This is the message I now get when I post an article to Linked In. It is a sign of the times and an unwelcome one. I am not against the use of AI in alleviating the drudge of searches for information or the production of formulaic statements. AI saves time, is more inclusive and can generate some wisdom from the crowd, but it is fundamentally impersonal and if you look at the snip above carefully, the person it wants to write out – is me!
I am no Tolstoy but I have produced nearly 8,000 articles , most of which are published over the past 15 years on this blog. One article – if I can remember – was written by Chat GPT. I would not be at all surprised if I was told that the majority of posts on linked in are written by a bot.
But what that means has not been properly thought through. We live at a time when “diversity and inclusion” are watchwords for good practice but creating articles without the maverick inclusions of an author’s whims and fancies, will inevitably lead to a homogenisation of expression. There may be no thought new since Homer but we can still expect to occasionally read what Pope , in his essay on criticism described as
“what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed”
The felicity of a bon-mot or a well crafted sentence is not something that is in the imaginative faculty of a bot (yet).
Nor is the capricious impulse to yoke disparate thoughts together through striking analogies, striking because they come from the unique imagination of a human being.
The extreme unpredictability of the human imagination can give rise to both appalling mistakes and breathtaking beauty and it is these outliers of expression that make for interesting reading.
Many would like to rewrite with AI, the hard-pressed hack – anxiously counting the words towards the 600 or 700 word commission, the compliance officer – keen to complete the boilerplates on a website, the harassed student with a deadline looming. For all kinds of reasons, AI is a boon.
But if you want to connect with a piece of writing , or art, or music – you need to get close to the source – the imagination of the endeavour. If the words you have read are sourced from a superior piece of software, they may serve to pass the time of day or meet a specific search for information, but they do not count for a conversation with the author.
And for the publisher of an article “rewritten with AI”, there is the humbling and denigrating feeling of inadequacy, that your endeavour can only aspire to the proficiency of artificial intelligence. I hope that Linked in take down their nasty little offer and allow people to post without let or hindrance.
If we want diversity and inclusion in our culture, we should promote the expression of the individual imagination over homogenised banality.