In this column distributed by the 黑料不打烊 Writers Syndicate, Professor Rosemary Haskell asks whether the language-generation capabilities of generative AI will impact the thought process.
By Rosemary Haskell
Text-generating artificial intelligence devices such as ChatGPT send shivers down many spines, particularly the sensitive vertebrae of writing and literature instructors.
鈥淲rite a paper about Hamlet鈥檚 Oedipus complex,鈥 I ask ChatGPT and lo, there is an essay鈥 in some shape or form. The optimist in me says, well, a student will need to edit and add to and check sources for that text, and probably extend it. In fact, by the end of the process, he will actually have some understanding of the topic and of the play.
But will the student actually have to read Shakespeare鈥檚 drama? Will he or she actually have to struggle to sift the play鈥檚 components, to shape a focus and to develop the tiny germs of their own ideas? The answer appears to be 鈥淣o.鈥 The student, or anyone, won鈥檛 have to do any of those things.
How much does the absence of such intellectual activity matter? As often happens, we can ask George Orwell to sharpen our thinking. His 1946 essay 鈥淧olitics and the English Language鈥 denounces contemporary English because it is stuffed with 鈥渃onvenient鈥 off-the-rack phrases that writers reach for without thought and then 鈥渢ack together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.鈥 No tough brainwork is needed. We may become like the 鈥渄ummy鈥 speaker who, by 鈥渓etting ready-made phrases come crowding in鈥 and regurgitating them 鈥渉as gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine.鈥
But why did Orwell fear this semi-automatic method of merely producing text instead of composing a work themselves? He saw it as the abdication of thought leading to the concealment of meaning 鈥 from others but, more sinisterly, even from writers and speakers themselves. Using other people鈥檚 words and phrases 鈥 the ones already doing the rounds 鈥 eliminates the hard work of composition. Furthermore, Orwell said this thought-lite writing promotes political 鈥渙rthodoxy鈥 鈥 the acceptance of the status quo.
OpenAI鈥檚 ChatGPT accesses a word hoard that鈥檚 鈥渁lready out there.鈥 To echo Orwell, I wonder if this huge warehouse of verbal garments that are off-the-rack rather than bespoke will limit our thought. To use another metaphor, will AI鈥檚 script keep us treading water rather than swimming forward to new thoughts, new ideas, which are formed partly through our idiosyncratic and probably less correct ways of expressing them?
Orwell was gearing up in his 1946 essay for the later horrors of his novel 鈥1984,鈥 where totalitarian Big Brother quashes rebellious thought by promoting the official language of Newspeak. That language drastically reduced the store of words and so, the novel argues, reduced the range of thought, especially politically unorthodox thought.
In my darker moments, I cannot help but consider the text-generating functions of Chat GPT as Orwellian agents of conformity by channeling the internet world into my brain. Of course, such linguistic Pavlovianism has been occurring for years: text prediction in my email writes things before I do. I鈥檓 becoming more compliant: why not let Bill Gates write my emails for me? His Microsoft brain saves me trouble. I think less.
As a teacher of undergraduate writing and literature, I feel as though I am on the leading edge of this newish text-generating territory. Students, and perhaps all of us, have always found ways to avoid reading assigned texts. Now that late-adolescent 鈥渄on鈥檛 want to do my homework鈥 temptation has been made much easier to succumb to.
Still, I try to put the AI robo-writer in perspective. After all, the internet didn鈥檛 destroy reading, writing and thinking but opened up a huge vista of more easily accessible information. To start my research, I no longer have to trek to a library, thumb through drawers full of moldering index cards, heave giant indexes off shelves and laboriously transcribe authors, titles, dates. The great electronic machine-brain can do all of these things for me. 鈥淲hen I was your age, I actually had to get up out of my chair and walk uphill both ways to the library,鈥 was a common refrain. I don鈥檛 even bother to say that anymore, so distant are those analogue days.
And yet, if ChatGPT makes not reading 鈥淗amlet鈥 or Toni Morrison鈥檚 鈥淏eloved鈥 the default option, if it deprives us and our descendants of the intoxicating and painful pleasures of creating from scratch our own idiosyncratic and imperfect paragraphs, I won鈥檛 be able to forgive it.
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Views expressed in this column are the author鈥檚 own and not necessarily those of 黑料不打烊.