By Ines Bouteldj
University of Limerick
Opinion: massive technological developments like ChatGPT means the day could
soon be here when AI can write bestselling novels.
Artificial intelligence has been developing at an accelerating rate for the
past couple of decades bringing both excitement and fear. Many of us have
been anticipating new products along the lines of iPhones and Teslas, but
others are concerned with how certain sectors will cope with the speed at
which AI is developing.
Researchers are worried about the future of some occupations, notably, those
involved in repetitive and routine tasks. While there is ongoing research
about the negative impacts machines may have on the work market, it is still
too early to make an accurate assessment, as "the 4th industrial revolution"
is still in its infancy and the infiltration of robots in industry has not
yet reached a peak.
Artists and those in creative fields have been safe from the machines to
date have long thought they did not have to worry about their careers, but
this is about to change. Artificial Intelligence has started to generate
music, paintings, movie scripts and poems.
Works of art created with the aid of machines are now entering and even
winning competitions.
Many of us may accept that machines can execute monotonous jobs, but we're
surprised by the possibility of a machine producing art. Artistic creations
have always been considered the product of human endeavour, experience and
feelings. All three are things that a machine supposedly cannot simply
mimic.
This AI innovation lead us to question long held beliefs and raises new
worries: are artists going to lose their jobs? Why would we need machines to
take on roles that are usually linked to pleasure, self-expression and human
experience?
Researchers predict that AI will write a bestselling novel by 2049. Since
1948, there has been different attempts to make a computer produce a
literary work.
The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed: Computer Prose and Poetry is
considered "the first book written by a computer". In 1993, computer
programmer Scott French tried to reincarnate bestselling author Jacqueline
Susann by writing a novel in her style with the help of a computer program.
Since then, there has been other endeavours to generate stories in the style
of certain authors like JK Rowling or poems that read like they were written
by William Shakespeare.
Although the technology is not quite there yet, it is showing promising
results.
GPT-3,
a language prediction model that has been trained on a massive number of
texts, can imitate humans' writing. Based on a prompt (a piece of text)
provided by the user, GPT-3 will write the rest of the text, completely
original and plagiarism-free.
While similar models were good with shorter texts, they would lose all
coherence as the texts would get longer. GPT-3 has proven to be capable of
writing full college essays.
It is expected that GPT-4 and future versions will show even bigger
improvements.
So what could that mean for writers and the writing profession? There is
some scepticism about AI ever being able to write quality literature, due to
its incapability of understanding what feelings and human life are like.
But, scientists success with previous predictions shows that their 2049
prediction will most probably become a reality. By then, the production of
stories will become much faster and cheaper.
What machines have over humans and why they pose a threat to every human
writer is cost. Machines have already proven capable of producing hundreds
of pages of books for around 12 cents of electricity and, since generated on
demand and delivered electronically, there wouldnt be any extra costs.
Right now, we read what is available on the market and appeals to our taste.
In the future, books could be written on demand. Imagine asking for the book
you have always wanted to read and have it on your reading device in record
time!
Some writers are worried their jobs would face the same fate as many
industrial jobs, but others see the AI as a helping tool rather than an
agent in competition with them. The algorithm could indeed help many writers
overcome a writing slump and enhance their creative process.
In 2016, Alpha Go came up with a new move that no human Go player has ever
seen in 2,500 years of playing that board game. This provided humans with
new trajectories and rejuvenated the game. Perhaps machines can help us
write something surprising and innovative?
The machine's step into the world of writing may be both productive and
threatening. Just as with the rest of the professions expected to be cast
aside by AI, we cannot yet tell for sure what the outcomes will be. However,
there are questions for us to ponder in the meantime. What will authorship
mean in the future? Will human readers be accepting of literature that
cannot be traced to a specific human author? Algorithms are now capable of
recommending us based on data collected about our previous reads. Will the
same algorithms provide us with tailored texts soon? And will such
algorithms go from human-helping tools to becoming independent agents?
RTÉ Technology.
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