I tell my students that reliance on LLMs is the intellectual equivalent of a steady diet of processed food--it will make you sick and eventually it will kill you.
Visual and musical art is so powerful because it's the closest we can get to experiencing another person directly, unmediated by language or abstraction. Written works add an extra layer separating us, but good writing allows the inner person to shine through.
AI writing and art goes the other direction: it adds a full layer between the "creator" and the subject. Not only is the deeper self further abstracted by trying to communicate their meaning to the AI, but it is then mixed with whatever the AI adds. Like cotton candy melting on your tongue. There's still a little bit of that self there, the intention -- but it's fleeting.
Hello L.M., this phrase from Le Guin goes deep! – “when you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before.”
What is NOT illusion? I have gotten to the place where even my favorite sci fi and fantasy writers and their fictions leave me empty and hungry. Even beloved Tolkien and his trilogy, although his redeeming quality is that reality informs his imagination, yet his heroes cannot carry our baggage, for they are not real. There is only One who can carry our baggage, One who is eternal and the epitome of the real.
So what then of art – and I focus on the language arts, and in particular poetry, being the quintessence of speech – what of it is not illusion?
That which reflects true personhood. I have found – now in my 84th year – very few authentic nonfiction writers who can embody this:
The burden of Art, especially Poetry, is the establishment – and defense – of Human reality.
I tell my students that reliance on LLMs is the intellectual equivalent of a steady diet of processed food--it will make you sick and eventually it will kill you.
Visual and musical art is so powerful because it's the closest we can get to experiencing another person directly, unmediated by language or abstraction. Written works add an extra layer separating us, but good writing allows the inner person to shine through.
AI writing and art goes the other direction: it adds a full layer between the "creator" and the subject. Not only is the deeper self further abstracted by trying to communicate their meaning to the AI, but it is then mixed with whatever the AI adds. Like cotton candy melting on your tongue. There's still a little bit of that self there, the intention -- but it's fleeting.
Hello L.M., this phrase from Le Guin goes deep! – “when you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before.”
What is NOT illusion? I have gotten to the place where even my favorite sci fi and fantasy writers and their fictions leave me empty and hungry. Even beloved Tolkien and his trilogy, although his redeeming quality is that reality informs his imagination, yet his heroes cannot carry our baggage, for they are not real. There is only One who can carry our baggage, One who is eternal and the epitome of the real.
So what then of art – and I focus on the language arts, and in particular poetry, being the quintessence of speech – what of it is not illusion?
That which reflects true personhood. I have found – now in my 84th year – very few authentic nonfiction writers who can embody this:
The burden of Art, especially Poetry, is the establishment – and defense – of Human reality.
Tolkien came close, but “close” only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. I posit this: “A Great and Terrible Love: A Visionary Journey from Woodstock’s Sorceries to God’s Paradise”, written by a little-known laureate. Here’s a digital copy with the TOC hyperlinked for easier access: https://www.academia.edu/145198253/A_Great_and_Terrible_Love_A_Visionary_Journey_from_Woodstocks_Sorceries_to_Gods_Paradise
Its and its smaller “children” are also on Amazon in paperback
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Steve-Rafalsky/author/B08R26PZ8P/allbooks?
Sorry about promoting myself, but it’s warranted and timely.