Interesting piece Richard. Reading it, I was thinking about the impact that AI may have (is having) on the art of writing across the board. I wonder what your take on it is. I am very dismayed actually by the grounds the LLMs are making in the arena of creative writing. (I note the recent 'unveiling' of the latest creative model by OpenAI, with one leading author gushing over how 'beautiful and moving' an AI-gen short story was.)
Perhaps why write about anything if Chatgpt or whatever can conjure up something ''meaningful' in a fraction of a second. Very dispiriting. In your piece you mention: 'driving the AI through Northumberland . . .' and for a moment I was confused. I guess you meant the A1, right? Maybe it was a subconscious slip.
Thanks Martin. Yes, where to start with AI? It is depressing. Sometimes I try to tell myself that it's like other technologies that have come along before and that humans have then overtaken again through creative adaptations of them. But it's not really, is it? There's something different this time around and, indeed, why try to compete? Another analogy I've wondered about is that it's the latest in a long history of labour-saving devices but, unlike those that save you labour you really don't want, this one can't take take the pleasure that comes from the process of writing. In that version, I suppose it would depend where one places oneself on the spectrum of writing being hard work and writing being a mostly enjoyable workout. A lot of the writing I do here falls into the second category. I do put a lot of work into it, but it's not something anyone's forcing me to do. I really want to try and articulate the things that pop up in my head, which is partly what this piece was about. But there are many reasons to write, of course, and, from the perspective of an educator, I find it upsetting that trying to get students to understand the pleasures and rewards of thinking through writing is becoming near impossible when there are so many shortcuts to the finished product, which is all that seems to matter in our culture.
So I guess my short version of that, for now, is: if writing = product, then AI has the upper hand; if writing = process, there's still scope for human creative labour.
Thanks for pointing out the A1/AI thing, which I thought I'd sorted when reading thee draft. I've now corrected it. Ironically, this was a machine-generated glitch rather than a subconscious slip. I wrote this piece on two different devices, one of which recognises text as image rather than electronic text. In the process of transferring, my correct 'A1' got changed to 'AI'. When proofing, I almost took the reference out completely because I felt that most people are far more used to seeing 'AI' than 'A1', but the actual road I experienced my Neil epiphany was such an evocative reference for me, I decided to keep it in, not noticing I'd kept the formatting error. Boring but true.
Agree on the product/process distinction, at least as an educator and for the time being. In my classes I am placing greater emphasis on the formative aspect of the assignment. But AI is there at every turn. For example, Ss have to submit weekly Subject Research reports whereby they discuss the merits/weaknesses etc. of a given academic article. These have been written wholesale by Deepseek. So I now need to see physical copies of same articles with annotations in Ss' own hand etc. etc.
A friend here (a published author like yourself) laments the beginning of the end of human authorship, but more so the wonderous journey of discovery that a young person undertakes (or used to undertake) when embarking on a writing project (whatever that might be) and everything it entailed - the spark of the imagination, the brainstorming, the frustrations of the next step, the turning over in the mind of one sentence, one phrase, again and again until it read right, the sweat, the tears, the feeling of accomplishment when done . . . All of this now likely to be consigned to a History that, in essence, will become null and void. What is the possibility that Chatgpt will be able to 'spew' out an equal (or even better - hence null and void) of Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky in the near future?
I enjoyed this piece as I do all of your writings. The implied linkage between the undefinable yearning that is the foundation for much of fado and the inability to fully articulate in writing the impact that individual songs seem to have on many of us is something I had not fully considered before. A fair amount of my own songwriting includes lyrical references both to other peoples' songs, as well as to the emotional impact these songs have (or have had) on my own experience of trying to understand life. Finally, great to see another reference to Joe Boyd's great new book. I'm enjoying reading this massive tomb as slowly as I can.
Thanks for this comment, James. That's an interesting approach to take to songwriting, with new songs coming from the experience of learning about life through existing songs. I like it.
The Boyd book is impressive, isn't it? I'm slightly darting around it in that I was keen to read the chapter on bossa nova while working on my fado pieces. I've read a fair chunk of the 'Mbube' chapter too.
Interesting piece Richard. Reading it, I was thinking about the impact that AI may have (is having) on the art of writing across the board. I wonder what your take on it is. I am very dismayed actually by the grounds the LLMs are making in the arena of creative writing. (I note the recent 'unveiling' of the latest creative model by OpenAI, with one leading author gushing over how 'beautiful and moving' an AI-gen short story was.)
Perhaps why write about anything if Chatgpt or whatever can conjure up something ''meaningful' in a fraction of a second. Very dispiriting. In your piece you mention: 'driving the AI through Northumberland . . .' and for a moment I was confused. I guess you meant the A1, right? Maybe it was a subconscious slip.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
All the best,
Martin
Thanks Martin. Yes, where to start with AI? It is depressing. Sometimes I try to tell myself that it's like other technologies that have come along before and that humans have then overtaken again through creative adaptations of them. But it's not really, is it? There's something different this time around and, indeed, why try to compete? Another analogy I've wondered about is that it's the latest in a long history of labour-saving devices but, unlike those that save you labour you really don't want, this one can't take take the pleasure that comes from the process of writing. In that version, I suppose it would depend where one places oneself on the spectrum of writing being hard work and writing being a mostly enjoyable workout. A lot of the writing I do here falls into the second category. I do put a lot of work into it, but it's not something anyone's forcing me to do. I really want to try and articulate the things that pop up in my head, which is partly what this piece was about. But there are many reasons to write, of course, and, from the perspective of an educator, I find it upsetting that trying to get students to understand the pleasures and rewards of thinking through writing is becoming near impossible when there are so many shortcuts to the finished product, which is all that seems to matter in our culture.
So I guess my short version of that, for now, is: if writing = product, then AI has the upper hand; if writing = process, there's still scope for human creative labour.
Thanks for pointing out the A1/AI thing, which I thought I'd sorted when reading thee draft. I've now corrected it. Ironically, this was a machine-generated glitch rather than a subconscious slip. I wrote this piece on two different devices, one of which recognises text as image rather than electronic text. In the process of transferring, my correct 'A1' got changed to 'AI'. When proofing, I almost took the reference out completely because I felt that most people are far more used to seeing 'AI' than 'A1', but the actual road I experienced my Neil epiphany was such an evocative reference for me, I decided to keep it in, not noticing I'd kept the formatting error. Boring but true.
Agree on the product/process distinction, at least as an educator and for the time being. In my classes I am placing greater emphasis on the formative aspect of the assignment. But AI is there at every turn. For example, Ss have to submit weekly Subject Research reports whereby they discuss the merits/weaknesses etc. of a given academic article. These have been written wholesale by Deepseek. So I now need to see physical copies of same articles with annotations in Ss' own hand etc. etc.
A friend here (a published author like yourself) laments the beginning of the end of human authorship, but more so the wonderous journey of discovery that a young person undertakes (or used to undertake) when embarking on a writing project (whatever that might be) and everything it entailed - the spark of the imagination, the brainstorming, the frustrations of the next step, the turning over in the mind of one sentence, one phrase, again and again until it read right, the sweat, the tears, the feeling of accomplishment when done . . . All of this now likely to be consigned to a History that, in essence, will become null and void. What is the possibility that Chatgpt will be able to 'spew' out an equal (or even better - hence null and void) of Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky in the near future?
Very well put.
I enjoyed this piece as I do all of your writings. The implied linkage between the undefinable yearning that is the foundation for much of fado and the inability to fully articulate in writing the impact that individual songs seem to have on many of us is something I had not fully considered before. A fair amount of my own songwriting includes lyrical references both to other peoples' songs, as well as to the emotional impact these songs have (or have had) on my own experience of trying to understand life. Finally, great to see another reference to Joe Boyd's great new book. I'm enjoying reading this massive tomb as slowly as I can.
Thanks for this comment, James. That's an interesting approach to take to songwriting, with new songs coming from the experience of learning about life through existing songs. I like it.
The Boyd book is impressive, isn't it? I'm slightly darting around it in that I was keen to read the chapter on bossa nova while working on my fado pieces. I've read a fair chunk of the 'Mbube' chapter too.