I often think about the Ursula K Le Guin line from a story where they create instantaneous space/time travel and the guys mother asks “where is the dancing? where is the way?”
Thank you for the essay! I'm going into computer science research, so you can imagine how alone I feel on this issue. I've been re-reading Barthes with increasing frequency as my work comes closer to intersecting with LLMs and generative AI (not so much an optional direction of inquiry nowadays as an inevitability). The death of the author, which I imagine OpenAI executives would delight in, although much of his later writing modifies that argument by suggesting that the author is still alive. If not as an extratextual authority then as a body of information that we can parse and interpret as we do a piece.
But also his conception of the "Text" as a field of meaning that the reader creates in their interactions as much as they consume. Reading and writing were not always discrete activities. Our ability to traverse a text, to play with it, and ultimately to procure something of value from it—all tied to our ability to write. It's precisely where they intersect, the describing relationships to other texts and synthesizing context into concrete meaning, that AI intervenes. Offloading all of our intellectual labor onto AI except at the highest level is tantamount to refusing to engage with the text in any capacity, reading or writing. This process debilitates all text and all writers and all readers. I simultaneously do and do not hope that that becomes more obvious with time.
I agree!!! she finds a way of making her critique of the world that we find ourselves in so nuanced. No one can argue that her critique is not steeped in leftism, but what feels so refreshing-other than her genuinely insightful prose-is that you get the sense that she understands the allure. In this essay that looks like her having a genuine understanding of why ai is attractive to people as a tool in this modern world. But in other essays that has looked like her understanding the impulse for women to "align themselves with power", or how we feel the need to tell ourselves stories to fit our incomprehensible lives into plot lines or narrative arcs. obviously this is not the only thing that makes her writing shine but its one aspect that stands out to me.
i worry i am too apathetic about AI. i'm a copywriter by profession and i use AI very, very frequently in my job. i guess i feel no creative loyalty to corporations who employ me in 0.25 billable increments to produce content for them that they don't even read. but is that a defensive posturing? do i even care if it is defensive? sometimes i feel bad about it all — on twitter, people are very moralizing about AI, often for what i agree are very good reasons. in general, i find the kind of apathy that i have about AI to be insidious and representative of a sick culture.
in my personal writing, i'd never use it. to your point, i do think it's very valuable to be bad at something and struggle with it. as i continue to try to find some kind of voice or identity as a writer, i don't see AI being a useful tool in that process. your point about commodity versus art resonated with me there. joan didion has a famous line about manually rewriting hemingway to understand the craft — in some ways, these large language models do just that, but it's so removed from what was actually useful about that practice for didion, or for any one of us who have tried to develop a Voice as a writer by going through phases of writing derivative slop inspired by people who are truly talented. like, why outsource the fun?
I often think about the Ursula K Le Guin line from a story where they create instantaneous space/time travel and the guys mother asks “where is the dancing? where is the way?”
Thank you for the essay! I'm going into computer science research, so you can imagine how alone I feel on this issue. I've been re-reading Barthes with increasing frequency as my work comes closer to intersecting with LLMs and generative AI (not so much an optional direction of inquiry nowadays as an inevitability). The death of the author, which I imagine OpenAI executives would delight in, although much of his later writing modifies that argument by suggesting that the author is still alive. If not as an extratextual authority then as a body of information that we can parse and interpret as we do a piece.
But also his conception of the "Text" as a field of meaning that the reader creates in their interactions as much as they consume. Reading and writing were not always discrete activities. Our ability to traverse a text, to play with it, and ultimately to procure something of value from it—all tied to our ability to write. It's precisely where they intersect, the describing relationships to other texts and synthesizing context into concrete meaning, that AI intervenes. Offloading all of our intellectual labor onto AI except at the highest level is tantamount to refusing to engage with the text in any capacity, reading or writing. This process debilitates all text and all writers and all readers. I simultaneously do and do not hope that that becomes more obvious with time.
in a world of "i tried this writer's routine for a day" content and inescapable AI bombardment, this felt like a satisfying exhale and mind reset.
I agree!!! she finds a way of making her critique of the world that we find ourselves in so nuanced. No one can argue that her critique is not steeped in leftism, but what feels so refreshing-other than her genuinely insightful prose-is that you get the sense that she understands the allure. In this essay that looks like her having a genuine understanding of why ai is attractive to people as a tool in this modern world. But in other essays that has looked like her understanding the impulse for women to "align themselves with power", or how we feel the need to tell ourselves stories to fit our incomprehensible lives into plot lines or narrative arcs. obviously this is not the only thing that makes her writing shine but its one aspect that stands out to me.
Based
i worry i am too apathetic about AI. i'm a copywriter by profession and i use AI very, very frequently in my job. i guess i feel no creative loyalty to corporations who employ me in 0.25 billable increments to produce content for them that they don't even read. but is that a defensive posturing? do i even care if it is defensive? sometimes i feel bad about it all — on twitter, people are very moralizing about AI, often for what i agree are very good reasons. in general, i find the kind of apathy that i have about AI to be insidious and representative of a sick culture.
in my personal writing, i'd never use it. to your point, i do think it's very valuable to be bad at something and struggle with it. as i continue to try to find some kind of voice or identity as a writer, i don't see AI being a useful tool in that process. your point about commodity versus art resonated with me there. joan didion has a famous line about manually rewriting hemingway to understand the craft — in some ways, these large language models do just that, but it's so removed from what was actually useful about that practice for didion, or for any one of us who have tried to develop a Voice as a writer by going through phases of writing derivative slop inspired by people who are truly talented. like, why outsource the fun?