Creative AI?

There's been a lot of news in the media lately about AI programs that generate text or images. One of the e-mail lists I subscribe to recently had a long thread about AI text products and especially art. Some people argued about whether a program that gets "ideas" (to speak anthropomorphically) from many different online images and combines multiple elements from them to produce a new image unlike any of the sources is infringing artists' copyrights. I tend to agree with the position that such a product is in no sense a "copy" of any particular original.

Here's the Wikipedia article on ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer):

ChatCPT

The core function of that program is "to mimic a human conversationalist." However, it does many other language-related tasks, such as "to write and debug computer programs" and "to compose music, teleplays, fairy tales, and student essays" and even "answer test questions," as well as other functions such as playing games and emulating "an entire chat room." It could also streamline rote tasks such as filling out forms. It has limitations, though, which are acknowledged by its designers. Like any AI, it's constrained by its input, and it may sometimes generate nonsense. When asked for an opinion or judgment, the program replies that, being an AI, it doesn't have feelings or opinions.

This week the Baltimore SUN ran an editorial about the potential uses and abuses of the program. It includes a conversation with ChatGPT, asking about various issues of interest to Maryland residents. For instance, the AI offers a list of "creative" uses for Old Bay seasoning. It produces grammatically correct, coherent prose but tends to answer in generalizations that would be hard to disagree with. One drawback is that it doesn't provide attribution or credit for its sources. As the editorial cautions, "That makes fact-checking difficult, and puts ChatGPT (and its users) at risk of both plagiarizing the work of others and spreading misinformation."

A Chat with ChatGPT

Joshua Wilson, an associate professor of education at the University of Delaware, discusses the advantages and limitations of ChatGPT:

Writing Without Thinking?

It can churn out an essay on a designated topic, drawing on material it garners from the internet. A writer could treat this output as a a pre-first-draft that the human creator could then revise and elaborate. It's an "optimal synthesizer" but lacks "nuance and perspective." To forbid resorting to ChatGPT would be futile, he thinks; instead, we need to figure out the proper ways to use it. He sees it as a valid device to save time and effort, provided we regard its product as a "starting point and not a final destination."

David Brooks, a NEW YORK TIMES columnist, offers cautionary observations on art and prose generated by AI programs:

Major in Being Human

He distinguishes between tasks a computer program can competently perform and those that require "a humanistic core," such as "passion, pain, longings. . . imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy." He advises the next generation to educate themselves for "skills that machines will not replicate," e.g., creativity, empathy, a "distinct personal voice," etc.

Some school systems have already banned ChatGPT in the classroom as a form of cheating. Moreover, AI programs exist with the function of detecting probable AI-generated prose. From what I've read about text-generating and art-producing programs, it seems to me that in principle they're tools like spellcheck and electronic calculators, even though much more complex. Surely they can be used for either fruitful or flawed purposes, depending on human input.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Writers' Rituals

Here's an article by Stephen Graham Jones that cautions writers against falling into the habit of depending on "rituals" to start a writing session:

The Case Against Writing Rituals

By "rituals," he refers to elements along the lines of a favorite mug, a particular type of pen, or, as he admits having succumbed to at one point, a "lucky" hat. He also includes in that category needing a quiet environment or a certain block of time to generate wordage, things that I wouldn't have thought of as rituals. He has trained himself to write anywhere, for as long a time as the situation allows, with whatever tools may be at hand. He also discusses a more insidious habit, a routine of reading e-mail and checking social media pages before easing into a creative session. I wouldn't have called that behavior a "ritual," either, but on reflection it does qualify for the label. I admit to a similar tendency to feel I must clear away the daily computer chores that don't require much thought before diving into the work of writing. Too often, getting through the minutiae leaves less time for actual work than I'd expected.

Somewhere Isaac Asimov recounts an interview when he was asked whether he performed any pre-writing rituals. After a puzzled inquiry about what the interviewer meant by "ritual," he answered something like, "I put paper in the typewriter" (or, later, turn on the word processor). As anyone who's read his memoirs or autobiographical essays will recall, Asimov really could write anywhere. When forced to travel, even for nominal vacations, he took his "work" with him. That's one factor he credited for his prolific output.

Maybe Stephen Jones's disapproval of rituals isn't completely justified, though. Can't they have a sort of placebo effect? Mightn't it be helpful to have an established process that primes the creative part of the brain to get into gear?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Beginner's Mind

This week I watched a video lecture on creativity delivered by Kermit the Frog. It started with a celebration of the Big Bang as the original creative act (although without references to a Deity). Kermit gave inspirational advice on ideas such as inspired craziness and thinking outside the standard rules. He speculated on why we're put in this world and declared our purpose is to be creative, for everybody is creative in some way. Here's the video in case you want to listen to it. (It's fairly long.)

Listening to a Talking Frog

One of the concepts discussed in the talk, "beginner's mind," particularly struck me.

The Beauty of Beginner's Mind

As I understand it, this means approaching experiences without being bound by preconceptions, as far as possible. The short essay on this page (a teaser to lure the visitor into deeper exploration) says the "wisdom of uncertainty frees us from. . . the thicket of views and opinions." As a result, "When we are free from views, we are willing to learn." The person in this frame of mind is compared to a child, who sees the world with fresh eyes.

That page doesn't explicitly link "beginner's mind" to the creative process, as Kermit's lecture does, but the connection is clear. An artist or inventor who embraces this mindset can hope to generate fresh, individual work not quite like anything that has gone before. The concept resonates with me because it reminds me of my creative process and emotions when I originally started writing stories. I produced my first writings, aside from class assignments and a couple of allegedly humorous science-fiction skits, at the age of thirteen. Reading DRACULA at age twelve had turned me on to vampires, horror, fantasy, and "soft" SF of all kinds. Because I was limited to the offerings of the local public library and one store that sold paperbacks, I got a solid grounding in Victorian and Edwardian classics and the vintage works of the major pulp authors before I ever read much recent speculative fiction or viewed any horror films—a circumstance I consider very fortunate. This reading inspired me to want to write my own fiction, since I couldn't afford to buy many books and the sources available to me didn't have enough of the kinds of stories I wanted—mainly relationships between human and "monstrous" characters. So I had to create them for myself.

Incidentally, my impulse to start writing didn't spring from internal drives alone. It had a technological catalyst, too: I got access to my aunt's old typewriter, left in my grandmother's house. Finding a textbook from my aunt's high-school typing class, I taught myself the rudiments of touch-typing. Whenever I stayed overnight or longer at my grandmother's, I typed stories (until my parents gave me a portable typewriter of my own, and I could compose fiction at home also without the constraint of handwriting). Similarly, the much later advent of word processing with our first computer in the early 1980s sparked my creativity anew by eliminating the necessity to retype whole pages, or even multiple pages, to correct small errors or insert minor revisions. The computer removed a barrier between my creative impulses and their concrete expression, making it possible to refine my work further. (No more qualms about whether changing a word or two was worth retyping a page.)

When I started producing stories, I had the "beginner's mind." I didn't know any of the conventional "rules" for fiction, only the basic grammar and spelling I'd learned in English classes. In fact, when I eventually submitted my first book to a publisher, I didn't know anything about publishing except that submissions had to be double-spaced on one side of the page and include a SASE. But that stage came later, of course. For the stories I wrote as a teenager, I imitated the elements I loved in the horror and speculative fiction I avidly read, while tweaking the themes and tropes in accordance with my own fantasies. Because I wasn't inhibited by knowing what I was "supposed" to do, the words flowed almost faster than I could get them onto the page. The process of writing itself enthralled me, and I spent as much time on it as I could spare from school, chores, and other obligations. My third completed piece was a single-spaced novelette over thirty pages long, in the form of the journal of a man inadvertently changing into a vampire.

Now that I know the "rules" and have more experience in recognizing flaws in my own writing (and that of others), I work slowly and laboriously. I proceed like the centipede who has trouble walking because he can't decide which foot to move first. I don't often enjoy the first-draft process very much, although I do like brainstorming, outlining, proofreading the nearly-finished outcome, and the fulfillment of "having written." I sometimes miss the "first, fine careless rapture" of my teens and early twenties. On the plus side, my work has grown far better than it was when I had no idea what I was doing. I finish novels rather than bogging down in the middle because I haven't plotted in advance. I produce fairly polished first drafts that don't elicit heavy revision requests from editors. If only one could keep the "beginner's mind" along with the benefits of learning and experience.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Living in the Moment

Kameron Hurley's newest LOCUS column further discusses the quandary of living in these fraught times.

Measuring Life in Keurig Cups

She describes the joy of creative projects other than writing, endeavors that engage the body and senses such as the backyard pond she and her spouse constructed. She reminds herself and us that we can choose to brood over what's happening in the country and the world outside of our control or focus on what we can control, how we spend our own time.

I especially like her quote from Paul Harvey: “During times like these, it helps to remember that there have always been times like these.” Hurley brings up the example of Monet painting within earshot of bombardment during World War I. I often remind myself that the country and the world have survived much worse and returned to whatever "normal" may have been at the time. Consider the plague-devastated village at the end of Connie Willis's DOOMSDAY BOOK or London during the blitz in her BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR. And yet here we are.

A message in Hurley's essay that particularly resonates with me is the theme of living in the moment. She puts it, “Am I physically all right, in this moment? Is everything okay here, in this moment?" This is a reminder I try to invoke for myself regularly, but I tend to think of it in negative terms: Is anything terrible or unbearable happening right now? The answer is usually "No." Of course, it may occasionally be "Yes," as with acute grief or terror or agonizing physical pain. More often than not, though, I suffer self-inflicted unhappiness by obsessing over bad things that may or may not happen in the future. Even impersonal forces such as political trends—sometimes I have to figuratively hit myself upside the head with the reminder that if the party I oppose wins the November election, the apocalypse won't descend upon us in the first week of November or even on Inauguration Day. To paraphrase a quote I came across somewhere recently, worrying doesn't make tomorrow any better; it makes today worse.

Since, unlike Hurley, I don't have a creative avocation other than writing, I make a conscious effort to take note of good things happening day by day—e.g., sunny weather, functioning cars, appliances, and utilities, reasonably okay health, Facebook videos of our youngest grandson (age two), the convenience of ordering books and other treats online, the restaurants that have reopened, etc. I've started posting some of these daily on Facebook under the label "Today's Good Things," most of which probably give the impression that my life is rather boring. That's okay; I prefer boring to chaotic. I also keep track of the daily word count on my current work in progress, which encourages me with the sense that I'm accomplishing something, however slowly.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

On Creating Something from Nothing

Kameron Hurley's new LOCUS essay, "On Patience, Goal-Setting, and Gardening," meditates on the analogies between pushing to finish and edit a book and transmuting three "dead city lots" into a garden. Both kinds of creative activities, she says, are "about transforming a vision in my mind into something tangible that others can see":

On Patience

The essay focuses on the tension between two concepts, the power of imagination and the hard fact that imagination alone can't produce anything without patience, perseverance, and a lot of often frustrating work. And this time-consuming work "costs you other opportunities." She's reminding us that we have to really want our goal strongly enough to exercise the "patience" mentioned in her title. To avoid getting overwhelmed by the scope of the work lying ahead, we should focus on accomplishing the project "a piece at a time."

I'm reminded of the familiar saying about the nature of genius—10 percent inspiration, 90 percent perspiration.

Two of the best lines:

"It’s the ability to envision something that doesn’t exist, that, perhaps, makes us believe in the act of creation."

"I’m creating something from nothing but thought."

No wonder Dorothy Sayers in her book on the Trinity, THE MIND OF THE MAKER, chose the analogy of creative artists (especially writers) to structure her exploration of that theological concept.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Value of Curiosity

Astrophysicist Mario Livio has recently published a book titled WHY? WHAT MAKES US CURIOUS. He maintains that curiosity is "the most human characteristic":

Why We're Curious

Livio identifies two types of curiosity, which differ in their observed effect on the brain. Encountering something "novel or bizarre" can activate the part of the brain associated with conflict. By driving us to investigate the strange thing, thereby relieving the mental conflict, "curiosity might be our way of reducing unpleasant feelings." The other category springs from being "motivated by the love of knowledge for its own sake." In that case, the satisfaction of curiosity activates the brain's reward center. Of course, what we know about evolution suggests that we wouldn't have developed a love for knowledge unless learning new things gave us an advantage.

Some interesting points brought out in the interview with Livio: How can curiosity be a "defining characteristic" of humanity, when many animals are curious, too? What about "Curiosity killed the cat"? He says animals aren't curious about the "how" or "why." He cites an experiment contrasting the responses of chimps and human four-year-olds to an odd phenomenon. Also: Curiosity is at least partly genetic (studies suggest about 50 percent inherited). Curiosity in the sense of "novelty-seeking" declines with age (after all, so much of the world is new to children, so they have to question almost everything), but the "thirst for knowledge" can be a lifelong pursuit. Curiosity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity (to create, you also need "drive and persistence and talent").

Most memorable line: "Curiosity is the best remedy for fear."

If it's one of the most important traits making us human—setting us apart from other animals—could we use the presence of curious behavior in an alien species to determine that they are sapient? Would we ever expect to meet intelligent aliens who aren't curious? That seems unlikely, because the drive to investigate and learn about the environment should be a necessary survival feature for an intelligent being.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Value of Boredom

A recent scientific study agrees with Neil Gaiman that boredom stimulates creativity:

Boredom, the Ultimate Creativity Hack

As Gaiman puts it, "boredom is the place you create from in self-defense." Instead of filling every minute with "productive" activity, such as scanning through phone messages while waiting in lines, we should embrace waiting times as a chance to "do nothing." The brain isn't literally doing nothing, though; those "empty" snippets of time can foster daydreaming, which leads to enhanced creativity.

Reminds me of those summer vacation days (in the childhood of our generation) when a mother would shove kids outside and order them to find something to do (with the spoken or unspoken corollary, "or I'll find something for you to do"). We usually came up with an activity to engage our imaginations, even if it was only playing school with our oldest sister as the teacher passing on what she'd learned in the previous term.

When we set aside electronic distractions and let our thoughts wander during down time, the mind "can take you into new and interesting territory." Okay, I can accept that premise. This article, though, focuses on high-tech means of filling every minute with activity. What about people like me, who carry books (in my case, usually "tree" books) everywhere? I don't read in store lines, of course, except maybe the magazine I've put in my cart to buy, but I'm always reading books in waiting rooms, etc. Sitting there doing "nothing" would lead to more impatience and anxiety than productive daydreaming. I wouldn't go anywhere without a book on hand, including in cars while other people are driving. I'm sure many if not most avid readers follow the same practice. How does that habit fit in with the recommendations of this article?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt