Natural Intelligence

I’m with Noam Chomsky.

ChatGPT doesn’t interest me much. It will evolve, of course, and it will be useful for many professions. It will replace some jobs, and it will create others.

Computers and AI far surpass what most humans can do now. That’s a given, but it doesn’t inhibit or degrade human achievement and potential. It enhances what we can do and canonizes what we’ve done.

I’ll take it a step further than Chomsky does here. I don’t care what kind of poem, essay, screenplay, or novel that ChatGPT can write, not now nor in the future.

I care about the essay of a college applicant.

I care about the poems of an obsessed PhD candidate.

I care about screenplays by P.T. Anderson and novels by Maxine Hong Kingston.

I’ll read the works produced by AI over time. Some will be good, and I’ll enjoy them, but they will always have their limitations, even when they surpass Shakespeare.

Why? Because computers aren’t bound to the human condition. The artificial will never be as beautiful, tragic, mysterious, or romantic as the natural.

We are not the same.