Is ChatGPT Satanic?

I don't know what to think about ChatGPT

In the past I’ve adopted fairly Luddite responses to technology and its encroachment on our lives. 

None of which I’ve changed my mind about necessarily. While I haven’t outlined those ideas here, it basically comes down to the fact that I don’t like how tech has evolved to manage my behavior and thinking and monetize my attention. 

I don’t like every aspect of my lived experience being harvested for data, and as the basic thrust of this substack (so far at least) I don’t appreciate the way algorithms control and silo us. And turn us in on ourselves. 

Artificial Intelligence?

I do not believe that there will ever be an artificial consciousness. But I do think that artificial intelligence is possible. Something like a Large Language Model seems like the path to an artificial intelligence in that it can successfully mimic intelligence in a wide variety of circumstances, even if it can never fully achieve it. 

I don’t doubt that an LLM can pass the Turing Test. I don’t doubt that I’ve encountered an AI bot without realizing or even argued with one on Twitter. They have the capacity to convincingly pass for human intelligence in many situations, and sometimes…that’s enough for all practical purposes, to be considered intelligent. 

But they’ll never truly create something or create a work of art. 

Humans will create amazing things and do some very cool art by using AI and things like ChatGPT. But the program itself won’t actually make something creative, and that’s an important distinction. 

When ChatGpt was first unleashed, Twitter was flooded with tons of amazing examples of everything it could do. And honestly, it was impressive as a program. 

But on closer inspection, many of the things it created were just pastiche. You could easily see that all it was able to do was combine ideas and thoughts and match them to patterns. 

And in a sense, that’s what human creativity is - the combination of prior ideas into something new. And while an AI may be able to more skillfully create artistic pastiche “off the top of its head” so to speak, it can’t create anything like a human can, because it can’t have the driving vision or idea that a human is motivated by. 

That may be a cliche or trite or whatever, but it’s true. 

Where does it leave us?

I messed around with ChatGPT a little, just like so many people have been doing. And it is fascinating. But I wasn’t getting the wonderful results that other people were reporting. Maybe I don’t know the right prompts. Not sure. But everything I got back was plainly derivative. 

When your model for thinking is just a combination of every phrase and thought from the past, then you’re always going to be stuck in the past. You’ll never approach the escape velocity of a truly novel idea. 

But I can see how it can be a useful tool all the same. Some of the more perceptive thinking that I’ve seen around the issue can be summed up thus: AI is a Pandora’s Box that can’t be stopped. Efforts to prevent its use will eventually be futile on a long enough timescale, and those who embrace it sooner will go farther and use it to create and do far more. 

I don’t know what to make of that. 

There’s the human rights concern for whether or not it will displace jobs, and clearly that is a very grave concern which should not be taken lightly, although it’s not what I’m addressing here. 

I’m mainly concerned with how it will affect art and creative endeavors and how it can potentially endanger our humanity. 

I can see artists and writers using AI as intellectual scaffolding. By using AI to outline and brainstorm and lay the groundwork for a creative project, you focus more brain power and bandwidth on actual creative stuff. 

I can see that. I don’t know what to make of that, to be honest. Part of my desire to “escape the algorithm” is to minimize reactive thinking…so I’m still kind of sitting with that. 

But I do worry about AI being used to create tailor made art to be consumed on a mass scale according to an algorithm of “what I like.” That it will be the disney/marvelization of entertainment media on steroids and people will simply be able to input what superheroes and stories that they like and the AI will just be able to spit out a story for them to watch on your average Friday night. 

Satan

If that happens, then it’s bad. 

When I say that ChatGPT might be Satanic, I’m not really using that in a strict theological sense. By Satanic I refer to anything that encourages the tendency for me to curve in on myself, that prevents me from being human and reaching out to understand others.

The one thing that I’ve always hated about “just let people enjoy things” culture is that on some level, art should call us out of ourselves. Art shouldn’t just gratify my tastes and desires. It should make me a part of the conversation with others about what it means to be human. It should challenge me. 

Of course not everything has to be Dostoyevsky and there’s a legitimate part of how we look for art that’s entertaining or pleasing. You can’t watch Tarkovsky movies every day. 

But if we speed up the process where art is purely a matter of satisfying what I like and find fun then we’re going to get a culture that encourages further insularity and self-centeredness.

And that’s inhumane and dangerous.