Some Rights Reserved

I sent this picture to the new mayor of Toronto. The house is right across the street from mine and is the property of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, the public housing agency for the City of Toronto. It's a beautiful Victorian duplex with a new roof and new windows. While homelessness has grown and grown, it has sat empty since 2018. 

I've been fooling around with ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence "large language model." Scraping the Internet for information, ChatGPT produces work that can pass for human. 

I know everyone else talked about this months ago. I'm comfortable in the position of person who has missed the bandwagon. 

The most commonly-heard concern about ChatGPT was that no student would ever again write their own work, meaning there would be no more heart-warming stories like this one, told by Anne Lamott:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. ... [He] was at the kitchen table close to tears ... immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

Nowadays all her brother would have to do is ask for a summary of the characteristics and habits of, say, cardinals, and get this actual answer from ChatGPT:

Cardinals are striking songbirds known for their vibrant red plumage. Males display the iconic crimson hue, while females boast more subdued colors. These territorial birds inhabit woodlands, gardens, and shrublands across North America. They are adept singers, filling the air with melodious tunes. Cardinals mate for life, forming strong pair bonds. They primarily feed on seeds, fruits, and insects, and their diet expands during breeding season to include caterpillars for their young. Cardinals are year-round residents in many areas, providing a delightful presence in nature's tapestry.

The old-fashioned used of language ("melodious tunes"; "nature's tapestry") would cue the teacher that the passage was not the work of a grade five student. But you get the picture. The Internet has already changed how everyone finds information. ChatGPT takes it a bit further and more or less guarantees that no ten-year-old will be quite as tortured by his homework as was Anne Lamott's big brother. 

As for work more nuanced than grade school reports, such as poems or jokes, ChatGPT doesn't quite seem to have the hang of it. At least not yet.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Here's a poem that comes from the dark recesses of the folk tradition. It was one of my father's favourites:

Starkle Starkle little twink
Who the hell you are I think
I'm not under what you call
The affluence of incahol
I'm just a little slort of sheep

I'm not drunk like tinkle peep
I don't know who is me yet
But the drunker I stand here
The longer I get
Just give me one more drink 
To full my cup
'Cuz I've got all day sober 
To Sunday up 

Here's what ChatGPT came up with when asked to write twelve lines of humorous poetry to follow "starkle starkle little twink":

Starkle starkle, little twink,
Embark on a witty rhyme I think.
In the realm of humor, we shall roam,
Where chuckles and laughter find their home.
Giggles and grins, let's set them free,
With verses quirky and full of glee.
Tickle funny bones, make spirits soar,
From this silly rhyme, laughs will pour.
Like a clown juggling pies in the air,
These lines will bring joy beyond compare.
So let's share a chuckle, have some fun, 
With this poetic jest, we're not yet done!

Like I said, nothing to worry about.

As for the title of this post, Chat GPT mines existing copyrighted material to come up with its responses. Anything that is on this blog that I wrote myself is my copyright, but I can't claim copyright on the ChatGPT stuff.

Super clear, I know.

Thanks for reading!

Karen