Biblioracle: I’ll take that bet — ChatGPT won’t change the way we value books and writing
Only fools put far-reaching predictions into print where they can be immortalized and then resurrected to prove the foolishness of the predictor.
Call me a fool because I’m laying down my marker. ChatGPT and its large-language model artificial intelligence cousins are going to be much less disruptive to the book industry than many of its boosters seem to believe.
In the last several months I have seen predictions, such as a Twitter post from Johns Hopkins University political scientist and author Yascha Mounk saying that “It’s only a matter of time until artificial intelligence outperforms humans on skills we once thought of as distinctive to our species, such as composing a beautiful piece of music or writing a moving story.”
In a follow-up tweet, he asks if anyone wants to bet on it.
I do.
I get being amazed by what this technology seems to be able to do, but I think we are being dazzled by a bit of a conjuring trick and forgetting about what’s really happening inside of us when we encounter that beautiful piece of music or are moved emotionally by a story.
When you enter a query into the ChatGPT interface, its answer unspools word by word, much faster than we humans could type, but nonetheless in a way that seems somewhat similar to how words accrue on the page when generated by human brain power, as if ChatGPT is thinking about what to say next.
But this is not what’s happening. That response was generated in a digital instant, and the unspooling is a design choice meant to create an illusion of thought. But ChatGPT doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, and it never will be able to do either of those things.
When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear in a 1983 television special that I and millions of others watched, slack-jawed and amazed, we did not actually think that David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear.
Similarly, just because a generative AI tool can create prose that simulates a story, it does not mean it is doing the same thing as humans when we make stories. Sure, it’s possible that an AI could generate something passable if you squint just right and don’t think too hard, but the idea that it will ever “outperform” humans will only come true if we decide to redefine what’s meaningful to match what AI can do.
Maybe I’m a romantic, or a Luddite who can’t appreciate the amazing progress still in front of the technology, but I feel like I’ve seen similar predictions before, both about artificial intelligence and about books, that haven’t come to fruition.
For example, in 2016, then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx said we’d have fully autonomous cars being widely used by 2021. Now even the most bullish AI researchers say this is unlikely until 2030 or 2035. And we should be prepared for that year to keep moving back.
When it comes to books, the arrival of the Kindle was supposed to presage the end of printed books. In reality, both in terms of the percentage of books sold and the share of revenue, e-books are declining versus print. In 2022, less than 7% of book industry revenue came from e-books.
As it turns out, and many suspected at the time, e-books may fill a niche, but there are also some things about the printed book that make it an enduring technology, even pitted against its more convenient digital version.
The people who think machines are going to outdo humans at inherently human activities need to get in better touch with their humanity. They’re missing out.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Silence” by Don DeLillo
2. “The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson” by Jeff Pearlman
3. “The Throwback Special” by Chris Bachelder
4. “Dr. No” by Percival Everett
5. “Nature Girl” by Carl Hiaasen
— Kevin D., Island Lake
Kevin is a good candidate for a novel that combines sports with cultural commentary and good, old-fashioned storytelling, “The Sense of Wonder” by Matthew Salesses.
1. “The Circle” by Dave Eggers
2. “The Every” by Dave Eggers
3. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
4. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
5. “The It Girl” by Ruth Ware
— Mary P., Arlington Heights
While “Gone Girl” became a massive cultural phenomenon, Gillian Flynn was hitting on all cylinders from her very first book, “Sharp Objects,” which should be a good fit for Mary.
1. “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare
2. “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë
3. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
4. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr
5. “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell
— Bill T., Chicago
A mix of old and new classics. I’m going to recommend a newer book that comments upon stories of old, “The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com
