Why we need a better critical theory of LLMs
One of my favourite examples of last redoubt humanism is Nick Cave’s widely cited Red Hand Files blog post about ChatGPT:
What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary but it cannot create a genuine song. It could perhaps in time create a song that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from an original, but it will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque.
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognizable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering. This is what we humble humans can offer, that AI can only mimic, the transcendent journey of the artist that forever grapples with his or her own shortcomings. This is where human genius resides, deeply embedded within, yet reaching beyond, those limitations.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/
I just discovered a follow up Red Hand Files post in which he makes the same point in an even nicer way:
ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put it politely, should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.
ChatGPT’s intent is to eliminate the process of creation and its attendant challenges, viewing it as nothing more than a time-wasting inconvenience that stands in the way of the commodity itself. Why strive?, it contends. Why bother with the artistic process and its accompanying trials? Why shouldn’t we make it ‘faster and easier?’
When the God of the Bible looked upon what He had created, He did so with a sense of accomplishment and saw that ‘it was good‘. ‘It was good ‘because it required something of His own self, and His struggle imbued creation with a moral imperative, in short love. Charlie, even though the creative act requires considerable effort, in the end you will be contributing to the vast network of love that supports human existence. There are all sorts of temptations in this world that will eat away at your creative spirit, but none more fiendish than that boundless machine of artistic demoralisation, ChatGPT.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chatgpt-making-things-faster-and-easier/
I love the writing, much as I love everything (older) Nick Cave does. I’m also in agreement with the underlying theme of temptation and creative engagement. This was the ethos of my abandoned book on Generative AI and the Enjoyment of Writing which I stopped when I realised I was getting tempted to finish off a book I’d lost interest in through Claude.
But I don’t think this last redoubt humanism is a solid foundation for critiquing LLMs. It creates a temporary fortification around a particular area of creative labour, underwriting it with a metaphysics of creativity. Once enough people are convinced that an LLM is able to match the standard of creative labour in that area, the metaphysical claims fall with it. It’s essentially setting up humanism to be progressively demolished and/or retreat into an ever smaller space, with ever more opaque claims about the genesis of creativity underwriting that smallness.
Instead we might ask what kinds of social relations do we want to sustain? And what kinds of creative practices serve these relations and are in turn served by them? This is the essence of Donati’s relational humanism and I think it provides a much more solid foundation for a critical theory of LLMs.
#creation #creativity #donati #humanism #LLMs #NickCave #posthumanism #redoubtHumanism #relationalHumanism #relationalSociology
