What? Me Worry About AI?

Never mind the hysteria about it, here’s the bollocks

People are all fired up about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Especially those of us in the word-slinging trades, as the much-touted ChatGTP can form structured sentences and order them in a logical fashion. I, however, remain somewhat underwhelmed and largely unafraid of it.

Why? Because I gave ChatGTP-4 a test drive. The results were meh when I asked it some basic questions, like essays by a somewhat-smart middle school kid who does okay at rote tasks and has a research bent. Then I decided to have some fun with it.

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I upped the ante by asking it to “write a song in the style of Mick Jagger/Keith Richards.” What it offered me is this:

Verse 1: I was born on a dusty road, With a guitar in my hand. I played my way through the midnight sun, And the heartache of a broken land.

Chorus: But I’m still alive, I’m still standing. I’m a Rolling Stone, And I won’t fail.

Verse 2: I’ve seen the world through a haze of smoke, And the neon lights of the city. I’ve been to the edge and back again, But I still stand strong and gritty.

Chorus: But I’m still alive, I’m still standing. I’m a Rolling Stone, And I won’t fail.

Verse 2: I’ve seen the world through a haze of smoke, And the neon lights of the city. I’ve been to the edge and then back again, But I still stand strong and gritty.

Chorus: But I’m still alive, I’m still standing. I’m a Rolling Stone, And I won’t fail.

Outro: So come on and rock with me, Through the night or day. We’ll keep on rolling, in the Rolling Stone way.

My response to Chat GTP’s response? A highly amused “Ha!” followed by chuckles. To continue the academic analogy, it’s like sixth grade songwriting by a lad who thinks he’s far more clever than he actually is. Trite. Clichéd. Doesn’t quite suck. But it’s utterly devoid of any of the muse-driven mojo that underlies truly great songwriting.

On the plus side, it’s so irredeemably mediocre that it raises the tide on some of the so-so album track filler that has increasing marked the actual songs by Mick’n’Keef ever since 1978’s Some Girls, the last full great album by the Stones. I do hope the long gestating new album from the band will rekindle their glories. Even if they don’t hit one out of the ballpark – which would be a wonderful gift – a third base run would still be a blessing. Then again, yet another fine Keith Richards solo disc would suffice just nicely for a fix of many key rock’n’roll intoxicants that his band, at their finest, deliver in wondrous abundance. But I digress (as I tend to do now and then).

A recent story in The New Yorker by the computer scientist Jaron Lanier titled “There Is No A.I.” injects some much needed sanity into the hubbub and worrywarting about this oncoming technological advance. His take starts with a wise cautionary no string of computer code: “we have to stop mythologizing it.

“The most pragmatic position is to think of A.I. as a tool, not a creature,” Lanier says. At present, it seems to me like Ask Jeeves after the old boy had a few expository writing classes. I used Chat GTP-4 on a recent research project and it managed to extract some basic as well as elusive info from all the digital data out there in the Internet megaverse in solidly written text. But AI is devoid of the randomness, elasticity and creative impulses, inspiration and juju found in the human biocomputer, as acid-tripping neurologist John Lilly, a pioneer in trying to talk with dolphins, dubbed that collection of cells, synapses and such inside our craniums.

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So when I sit back after writing this or another piece, I won’t be fretting about the damage that AI and ChatGTP might to my long career as a professional writer more than the ravages that the Internet has already inflicted on the profitability of wordsmithing. And another recent story on AI in Wired notes how some data repositories are putting up resistance: “Reddit wants to start charging for access to its 18 years of text conversations, and Stack Overflow just announced plans to start charging as well,” it reports.

So when I want to clear and refresh my real intelligence after I finish writing this or that, my digression won’t be pondering the dangers of AI, but rather picking up my six-string girlfriend mere inches from where I sit in my desk chair, Sweet Virginia, and start proverbially fiddling around. I even considered, just for gits and shiggles, working up a nifty melody for the nameless “Stones” song that really doesn’t really even merit a title much less a some music. After all and as they say, you can’t fix stupid.

I’d rather spend my time bashing about on my guit-box on good and great songs written by humans, including my own.