I don't typically agree with pg, but I think he's right here. I was thinking about this topic yesterday.
I've already seen people start using using these tools to help them craft messages (email, text) to family members and friends. Do we really inhabit a world in which the average person is that creatively bankrupt and lazy that we'll start mediating our intimate social relationships through these tools? It's pretty pathetic.
The outliers who are able to produce truly novel styles that the models can't replicate yet (since they aren't in the dataset yet) are going to increase in value 10000x as soon as model produced language becomes the norm.
My question is though, how many of these people who are supposedly offloading the mental energy of writing onto ChatGPT are good writers in the first place? And are they really delegating that much substantive thought?
I think the pg comment presupposes that most people currently know how to write, and I just don’t think that’s the case, at all. At least not to the extent that doing less writing (or using an AI) will dramatically reshape their modes of thought (much less the trajectory of human thought as a whole).
Also, I’m not saying that written communication is the be-all, end-all of human intellect - I think I’m a fairly good writer (used to be better, though) but a fairly poor verbal communicator. I know lots of people who are great verbal communicators but not-great not-terrible writers. Some people are great at both, and some people aren’t good at either. But it’s all part of the mix of original human thought.
I guess when we get to the stage that a 21st century Orwell is using AI to write his books, then I’ll worry that we’re stunting human potential, but until then it just doesn’t seem to me like much original thought it getting displaced here. Yet, anyway.
The thought in the last paragraph resonates. Not sure which shape it will take, but the extreme inflation of reasonable and orderly text that the models produce will make it lose all its value. It might be an opportunity for the better, in the end. Maybe quirkiness, authenticity, and personality will see a revival.
It might be better, because the long-winding and formulaic text from the models is something also only models can read well :)
I've already seen people start using using these tools to help them craft messages (email, text) to family members and friends. Do we really inhabit a world in which the average person is that creatively bankrupt and lazy that we'll start mediating our intimate social relationships through these tools? It's pretty pathetic.
The outliers who are able to produce truly novel styles that the models can't replicate yet (since they aren't in the dataset yet) are going to increase in value 10000x as soon as model produced language becomes the norm.