There’s a brilliant, BRILLIANT part about differing generational reactions to the following story: A man used ChatGPT to write a love letter to his wife. She cried and said she’d never felt so loved by him, this letter was everything she’d hoped to hear. Teens find this a lovely story. - ThreadSky

naomialderman.bsky.social • 4 days ago

There’s a brilliant, BRILLIANT part about differing generational reactions to the following story:

A man used ChatGPT to write a love letter to his wife. She cried and said she’d never felt so loved by him, this letter was everything she’d hoped to hear.

Teens find this a lovely story.

Reposted from Naomi Alderman

This is a very very good episode about how teenagers are thinking about AI:

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

I know we on Bluesky are all quite angry about the theft machine. And rightly so. But: I think it’s correct that norms are changing quickly among young people & that’s unstoppable.

Comments

zoonie.bsky.social•4 days ago

That is interesting as an idea also though: giving (some) men the means to talk about their emotions to, basically, a robot, who then interprets those emotions, allowing the men to feel removed enough to use the output honestly.
There's a model in there for some kind of therapy tool.

jameswallis.bsky.social•4 days ago

Surely this is just the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, if Cyrano had been a plagiarist, and not actually in love with the woman himself, and a soulless tool of capitalism.

naomialderman.bsky.social•4 days ago

The teens say: “But why do you find this bad? If he bought her flowers, he didn’t grow the flowers himself did he? The important thing is that she had a lovely experience which he intended to give to her.”

So. We can go furious into the future or not. But here it comes.

naomialderman.bsky.social•4 days ago

I can almost glimpse the shape of the future in there. Where artisanal writing done by actual humans is still a prestige product, awards are still given. Like handmade furniture. But the simple level of everyday writing is just standard IKEA. Everyone gets it mass-produced.

dexterclaw.bsky.social•4 days ago

I feel presumptuous saying it, but I think you have this backwards. This technology can replace artisanal writing by ordinary humans. It can get better at writing well, but it can't get better at writing *about* anything. To me, it seems far more likely to replace amateur writing than professional.

girinero.bsky.social•4 days ago

You should feel presumptuous, because you just repeated what Naomi said.

dexterclaw.bsky.social•4 days ago

Fair enough, but I meant to say something different

naomialderman.bsky.social•4 days ago

you seem perfectly nice, I think that maybe... you are thinking of something else when you think of "artisanal"? I am thinking of highly-valued craft products that are valued at least partly *because* they're made by hand. As opposed to mass-produced consumer goods which our homes are full of.

melindasalisbury.com•4 days ago

This! I'm wondering if there could be a place for writers in the development of GenAI. Something like we write commissioned, prompt-led work at a fixed price (like commissioned IP and/or book packager orgs) to be input into LLMs for training, while still getting to write and publish our own work?

syd-e13.bsky.social•4 days ago

I think this is right. Been thinking a lot about sports reporting (bear with me here) and the worry that it will all be done by AI in future. But my (over?) optimistic view is that no one will pay for that, so the Guardian etc. will still cover sport with human reporters b/c that will be their USP.

sgray.bsky.social•4 days ago

As a generality, I find that’s a good way to view the long term impact of most new tech & mediums on the previous incumbents.

It rarely displaces 100%, but often old tech, jobs, skills, etc… move up the income bracket to become small scale luxuries and/or artisanal past-times.

1/2

sgray.bsky.social•4 days ago

For examples see; Horses as a form of transport, hand made clothes/shoes/furniture, servants/maids/butlers, etc…

I fully expect a wide range of current skills & tools to end up in the future equivalent of todays “working museums” that show snap shots of how people used to live.

nikkijayne.bsky.social•4 days ago

What scares me is the speed, though. Cars would have taken decades and decades to overtake horses as transport. AI is doing it in a couple of years.

sgray.bsky.social•4 days ago

Yeah, I know what you mean. Our brains really aren't wired to handle change & uncertainty well.

I think partly it's an age thing, like the Douglas Adams quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/39828-i-ve-come-up-with-a-set-of-rules-that-describe

Another aspect is the media coverage which, like crime reporting, tends to exagerate & distort reality.

thebrainofchris.bsky.social•4 days ago

A while back I foresaw a future where the creators and critics of art fall by the wayside in favour of "curators" of AI outputs, but the further we go the less convinced I am that generators can scratch even the most superficial versions of that itch.

weknow0.bsky.social•4 days ago

In the same way that we're not all taught to write in copper-plate script any more

dangerouscorner.bsky.social•4 days ago

Cyrano de Bergerac is out of a job. Roxanne marries Christian.

agirlintheshed.bsky.social•4 days ago

I can see it and it’s horrifying

gbaji.bsky.social•4 days ago

Thanks, I hate it.

naomialderman.bsky.social•4 days ago

yeah. this is going to be the big generational divide of our lives I think

stephanidelrey.com•4 days ago

YES and the comparative cost of the 2 will be similar. As algorithms promote cheap content that can be churned out the fastest and access to libraries reduces… reading human-made content becomes a luxury for the financially better off

slabgorb.com•4 days ago

Ug, I mean, they have a point in that people don't write the hallmark cards they buy, they just keep picking one up until it resonates

BUT I HATE THIS POINT

slabgorb.com•4 days ago

thinking about this more though if you said 'Hey Keith write a hallmark card generator' it would not take me 11 billionty-milliony-lots dollars to provide that

obandsoller.bsky.social•4 days ago

I feel all sorts of ways about that anecdote. I mostly wish they'd dug into it more.
How much work did the husband put into writing it? like did he ask the bot "write a love letter", or did he tell it to mention certain things he loves about his wife. That makes a big difference (at least to me!).

obandsoller.bsky.social•4 days ago

I think that lots of people don't write things like that often and so look for advice, and in what ways is it different if a bot helps vs they follow a structure given to them from some website/book?

obandsoller.bsky.social•4 days ago

I am very stung by the idea that you can't think if you can't write, but somehow long division is this irrelevance. How do you understand Euclid's algorithm or anything that depends on it if you don't understand long division?

Also: thanks for the recc, it was definitely worth the listen.

euantaylor.bsky.social•4 days ago

I recall a friend telling me that he used to rip off the Cure lyrics in notes that he sent to girls that he was running after.

Plus ca change!

euantaylor.bsky.social•4 days ago

Separately, at a Norwegian friend's wedding reception in Oslo, his wife sang him Love Song and didn't leave a dry eye in the room.

craiggrannell.bsky.social•4 days ago

It’s interesting. To my mind, a lot of this is down to the meaning and intent. Is the person performing the act intending to do something nice and enhance existing skills? Or are they just lazy and looking for a quick way out? (To my mind, the Apple AI ad spots promote the latter.)

fliceverett.bsky.social•4 days ago

But that's false equivalency. The flowers exist as an object. A letter is only its authentic intention and meaning. If he didn't write it himself, it's not worth anything. The equivalent would be sending her an AI picture of flowers.

naomialderman.bsky.social•4 days ago

I hear you. Generationally, we will just believe this forever.

But no generation in history has managed to turn back a culture shift once it’s coming from the teenagers. So I think we just need to know that’s what’s coming.

fliceverett.bsky.social•4 days ago

You're right. But dear God, it's depressing.

kle138.bsky.social•4 days ago

Is there room for an AI nonchalance? A certain ‘eh, it’s fine, seems like a useful tool,’ neither our doom nor our savior?

IMO the issue is more the VC-overdrive and the tech-bro hyping of AI over-promises to leverage themselves into every cranny of our online lives and (now) our government