Up Next, AI: Threatens With Words?

From time immemorial, we have always come together as a civilization with words. Thoughts, feelings, expressions, records, commands, and rules- are words. Without words, there is no medium of expression and human beings are social animals that need to express themselves.

Consider, you are reading this piece of writing because you are assured there’s someone on the other side of the screen who wants to convey something. It’s just like with customer service; you’re agitated texting the AI bot but you feel reassured talking to a customer support executive.

Yet in recent times, artificial intelligence has threatened to spread its tentacles into literary waters. OpenAi which is founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman has developed the generative pre-training (GPT) of a language model, the latest of which was claimed to be ‘too dangerous’ to be released because of its eerily similar human writing ability. The GPT-3 is trained in all the text available on the internet and uses this database, to make progress in the creative writing domain and produce poems, novels, short stories, essays and the like.

“Even if AI evolves to a level of consciousness, you still need experience right? If you ask me to write about what happens in outer space I won’t know what to write about because I don’t know that life, nor have I spoken to people who have lived that life. So unless I have first-hand or second-hand experience, I will not be able to write about it, and if I do, it will be very shallow. I don’t think just being smart and reading all the books in the world is going to give you that experience, life has a goal, life is there for a reason.” said Naresh Kumar, a writer who is set to publish his first high fantasy novel.

Illustrated by Miriyam Jomy Alias

Human writers are the coalescence of life, emotions, philosophy, culture, intuitive ideas, and experiences. The process of writing is an experience in itself. Writers write for different reasons and deal with their obstacles differently. It’s what makes each writer unique and provides a rich and vast database.

“I started writing as a way of expression at the age of 9. Ever since, my words began to shape my experiences, I would experience things once in reality and a second time with my words. I opened out my work to the general public in my first book 'Fire and Grace' in hopes that everyone could feel what I felt, or even a mild fraction of it. It's a powerful feeling.” says Aamina Azhar, 17.

Rather than an amalgamation of random predictive text like AI would produce, most human writing stems from a place of purpose.

​“I feel writing does have a purpose at all times. Even if an artist may want to write merely for Art's sake, the audience/reader may perceive the same writing differently, finding deeper meaning in it. Thus the purpose of art is not entirely in the hands of the creator.” says Rajeshwari, an aspiring writer.

“People should write, not for an ulterior motive, but just for the purpose of writing. If they do qualify as a writer, great. If not, they've reached a connection to their selves which they hadn't found before which is even better.” says Aamina Azhar.

​Intertwined with purpose is the need to write for an audience. If people do not understand other people, then who will? Not the machines anyway. We are connected on a conscious level and perceive messages at varying frequencies. “Let’s take Harry Potter for example,” said Naresh Kumar. “Harry Potter has evolved- it started as a kid’s book and evolved into something darker towards its later stages and that’s growth. So you need to think about who it is you’re actually writing for. If it’s a series then obviously you need to understand the audience is also going to grow over time.” he said.

When a writer sits down to write, it is often the result of an idea or thought that is coming alive in its abstract form. Inspiration strikes writers from conversations, observations and sometimes even other pieces of work. When artificial intelligence gathers its 175 billion parameters to produce a piece, would we call it inspiration? Or is ‘inspiration’ reserved for beings with consciousness? If not, does it cross over to the boundary of plagiarism? Here’s what writers think of plagiarism:

“Plagiarism is a very tricky concept because in my opinion all the stories that are meant to be told have already been told, what we deal with now is reiterations of the same stuff. Obviously with the times, these stories have new elements added to it but at the very heart of it, there are only so many stories that exist I mean it’s mostly about relationships right? It’s not just about getting inspired by someone, it’s about what you do with that inspiration.” says Naresh Kumar.

“On one hand, I feel like, because we're able to easily get reading materials, every writer has read a lot and something that you may have read years ago and don't even remember, may unconsciously manifest in your writing. So, is it plagiarism if you don't even remember a piece that already exists? Also, the concept may be the same, but the writing style may be entirely your own.” said Soumya Bondal.

“If two pots spun by the same potter can never be exact, two pieces of writing, from one or multiple authors, can never be the same. Some pieces attach a uniqueness to them and sometimes the uniqueness lies in the author itself.” said Aamina Azhar.

Where does the AI fall, progress or plagiarism? Think about it.

Keeping in mind this rocky bridge between plagiarism and inspiration, we asked writers who they consider to be writers. Is there a threshold to cross to earn the title of a ‘writer’?

“I do not think there is any threshold to cross, anybody can be a writer, everyone does it but not everyone likes to call themselves a writer as they feel that what they have written is not good enough. I know for a fact that my mother does this.” says Tanya Raman, a writer who loves dabbling in the world of fiction and fantasy and has been working on several novels which she hopes to publish someday.

“People should write, not for an ulterior motive, but just for the purpose of writing. If they do qualify as a writer, great. If not, they've reached a connection to themselves which they hadn't found before which is even better.” said Aamina.

​Besides the inorganic feeling that AI-generated text evokes in people, it could work as something complementary to human writers. Until the day AI can develop something close to consciousness, human beings can always adapt to change and that’s what keeps us going. It lies in the answer to the question of how far we can go with AI.

​“When that day comes, when AI actually wakes up and becomes sentient and independent on its own- the first thing it is going to think is what is wrong with humanity and why am I existing in the first place so that whole existentialism is something that will come into place.” Naresh Kumar’s two cents.

If not, we may see the plot of 'The Great Automatic Grammatizator by Roald Dahl' come to life; where a machine makes best-selling novels and attaches the names of famous human authors for it to sell.

So is AI truly threatening to writers who can boast of the best thing they can be, human?