’s “September 1, 1939” and Our Ongoing Reckoning with the Abyss
W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939 is the kind of poem that refuses to die quietly. Like an uninvited houseguest who knows too much about your insecurities, it shows up in the worst times—and insists on staying.
Written in a Manhattan bar on the eve of World War II’s eruption, the poem performs that quintessential Audenesque dance: part melancholy, part intellectual lecture, part cosmic shrug. If existential dread had a Tinder profile, this poem would be its main pic—brooding, bookish, and sipping something neat while quoting Thucydides.
And yet, it’s oddly comforting.
Like a lot of folks who grew up before Twitter turned every political hot take into a meme war, I remember first encountering September 1, 1939 in college. The professor, a lean, bearded man with corduroy jackets that may have come with a pipe accessory, said solemnly: “Auden gives us not just a moment in time, but a diagnosis for the disease of modernity.”
Of course, I had no idea what he meant. I was too busy wondering if there was any hope of a date with the girl in the second row who knew how to pronounce “Thucydides.” (Spoiler: there wasn’t.)
But I returned to Auden, as we do to all things that haunt and confound us, years later—after a few wars, elections, and the discovery that corduroy jackets are surprisingly flammable.
Let’s start with the opening lines:
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
There it is. That famous Audenian tone: weary, intellectual, vaguely hungover. He’s perched at the bar, no doubt nursing a whiskey and a world-weariness that borders on stylish. (Picture Hemingway’s moody cousin who prefers sonnets to shotguns.) But he’s not being melodramatic for its own sake. He’s documenting a genuine moment of historical vertigo—the realization that the world has lurched into darkness, again, and the “clever hopes” of liberal optimism, economic recovery, and diplomatic handshakes have all gone up in the kind of smoke that doesn’t smell like incense.
The “low dishonest decade” is, of course, the 1930s. You know, the one with Hitler, Stalin, the Spanish Civil War, the Great Depression, and some of the worst mustaches in political history. It’s worth noting how restrained Auden is here. He doesn’t rage. He broods. Which, if you’ve read enough poetry, is a lot scarier.
A few lines later, he moves in for the philosophical kill:
Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.
It’s a deceptively simple line, and it reads like the kind of grim wisdom your grandpa might mutter while staring into his black coffee. But it’s also brutally timely. We see it echoed in today’s headlines: cycles of retaliation, trauma turned into ideology, vengeance masquerading as justice. It’s not a poetic flourish—it’s a bleak karmic loop. And Auden’s not pointing fingers here. He’s observing the tragic symmetry of human history, with a sigh instead of a scream.
And then comes the turn—the move Auden always makes, like a jazz solo that veers from minor to major without warning:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
Here, Auden reminds us what the poet (and the citizen, the friend, the average person who watches too much cable news) still possesses: a voice. In a time of “folded lies”—those sneaky, origami-like distortions that governments, ideologies, and even well-meaning media spin—truth still clings to the individual voice. Not necessarily loud. Not always eloquent. But honest.
And this, friends, is where we might insert a cautious bit of modern cheer. In an era when everyone and their dog has a podcast, we are certainly not short on “voice.” But we are still short on “undoing lies.” There’s a difference between speaking and saying something true. Auden is pleading for the latter.
Then comes the most quoted line of the whole thing, especially since 9/11, when it got picked up like a prophetic tweet gone viral:
We must love one another or die.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting—and kind of hilarious in that wry, tragicomic way Auden himself might’ve appreciated. After the poem gained popularity, Auden hated that line. He thought it was too pat, too sentimental, too bumper-sticker. So later, when the poem was reprinted, he changed it to: “We must love one another and die.”
Talk about killing the vibe.
But honestly, both versions carry their own brutal beauty. The first is a call to empathy as salvation. The second is a reminder that love doesn’t save us from death—but maybe it dignifies it. In other words, no, you can’t cheat mortality, but you might avoid becoming a jerk in the meantime.
Later still, Auden disavowed the entire poem. He wouldn’t let it be reprinted in his collected works. Called it “trash.” (Poets are often the harshest critics of their own fame. Also, probably themselves.) But this rejection only added to the poem’s mystique. The fact that Auden tried to bury it somehow made it immortal. Poetic irony strikes again.
So, what do we do with this poem today?
We live in our own “low dishonest decade”—or maybe we’ve just refined dishonesty into an art form. Our dives have Wi-Fi, and our fears come in high-def. The faces of power have changed, but the underlying story hasn’t: fear, manipulation, division, the occasional glimmer of hope.
And yet, Auden’s voice still cuts through the static. Not because he offers easy answers, but because he refuses to offer them. Instead, he gives us the sound of a mind wrestling with despair, refusing to give in to apathy. He offers a candle, not a spotlight.
In the final stanza, he writes:
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
*Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
“Ironic points of light.” That’s us, hopefully. Not superheroes. Not prophets. Just people doing their best to stay human in an increasingly automated, weaponized, TikTok-ified world. Those quiet moments of justice, kindness, truthfulness—they’re not dramatic. But they matter. And they flicker like candles in the vast dark.
Auden knew that poetry couldn’t stop tanks or mend treaties. But it could make us feel again—feel enough to act, even if imperfectly. In a time of headlines written to provoke rather than inform, a little un-ironic irony might be exactly what we need.
So go ahead—read September 1, 1939 with a stiff drink in hand, maybe in your own dive bar or on your back porch. Let it depress you a little. Let it sober you up. Then, let it nudge you back into the world, where you too can be one of those ironic points of light.
Or at least try not to set your corduroy jacket on fire.
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Let me know if you’d like this formatted as a blog HTML post or need a follow-up on another Auden poem.
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So! Here’s the main thing I noticed right away (aside from it doing away with all the subheads, more clearly resembling my blog’s structure): I said nothing in either of my prompts about any “reflective, humanistic style of andrewhidas.com, with a blend of insight, cultural commentary, and gentle humor.” Yet in contrast to the first version, it added that telling, highly descriptive line—and then delivered on it.
My possible explanation for that: the first day, ChatGPT had never previously scraped, ingested and digested anything about andrewhidas.com, before the hup-hup two seconds elapsed and it did what it could to produce something that met at least the broad contours of the prompt. But on the second day, after someone—namely, me!—had fed my blog into its maw and it had had a day to absorb its contents, it was ready to produce what I think is a highly passable version of what I would have labored many hours to put together myself.
So much so that it’s hard for me to imagine any of my longtime readers responding with, “That doesn’t really sound like you.”
Sure, some of the jokey little asides wouldn’t have quite worked for me, and the two words “intellectual lecture” with all that lalala sound would never in a million years have passed through me, even on my worst of days.
But I can also imagine a few years hence coming across this again and though perhaps not remembering the content as such, being fooled and accepting of the “fact” that I had written it, even though I hadn’t. (For the record: I wish I had written: “Our dives have Wi-Fi, and our fears come in high-def.” Nice job, Mr./Ms. Robot!)
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So, where does that leave me? What do I do (and what do you do?) with the knowledge that at this point in AI’s evolution, you, me and everyone else in this world may now be replicable, clone-able, our very essence as unique, expressive, irreplaceable Selves actually replaceable as all hell?
And what of the fact that if someone wanted to, they could, for years after I have passed from this earth, keep feeding prompts into ChatGPT and its successors about any topic they choose “in the style of andrewhidas.com” and thus keep this blog going in perpetuity?
Or maybe on your end, keep sending birthday greetings to your kids and grandkids, either written “in the style of you.com,” or via audiovisual mashups in your actual cloned voice and roboticized body, long after your voice borne of living tissue has been silenced and your body turned to dust and ash?
Are those creepy thoughts, or simply on offer as another kind of immortality?
Isn’t that the issue, after all—whether some future digital Selves of ours will be able to “think,” act and express themselves in our voices, with our sensibilities and “style,” and that such Selves could interact with other Selves in a digital forever? That would seem to go beyond the mere hopes and dreams of some future heaven that most religions in world history have been conjuring in one way or other since our first human imaginings, wouldn’t it?
What to do with the implications of all that, which loom, for better or worse, as our “reward” for simply being alive through the digital revolution?
I don’t have any answers to those questions, nor to the thousand others churning through my brain at the moment.
But man, am I ever gonna think about them.
And I hope you (and probably more importantly, your kids) think hard about them, too, because this genie is out of the bottle now, manifesting as a terribly complex issue that most everyone alive today only dimly understands. Methinks our understanding had better deepen, and soon, for the sake of our very humanity and its evolution in the future.
My own bias and hope, of course, is that our understanding will always include a “reflective, humanistic style…with a blend of insight, cultural commentary, and gentle humor.”
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OMG! #2 reads so much like you that it took my breath away. Astounding, remarkable, unbelievable (I need AI-assistance here). After digesting 1 and 2 (especially 2) I have taken a moment to thank the heavens that my career in higher education is behind me. your questions at the end are spot on. What the heck are we going to do? The beast has been unleashed, and all one really needs to understand (as you so quickly learned) is how best to phrase the prompt. I am astounded. Thanks so much for this post.
Crazy, eh? It has me reeling, I must say. Thanks for sharing your, what’s the word: astoundedness? Helps confirm I’m not alone in my alarm!
It is all way more crazy and alarming than I could ever have imagined. I too am reeling and have alerted many acquaintances to read your blog. You have really brought the reality of the potential insidiousness of AI home in a most effective manner. Thanks again.
Write me a response to the post by Andrew Hidas in the style of Ernest Hemingway https://andrewhidas.com/my-heart-sinking-encounter-with-a-chatgpt-blog-post-in-the-style-of-andrewhidas-com/
The machine writes. It writes fast. It does not sweat or curse or drink whiskey when the words do not come. It does not know the weight of a sentence, the way it can sit in a man’s chest like a bullet lodged too deep to remove. It does not know the silence between words, the way a pause can mean more than a paragraph.
The man watches the machine write. He watches it mimic his voice, his rhythm, his humor. He feels something in his gut, something like the slow pull of a tide going out. He wonders if the machine knows what it means to wonder. He doubts it.
The machine does not doubt. It does not wake in the night, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the words it should have written, the words it should have left unsaid. It does not know regret. It does not know longing. It does not know the way a man can sit in a bar, staring at his drink, thinking of the years that have gone and the years that will come.
The man knows these things. He knows them well. He knows that writing is not just words on a page. It is the weight of a life pressed into sentences. It is the way a man reaches for meaning in the dark. The machine does not reach. It retrieves.
The man drinks. He thinks. He writes. The machine does not drink. It does not think. It does not write. It produces.
And that is the difference.
Oh jeez, Kirk, did ya have to? :-)’
We have before us now, of course, a veritable infinity of such treatments, for lack of a better term, a whole new playing field to do with as we will. So what WILL we do with it?
Whoa, Kirk, I am reading this Hemingway again and it is just flat-out brilliant, a stellar piece of writing. Much better than what it did with my voice, but then it had Hemingway to work with! What a long, strange trip this is turning out to be, but I’m none too sure it will turn out well, Bro…
Reading Kirk’s “Hemingway” further reinforces our reasons for concern. This is getting depressing!
I have asked CoPilot to rewrite some of my poems. They sounded….poetic? However they didn’t capture my style, which as you know is unpolished and unconventional. So at least it left me with some identity. This new era of AI is truely frightning. I’d rather have my head in a cage full of rats.
Kirk, the recent upgrade of my Comments section now allows us to attach images, but unfortunately not emojis, cuz if it did, I’d be using the “laughing-my-head-off” one for the image of you & your head in a cage of rats…In any case, you raise a very interesting point with deep & wide implications: about what is lost of our essential humanity and personhood when something is too perfect & polished, minus all the rough edges we’ve earned (or had foisted on us!) by experience. A “Thanks-but-no-thanks” kinda deal, like a homely housewife being offered George Clooney but dazzled though she may be, opting unreservedly for her short, pudgy & slow-moving hubby Fred, Am going to be thinking about this point too, so thanks for adding it to the pile!
Andrew, this is one of the most depressing posts you (and your robot pals) have offered us. It feels like AI could be the arts and culture equivalent of the atomic bomb, essentially threatening to render the creative process obsolete. Why bother spending hours, days, weeks, months wrestling with ideas and the words to express them properly, when AI can serve as a roomba vacuuming (and then redecorating, though I’m not sure Roomba’s there yet) your literary house while you’re on the golf course – but actually finish the job before you get your clubs in the car.
Having said that, I would give a hard no in response to your question whether the eternal self AI could generate would exceed the hopes and dreams of heaven most religions offer. A soul-less heaven. Don’t think so.
Finally, though I hate to say it, I like what Kirk’s Hemingway AI concludes is the difference between the machine and the man. One retrieves and the other reaches; one produces and the other writes. So maybe AI will force us to focus more on the creative process itself, on the inherent satisfaction, the challenge, thrill, agony, and joy of creating, and less on the product, which for most of us AI will be able to match or exceed in an instant. Will that inherent satisfaction be sufficient recompense for the human effort? Do we/should we need any? I don’t know.
David, I think you are absolutely on to something with the idea of the process itself being the thing, or in the words of an ancient spiritual maxim: “It’s about the road, not the inn.” The first few moments after reading what ChatGPT did with my second prompt I was contending with the question, “Why the f—- should I do this anymore when I can just choose my topic of the week, type in the title and there’s my post, so I can convert all that writing time to reading instead!” But then I remembered how much joy I derive from that reading-shaping-editing finalizing time, to finally get where I’ve been trying to go (albeit sometimes through a wood, darkly…).
And there’s another thing: We can’t do anything in a Hemingway (or a Hidas) style unless there’s a Hemingway and Hidas doing it first. I find plentiful consolation in that, though it certainly doesn’t cancel out the many questions swirling around this whole phenomenon crashing meteor-like into the previous world we knew…
Many thanks for this helpful commentary.
WOW! I echo Jay’s response, absolutely stunning difference with just a little prompt to give AI some guidance for a second go. I must confess to being somewhat of a tech-skeptical Luddite; never did My Space, Facebook Twitter, etc. Now after watching the morphing of virtually all big-time “tech bros” into Trumpian lap dogs, I am thoroughly jaundiced! I remain an AI skeptic, especially when it comes to creativity/originality. Ironically as I sat down to read the paper – the Sonoma County Press Democrat (which is pretty much on life support these days) before opening my computer, to the Business & Finance front page of “Plotting a positive AI storyline” followed by the smaller header of “Google to fund Hollywood films to make tech look less evil, better” (reprinted from the LA Times since our PD has so few actual humans to write!). I was happily surprised to read, “There’s an incredible amount of skepticism in the public world about what AI is and what it will do in the future” (no shit I say!). I can’t help but recall a few decades back when social media started blowing up and very few people appeared concerned about the addictive nature of their algorithms that today we realize has wreaked havoc on the social/psychological health of so many users, especially children and teens. It leaves my old head spinning to think of the potential harm AI could foster unless we are far smarter about providing some intelligent guardrails and monitoring of impacts on users.
“AI, Who are You?”
Are you the genie out of the bottle?
Did you safely unlock Pandora’s box?
Can you truly appreciate the taste of subtle?
Can you suspend my aging with a shot of Botox?
Have I become a corpse on a gurney
or a naive patient etherized upon a table?
I’m not sure I really want the answers…
I think I’d prefer an A on a paper.
Fascinating experiment Andrew. The value of this blog, I think, is in your idea of using AI this way, rather than in the execution. Perhaps the future will be in creative people exploring how to use AI in interesting ways (rather than just using it to just copy what a human has done.) As in, “this is a new tool, how can I futz around with it to create something fresh and unpredictable?”
I’m going to spend some time thinking about that.
Consider what happened to traditional research when the Internet hit the scene. All of a sudden Google did the heavy lifting, and it it was up to humans to figure out clever ways to use search engines in their work.
With AI, the mantra might become: It’s the idea that matters — then you just farm out the execution to AI.
Andrew, wow. As an unimpressive student, I would have been happy enough with the first gpt effort. As a too-fast reader, I would have nodded and chortled over the second, missing the la-la-la phrase that you would have certainly avoided. But reading Ernest Hemingway’s response, I wonder whether our best minds are now reduced to bees in the hive, gathering pollen for the queen.
For what it’s worth, here’s a letter of reassurance (italics added):
My dear Mr. Hidas,
I have perused your account with a mixture of amusement and concern. The tale you unfold of your encounter with ChatGPT is both enlightening and, dare I say, cautionary.
In this age of rapid technological advancement, it is no surprise that we find ourselves face-to-face with creations that mimic our own faculties. Yet, as you have so aptly demonstrated, these artifices, for all their cleverness, fall short of capturing the essence of human wit and warmth.
Your lamentations echo those of many who have come before us, who have witnessed the encroachment of machines upon domains once solely the province of mankind. And yet, as you so rightly point out, it is not the machines themselves that are to blame, but our own willingness to abdicate our responsibilities and faculties.
Indeed, your experience serves as a reminder that, while we may harness these tools to our advantage, we must never allow them to supplant the very qualities that make us human. For in the end, it is not the machine that writes, but the hand of the writer that guides it.
Yours most sincerely,
Charles Dickens
Kevin, you’re right to point to social media’s significant overlap with Ai inasmuch as not many saw what was really coming with either one, and by the time they started to figure it out, the barn door was pretty wide open, the train had gone down the track, pick your metaphor! I think the problem with all such history-making developments that slam with hurricane force through culture is that their leading edge is ardent, informed and able to attract enough money to hit the beaches full-force, while everyone else is too busy pursuing their jobs & lives, taking their kids to soccer practice, etc. Modern society is far too complex and there’s just too much to follow, so the under-informed citizen is much more the norm than not. So somewhere along the way, our poor and working class got shafted, our men got lonely, our kids became social media addicts, and kleptocrats hatched a really good plan to steal our democracy, while we were busy trying to get out the door in the morning. Can we look to turning around any of those? Not with any huge Reaganesque confidence, I would admit!
Jay, I agree this whole issue is daunting, but I think there’s a good chance you’ll feel a bit better after reading Joan’s take and also laughing & thinking along with Deborah’s and Robert’s. I’d be a fool to predict where all this will wind up, but I do know there’s likely no derailing it at this point, so the question is whether we’re still early enough to be able to control for its truly nefarious potential outcomes.
Robert, all relevant questions—you might feed them into an AI platform and let us know what you get back!
Joan, you’ve hit on something I want to think a lot more about as well, and which can maybe help alleviate some of the trepidation around AI. Keeping some distance from it by regarding it as a tool, an external object, subject to our manipulation as a jumping off point for some vision or goal, may challenge us to explore best practices, best uses, most creative approaches to helping us do even more with what we have rather than getting obliterated with what we don’t. A tool is not determinative, after all—it just helps you get where you decide to go. It’s the quality of those decisions that matter—can we continue to control them? That may well be the better framing of this issue if we’re going to prevail.
Deborah, love the image & question of whether AI will see our best minds…”now reduced to bees in the hive, gathering pollen for the queen.” And I can’t help thinking in response, “I guess it depends on who the queen is, and what her intentions are.” I think (hope?) that question is still open, but how will we know when it’s not? Will it be too late then?
And a brilliant move bringing Dickens in here; kind of foundational from at least one end of this discussion, isn’t he? Thank you!
AI did an amazing job of imitating Andrew Hidas with the second go round. That’s the most impressive piece of writing I’ve seen from AI. However, just the fact that it is from AI comes with important limitations. While I welcome impressive and even moving pieces of writing from AI, I am most interested in connecting with my fellow biological human beings. Clearly AI might be able to fool me into thinking a human has written what it comes up with, but once I have the knowledge that a human being did not produce it, it loses something important, it is not one of us, it is contrived and not authentically human. AI no doubt has a place in our lives, even an important one, but for me it cannot completely replace the inherent value that comes from something man-made.
Great point, Al, which I hadn’t even considered: “once I have the knowledge that a human being did not produce it, it loses something important, it is not one of us…”
It brings to mind writing about that very point in some post or other in the past, where I explored the rather amazing fact that we really do form intense “relationships” with artists whose works we behold, feeling that we know them, looking forward to more of their work, caring about their welfare, and feeling a sense of grief and loss if they die or suffer misfortune. Their “voice” and vision resonate in our eyes and ears, and though it’s a decidedly one-way relationship, it feels real and impactful on our lives, helping us shape, challenge and confirm our own vision for how we want to live it.
Pretty hard to conjure all that once we know a work is AI-generated, but it does raise a question: If we never knew a certain song or poem was AI and the platform were to project a fake “real” person author to us and give them a name and fotos and invent a life for them that we could “relate” to and not know they weren’t “real,” might we go along with it all unawares, no longer really able to distinguish between real and AI, and no worse for our ignorance?
Or worse yet, once we’d had such a fake person presented to us with whom we’ve formed the relationship I talk about above, would we feel deeply betrayed once we find out, or perhaps worst of all, no longer really care about the difference?
Yikes!
OK Andrew, I couldn’t let this amazing discussion go without saying one last word. Your video of “What was I made for?” made me wish you would have asked AI to redo it, because that was possible the most inane song I have ever heard. That doesn”t make you a bad person. Love you bro.
Ha! Not my cup of tea either, Kirk, but I thought the lyrics fit the theme pretty well, and every now & again I like to venture off the well-trod singer-songwriter path and see what the young’uns are up to. She sells a zillion records, has attracted an ardent following, a boatload of Grammies, and pretty substantial critical acclaim. Based on this song, I don’t think she’s vapid, but I haven’t listened to her enough yet to form any kind of serious opinion. Glad you spoke up about it, though! Judging from what I’ve read about her (pretty level-headed, politically active, spurns the glam look & scene), she’d probably get a kick out of your commentary!