AI Writing and Creativity

Another nice little reach, this one by Samanth Subramanian over at The New Republic on human creativity and AI writing. Subramanian is, in part, responding to Literary Theory for Robots by Dennis Yi Tenen and the notion that humans comb large scale sources for inspiration in the same way Large Language Model AIs do, so “we shouldn’t agonize too much over the source of intelligence.” But, as Subramanian says,

The art of the novel doesn’t lie in the combine-harvesting of details and plotlines. It lies in how a writer selectively filters some of them through her own consciousness—her deliberations, the sum of her life, the din of her thoughts—to devise something altogether different and more profound. This, and only this, makes any piece of writing meaningful to those who read it.

As someone who teaches about traditional tales and sees the same stories told again and again (Iliad -> Hamlet -> Lion King just as a quick example), this is the heart of the creativity. It’s less what story you are telling than how you tell it. Whether it is Propp boiling down the elements of Russian Folktales, or Joseph Campbell tracing the Hero’s Journey, or as cited in the article, Georges Polti publishing The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, some aspects of stories are, if not universal, than very wide-spread. Unoriginal if you will. Writers stand on the shoulders of their predecessors and draw from their cultures, but, in Subramanian’s words, produce something “different and more profound” – not just for the readers, but for themselves.

Nevertheless, the debate continues as to whether human writing (creativity) is really that different from AI  – or, if so, will remain different. Will it become just like every other automatized industry?

“Because mind and language are special to us, we like to pretend they are exempt from labor history,” Tenen notes.

There is much more in the article. A definite recommended reading.