"We should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world."
ADVERTISEMENTWith the backdrop of ever-growing artificial intelligence tools and the troubling questions AI conjures – as well as the current structural drama unfolding at OpenAI, the non-profit behind ChatGPT - there are voices that need to be heard.
These voices are hear to challenge, to gain insight and to strike a chord. Especially when it comes to the advent of new AI models, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney and DALL·E, which allow anyone to generate texts as well as intricate and realistic images based on artworks found online in a matter of seconds, by simply typing a few words into a text box.
One such voice is Nick Cave.
The singer-songwriter has held an ongoing dialogue with his fans through his open forum, The Red Hand Files. His blog allows fans to submit open questions, which the artist answers in beautifully penned replies that reveal his considerate nature on all matters relating to creative expression, grief, as well as a wide range of topical subjects.
It’s thoughtful, at times devastating and ultimately uplifting – a treat well worth your time.
In August of this year, as part of his correspondence project, Cave was asked questions about creativity and ChatGPT by two fans, Leon and Charlie.
Cave replied with a single letter, which British actor, writer, broadcaster and all-round national treasure Stephen Fry read out at the 10th anniversary Letters Live show at London's Royal Albert Hall this month.
Letters Live is a celebration of the enduring power of literary correspondence, and their shows features a wide variety of performers reading letters written over the centuries and from around the world.
Leon asked Cave: “I work in the music industry and there is a lot of excitement around ChatGPT. I was talking to a songwriter in a band that was using ChatGPT to write his lyrics, because it was so much ‘faster and easier.’ I couldn’t really argue against that. I know you’ve talked about ChatGPT before, but what’s wrong with making things faster and easier?”
As for Charlie, he simply asked: “Any advice to a young songwriter just starting out?”
Cave’s answer to both these questions was a beautifully penned reply, which sounds even more powerful and captivating when read aloud by Stephen Fry.
Hear for yourself:
Previously, Cave shared his take on songwriting using artificial intelligence and ChatGPT.
Responding to a fan named Mark who sent him lyrics to an algorithmically generated song “in the style of Nick Cave”, Cave wrote that “with all the love and respect in the world,” the track is “bullshit” and “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”.
“Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology,” he continued. “I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster.”
So, is AI an anti-artist tool?
Here is Nick Cave’s full response to Leon and Charlie, which can be found on The Red Hand Files, and which may make you think about ChatGPT and AI’s relationship to the creative process in a different way:
Dear Leon and Charlie,
ADVERTISEMENTIn the story of the creation, God makes the world, and everything in it, in six days. On the seventh day he rests. The day of rest is significant because it suggests that the creation required a certain effort on God’s part, that some form of artistic struggle had taken place. This struggle is the validating impulse that gives God’s world its intrinsic meaning. The world becomes more than just an object full of other objects, rather it is imbued with the vital spirit, the pneuma, of its creator.
ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.
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.
ADVERTISEMENTAs humans, we so often feel helpless in our own smallness, yet still we find the resilience to do and make beautiful things, and this is where the meaning of life resides. Nature reminds us of this constantly. The world is often cast as a purely malignant place, but still the joy of creation exerts itself, and as the sun rises upon the struggle of the day, the Great Crested Grebe dances upon the water. It is our striving that becomes the very essence of meaning. This impulse – the creative dance – that is now being so cynically undermined, must be defended at all costs, and just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.
Love, Nick
