Forward

Janus-Writing

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

“ AI is backward looking. Creativity is forward looking.” — CEO of Take-Two software

I came across this quote and it just jumped out at me with a ‘look at me!’ and so I did.

AI uses already-created content to ‘teach’ itself, to inform and influence the response to prompts.

Already-created. That is the past. It’s looking backward at what has been. That’s how it is built and that is what it does.

I wonder if that’s why so much of the content that is AI-generated has an oddly formal cadence and syntax? There is more content that is free of copywrite in the past, it has been easy to locate, no fees, and feeding the code would include a lot of Shakespeare, Homer, versions of the Bible, Koran, Dead Sea scrolls, Pharonic texts from Egypt, Runic carvers’ texts, and even Enheduanna from Mesopotamia in 3500 BCE likely has educated AI entities/engines with their accounts of household goods.

(For more information on tell-tale [for now] AI cues, see my guide, here)

AI can be prompted to write ‘in the style of’ someone, returning a more contemporary result that is, IMO, plagiaristic. (come at me. I still work full time, but at 65 I still have time for it) In order to fulfill even that prompt, though, it must ‘look back’ on the content it has acquired that was created by that specific person. It is backward looking, not creative.

Sometimes I feel like I am spinning my wheels, writing on Vocal, writing on Medium, writing at all. Sometimes I wonder if my voice has a purpose, if my thoughts are useful, if my experience counts for anything. Sometimes I feel like that annoying pebble that slips into your sandals even if you just tossed it out a moment ago. “Pay attention to me!” nudges those pebbles. “Give ME your time!”

I don’t want to be that pebble. That irritant. That (much) annoying, although annoyance-causing surely must be one of my latent superpowers bursting free?

My own writing could be seen as backward facing, since my own experience, (excuse me: ‘lived experience’ is the proper and of-the-moment description, I believe) lived experience influences the way I see things now, and how my future hopes are thus adjusted.

The key, though: future hopes. Forward. Something not of the past, or at least not exclusively of the past, something new. Newish. Kinda-newishly?

Maybe I could be more like Janus; looking both backwards and forwards at the same time? Although: that doesn’t seem like he was able to appreciate the present that way.

I don’t have the vision to see the end-of-times, although somedays I wonder if it is closer than I anticipate. I’m not sure that I buy into any final end. I’m not sure of much except that things likely will get worse before they get better and it will take the majority of people working together to make that happen.

I don’t think we’re there, wherever THERE may be, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see it. My part might just be providing a sneak peek into its existence. May be encouraging people to seek something better, be all that they can, find the ways we are alike instead of endlessly poking at the ways we are different. Documenting the community I observe, celebrating the connections that are made.

And maybe, just maybe, being part of the future creation we all will build. Looking forward into all that we can be, helping those around me while we are where we are, and wondering just how the students then will understand our present time.

Unless, of course, it’s erased in an effort to make thing tidy. Antiseptic. Sterile. Faultless. Hmmm. I hope my words might still remain in that future. Somewhere. Maybe here.

Originally published by this author at https://vocal.media.