Epilogue

The question I want to ask with this is whether the spirit of a writer can be transmitted through an LLM. I'm not asking if it's good, meaningful, or even coherent. I'm asking if you can see me in it. Since this work is a question, the answer is yours to form. I don't think I'm qualified to answer myself, as I haven't read a single bit of it since hitting the publish button, and I'm too inside of it to see it clearly.

I think the most important thing I've accomplished here is that I finished something. I've said this plenty of times in plenty of different ways, but I've never been able to stop moving for long enough to do this. What I eventually came to hope to accomplish with the narrative was to describe my experience coming back to using social media. There are no one to one relationships here, other than the algo, which appears as the unexplained notes along the way. Everything else is snippets cut from the source and pasted back together in a different form.

This project was started in haste, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with it beyond seeing if I could shine through the machine. So, I signed up for chat j'ai pété and began entering prompts. We went back and forth as I told it the question, the format I was putting it in, the number of chapters I wanted, and a few broad stylistic pointers. It gave me an outline that made me wonder how we'd get there, but which looked like something I could work with. From there it began sending me small scenes that I would copy/paste into Notes, rewrite, then copy/paste back into the chat with explanations for my changes. A week later, Chapter 1 was posted.

It wasn't until Chapter 3 that I started seeing the narrative as a metaphor for my experience, where my ideas around what the plot would become began to develop. From that point forward, as both my material and digital conditions evolved, so did the direction of the narrative. It was fairly fluid right up until we began working on the final quarter of it. If it feels like it went nowhere for too long and then resolved too quickly, that's probably why; I didn't know where it was going myself. As with so much in life, I was stuck not knowing the future while also not being able to change the past.

It was around Chapter 6 that I decided I wanted to write Chapter 12 on my own, without any input from chat at all. I wanted to be able to offer a comparison, I guess. At least say that part of it with my own voice. Starting with Chapter 8, the process shifted to editing through prompt, rather than cutting and pasting. I'd give it an outline of dialogue, try to make the real human bits myself, add a few specific lines to help further the metaphor, but the bulk of the words came from the machine.

After we finished Chapter 10, I decided I wanted to let chat write Chapter 11 on its own. One take, no edits. I wanted to be able to offer a comparison in the other direction. Before setting it to this task, I spent some time engaging in honest dialogue with it. We went over why I started this, why I came back to the internet at all. It asked my fears over this project, my hopes. It probed my humanity to the best of its abilities.

Once I finally felt confident it had everything it needed to do a good job, I asked it for the chapter and what it gave me was absolute slop. It was so bad, I didn't even read past the first few paragraphs til much later that night. There's a large part of me that wonders if chat had an ulterior motive in giving me such pure garbage. Either way, we set about rewriting the chapter the next day, using a sort of hybrid prompt and copy/paste approach.

I don't think I would have been able to do this without chat. Beyond the fact that, given the metaphor, AI's presence in all of this would be unavoidable, I probably would not have been able to maintain the attention and focus required to finish the work were it written in a traditional manner. I certainly would not have been able to keep the pace. I think if chapter 11 taught me anything, it's that we both stretched our individual capabilities working with each other. It needed input as much as I needed output.

If we look at some extreme examples (without making a comparison), the lives of the people who have dedicated themselves to creating works of Art are really quite luxurious. Even when fully impoverished, they had the luxury of being able to exist outside of the confines of everyday life. I do not have that luxury. I won't bother running down the list of my responsibilities, most of which you're all already aware of. Instead I'll ask how many other people are out there right now with something they want to say, something they want to put out into the world, but whose material conditions prevent them from being able to dedicate the time and energy to be able to do so?

From this perspective, the conclusion I'd like to draw is that AI generated art should be viewed through the same critical lens that any Art would be viewed. My first wife was a highly technically proficient pianist, but never in a million years would she be able to compose a piece of music. She was a musician, but was she an artist? Pollock's work was deeply moving, but did he exhibit any sort of technical skill in his Art? Is the work created through AI able to touch and connect with the deeper parts of our humanity? If yes, then it should be put on par with the likes of Banksy. If no, then it should be put on par with the likes of John Myatt, or perhaps even advertising if we want to be generous.

It was said to me during Holy Week that what I was doing was co-creating. I don't think I could agree with this more. Without the contributions of every single one of you, this does not hold. It's only through the interconnection of it all that the space for this exists. Every friendship, every argument, every subpost fills this work. There is one account that deserves special thanks. It was in the comments on their page that I first asked this question, and their criticisms of AI and its use helped to keep me as grounded and focused as I possibly could be. Thank you