Regarding yesterday’s post Short Story Steve wrote: Well, I did just that. I used your prompt as input. I got this back:
The young man stepped through the gates of the zen temple, his heart pounding with anticipation. He had come seeking guidance, unsure of where to turn in his search for meaning. The serene surroundings of the temple, with its carefully manicured gardens and towering wooden structures, immediately put him at ease. He made his way to the main hall, where a small group of people were gathered in meditation.
A gentle-looking monk approached him, smiling warmly. “Welcome, young one. What brings you to our temple?”
The young man took a deep breath. “I seek instruction. I am lost and in need of guidance.”
The monk nodded, his eyes filled with understanding. “We can certainly help you with that. First, we must teach you the practice of meditation. It is through meditation that we find clarity and peace.”
The monk led the young man to a small room, where he instructed him on the basics of meditation. The young man found it difficult at first, his mind racing with thoughts and distractions. But gradually, he began to sink deeper into a state of tranquility, feeling the weight of his worries lifting from his shoulders.
After his first session, the monk presented him with a koan – a riddle meant to provoke thought and contemplation. “This is your next step,” he said. “Take this koan and meditate upon it. When you have found the answer, come back to me.”
The young man took the koan with gratitude and bowed respectfully to the monk. But as he made his way back to his room, he felt a surge of curiosity. Instead of meditating with the koan, he pulled out his phone and typed the koan into a search engine, hoping to find some insight into its meaning.
To his surprise, he stumbled upon ChatGPT, a language model trained to answer all manner of questions. He posed the koan as a question to ChatGPT and waited for its response. To his amazement, he received a detailed answer that seemed to unlock the riddle’s meaning.
Excited, the young man returned to the monk and presented his answer. The monk listened patiently, then nodded. “You have understood the koan well. You are ready for the next step.”
The young man felt a surge of pride, even as he realized that he had not truly arrived at the answer on his own. But he was eager to continue his journey, and so he took the new koan and set to work, determined to find the answer within himself – with a little help from ChatGPT, of course.
(my comment: it’s readable. I don’t know what it means by towering wooden structures. I don’t see Murakami in this story. There is none of his delightful detail.)
I wouldn’t say I’ve read a *lot* of Murakami but I’ve read several of his books. That being said, I don’t think that this reads like him at all.
Murakami’s writing is clean, unencumbered by lengthy sentences (as most Japanese to English translations tend to be) BUT to me, the thing that defines him most of all is the frisson of tongue-in-cheek that’s present in most of his writing.
I never know if he’s writing (serious) surrealist/fantasy fiction OR if he’s having fun with the reader, and the language. As I write this, I think about the story of the man who works at an elephant manufacturing company making elephant ears – a job he prefers to the one he’d previously held with the same company, making elephant heads.
In the story above, there is none of that mirth that imbues his writing . It’s a string of “writerly” words strung together to make a story. Murakami doesn’t live in those sentences. He’s never even been to that neighbourhood!
So until AI can actually FEEL what a writer is conveying *behind* their words, it will continue to produce lackluster-imposter writing.
Till then , round one – Humans 1 / AI – 0
And if you’re inspired to check out more of Murakami’s writing, read his short story “Barn Burning” and follow it up with the Netflix (Korean) movie “Burning”!
So good!
Channeling my inner Nick Cave: “With all the love and respect in the world, this story is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it.”
The original quote: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/
I think for now the reader and the zen master are both safe. If we can see that this story is bullshit, the zen master will notice that the student’s koan solution is bullshit. :-)
We should revisit this a year from now.
At an academic level – fails- students cannot use.
Corporate, time will tell.
fyi –
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/generative-ai-is-here-how-tools-like-chatgpt-could-change-your-business
I have already informed my students that they are fully responsible for any mistakes that ChatGPT makes in the event they use it for answering Homework, Assessments, or Exams. User beware.