I didn’t think I’d be wondering if ChatGPT was evil on this website. I’m not using ChatGPT for any of my fiction writing, though I’ve written about the potential of doing so. I’ve only experimented with it in my work as a copywriter and found it to be a simple way to save time during the research stage of projects. I’m using it as an alternative search engine that delivers the answers that I would usually Google to find.
Nick Cave’s recent comments on ChatGPT have really got me thinking, though. He believes that “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.”
As an artist, I’m beginning to wonder if I should get off the fence and totally avoid ChatGPT. As I said, I’m not using it for creative purposes, only as a glorified search engine. But if Nick Cave is right, and “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,” then how could I possibly use it for anything?
Nick Cave concludes by commenting that creativity is “being so cynically undermined,” and it “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.”
So shall I get off the fence and stop using ChatGPT under any circumstances? Is Nick Cave overreacting? Does he fail to realise that being a ChatGPT user doesn’t necessarily mean not taking part in the creative part of the process? Is ChatGPT evil?