ChatGPT Should be an Inconvenience

by Jesse Vanderveeken

Let me start on a rather self-defeating note: I find it hard to understand how ChatGPT works. I suppose it entails something about predicting what text “should” follow previous text, based on mountains of data collected online. I have thought of it through the metaphor of a large soup bowl, in which a soupy amalgam of internet articles is collected and dished out according to the user’s requests/prompts.

That being said, I will leave explanations for someone else. I feel inclined rather to follow the route of many other students of the arts in exploring the implications of ChatGPT for art and artists (and yes, I will treat English Lit. and English essays as art as well). 

But how did I come to this decision? Did I simply pull from sources online and decide what text was most likely to follow from my earlier discussion about misunderstanding ChatGPT? Have I simply generalised from information gathered off the internet what must be appropriate for my own situation? Or have innate proclivities brought me this way (hinted at by my earlier “I feel inclined…”). 

These questions encroach on a philosophical debate about how human ChatGPT is (and likewise how ChatGPT humans are). It leads us to wonder what is unique about us and what we can do that “Chat” cannot. However, as artists the comparison is not always as part of a grand philosophical debate, but rather a more practical concern; it is made because employers will make it. As Paniz Vedvaraz puts it -- in her Western Gazette article Is AI art a tool or a threat? -- “for young creatives, AI is not just seen as a tool — it’s competition”.

Coupled with the particular concerns of artists, the data centres that house AI deployments use vast amounts of energy, water, and rare minerals, which contributes to our current environmental crisis. 

However, in spite of all this, many are convinced -- and I am among them -- that AI models can be responsibly incorporated into an artist’s arsenal as unique modes of creation. For instance, many social media filmmaking accounts that I find innovative use AI to create visual effects that would not be possible through any other medium (e.g. Aze Alter, Prompt Forum, and Neural Viz). Such accounts also credit AI, and incorporate their own creativity into their products through editing generated images/videos and forming content into a larger story.

But these examples by no means demonstrate a typical use of AI image and video generation. For every art film that uses AI in a novel way, there are thousands of uncanny cat photos designed to farm engagement on Facebook. These few creators are rather shining examples of what AI could be for artists.

So how does this relate to ChatGPT and English students? Well, the above discussion sketches out a larger consensus surrounding AI: it could be used for the benefit of creatives; however, it often isn’t and not often enough to subdue many legitimate concerns. 

I am writing this post to suggest a new philosophy for using AI (and in particular ChatGPT): to not use it as a convenience, but as an inconvenience. While someone might describe ChatGPT as productive because it automates tedious tasks to free-up individuals for more creative endeavors (e.g. creating an essay outline so that a student can focus on the challenge of constructing convincing arguments), I suggest that, as a tool for automation AI utterly fails us. It generates over-done structures and images scooped from the lukewarm soup of the internet -- and at an untold cost. 

Instead, Chat should be a tool used sparingly for tasks which it is uniquely equipped for. 

Through producing its characteristic visual instability and formlessness, and through generating texts that generalise across internet literary culture, AI should challenge rather than reproduce our understanding of art. It should encourage us to go beyond current artistic conventions, just as new technologies like early photography and lithography had done before it.

Said simply, AI should be used productively, generative in the sense that it pushes the boundaries of what art can be and do, not as a factory to produce sludge content -- ever-cheaper entertainment devoid of any “human touch”.

And yet, without regulations, I do not see this change coming about. However, as with every problem social and political, we must be the change we want to see. Start by using ChatGPT as an inconvenience, and through your rough and troubled path others soon may tread…