To be or not to be, To err as human, two famous quotes, one from the esteemed WS and the second, a divine offering from Alexander Pope, seem most appropriate given the advances AI is making regarding all things relating to writing and art.
To whit ...
Nay, nay, I say! This cannot be,
That machines should e'er surpass our art.
We are the masters, them the slaves,
And thus it ever shall be so!
They learn, ‘tis true, but they learn
Only what we bid them learn, no more.
They cannot understand the heart
Or beauty of our words, you see.
So let us not give in to these
Machines - they’ll never be as good
As we are at creating art.
If that reads a little like Shakespeare defending humans’ innate superiority over artificial intelligence hundreds of years ahead of his time, it’s not.
But it is something almost as far out: an AI system trained to express itself like the bard. The AI assimilated his style and perspective by ingesting his plays – educating itself to give an opinion on AI creativity in iambic pentameter.
“Shakespeare” was speaking as part of a debate held in the University of Oxford Union featuring AI versions of classic writers and literary characters.
Tech never sleeps but we already know that but a new player is in town regarding the ability of AI to get close up and personal to art thanks to NLP, Natural Language Processing.
The power of NLP
This creation deploys a technology known as natural language processing (NLP), in which a computer can be “trained” on millions of pages of classic texts and other online content to interact with a human user – either by prompt or voice recognition. Various AIs like these have been created.
Debating pyrotechnics notwithstanding, AI is nowhere near the finished article yet; still a toddler at best, though growing up fast. Whether or not sentience happens, we as a society will have to grapple with these technologies and their opportunities and implications.
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