Author Ted Chiang says that generative AI will never make real art, no matter how strong it gets.
Many people love Chiang’s science fiction work. The novella “Story of Your Life,” which was made into the movie “Arrival,” is what she is best known for. But he has also written great pieces for The New Yorker about the problems and risks of AI.
You should read his most recent piece in full, but here are some highlights: Chiang says that big language models still have “largely theoretical” promise. He says that generative AI has been most successful at “lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for other people to read.” This technology makes us less human because it sees us as less than what we are: producers and receivers of meaning.
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Chiang says that even if LLMs get better, the work they produce will never be art. He knows this is “notoriously hard to define,” but he does it anyway: “Art is something that comes from making a lot of choices.” If you make those choices, you might not end up with a great book, painting, or movie, but you’re still “communicating with your audience.”
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Chiang ends by saying, “We are all products of what has come before us, but it’s through living our lives with other people that we give meaning to the world.” “Don’t listen to anyone who says that an auto-complete algorithm can’t do that.”