I don't think I agree with Tressie MC here: "The history of technology says that these things have a hype cycle: They promise; we fear; they catch hold; they under-deliver. We right-size them. We get back to the business of being human, which is machine-proof." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/opinion/chatgpt-writing-ai.html #ChatGPT I don't think it's a static cycle, and I don't think we're machine-proof.
She says: "But even when the essays are a good synthesis of other essays, written by humans, they are not human. Frankly, they creep me out precisely because they are so competent and yet so very empty. ...There is a voice, but it is mechanical. It does not incite, offend or seduce. That’s because real voice is more than grammatical patternmaking." Lots of uninspired, or unskilled, human writing is just like this.
Or highly skilled. She also says of a soulless Xmas song remake: "The song was musically sound, as far as I could tell. The notes were all in the right places. But it had been filtered in the way that mechanical Muzak covers transform actual songs into mere sounds: technical holiday music." But Muzak was not "mechanical," it was written and performed by humans trying to suppress their individuality.
@philipncohen And similarly, ChatGPT is specifically trained — carefully trained — to produce that neutral tone. Language models can do other things. No, the cycle that's predictable is the cycle where we write essays like this to minimize distressing social change.
@TedUnderwood @philipncohen you can always prompt it to respond with emotion or differently , for example in angry iambic pentameter or dispairing screenplay, you can also add « tone » like cocky , confrontational or humble … I tried it & it’s is really impressive 😱
@philipncohen @tonic Impressive! I feel dirty. And this is without any special training.
@TedUnderwood @philipncohen according to GTP , the training is the dirty part 😉
oh god !
we were so focussed on whether we could we never asked ourselves whether we should !
it turns out it's all about "prompt engineering" , with a bit of practice, experience and longer prompts you can get pretty far.
And btw it might not seduce the right partner for you, but it might seduce someone 😉
I used GTP to seduce my wife to great effect : prompted to write a series of poems for her in spanish and it totally worked 😄
@philipncohen @TedUnderwood one last one : here's an AI presentation tool that i'll be trying out in the coming days : https://tome.app/invite/joseph-p-clbwo8vg213ch3a7bc4hv0hx2
here's mine, i dont hate it, but i cant evaluate it, because i'm not that guy, but i would perhaps love to be that guy ?
@tonic @TedUnderwood
It wasn't happy about it, but it tried...
"Write something in a tone that incites, offends, and seduces"