Do Androids Dream of ChatGPT?

In 1982, Blade Runner came out.

I was born that same year. I didn't discover Blade Runner if not much later — I was about 13 when I saw it for the first time, and since then, I've been mesmerised and watched it probably another 20 times or so.

The movie is a loose adaptation of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by the amazing mind that was Philip K. Dick.

Dick was out of this world.

The questions he asked with his stories were not only destined to become classic Sci-fi tropes — they were philosophical, sociological, deep and often disturbing analyses of the collective human psyche.

In the book, replicants are a thing. I know you're by now adjusted to the whole concept of human-like machines. At the time, it was new. But the real question that the book asked was — do they dream, as in, do they have desires? aspirations? anything else that can be classified as human?

And also — is that so important?

Cause, you know, you can buy a pretty good-looking fake cat (since most animals are extinct). It will behave like a real one. Purr like a real one. If it quacks like a cat, and walks like a duck, and — you get it.

Coincidentally, the movie is set in 2019. Not far from today, where most of my philosophical interactions are around AI and what AI can do, and what does it mean to be an artist? And "if I give AI a prompt, and it spits out a painting, who made the painting?"

And believe me, I am a fucking elitist in this situation, and I fucking hate it.

I hate it because I love the idea of art being accessible. Of everyone being able to try their hands at music, painting, writing.

What I don't like is the intrinsic nature of AI-generated art. Which to me is not art, so I'll call it content. And the first rule I'll force once I'll be a dictator is, Make Art Not Content.

(second rule is, No Mirrored Sunglasses, for eerie similar reasons — I need to see what the heck is happening in your soul, and the eyes are the yadayadayada).

Now, I've played with ChatGPT mostly, and GPT-4 (Bing). And while it can write a pretty impressive work email — albeit a bit cliche-sounding — it can't write any good story for shit. Like, it will get the basics right, and might even get produced by Marvel as the newest movie — a very low bar, I know — but it won't create a thing.

"You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before — " "The writers," Pris said, "made it up."

The writers made it up. That's what's missing — the made-up part.

All I've seen AI doing, so far, is a mishmash of what's out there already. A classily regurgitated same-same ready-meal.

And yeah some people are worried about plagiarism (rightly so). And some people are worried that they'll lose their job (you will). Content creators are worried their content is gonna be replaced with AI-generated one (they're correct).

But Artists — we shouldn't worry. Cause these are nothing but algorithms. Software trained to understand what we want, take the best summaries that are out there, and generate stuff.

It's just a tool.

So while I'll most probably be elitist with people that will just put in a prompt into an AI and say "I made this" (no you didn't), I will still admire people that will spend hours feeding the AI the right content to generate something unique.

And sure, one day there is gonna be Chat-GPT16, and it's going to write the next Fifty Shades, the next Ant-Man, the next content to sell.

Artists will keep doing what they're doing — using all their creativity and tools to do something new.

Software can't make anything new. It cannot dream.

And the day it will — I'll fall in love with it, and with the next chapter of the Search for the Soul.