Arundhati Roy writes:

The auguries are raining down hard. Think or Sink. Comply or Die. Look Up or be Left Out. And so, with these not-so-gentle threats, it has come to pass that the Age of AI – Actual Idiocy, Actual Super Idiocy, Recursive Snowballing-Idiocy – is upon us. Heck, I’ve already used two dashes in this opening paragraph. That, as they say, is a tell. So, perhaps I haven’t written this essay at all. You’d have to use an AI app to check if it’s actually AI, and whether I’m really, or not really, or only partially me. You can no longer use your instincts. You have to use the App. Now that AI owns the em dash, what will future generations make of Emily Dickinson and her love of them? Has she been fed to the machine, too? Will they love her less? Are we being gradually locked out of language? Does it matter anymore?

For reasons that have more to do with a writer’s ego than with faith, I have always been enthralled by the first verse of The Gospel According to St John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” I believe this to be true. I believe that disrupting and vitiating the fundamental relationship between humans and language will undermine all semblance of social coherence.

AI has crashed into the world of literature, leaving writers, publishers, literary agents, readers, critics, teachers and students feeling the ground give way under their feet. Professors must now look at student assignments with distrust. Publishers have to evaluate new writers like detectives inspecting a potential crime scene. It’s hard to describe what this does to reading or learning. The joy and challenge of intellectual engagement has been replaced by something closed, mordant and mechanical. A taxidermists’ Shangri-La in which everything that was once alive has been skinned and stuffed, and regards you unblinkingly, with a meaningful glint in its bright, spurious eyes. It’s like looking at someone and wondering if it’s really who you think it is. Or looking in the mirror and seeing your likeness, but knowing it isn’t really you.

In time, we may forfeit that knowledge, too. Then we will no longer know who we are, or even if we are. [Continue reading…]