I disagree that I wouldn't have picked it up, but parts of it do read very strongly. Liminal is a great word, but to me, "Airports are liminal spaces, filled with souls in transit. I stand at the departure gate, surrounded by the hum of announcements and distant conversations. Time feels suspended here-a pause between what was and what will be." reads like almost unmistakable AI. Introductions and endings are usually the big giveaways for me. The body is stronger, but still overwrought. "As I board my flight, I carry more than just my luggage. I carry the imprint of her presence, the echo of her sigh, the warmth of that brief touch. In a place defined by departures and arrivals, it's these small intersections of lives that remind me of our shared humanity. Perhaps we're all just travelers passing through, our paths crossing in the most unexpected ways. And maybe, in these passing moments, there's a quiet beauty that lingers-a subtle chord that adds depth to the melody of our lives," also reads to me as more a composite of a whole bunch of creative approaches rather than anything unique to an individual voice. I would have a very, very hard time believing that a human wrote it if it were submitted to me. It's stronger than it was a year ago, but not by so much that it wouldn't be fairly easy for me to catch. The patterns I'm used to seeing are still present and there's a very formulaic way that the story is approached.
Regarding the soul, I think a better definition for my specific piece than anything metaphysical would simply be "emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance." I do happen to believe that souls exist in a way that I didn't when I was younger, but in articles like this, I'm more referring to human's unique ability to express themselves.
Thanks for your comments, Ben. Perhaps I should take it one question further and ask ChatGPT to remove any telltale signs of AI.
I refuse to believe that the simple act of arranging words in a stream cannot be done in a way that does not identify the thinking machinery of its creator - if asked to conceal it.
You might say it has no emotion in it but I disagree. I think it evokes the transient nature of human communication in such spaces all too well, and I speak as one to whom these places are like a second home. It resonates with me as a writer of fiction. The one change I would make if I were to appropriate it as my own would be to remove the word "liminal". A great word but not one in common use.
We're going to see a lot more AI especially as it develops a sense of targeted readership. I think you will agree that already it writes better English than most English-speakers, the vast majority of whom do not write for a wide audience, or at all.
These things are evolving fast, under the triple pressures of profit, massive feedback, and technological advancement. We as humans must inevitably fall behind. We cannot cram more neurons into our skulls and we are dependent already on computer systems to maintain our civilisation.
My next read is Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus. I can also recommend Stephen Fry's recent presentation on AI. Well worth reading for an undeniably human take on the dangers and possibilities.
I've experimented with that myself, but no matter how many times I tell ChatGPT to "for the love of god, just make this less formulaic and obviously AI-written" it falls comically short for me. You're right that it speaks to things that are real, but all that it has the ability to do is draw from the way that other authors have written about airports. There's lots of wonderful literature that speaks to the come-and-go, liminal nature of those places, and plenty that really explores humanity. I think in my piece, "The Strange Mundanity of Flight," for example, the way I characterized people is far more believable than what's written here. And I don't think it's a particularly phenomenal piece, but the night and day differences between it and AI approaching the same subjects are pretty apparent to me.
When I ask ChatGPT to imitate my style, it falls comically short. It does evoke the transient nature of airports as you say, but it doesn't yet have the ability to do that in a way that offers insight that can't be found elsewhere. I hope no offense is taken to this as it wasn't actually written by you, but to me the whole thing just feels very hollow, overwrought, and contrived. I'd rather listen to any established author write about the same experience and I think more growth will be found as a writer looking to real people for that linguistic inspiration. There's something incredibly impressive in what it does, but it's no substitute for real human-written literature yet. At least the sort that really explores human nature beyond listicle-level depth.
Liminal isn't actually such an uncommon word! And it is the perfect way to describe airports. I would have used it myself and it makes its way into my writing fairly often. I've seen a lot in pop culture and on social media recently about "liminal spaces."
Thirty some years of being interested in words and liminal has never been in my vocabulary. Perhaps it’s not in the general Australian vocabulary.
I’d disagree on your assertion that it draws from other authors. I’d say that nowadays, no more than any other author. I spent years hunting down plagiarists and when they switched to AI - in so sudden and uniform a move - I could rarely find even a striking phrase had been used verbatim by some previous writer. That was one of my close secrets in the battle, to find a phrase that was unusual, enclose it in quotes, and google for the exact match.
As for overwrought, I mentioned three poets previously. I rather suspect that you might describe them, especially Shakespeare, in such terms.
I tried - as one does - to get earlier AI products to imitate my style. I think I was never going to have any success the way I was going about it but I also think that it’s a difficult thing to do and while my own writing of years ago sometimes seems unfamiliar I’m pretty sure that an AI piece appearing today under my name would not tax my fraud detection resources to much.
Because people with limited English skills - like about seven billion of us - will turn to AI to put their thoughts in writing, there’s going to be a continuing and growing demand. I’ll use an auto translator if I want to say something in French or German, and more so in Sanskrit where I have to wrangle the grammar as well as the Devanagari characters used in this modern age.
My main use of AI, apart from producing images where I don’t have to worry about copyright, is not writing but analysis and suggesting ideas. I can ask it to analyse a piece of fiction and produce personality sketches for each character, highlighting places where one character might be acting out of place. Don’t tell me that AI is just mining the efforts of all the previous writers who have done the same thing to my freshly-written fiction!
It’s an interesting field, and I’m worried about where it’s heading.
It enters into some complicated territory! I think my color analogy speaks to this pretty directly, though. I'm not saying that it plagiarizes word for word. In my experience it doesn't do that. Instead, it takes the composite of 100 stories written on airports, figures out common threads, and combines many voices into one in a way that almost always comes across as unnatural, formulaic, or "brown," as in my analogy. You're right that it can respond to a newly written story with seemingly unique insight, and that enters into some even more confusing terrain. But the same thinking still applies. It approaches a newly written piece by weighing probabilities and determining, "when presented with these sorts of scenarios in writing, how might other editors respond?" Its responses will be useful and analytical, but still only a composite of the sorts of insights that editors have been able to offer other pieces of work in the past.
"And, just between you and me, I think that the story produced by ChatGPT is better than anything I could create. Certainly better than I could produce in 64 seconds." Same here. Excellent article.
But better than what you could create in say, an hour? 2 hrs? Is the speed what makes it better? Because I'd camp in that liminal space and wait for you to give me somthing with soul.
I've fiddled with Chat gpt a bit, and once you get it fine tuned, it can create some pretty deviant and risqué tales. Sometimes it even surprises me. BUT, to me, the epic AI creations are still the exception rather than the rule. Someday,creative punctuation, and the occaisional syntax or other mistake may be the only way to tell somthing is human authored. That doesn't sound like an appealing future to me...
I disagree that I wouldn't have picked it up, but parts of it do read very strongly. Liminal is a great word, but to me, "Airports are liminal spaces, filled with souls in transit. I stand at the departure gate, surrounded by the hum of announcements and distant conversations. Time feels suspended here-a pause between what was and what will be." reads like almost unmistakable AI. Introductions and endings are usually the big giveaways for me. The body is stronger, but still overwrought. "As I board my flight, I carry more than just my luggage. I carry the imprint of her presence, the echo of her sigh, the warmth of that brief touch. In a place defined by departures and arrivals, it's these small intersections of lives that remind me of our shared humanity. Perhaps we're all just travelers passing through, our paths crossing in the most unexpected ways. And maybe, in these passing moments, there's a quiet beauty that lingers-a subtle chord that adds depth to the melody of our lives," also reads to me as more a composite of a whole bunch of creative approaches rather than anything unique to an individual voice. I would have a very, very hard time believing that a human wrote it if it were submitted to me. It's stronger than it was a year ago, but not by so much that it wouldn't be fairly easy for me to catch. The patterns I'm used to seeing are still present and there's a very formulaic way that the story is approached.
Regarding the soul, I think a better definition for my specific piece than anything metaphysical would simply be "emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance." I do happen to believe that souls exist in a way that I didn't when I was younger, but in articles like this, I'm more referring to human's unique ability to express themselves.
Honored I could inspire you to put this together!
Thanks for your comments, Ben. Perhaps I should take it one question further and ask ChatGPT to remove any telltale signs of AI.
I refuse to believe that the simple act of arranging words in a stream cannot be done in a way that does not identify the thinking machinery of its creator - if asked to conceal it.
You might say it has no emotion in it but I disagree. I think it evokes the transient nature of human communication in such spaces all too well, and I speak as one to whom these places are like a second home. It resonates with me as a writer of fiction. The one change I would make if I were to appropriate it as my own would be to remove the word "liminal". A great word but not one in common use.
We're going to see a lot more AI especially as it develops a sense of targeted readership. I think you will agree that already it writes better English than most English-speakers, the vast majority of whom do not write for a wide audience, or at all.
These things are evolving fast, under the triple pressures of profit, massive feedback, and technological advancement. We as humans must inevitably fall behind. We cannot cram more neurons into our skulls and we are dependent already on computer systems to maintain our civilisation.
My next read is Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus. I can also recommend Stephen Fry's recent presentation on AI. Well worth reading for an undeniably human take on the dangers and possibilities.
Britni
I've experimented with that myself, but no matter how many times I tell ChatGPT to "for the love of god, just make this less formulaic and obviously AI-written" it falls comically short for me. You're right that it speaks to things that are real, but all that it has the ability to do is draw from the way that other authors have written about airports. There's lots of wonderful literature that speaks to the come-and-go, liminal nature of those places, and plenty that really explores humanity. I think in my piece, "The Strange Mundanity of Flight," for example, the way I characterized people is far more believable than what's written here. And I don't think it's a particularly phenomenal piece, but the night and day differences between it and AI approaching the same subjects are pretty apparent to me.
When I ask ChatGPT to imitate my style, it falls comically short. It does evoke the transient nature of airports as you say, but it doesn't yet have the ability to do that in a way that offers insight that can't be found elsewhere. I hope no offense is taken to this as it wasn't actually written by you, but to me the whole thing just feels very hollow, overwrought, and contrived. I'd rather listen to any established author write about the same experience and I think more growth will be found as a writer looking to real people for that linguistic inspiration. There's something incredibly impressive in what it does, but it's no substitute for real human-written literature yet. At least the sort that really explores human nature beyond listicle-level depth.
Liminal isn't actually such an uncommon word! And it is the perfect way to describe airports. I would have used it myself and it makes its way into my writing fairly often. I've seen a lot in pop culture and on social media recently about "liminal spaces."
Thirty some years of being interested in words and liminal has never been in my vocabulary. Perhaps it’s not in the general Australian vocabulary.
I’d disagree on your assertion that it draws from other authors. I’d say that nowadays, no more than any other author. I spent years hunting down plagiarists and when they switched to AI - in so sudden and uniform a move - I could rarely find even a striking phrase had been used verbatim by some previous writer. That was one of my close secrets in the battle, to find a phrase that was unusual, enclose it in quotes, and google for the exact match.
As for overwrought, I mentioned three poets previously. I rather suspect that you might describe them, especially Shakespeare, in such terms.
I tried - as one does - to get earlier AI products to imitate my style. I think I was never going to have any success the way I was going about it but I also think that it’s a difficult thing to do and while my own writing of years ago sometimes seems unfamiliar I’m pretty sure that an AI piece appearing today under my name would not tax my fraud detection resources to much.
Because people with limited English skills - like about seven billion of us - will turn to AI to put their thoughts in writing, there’s going to be a continuing and growing demand. I’ll use an auto translator if I want to say something in French or German, and more so in Sanskrit where I have to wrangle the grammar as well as the Devanagari characters used in this modern age.
My main use of AI, apart from producing images where I don’t have to worry about copyright, is not writing but analysis and suggesting ideas. I can ask it to analyse a piece of fiction and produce personality sketches for each character, highlighting places where one character might be acting out of place. Don’t tell me that AI is just mining the efforts of all the previous writers who have done the same thing to my freshly-written fiction!
It’s an interesting field, and I’m worried about where it’s heading.
Britni
It enters into some complicated territory! I think my color analogy speaks to this pretty directly, though. I'm not saying that it plagiarizes word for word. In my experience it doesn't do that. Instead, it takes the composite of 100 stories written on airports, figures out common threads, and combines many voices into one in a way that almost always comes across as unnatural, formulaic, or "brown," as in my analogy. You're right that it can respond to a newly written story with seemingly unique insight, and that enters into some even more confusing terrain. But the same thinking still applies. It approaches a newly written piece by weighing probabilities and determining, "when presented with these sorts of scenarios in writing, how might other editors respond?" Its responses will be useful and analytical, but still only a composite of the sorts of insights that editors have been able to offer other pieces of work in the past.
"And, just between you and me, I think that the story produced by ChatGPT is better than anything I could create. Certainly better than I could produce in 64 seconds." Same here. Excellent article.
But better than what you could create in say, an hour? 2 hrs? Is the speed what makes it better? Because I'd camp in that liminal space and wait for you to give me somthing with soul.
I've fiddled with Chat gpt a bit, and once you get it fine tuned, it can create some pretty deviant and risqué tales. Sometimes it even surprises me. BUT, to me, the epic AI creations are still the exception rather than the rule. Someday,creative punctuation, and the occaisional syntax or other mistake may be the only way to tell somthing is human authored. That doesn't sound like an appealing future to me...