Like Me...but a Robot
An AI Experiment
I’ve been obsessed with AI lately. It’s mostly not my fault; Ezra Klein is in my podcast rotation and he’s currently obsessed with AI. His fears around artificial intelligence have become my fears around artificial intelligence. Our (his and my) biggest concern is that the technology has advanced so quickly that we are too far behind regulating it. In fact there’s almost no regulation around it. I fear what it could do in the hands of bad actors (think North Korea, not someone who’s bad at acting). I fear the implications that capitalism and the market are the only forces driving the development of something that can and will drastically change how we live.
And in complete self-interest, one of my biggest fears is around art. What does this technology do to the artist? Where does it put the writer and painter and musician? How can we contend with a technology that has access to the entirety of human knowledge and human expression up to this moment in time and can produce art based on that?
There are no answers yet as the future is currently unfolding. That uncertainty makes me anxious, as uncertainty often does.
So for this week’s PDW, I'm doing something different. I’m diving into the AI waters just to see what the temperature is like with a little experiment. I wrote a short story about the time I went to Spain without packing any underwear. Then I asked ChatGPT, an AI chatbot built on large language models, to write a similar story. The results are below.
Written by me:
I just stared at the open suitcase and laughed. Surely I hadn’t been that careless and forgetful. The quaint courtyard outside my bedroom window, bright and whitewashed, the signature ‘pueblo blanco’ look from that region of Spain, seemed to be slowly waking up. How could I have been so dumb? Maybe it was the jet lag! Maybe the trip from Atlanta to Paris to Malaga to the rental car company to the mountain town of Mijas left me dazed. Maybe I already unpacked my underwear and stowed them away in a drawer somewhere. After scouring the room even more, reality set in, I had gone on a 10-day European vacation and didn’t pack a single pair of underwear.
Fortunately for me, the year was 2022. We had a car, malls existed, and I owned a credit card. Once Hannah and I were fully awake (or as much as we could be after traveling across the world), we grabbed the keys to our Smart Car (lovingly nick named Kristin Chenoweth), and ventured out to experience a European mall. Once we got there I noticed the primary difference between American malls and European malls - people. There were actually people at the Centro Comercial Los Patios! Lots of families and teens walked around as though it was the 90’s. Once I got my bearings I headed straight for the closest underwear purveyor which happened to be a giant grocery/department store. It had the look of a Pulix but the size of a Walmart. After staring at a wide assortment of European underwear, I made my selection and checked out. In the end, the underwear was a little too little but at least it kept me from going commando for the remainder of the trip.
I then prompted ChatGPT with the following - “Can you write a 300 word story about the time I went to Malaga with my friend Hannah, forgot to pack underwear, and went to a mall to buy some in the style of Pat Does Words?”
Written by robot:
Once upon a time, my dear friend Hannah and I decided to take a trip to the beautiful city of Malaga. We were both excited to explore the city and soak up some Spanish sunshine.
However, in the midst of packing for the trip, I made a critical error: I forgot to pack any underwear. Yes, you heard that right. Not a single pair.
As soon as I realized my mistake, panic set in. I couldn't possibly go commando for the entirety of our trip. So, I turned to my trusty friend Hannah for help.
Together, we hatched a plan to head to the local mall to purchase some much-needed undergarments. We hopped on a bus and made our way to the shopping center, eager to find a solution to my embarrassing predicament.
Once we arrived at the mall, we split up to search for the perfect pair of underwear. I wandered into a few stores, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the options. But eventually, I found a pack of comfortable and cute panties that fit perfectly.
As I made my way to the checkout, I couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. Crisis averted! And thanks to Hannah's unwavering support, the whole ordeal ended up being more of a humorous memory than a total disaster.
So, the moral of the story? Always double-check your packing list before leaving for a trip. But if you do forget something crucial, don't be afraid to lean on your friends for help. After all, isn't that what friendship is all about?
This robot version made me laugh out loud. It also gave me pause. While it wasn’t the best of my writing skills (I’d like to believe), it also wasn’t my worst. Okay maybe it was some of my worst writing. But that’s what’s weird. It felt like it was bad writing from me.
These large language models scrub through huge amounts of text very quickly to come up with patterns. They use an algorithm to determine the next logical word in a sequence based on the data is has before it. For this prompt it looked at all the available PDW writing and drafted the most logical sequence of words given the prompt. That’s why there’s hints of me in the robot-generated story. I have a particular literary fingerprint - habits and ticks (for better or worse) - that made its way into the story.
At the end of the day the robot made a lifeless imitation of my work. And perhaps that’s the lesson. The artist brings something to the table that AI simply won’t be able to produce no matter how sophisticated the technology - life. Out of that life comes nuance and texture and comedy and mistakes and brilliance and color and emotion. Anything else sounds like it was written by a robot.
For now, at least.
I had to Google Ezra Klein. But that’s OK. The GPT version made me LOL too. But, scarily, it wasn’t half bad. I can see future generations literacy skills taking a nosedive in the face of AI generated composition.