musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Oh for a Muse of fire


I have begun to wonder whether the creative Muse as we have known her is entering a phase of terminal cognitive decline or is just in the process of changing her clothes -trying on a different wardrobe because she sees new possibilities in the styles hanging in a stranger’s closet to which she’d never had access before.

And I wonder if the often sudden and unexpected inspiration will cease, or at least become as irrelevant as old news: no longer representative of unique and precious insight. Should we even attempt to continue to write, to compose, to think…?

I refer, of course, to Artificial Intelligence knocking at the creative door: AI with its artificial sheen, attempting to masquerade as a creative genius; impersonating, while not yet a person. I suppose it must be obvious why a writer, an artist, or a composer of music -to name only a few faces in the crowd- would feel threatened. And yet on deeper inspection, I’m not so sure it is as serious as it seems.

After all, say some, ‘for the technology to generate an image or essay, a human still has to describe the task to be completed. The better that description – the more accurate, the more detailed – the better the results… It could be argued that by being freed from the tedious execution of our ideas – by focusing on just having ideas and describing them well to a machine – people can let the technology do the dirty work and can spend more time inventing.’[i]

Really? Isn’t that a little like the task I used to perform many years ago, writing university course essays for a friend of mine after she specified the subject matter, and the style she had been instructed to employ? Who really deserves the credit -my friend, because of her initiative in finding a solution to her inability to compose a satisfactory essay to pass the course, or me, her reliable, yet unpaid, external Muse? She didn’t need to invent; it wasn’t her thing.

I will concede there is some difference, though: I am creating ex nihilo, as it were -or rather, my Muse is creating from some deeply-buried skill set in my forebrain somewhere; AI is drawing on a different set engendered by a decision-making algorithm and exposure to reams of appropriate data. In a way, perhaps that seems to make the process similar to mine. But it is not the same; nowhere near the same. When I, or the more talented people around me create, we draw upon quite disparate experiences, dissimilar personalities, and most evidently, variable talents that allow for unexpected alliances between ideas and themes. Our creation need not follow the highway to its destination, but is allowed to wander and reinterpret the goals along the way. In fact, as often as not, the expected goal is never reached: the predictable is boring, the anticipated, is unimaginative -even if childishly satisfying at the end of, say, a romance novel.

Of course, perhaps all this talk about the end of human inspiration is simply the sour grapes of an old man wiling away his retirement years in front of a laptop; the envy of an elder who has trouble updating his phone apps, let alone installing new ones. I admit that. But I have also been known to reflect on what it is that inhabits the things we do -the things we claim as part of ourselves.[ii] If things I do are essentially an extension of myself, surely then, a poem or an essay is invested with the same soul -a soul that an AI can never claim.

Is there a soul in a creation, some je ne sais quoi that sets it apart from a manufactured product? Would anybody not knowledgeable about its source really care? Does not the worth of the final product rise or fall with the skill of its creator -machine or imaginative human? If we did not know, would we still be entertained? Appreciative? After all, what would be the difference between, say, the original painting of the Mona Lisa and a skillful copy? Would it somehow mean more to be in the presence of the original; and if so, why?

For me, at least, the original speaks of the imagination of the creator -that out of their mind, a flower unlike any other blossomed: a flower that spoke to me of emotions only a human would understand of anger or love; of desires, or rejection; of things I can dream but cannot name… The things begot of humans have agency because they make us understand the humanity involved.

A flower drawn by my daughter and carried home carefully from her school so the crayon lines would not smear before I had a chance to praise it, would not have the same soul attached as an identical item from a machine. My daughter understands the meaning the flower would have for me, and it was because of that understanding that the flower was created: a bond, a love.

So, how can I expect that of an AI program, however cleverly it might mimic what my daughter drew? In an admittedly dissimilar case, I am reminded of a story I wrote when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The Oracle of Quaerimonia I called it, although after so many years, I have absolutely no memory of why, let alone what it was about. Looking it up now, I think Quaerimonia means something about questioning, but with no knowledge of Latin then, I must have seen it written somewhere. At any rate, I was so proud of using the strange word in my story, that I brought it to my teacher to look at. I’d written it in a little notebook I used to carry in my pocket, and carefully opened it up to the proper pages. I don’t think it was very long -the pages were tiny and my cursive large and unruly, but I remember her usually stern face softening as she read it, and a smile growing by the time she made it to the end.

“That’s very good, G…” she said, although I suspected her voice belied what she really thought. “And I like the advice of the Oracle. Did your father tell you things like that?”

I remember shaking my head -I think it must have been advice that I had invented for my story and not him. Anyway, I was disappointed that she didn’t think that someone my age could ever have come up with a word like that.

Would AI ever make that creative leap I wonder? Would it be that valuable if it did? I remain unconvinced…

[i] https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-dall-e-2-and-the-collapse-of-the-creative-process-196461

[ii] musingsonretirementblog.com/2020/05/31/the-wheel-is-come-full-circle-i-am-here/

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