How Thinking Like a Poet Can Save Us from ChatGPT
Opinion by an SEO Writer
The rise of large-language-model artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT and others has raised concerns about the future of our language, education, work, and the human condition. However, the banality of their chatter can be our defense against the writing machines.
As a poet and teacher of poetry, I believe that our best defense against the rise of AI can be learning how to think like a poet. Poets are trained to invent and reinvent language to arrive at fresh expressions of our angst, joy, anguish, and wonder. Poetry can indulge in bouts of narcissism and embellishment but most of all, it must be earnest, singular, and unpredictable. In a word, it must be human.
While AI bots are efficient at learning from the bland patterns in our language, they lack originality. As AI proliferates, our lack of originality in daily language is what will render many jobs irrelevant. Therefore, we need to express experience in words and sentences that are tactile, empathetic, and original.
This means learning to do some creative writing by taking classes in music, theater, painting, and dance. Studying literature and art can help us learn to express ourselves in ways no disembodied algorithm can invent. Applicable lessons learned in creative enterprises can be used in other industries to invent new and humane ways of answering human concerns and solving human crises.
In conclusion, AI can inherit our dead language, dull thinking, and workplace drudgery, but the rest must belong to us. Whatever we create in that surreal and real future must be inimitable, human, and true. Thinking like a poet can make what we create closer to a poem.
