Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 293.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.292: death of the author 2.0 continued (90)
[2] From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.288: death of the author 2.0 (50)
[3] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: abundant existing commentary on AI's charm (24)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-12-12 00:02:19+00:00
From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.292: death of the author 2.0 continued
Dear Ken,
Hmm ... so, for you, the Airbus 320neo I last flew in, just
to pick on something, is a being? Really? No way! Even my
gold fish doesn't think this.
On meanings of words I'm a convinced Wittgensteinian: a word's
meaning is rendered in its usage. And, as far as I'm
concerned, you're free to use a word as you chose. So, if you
want everything to be beings, you get to say so. But, for me
there are living things, like you and me and all the other
people here, which most of us, I think, call [human] beings,
and there are non-living things, like an Airbus 320neo and
like ChatGPT, which most of us, I would say, just call things.
[There's stuff as well, with beings and things being made of
different stuff, so far, at least.]
Further. I'd want to see more than just your claim that
philosophers and theologians, scientists and sociologists,
designers and dogs, each use the term being in different ways.
Some variation in usage there may be, but difference, as in
categorical difference, I would say not.
Any way, the context in which Bill described ChatGPT as a new
kind of being, was, as I read his message, clearly the people
kind of being. Bill said, AIs are to be thought of as new
kind of beings, not as approximations to people. I do not
read this as ChatGPT is just a new kind of thing. So, I will
continue to insist, ChatGPT is not a being, of any kind, new
or old. It's a thing, albeit a sometimes useful thing (thank
you, Henry). Ask your dog.
Happy being,
Tim
> On 11 Dec 2022, at 08:59, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 292.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
<snip>
> [3] From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.288: death of the author 2.0 (27)
>
>
<snip>
> --[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2022-12-10 14:02:51+00:00
> From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.288: death of the author 2.0
>
> Dear Tim,
>
> You are quite right in saying the these artefacts are tools. They are not
> comparable to human beings.
>
> But they are beings of a different kind — the word being has several
> definitions. These artefacts constitute something that actually exists. They
are
> beings in this sense.
>
> They are not sentient, they do not have personality, and the are not living.
> They are not beings in those senses.
>
> I see the first kind of being-ness in those things, but not the second.
>
> Personally, I would not refer to ChatGPT as "a being”. But if you ask me
whether
> an artefact or a tool has some form of being-ness, I’d have to say that it
does,
> as do hammers, pianos, or sandwiches.
>
> Philosophers and theologians, scientists and sociologists, designers and dogs
> all divide the world in different ways. Each of them uses the term being in
> different ways — and there are different categories of usage within each
> separate community of speakers.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-12-11 22:25:55+00:00
From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.288: death of the author 2.0
Hi Tim,
You say:
I wonder how you come to call ChatGPT, and it's ilk, beings?
This looks like a category mistake to me. A big one.
I am, I think, a being; a human being. And, I think othepeople are beings.
ChatGPT, and it's ilk, together with anything else human built using AI
techniques, are tools; artefacts of human efforts; used by human beings; not
approximations to people.
I think Ken Friedman has “grokked” something of what I had in mind:
You are quite right in saying the these artefacts are tools. They are not
comparable to human beings.
But they are beings of a different kind — the word being has several
definitions. These artefacts constitute something that actually exists. They are
beings in this sense.
They are not sentient, they do not have personality, and the are not living.
They are not beings in those senses.
I see the first kind of being-ness in those things, but not the second.
Personally, I would not refer to ChatGPT as "a being”. But if you ask me whether
an artefact or a tool has some form of being-ness, I’d have to say that it does,
as do hammers, pianos, or sandwiches.
I think of “tool” as being a functional category. A hammar is a tool, but it is
also, what? A physical object. A ChatGPT can be used as a tool – in a recent
article in The Atlantic, Ian Bogost suggests that it is better thought of as a
toy (https://tinyurl.com/2noq6qdg <https://tinyurl.com/2noq6qdg>) – but what is
it otherwise? A computer program I suppose. But it is not the kind of program
that programmers compose by assembling code. It’s a different kind of thing.
I picked “being” as a kind of neutral word. It’s not a human, nor an animal, nor
a .... I’d thought of “thing,” but that’s way too generic. Any and every thing
is a thing.
I’m not wedded to that usage. But at the moment I don’t have a good word ready
to hand.
You say I made a category mistake? That’s more or less my point. We don’t yet
have a good category for such things. We’re going to have to figure that out.
Meanwhile, I personally find it more productive to experiment with ChatGPT to
see what it can do than to argue semantics.
BTW, Willard, in honor of Margaret Masterman I had ChatGPT produce some haiku.
Bill B
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-12-11 09:11:54+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: abundant existing commentary on AI's charm
I suggest in addition to going on and on about these marvels of Chatbot's
performances (as perhaps one insightfully can), we dig into our
resources in art and literature--not excluding science fiction!)--for
some guidance. Are we not digital humanists?
Allow me to venture in this direction with three examples. First one
short story, which I may have mentioned before: Steven Millhauser's "The
New Automaton Theatre", in The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (Crown
Publishers, 1998), pp. 103-127. Then there's Karel Čapek's The Absolute
at Large, in English translation published by Macmillan in 1927 (and in
the Internet Archive), and Italo Calvino's 1967 lecture, "Cybernetics
and Ghosts" / "Cibernetica e fantasmi (Appunti sulla narrativa come
processo combinatorio), Einaudi 1980, pp. 164-181, in English in The
Uses of Literature, trans. Patrick Creagh (also in the Internet Archive).
Other suggestions?
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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