TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

At a recent writers group meeting we discussed the use of A.I. in creative writing with an initial attempt at poetry giving sentences that did rhyme but lacked soul.

Rather than writing new material I asked different A.I. programs to improve some existing material. With Wordworth’s “Daffodils” ChatGPT and Bard rewrote the poem whereas Bing gave some suggestions on how to improve it. With Hamlet’s Soliloquy ChatGPT and Bard again rewrote the speech, but Bing recognised the piece and said that it was “not easy to improve such a masterpiece” and only gave suggestion on delivering the speech.

Should we be concerned that A.I. tried to improve these classic pieces or that it couldn’t? The real worry however is that if we were to unleash more possibilities and control it might rewrite computer code such as the missile control systems to make them faster to respond and easier to use which might not be a step forward.

A.I. is the modern Pandora’s Box except that the box is well and truly open and there might not be a “Hope” note at the bottom.

The rewrites were not an improvement.

Dennis Fitzgerald,

Melbourne, Australia