Is the process of creating art unique to humans? What are some defining characteristics of man-made art that AI cannot replicate?
I have an easy answer […] and one the author Ross Gay mentioned when he visited campus a few years ago. He mentioned how one of the defining features of being human is that we are going to die, that we are mortal, and therefore I feel all art circles back to that. I am always struck by how everything I teach relates to these big questions, such as, why are we here? What is the point of all this? What are we doing on this planet? I believe a computer is never going to have these thoughts. To be a living, breathing mortal who is capable of high levels of thought is really unique.
Four-time-Nebula-Award-winning author Ted Chiang writes in his New York Times essay that “effort during the writing process doesn’t guarantee the end product is worth reading, but worthwhile work cannot be made without it.” Can we associate more of our personal values with our efforts during the creation of the art? Similarly, should we judge the art AI makes because it takes less effort to write than humans?
I do not necessarily see that as something different from person to person. Even a great writer can write a lot of terrible work, but if you continue doing it, some of them are bound to be good. Writers talk about this all the time, such as the hours that they spend going down the wrong path. For example, writing three chapters and then throwing them away. I think great writers can accept that. When we read the finished product, we think that this just magically flowed out of them, [but] there was probably a lot of effort in the thinking.
That is another part about what it is to be human. We make a lot of mistakes. And there’s a lot of beauty that is missed in perfection. The beauty comes from the errors.
There is definitely this distinction between STEM and the Humanities, where in the sciences we trust the human abilities to do things, and we try to cover up our mistakes and the errors we make. But when it comes to history and literature, you are questioning human ability: you are questioning stuff we messed up in the past, questioning why we sometimes make random, illogical decisions. What do you think of this difference in the subjects and what can we learn from it?
I think sometimes that technology is outpacing our understanding of it. Maybe there’s an important place for people in the humanities [to think]: are we making good choices with this? Do we really need this? Is this gonna do more harm than good? It’s important to think about all that. It’s sort of scary that we’re losing our English majors.
It really makes me think of Gilgamesh, the first story ever written down. And the really crazy thing about Gilgamesh is that what’s happening in there, the core emotions: his fear, his love, like everything that he goes through, is not that different from what we go through now. If we think of Shakespeare, like everybody’s recognizable in there: what’s driving them, what they are worried about, what they fear. Our technology changes, the way we dress changes […] our health and how we manage the disease that all changes, but the core things about who we love, who we have friends with, our fear of loss, our fear of death, that stuff does not change throughout time.
We really are not advancing that much […] and nor should we. Art will always speak to that.
What do you think are some of the reasons students turn to AI or Large Language Models to help them craft writing? What roles does Andover play in upholding or demolishing unhealthy writing standards?
This is something we are discussing a lot as faculty members. Many students are turning to LLM [Large Language Models] out of anxiety and insecurities, and possibly a worry that they don’t have the ability to write a paper in Standard English [especially if] they may be non-native speakers. And I think as an English department, we’re thinking more and more about different kinds of English, and there’s no hierarchy of them, and yes, it’s important to learn Standard English, because, as I said in class, it’s the language of healthcare and politics and finance and all of these systems.
[Writing] is such a product-based mentality, and I hope we’re also getting to a more process-oriented version of writing, where it takes time and it takes a lot of revision and drafting to your first job is writing by hand, or like we do in my class, that initial idea stage is happening in the classroom with me there, and so teachers aren’t just getting that finished product, but are really working with you at every step of the way.
I think everyone’s going to have to slow down, […] really engage in those tiny little decisions that we talked about way back in the first question. In a world where we’re used to immediacy, and we want a quick turnaround […] it’s going to be a space where you have to kind of let go of that a little bit. A lot of that doesn’t match up with all that we’re trying to do in terms of starting EBI and all the ways in which we’re talking about mental health — some of that doesn’t quite match up with efficiency and quick product turnarounds, right? And it might be that that’s just kind of a slow growth where we more and more start to match up with a lot of what students are hearing on one side and then hearing from teachers on the other side.
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