I teach English as a second language to adults in an adult education centre in Belgium. All the courses are ‘evaluated’; that is to say, the students have to do tests in order to obtain a certificate at the end. Inevitably, some students have used AI to help with their homework when it’s a writing task. In fact, we’ve had an interesting discussion over whether it’s acceptable to use AI or not. Some students argue that AI is a tool just as a dictionary is a tool, so why shouldn’t they use it?
Anyway, it’s pretty easy for me to spot who has used AI and who hasn’t. The obvious point is that if you’ve only been learning English for three years, you are not going to be able to write flawless screeds using complex structures you’ve never been taught. But also, I know my students. I know how they talk and what their interests are. They all have idiosyncratic ways of expressing themselves. When they use AI, the writing is impersonal. There’s no flavour of the student as an individual.
So I was thinking about that a little bit. My students will be using some basic free form of generative AI. I imagine – although I don’t know, because actually I am pretty ignorant about AI – there are more sophisticated versions which can be taught more nuanced, more personalised language. But whose?
(Elin Danielson Gambogi, After Breakfast (1890); oil on canvas, private collection; found here)
If I think about the art created by my favourite artists, it’s not really the basic elements of craft that appeal to me about their work. (I’m going to focus on creative writing, but I think you could apply this to visual arts and music too.) So if I think of a novel, there may be plot, there may be characters, there may be themes, absolutely. But what makes that novel appeal to me or not depends on something less tangible, and that’s the sensibility of the writer. There is something about the combination of all those elements of a novel that is special to that writer and it arises from everything about them as a person – their character, their life experiences, what they’ve read or seen, what happened to them that morning, their childhood pets, how they get on with their brothers, their particular neuroses, their loves and hates. Consciously and unconsciously that shapes their work.
This means I will read and enjoy even those novels by my favourite writers that I can objectively see are less good, or even flawed.
Can AI ever have its heart broken at the age of fifteen and find solace in obsessively listening to The Smiths for six months? Can AI ever trudge for three days through the mountains only to look down in wonder at Macchu Picchu in a bowl of sunlight? Can AI ever feel the shame that comes from going along with something at work which it doesn’t like but doesn’t feel strong enough to oppose? Don’t all of those things form the work as much as the creator?
In one of his wonderful Substack pieces James Marriott posted a genuine poem by Seamus Heaney and one his friend had asked chatGPT to write in the manner of Heaney. (Content warning: there is dissing of Heaney.) This is what he concluded:
There’s also the fact the AI poem doesn’t really go anywhere or express an idea or allude to a specific bit of history. It just circles vaguely round its themes. AI still struggles a bit with story or argument — a lot of what it produces can feel somewhat inert. […]
Interestingly, AI is much worse at Philip Larkin. It seems to struggle slightly with variations of tone that are more complex than simply “poetic” (the register a lot of Heaney is written in). Its attempts to be wry or angry can fall flat. And Larkin often uses his poems to tell a story.
I think this is really interesting. AI can create a pastiche of a style but not of a tone. I suspect it will learn to write better stories and arguments in time, but I don’t think it can ever evolve a sensibility. Part of creativity is learning and imitating, following what exists. But every creative work is infused with something of the creator that is unique and cannot be replicated by anyone or anything else.
You can read James Marriott’s full piece, and test yourself on the two poems, here. And if you haven’t signed up to his Substack, you really should.