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A.I.: Are We Giving Up on the Idea of Authorship?

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It pays to be aware of A.I. messages that are inherently fraudulent without an actual author.

Our identity is closely tied to our words: the words that we use amount to our rhetorical fingerprint. The ways we use the tools of literacy always mark us as a unique person. Ask yourself how often you have paused when asked to sign a petition with grievances or actions already listed. What if the petition doesn’t quite express your views? Ditto even for a drug store sympathy card: not in your style, perhaps, or too flowery. Look at any greeting cards and you realize how hard it is to take “of the shelf” sentiments and try to own their thoughts. By contrast, even a brief note written by us is also a piece of us. And what about A.I. poetry, if there is such a thing? Doesn’t it need a human source: someone who uses expressive language to tap into their life experience?  An authorless book makes as much sense as a airplane without a pilot on board.

In non-technical areas, trusting our ideas to ChatGPT and other large language models of artificial intelligence requires the same kind of leaps into skins that are not our own. We now have chatbots that can talk more than friends or relatives guilty of the worst kinds of unearned familiarity.

Of course there are routine messages where A.I. may get a simple point across, or necessary history on a topic or problem. Businesses like the idea of A.I. for messages because they can come up with facsimiles of transactional exchanges. Predictable requests are identified and answered, policies are explained, and web addresses are passed on. But there is another whole side of language. Language is expressive as much as instrumental. It exists to convert our feelings into words that have meaning for us and the receiver. Ordinary language is the domain of sentient beings who are biological rather than electrical.

Consider as well, the pronoun “I.” Our awareness of it gives us the power to take ownership of objects, needs, feelings, and a reserved space in what is usually a growing social network. Children learn this early, building an emerging sense of self that expands rapidly in the first few years. Eventually they will distinguish the meanings of  other pronouns that allow for the possibility of  not just “I,” but “we, “you,” and “them” as well. This added capacity to name a specific person is a major threshold. It is necessary to make inferences about others with their distinct social orbits and prerogatives.

Language has more meaning when its human sources can be identified.

This shift to “I” from “we” also enables us to assert intellectual and social kinship, one biological creature to another, bound by an awareness of similar arcs that include learning, living and dying. These natural processes motivate us to assert our own sense of agency: to be engines of action and reaction. We “know” and often boldly announce our intentions, at the same time doing our best to infer them in others. Estimations of motive shape most of our conversations with others. Every time ChatGPT uses forms of everyday language, it is ignoring the fact that it has no resources of the self: no capability to “feel” as a sentient being. Think of  the “I” statements used by others as sitting atop a deep well of attitudes and feelings that often come to the surface. When A.I. implies personhood, it is a counterfeit.  We all know the feeling when we have fronted for an organization, whose policies and key words sometimes mesh poorly with our own views.

Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of not comprehending what it means that that there is no human presence behind a message. In spite of what the New York Times dismisses as the “doom industrial complex” of A.I. concerns, they have also reported on kids hooked on Character A.I. apps that contribute to social isolation, sometimes disastrous results.

Consider the somewhat parallel case of works of art. To those in the thrall of painting and other forms of art it matters what the provenance of a painting is, especially if there is monetary value in a known artist. As we have explored here before, fakes can be hard to sort out from the authentic work of a master. The person who, in our context, “authored” the painting seems to sometimes matter more than the work in front of our eyes. That is what all of the documentaries on art fraud remind us. If it is so with art, why is the equivalent of provenance for our words something we are so willing to give up?

One answer is that writing is not easy; invention imbedded in literacy taxes the best of us. Some will accept any A.I. facsimile that takes them off the hook. But a key point remains obvious:  it pays to be aware of fraudulent messages from A.I. that have no identifiable source.

The Invitation of the Blank White Page

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Source: Wikipedia.org

It’s a medium with many virtues we tend to overlook: low cost, portability, and compact storage of text, images and data.

Although the precise origins of paper are hard to identify, some authorities place it in China about 105 AD. Plant fibers gathered and poured into a water bath were spread and carefully removed by a screen underneath, leaving a thin layer of material that could be dried so it would accept paint or ink. Papermaking eventually migrated to Egypt and Iraq, and then to Europe. “Paper” made in what is now Egypt was usually produced from papyrus or parchment (an animal skin), the only tools for capturing language recognized in the Koran.

While Egyptian papyrus (from which the word “paper” evolved) was initially the preferred material, it required more resources and woodworking skill than was practicable elsewhere. Eventually, near the end of 780s dried fibers of fabric became the dominant ingredient, partly because it was less susceptible to forgeries than all the other alternatives, and because it could more easily be sized with oils made from animal by-products. Sizing produced a smooth surface able to hold ink.

This and much more is told in Lothar Müller’s new book, White Magic: The Age of Paper (Polity Press, 2014). He notes that even before the invention of the printing press in 1450 there was a steady stream of written material made by copyists, as well as “printers” using ink transfers from individual wood blocks. Hand copied books were numerous, along with items such as block-printed playing cards with monarchs painted on their surfaces.  In the 14th Century it appears that nearly everybody played cards.

Arguably the most potent effect of the ability to make paper was not necessarily the book, but the ledger and the formal contract. Spain as the center of Phillip II’s empire is given credit (or maybe it should be blame) for creating one of the first paper-based bureaucracies.  Decrees, written petitions, contracts and files were committed to the page. Still made from rag fibers until higher demand would require the substitution of wood pulp, paper made possible major advances that are frequently still used: the keeping of governmental and business ledgers, the practice of double bookkeeping, and the increasing use of correspondence by mail. In the latter case, a chain of effects followed wider access to postal systems, triggering the development of better roads and predictable timetables.

All of these advances are based on a medium with virtues we tend to overlook: low cost, portability, and compact storage of text, images and data. These conditions were the essential prelude to the printed book, which was made possible especially in the West because of the ease of creating standardized type based on the small Latin alphabet.

Not surprisingly, print formalized the idea of authorship, turning writers into long-form storytellers, and readers into linear thinkers.  The availability of paper from mills sprouting up everywhere contributed to the flowering the enlightenment and, later, distribution of scientific research based on the premise of world-wide peer-review.

Müller’s study of paper and the book notes that the story of these media is not over.  Paper gives history a durable record not yet equaled by digital files. He also reminds us that books are things. They can be owned, passed on, or resold. Many of us still draw satisfaction from their visible and tactile presence. By contrast, the electronic version is more accurately described as a licensed product. As such, it’s not quite the object for independent use that is a defining feature of its enduring paper counterpart.

Comments: Woodward@tcnj.edu