That's all true, though I don't think that necessarily means it can't impact us in various strange (and real) ways. We can feel moved by books or paintings or songs; there are, no doubt, passages and pictures and music that's been created by AI that moved us too. It may have arrived there randomly; the feeling it is "expressing" may be hollow or fake or a cheap imitation, but if the effect is the same, is there a difference?
Like, I agree asking AI "what is a moment that made you sad?" is a sort of pointless, nonsensical question. But if you ask it that and it tells you something that makes you reflect on something and makes you sad, what do we so with that? I honestly don't know.
If you asked these questions to a friend and they told you a really gripping story which ended up just being a bunch of lies they made up, how would you feel about that? Sure, you were enthralled by the storytelling, but then what?
But maybe that's the future. Instead of reading books and watching movies, we'll just be fed custom-tailored stuff created on the fly by AI. Dopamine on a drip (not unlike scrolling social media).
I'm honestly not sure? I almost said something like that, like "what if you read a book and find out the autobiographical parts were made up?" Or, "what about normal fiction?" We don't care that that's made up at all. And that doesn't bother us; to the contrary, we see it as a very high form of art.
Which is all to say, I have a kind of similarly visceral reaction to AI-written stuff, but I struggle to entirely articulate why, and every time I come up with a good reason, there's some counterexample that where that same thing seems to apply and it doesn't bother me.
That's all true, though I don't think that necessarily means it can't impact us in various strange (and real) ways. We can feel moved by books or paintings or songs; there are, no doubt, passages and pictures and music that's been created by AI that moved us too. It may have arrived there randomly; the feeling it is "expressing" may be hollow or fake or a cheap imitation, but if the effect is the same, is there a difference?
Like, I agree asking AI "what is a moment that made you sad?" is a sort of pointless, nonsensical question. But if you ask it that and it tells you something that makes you reflect on something and makes you sad, what do we so with that? I honestly don't know.
If you asked these questions to a friend and they told you a really gripping story which ended up just being a bunch of lies they made up, how would you feel about that? Sure, you were enthralled by the storytelling, but then what?
But maybe that's the future. Instead of reading books and watching movies, we'll just be fed custom-tailored stuff created on the fly by AI. Dopamine on a drip (not unlike scrolling social media).
I'm honestly not sure? I almost said something like that, like "what if you read a book and find out the autobiographical parts were made up?" Or, "what about normal fiction?" We don't care that that's made up at all. And that doesn't bother us; to the contrary, we see it as a very high form of art.
Which is all to say, I have a kind of similarly visceral reaction to AI-written stuff, but I struggle to entirely articulate why, and every time I come up with a good reason, there's some counterexample that where that same thing seems to apply and it doesn't bother me.