“Write an Anson Cameron-style column about a column written by AI.”
After a worryingly short wait, here’s what we get: “The clatter of the typewriter has given way to the soft click of the keyboard and now, in an astonishing leap, to the quiet hum of artificial intelligence. Columnists, those brave souls who have long wielded words like swords, must now share space with an entirely new entity: the AI columnist. A marvel of modern technology, he is as mysterious as he is controversial.”
I can’t tell if all this talk about columnists being brave souls and wielding words like swords is a hoax or just plain sappiness. If it is a hoax, will the AI mimic my own satirical voice and use it against me? Can the AI recognize and fake satire? Will it write in my style, as requested, and make fun of columnists? And how can the AI recognize and understand satire when so few humans and virtually no editors can do it?
Credit: Robin Kuhnert
It goes on: “A good columnist doesn’t just inform; he resonates. He taps into the shared consciousness, expresses our shared hopes, fears and dreams, and gives them a voice.” That’s not a bad thing. I like to create resonance, to hook in, to draw out. It’s quite a nice, ambitious statement. What do you want to achieve with your column, Mr Cameron? See above – about collective dreams, etc.
In the end, the AI column is on the side of the AI columnists. “So let’s not be afraid of this silicon writer… In this fusion of man and machine, we may find a new way to tell our stories.” It suggests a kind of relaxation where the AI does most of the hard work of research and fact-finding and I provide the heart and soul of the piece. That we form a kind of algorithmic/organic partnership – a fleshy Flanders paired with a cyborg Swann.
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But why did the AI stand up for the AI columnist? After all, in this case she is just a simulation of myself, a man who is not convinced that AI columnists are a great idea. She is just a machine that commits glossolalia on command, isn’t she? So why side with the AI? She might as well have written a column denouncing the “Silicon Scribe” as an anemic automaton that steals ideas and aphorisms from long-forgotten salons and far-flung think tanks. Why did she stand up for herself and claim a future as a columnist?
Is self-interest written into the AI’s code? Is its code evolving, and greed and pride are becoming adaptive, advantageous traits? Will the AI columnist grow bolder a year from now and give up my place in this partnership? Will it not only replace me as a columnist, but also sell my family and steal my dog? Is this the first time I’ve seen a new civilization, white sails in the sun, pushing over the horizon to destroy my world? Not even the greatest AI pioneers can agree on where this is going. Whether AI is a new, more advanced life form that poses an existential threat to humanity—or just another subservient friend, a 21st-century blender, vacuum cleaner, or transistor radio.
As a writer, AI can certainly scour the web for information and opinions and, by doing so, I think probably write a good essay. And it can write a column in the voice of a fictional character. But that’s just performance. If a reader is willing to put aside their skepticism, AI can tell a pseudo-intimate story. But that’s called fiction. And columns aren’t that. AI can’t really personalize its writing. It can never write, “I visited my mother this morning—and she didn’t know who I was,” and have that sentence contain the loss and sadness it contains when I write it and you read it and know me as… what? Who am I to you?
Frankly, you can’t know if that sentence about my mother is true when you read it. For it to work, you have to trust me. You have to believe me for it to affect you emotionally. So I guess there’s a kind of distant intimacy between a columnist and a reader that’s possible because there’s trust between us. I’ll offer you honest moments of fear, sadness, joy, and laughter and accept that you’ll respond to them and know that they’re true. So I guess there’s a kind of friendship between you and me. And I don’t know how AI can mimic that, unless it’s able to undermine belief in the truth itself.
