The NYT quiz's ending note is not only insulting but stupid. Absolutely braindead. Referring to McCarthy's "As well ask men what they think of stone" as evidence of an "aversion to punctuation"??!! I guess someone at NYT thinks that the same meaning would be conveyed by "As well, ask men what they think of stone", even though the latter would be grammatically nonsensical and convey nothing close to the same meaning.
Writers, composers, musicians, and creators make deliberate choices. These choices carry their emotions and incite specific ones in us, mere mortals lucky enough to enjoy their creation. You said it best: "No matter how advanced the models become, they will always remain just that: models. Representations. Replicas. Forgeries. Frauds." Inference is linear algebra, not original thought. There is nothing underneath, just weights and biases.
I disagree with the notion that these choices are ‘consciously deliberate’. One can stumble upon a great idea without knowing the intellectual side of it.
Many great works, of literature, art, music, etc… were created without an awareness of their theoretical structure.
I think your comment adds a necessary finer point to mine, so thank you! It’s true that some artists cannot “explain” their work in the same way that critics can (and when critics do so successfully, they feel seen in the truth of their intentions, if subconscious at the time of creation). Still, even choosing something “because it feels right” is a willful choice; one’s intuition is as much an expression of one’s aliveness as one’s intellect (and the two are not entirely disparate). And that consciousness (which includes the subconscious) is the distinction I was trying to make between humans and AI. I’m really grateful for your comment and your pushing the argument forward!
I like to write, so for me, using AI would defeat the entire purpose.
I’m also intensely turned off by finding out some writing is AI-assisted. Like in chess, we want to see the human voice. Nobody wants to watch bots play, even if they can outplay all humans.
For the love of the game!! Joy is always a good argument. Seth Rogan recently made a similar point at Cannes: “if you don’t want to go through the process, you shouldn’t be a writer. The idea of a tool that makes me write less is not appealing to me, because I like writing.” To your point about watching bots play, I wonder if the oral tradition will make a comeback 😂 Maybe people will memorize and regurgitate what their bot wrote for them, but 1) sincerity is more easily assessed face-to-face, and 2) it’s a lot more cumbersome, not to mention embarrassing.
The samples in the quiz are just too short to have a proper opinion I think. Other than the two examples you quoted in your article I didn't have a strong feeling about the passages either way. What I always notice with AI written content is the tendency to use words like decorations, string them together to sound nice but they're not saying much and there's no underlying meaning. I just feel like that mostly becomes apparent in longer texts though. Anyway, English isn't my native language so that might have also influenced me. (i chose 2/5 AI written passages and it bugged me)
Yeah, in the first case I was thinking the McCarthy text was an LLM trying to cloak some pseudo-profound nonsense in competent language, whereas the second text wasn't trying so hard. The author here faults it for the mismatch between the rapid description and the meaning intended, but that could also be an intentional revelation of character, understatement or resignation. It's not a beautiful passage on its own but all the analysis of the McCarthy text didn't wow me either. Either way it's a guy (or two) talking, and most people don't speak in beautiful sentences even in "literature." A longer passage would reveal much more.
Oh yes! Eyeball kicks, great way to describe them. As a teen I liked those kinds of phrases especially in song lyrics (Radiohead's "immerse your soul in love" for example) but now I've seen too much of it and they've become almost meaningless. What a shame
I think it's unfair to include that passage from Blood Meridian. I would only know "As well ask men what they think of stone" is not a grammatical mistake if I knew the character and the scene, or if I had a sense for the author's style. It's also unfair to judge the AI generated passage as a stand alone. Sure, you don't like the sentence "The old man said weather and time and indifference". To you, it seems too fast: "The effect is a rapid, relentless rhythm—“weather and time and indifference”—totally antithetical to the actual rhythm of weather, and time, and indifference: weather acts slowly, cumulatively—as does time, as does indifference." But that's a completely subjective reading. Often, weather and time act very quickly to destroy the things we love. Indifference is often more cumulative, but someone who is worn down can often lose patience, which is the tone I felt. Overall, the test seems arbitrary and contrived. The comparison cannot be between passages, at the least.
I can't help but feel the poetry question was deliberately made difficult. I would have read both passages as parts of novels, and then Bishop reads much worse. The AI passage is meaningless, but since it is about death and I assumed there was more context after the quote, the meaninglessness had a point. Poems work very differently but I'm not sure the NYT knows the difference between prose and poetry.
I'm as anxious about the future as the next guy, but I try not to confuse taste for anything other than it is. Subjective interpretation is interesting insofar as it allows each reader to make their own of what they've read, and it's a big part of what makes art worthwhile, but the moment you begin to treat these inferences like exhibits in Opinion Court I think you've sort of lost the plot.
Write because you have something to say. Write because you love it. And if in reading you strive to filter out the bots then more power to you; I don't know if anybody could honestly blame you for being interested in other humans. Just know when to stop looking for meaning that isn't there.
The samples in the quiz are just too short to have a proper opinion I think. Other than the two examples you quoted in your article I didn't have a strong feeling about the passages either way. What I always notice with AI written content is the tendency to use words like decorations, string them together to sound nice but they're not saying much and there's no underlying meaning. I just feel like that mostly becomes apparent in longer texts though. Anyway, English isn't my native language so that might have also influenced me. (i chose 2/5 AI written passages and it bugged me)
Certainly, LLM 'writing' has its tics that make it obvious to a reasonably literate person, but even if it were indistinguishable from real (read: human) writing, it still wouldn't BE real writing; all the tech bros have done to produce it is feed a gigantic load of real writing into a probability engine. Without the genuine article to work from, the LLM can't produce anything at all.
I’m more concerned with putting my own work out there. Could my human written stories withstand this level of scrutiny? I don’t know enough about grammar to load every sentence like that first passage. I also like the “ands.” Hopefully the why comes through. I’m increasingly concerned that dislike of someone’s work will turn to accusations of AI.
All such thinking is fundamentally flawed. Unlike human writers, AI is in its infancy and progressing so rapidly the government stepped in to halt progress. LLMs are not even 5 years old. If allowed to develop another 5 years they surely would produce writing that is as good or better than all but a tiny handful of humans. When computers became capable of beating any human on earth at chess, the same sort of people as the author exclaimed ah, but they will never beat us at Go, a deeply human game that cannot be brute forced like chess. A decade later AI now beats all humans at Go and transformed the game by discovering vast new approaches to gameplay strategy that no human had thought of in 2,000 years. Examining a snapshot of current AI writing and drawing universal conclusions is a rudimentary intellectual error that Claude or Gemini wouldn’t make.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams joked that philosophers demanded “rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty” once a machine started producing answers. The modern AI panic has created the same economy. Vast numbers of academics, ethicists, and professional critics now make careers denouncing systems they scarcely understand, because alarmism pays better than technical competence and confusion is easier to sell than clarity.
"McCarthy's mistake-riddled writing" is...such a choice of a critique for one of the most iconic writing styles of the late 20th/earlier 21st century. This piece is so helpful
The NYT quiz's ending note is not only insulting but stupid. Absolutely braindead. Referring to McCarthy's "As well ask men what they think of stone" as evidence of an "aversion to punctuation"??!! I guess someone at NYT thinks that the same meaning would be conveyed by "As well, ask men what they think of stone", even though the latter would be grammatically nonsensical and convey nothing close to the same meaning.
BookTok and its consequences have been a disaster not just to reading, but to literacy.
Pretty sure that someone is actually AI... Idiotic nonetheless. Not sure what NYT is trying to prove here
Writers, composers, musicians, and creators make deliberate choices. These choices carry their emotions and incite specific ones in us, mere mortals lucky enough to enjoy their creation. You said it best: "No matter how advanced the models become, they will always remain just that: models. Representations. Replicas. Forgeries. Frauds." Inference is linear algebra, not original thought. There is nothing underneath, just weights and biases.
I read this piece twice already.
Thank you so much for reading so deeply ❤️ it’s the greatest gift you can give to this essay
I disagree with the notion that these choices are ‘consciously deliberate’. One can stumble upon a great idea without knowing the intellectual side of it.
Many great works, of literature, art, music, etc… were created without an awareness of their theoretical structure.
I think your comment adds a necessary finer point to mine, so thank you! It’s true that some artists cannot “explain” their work in the same way that critics can (and when critics do so successfully, they feel seen in the truth of their intentions, if subconscious at the time of creation). Still, even choosing something “because it feels right” is a willful choice; one’s intuition is as much an expression of one’s aliveness as one’s intellect (and the two are not entirely disparate). And that consciousness (which includes the subconscious) is the distinction I was trying to make between humans and AI. I’m really grateful for your comment and your pushing the argument forward!
I like to write, so for me, using AI would defeat the entire purpose.
I’m also intensely turned off by finding out some writing is AI-assisted. Like in chess, we want to see the human voice. Nobody wants to watch bots play, even if they can outplay all humans.
For the love of the game!! Joy is always a good argument. Seth Rogan recently made a similar point at Cannes: “if you don’t want to go through the process, you shouldn’t be a writer. The idea of a tool that makes me write less is not appealing to me, because I like writing.” To your point about watching bots play, I wonder if the oral tradition will make a comeback 😂 Maybe people will memorize and regurgitate what their bot wrote for them, but 1) sincerity is more easily assessed face-to-face, and 2) it’s a lot more cumbersome, not to mention embarrassing.
perhaps it is sadly parochial of us that we'd rather see two humans play chess than see the better game.
The samples in the quiz are just too short to have a proper opinion I think. Other than the two examples you quoted in your article I didn't have a strong feeling about the passages either way. What I always notice with AI written content is the tendency to use words like decorations, string them together to sound nice but they're not saying much and there's no underlying meaning. I just feel like that mostly becomes apparent in longer texts though. Anyway, English isn't my native language so that might have also influenced me. (i chose 2/5 AI written passages and it bugged me)
Yeah, in the first case I was thinking the McCarthy text was an LLM trying to cloak some pseudo-profound nonsense in competent language, whereas the second text wasn't trying so hard. The author here faults it for the mismatch between the rapid description and the meaning intended, but that could also be an intentional revelation of character, understatement or resignation. It's not a beautiful passage on its own but all the analysis of the McCarthy text didn't wow me either. Either way it's a guy (or two) talking, and most people don't speak in beautiful sentences even in "literature." A longer passage would reveal much more.
To your point: https://www.tumblr.com/nostalgebraist/778041178124926976/hydrogen-jukeboxes
Oh yes! Eyeball kicks, great way to describe them. As a teen I liked those kinds of phrases especially in song lyrics (Radiohead's "immerse your soul in love" for example) but now I've seen too much of it and they've become almost meaningless. What a shame
I think it's unfair to include that passage from Blood Meridian. I would only know "As well ask men what they think of stone" is not a grammatical mistake if I knew the character and the scene, or if I had a sense for the author's style. It's also unfair to judge the AI generated passage as a stand alone. Sure, you don't like the sentence "The old man said weather and time and indifference". To you, it seems too fast: "The effect is a rapid, relentless rhythm—“weather and time and indifference”—totally antithetical to the actual rhythm of weather, and time, and indifference: weather acts slowly, cumulatively—as does time, as does indifference." But that's a completely subjective reading. Often, weather and time act very quickly to destroy the things we love. Indifference is often more cumulative, but someone who is worn down can often lose patience, which is the tone I felt. Overall, the test seems arbitrary and contrived. The comparison cannot be between passages, at the least.
I can't help but feel the poetry question was deliberately made difficult. I would have read both passages as parts of novels, and then Bishop reads much worse. The AI passage is meaningless, but since it is about death and I assumed there was more context after the quote, the meaninglessness had a point. Poems work very differently but I'm not sure the NYT knows the difference between prose and poetry.
After I read this article, I finally did the NY times quiz with “does it actually say something” as the benchmark, and what a filter it was.
Now do it double-blind.
I'm as anxious about the future as the next guy, but I try not to confuse taste for anything other than it is. Subjective interpretation is interesting insofar as it allows each reader to make their own of what they've read, and it's a big part of what makes art worthwhile, but the moment you begin to treat these inferences like exhibits in Opinion Court I think you've sort of lost the plot.
Write because you have something to say. Write because you love it. And if in reading you strive to filter out the bots then more power to you; I don't know if anybody could honestly blame you for being interested in other humans. Just know when to stop looking for meaning that isn't there.
The samples in the quiz are just too short to have a proper opinion I think. Other than the two examples you quoted in your article I didn't have a strong feeling about the passages either way. What I always notice with AI written content is the tendency to use words like decorations, string them together to sound nice but they're not saying much and there's no underlying meaning. I just feel like that mostly becomes apparent in longer texts though. Anyway, English isn't my native language so that might have also influenced me. (i chose 2/5 AI written passages and it bugged me)
Certainly, LLM 'writing' has its tics that make it obvious to a reasonably literate person, but even if it were indistinguishable from real (read: human) writing, it still wouldn't BE real writing; all the tech bros have done to produce it is feed a gigantic load of real writing into a probability engine. Without the genuine article to work from, the LLM can't produce anything at all.
Good article. I enjoyed reading it. One thing I don't see discussed very often is accessibility.
An Army veteran with dyslexia doesn't have fewer stories to tell than anyone else. He just has a harder time getting those stories onto the page.
AI doesn't give him those memories. It doesn't give him the fear, the loss, or the lessons that came from living them.
Those are still his.
AI simply helps him communicate them.
There's a world of difference between asking AI to create a story and asking AI to help tell one that's been living in your head for thirty years.
One replaces the writer.
The other helps the writer be heard.
To me, that's a distinction worth protecting.
this makes no sense. why is it important that he's an army veteran. so we feel sorry for him? is he mute as well?
No, he isn’t mute. He’s dyslexic.
The veteran part explains the life behind the story. The dyslexia explains the barrier to telling it.
Your comment managed to miss both points.
I’m more concerned with putting my own work out there. Could my human written stories withstand this level of scrutiny? I don’t know enough about grammar to load every sentence like that first passage. I also like the “ands.” Hopefully the why comes through. I’m increasingly concerned that dislike of someone’s work will turn to accusations of AI.
i like them both but the church reference lands hard for me and is super relatable. both great contexts, one was just more personable for me.
All such thinking is fundamentally flawed. Unlike human writers, AI is in its infancy and progressing so rapidly the government stepped in to halt progress. LLMs are not even 5 years old. If allowed to develop another 5 years they surely would produce writing that is as good or better than all but a tiny handful of humans. When computers became capable of beating any human on earth at chess, the same sort of people as the author exclaimed ah, but they will never beat us at Go, a deeply human game that cannot be brute forced like chess. A decade later AI now beats all humans at Go and transformed the game by discovering vast new approaches to gameplay strategy that no human had thought of in 2,000 years. Examining a snapshot of current AI writing and drawing universal conclusions is a rudimentary intellectual error that Claude or Gemini wouldn’t make.
They will never produce “writing:” only plagiarisation.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams joked that philosophers demanded “rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty” once a machine started producing answers. The modern AI panic has created the same economy. Vast numbers of academics, ethicists, and professional critics now make careers denouncing systems they scarcely understand, because alarmism pays better than technical competence and confusion is easier to sell than clarity.
https://jbsections.substack.com/p/academics-denouncing-aino-technical
"McCarthy's mistake-riddled writing" is...such a choice of a critique for one of the most iconic writing styles of the late 20th/earlier 21st century. This piece is so helpful