I'm finished and I know it.
Artificial Intelligence is the end of us writers, us scribblers who shove words at you and hope you'll give a shit.
I imagine the artist who drew pictures 17,000 years ago on the walls of the caves of Lascaux being told, “Put away your brushes, Ug, we've got this new thing called ‘speech’ that makes your cave drawings kind of old-fashioned."
There is nothing new under the sun. All forms of communication live and die, as all creatures live and die.
We know how shaken the popes were when Gutenberg busted their monopoly on the written word. For a 1,000 years, priests' sermons were the exclusive interpreter of the Lord's words. Suddenly, we are told that this guy Gutenberg had created something called “reading.” By 1466, the Bible was mass-printed in German, and for the first time the Pope became pretty much useless, as people could read the Lord's words themselves.
And we all know that “Video killed the radio star.”
So, beginning 500 years ago, we got rid of people we needed to read for us. Now, with AI, we no longer need people to write for us.
And besides, writers like me don't flatter the way ChatGPT does, don't always give you the answers you like the way ChatGPT does. And we writers are often wrong or stupid or self-centered or vicious or crybabies or generally pains in the asses.
So, this is my slow goodbye. Yes, I'll keep writing because I can't help myself. Because I don't really like this world and for some reason I want you to know it. You can call it investigative reporting but it's really kvetching, using hidden facts to beat the powerful over the head with information they don't want you to see. I know that's quite self-aggrandizing, but it's more of a tick, a nervous habit, rather than the great virtue that I'm often credited with.
The most I can hope for is that if you're paying $20 a month for ChatGPT to be that mirror that makes you look thinner and brighter and shinier than you are, you might consider sending me 20 bucks a month as well. And I promise never to use ChatGPT to write my columns, my reports, or my poems.
My poems? Yes, you didn't know it, buddy, but I'm a poet. But I've been holding off publishing for nearly 60 years. I'd better get it out this year, otherwise no one will believe I wrote this doggerel and not Anthropic.
The only hints that a robot doesn’t write my stuff is that some of the poems are real clunkers, and some of my columns have screwed up grammar and some cranky thoughtlessness that gives me away as that obsolete thing called “a human.”
I just hope that in the future, that the forgotten profession called “writing” will be honored and studied as we study, with curiosity, the caveman who drew pictures on the walls at Lescaux.
We stand in awe and puzzlement at his work, wondering why he did it. I'll tell you why: he couldn't help himself.
I write because if I don’t pour out the words, I’ll burst with the information I hold inside me (and in my burning file cabinets). I think that guy in the cave was the first investigative reporter — a way to let the tribe know that there are bison nearby, dangerous and, for the bold, delicious.
And that’s how I think of the vote rustlers and finance vultures I expose: they taste like chicken. And, after all these years, I want another helping.
By Greg Palast