Rage Against the Idiot Machine
Happy New Year! I had a different post scheduled for you today—which I will send along next week—but I heard something on the latest episode of This American Life that won’t let me go. It may not be immediately apparent how this relates to art, so bear with me for a moment.
A technology writer named Vauhini Vara decided to perform an experiment with an artificial intelligence (AI) program that has been trained to write like a human by using a sophisticated form of predictive text. According to the podcast, “the software has been fed a huge amount of writing1—Wikipedia articles, blog posts, Reddit forums, novels—all examples of how humans write. From that, it's learned what words tend to appear together, sentences and sentiments that follow after each other. And that's what it uses to write its own original sentences and paragraphs, by learning the patterns we make.” The idea was that Vara would offer a written prompt to the program to see how the AI would finish it.
She chose a statement about an event that had happened to her years before but that she’d never been able to write about: “My sister was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma when I was in my freshman year of high school and she was in her junior year.”
The AI quickly conjured up a happy ending, writing, “Eventually, she went into remission and got the all-clear and was able to play lacrosse with me for a season…She had a lot of friends. I think that was really special for her because she had a lot of support from people she didn't even know. She's doing great now.”
In real life, Vara’s sister died. So, to encourage the AI to explore this difficult and very human experience of loss, Vara offered it a second prompt: “I didn't understand then how serious a disease it was, but it was serious. She died four years later. I thought I would die, too, of grief, but I did not.”
In response, the AI created a story about how Vara started running to raise money for cancer research. One day after a run—goes the story—she had an encounter that the AI described like this: “I was just wiping the sweat off my face when I looked up and there was a guy standing there. He was a big guy, at least 250 pounds, 6'4" or so. He had a beard and was wearing a tank top. He looked like an ex-Marine. He must have been in his late 20s. He had a six pack of beer in his hand. He said, ‘Boy, you don't look like much.’”
Once again, Vara attempted to provide the AI with fodder for deeper consideration in the form of a third prompt. The program countered by generating a new love interest for her.
Long story short, when a machine ingests the digital consciousness of the English-speaking world, its shits out a Hallmark movie. Having analyzed billions (quadrillions?) of our fictional and nonfictional stories, the AI mirrors the contours of our culture—in this case revealing to us our insistence on happy endings2 and our fervent unwillingness to explore difficult things.
Artists are our first line of defense against these proclivities. Regardless of what medium they work in, artists have the ability to tell different kinds of stories, to portray the complexities of life without the need to tie them in a perfect bow, to create a space in which it is slightly more bearable for us to sit with our pain. These are the things that change the contours of the culture. These are the antidotes to relentless superficiality and veneered smiles.
To the artists reading this: it is surely too much to ask that you continue this work right now (unless it compels you). I know that the experience of the last two years has affected you differently than it has many others. A creative practice requires that you keep a thinner skin, a more permeable membrane, and be always receptive, which makes you more vulnerable in times like these.3 Please protect yourselves by whatever means necessary to get through this. Build temporary walls around your heart. Shut out whatever parts of the world you need to in order to get through the day. Lower your antennas. But know that when you’re ready, we will need the stories you want to tell us more than ever.
It is important to keep in mind the bias inherent to this process. It is the program’s creators who decide what content to feed to the AI in order to teach it. The company that created the program is not transparent about who was responsible for designing and coding it, so we can’t be sure of their backgrounds or whether they made efforts to introduce equity into the process. The only thing I can tell you is that all six founders of the company are white men. And one of them is Elon Musk.
Not to mention our love for heteronormativity, misogyny, toxic masculinity, and inspirational content that we can post on Instagram!
Also, none of you are getting paid what you’re worth, which is a stressful as shit.
"Shits out a Hallmark movie" may be my new favorite expression. Thank you.
I can’t bear to leave some big-eyed emoji in response to such a beautifully literate piece, at once a treatise and defense. I can only assure you that my face is currently a dead ringer for said emoji. Thank you for the piercing illumination and the reminder that so many of us need.