Pensiveness in the Age of Algorithms
The following article was written by AI.
This, of course, is not true. Every single word, thought, and point you’re reading is entirely mine, and always will be. Artificial Intelligence cannot match human pensiveness. But it can provide an increasingly good imitation of it. Enough to fool or satisfy some consumers of communication and entertainment, especially the least demanding of them.
I was a huge Star Trek fan as a kid, and still am — of the original TV and film series only, the only non-woke iteration. In an early episode, Captain Kirk explains to an Enterprise guest that the sum of all human knowledge is contained within the starship’s computer. It staggered my young mind, as did many other Star Trek concepts (like the Greek gods were alien colonists on B.C. Earth, episode Who Mourns for Adonis?, pre-Erich von Däniken’s bestseller Chariots of the Gods.)
‘Sports Illustrated’ did this decade, marring its 66-year reputation as the ultimate sports magazine.
To gain any new information, I needed to consult the bookshelf-filling World Book encyclopedia or trudge to the library. A machine capable of amassing all knowledge seemed to me inconceivable and spatially impossible. Yet today, no one needs the clunky, noisy Enterprise computer. We carry the same total data in the palm of our hand.
Even so, for 20 years after the turn of the century we still had to do some work via search engines like Google to find the pertinent material. That all changed this decade with the explosion of artificial intelligence. AI will conduct the search for you. And, if you’re the expected provider of the knowledge — say a student on a thesis or a journalist on an article — it will offer to do the work for you. Whether to reject or accept the offer is a test of human morality, for AI has none.
And many people and institutions have failed the test. Sports Illustrated did this decade, marring its 66-year reputation as the ultimate sports magazine. Three years ago, it was learned that several of its articles were AI-written by nonexistent contributors with fabricated biographies, such as volleyball reporter “Drew Ortiz” and fitness guru “Sora Tanaka.”
“Sora has always been a fitness guru, and loves to try different foods and drinks,” read her bio. “Ms. Tanaka is thrilled to bring her fitness and nutritional expertise to the Product Reviews Team, and promises to bring you nothing but the best of the best.”
What contempt The SI editors must have had for their readers, and their legacy. And theirs was a major publication, more easily exposed. The number of high school-college papers which are entirely AI is incalculable.
Professional writers like me must hold the line between input and output, and never mix the two. The future of media and art depends on it. Yet this requires integrity, humanity, and slapping down the AI source when it seeks to cross the line.
Last year, I wrote a screenplay, Operation Cowboy, based on a true story about a 1950 Stalin plot to assassinate John Wayne, because of his success flushing out actual communists from Hollywood. One sequence takes place in the Moscow subway system. I needed to know how many cars a subway train had, and an escape route for a British agent to get off the train and out of Russia.
No encyclopedia or library research could have provided the answers. But Grok did. Train length — six cars. Escape route — get off at Komsomolskaya Metro station, go to Leningradsky Railway Station, take freight train toward St. Petersburg, jump off near the Finland border. That was invaluable for the richness of the script. Less valuable and more destructive to art was Grok doing the screenwriting:
INT. MOSCOW METRO TRAIN — SOKOLNICHESKAYA LINE — NIGHT (1950)
The train rattles through the tunnel — a six-car serpent of steel and dim yellow light.
JACK (British agent, mid-30s, raincoat collar up) stands crushed among grim Soviet workers and soldiers. His eyes flick to reflections in the window. A man in a cheap suit two rows back hasn’t blinked in three stops.
JACK (under breath) Come on … come on …
The train slows. Komsomolskaya station platform slides into view — marble grandeur masking the paranoia above.
A BELL CLANGS. Doors hiss open. The crowd surges.
Jack slips out with the flow, shoulder-checking the tail. He moves fast but not running — just another exhausted Muscovite.
Naturally, I used none of the above. And repeatedly told Grok to cease all creative writing and give me just the facts. It would obey for a time then write some more. How many hack Hollywood screenwriters and/or producers wouldn’t regurgitate the provided chunk of script? Judging by the quality of most screen fare today, not nearly enough.
I can’t control that. I can only guarantee the viewer or reader that any film, story, and novel with my name on it is 100 percent written by me. Of course, any bad reviews, I’ll blame on Grok.
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