The American writer is not afraid of artificial intelligence, at a time when Hollywood and the artistic community are taking the technological threat seriously. However, another fact about USB sticks never ceases to amaze him, and perhaps we should start by meditating on this first.
Uncertainty is the root of anxiety, and it is clear that Stephen King is not anxious. In an article published on The Atlantic, what some see as a threat does not seem to concern the author of “It” and “Shinning”. He came out of silence on the subject of artificial intelligence after he learned that his works were trained in these new language models, resulting in chatbots with false human airs, engineer, poet, professor, Geo Trouvetou… or writer.
“Self-driving cars. Saucer-shaped vacuum cleaners that move all over the place (and only occasionally get stuck in corners). Phones that tell you where you are and how to get to your next destination. We live with all these things and, in some cases – the smartphone is the best example – we can’t live without them, or so we tell ourselves. But can a machine that reads learn to write? »asks Stephen King.
Can an AI that reads learn to write?
The 75-year-old American from Portland, Maine has greatly relativized the risks in the near future in his sector (and in others), when artificial intelligence would not, according to him, be able to go as far than a talented artist. He then gave the example of poems he had been able to read, written by an AI in the style of the British poet William Blake and the modernist William Carlos Williams. “It’s a lot like cinema blockbusters: good at first sight, less good on closer inspection”.
His feelings on the quality of the texts and the possibility of the AI reaching a glass ceiling are his own opinions. Stephen King said he could, of course, be wrong. But according to him, another equally important point must be taken into account: the uselessness of wanting to fight against it. He who learned that his works were used to train the great language models of artificial intelligence considers any attempt at prohibition as a useless obstruction.
“Would I forbid the teaching (if that is the word) of my stories to computers? Not even if I could. […] I might as well be King Canute, forbidding the tide to rise. Or a Luddite trying to stop industrial progress by tearing up a steam loom”he writes on The Atlantic. A message that will certainly put the wind up the screenwriters and actors in Hollywood, who have been carrying out an unprecedented strike for 60 years concerning their salaries, but also the total acceptance of producers to embrace AI.
A whole work on a USB key, “a fact that never ceases to amaze me”
Stephen King’s optimistic and wait-and-see posture is rare in the sector, but the author denies it. History will tell us if human creativity is always one step ahead, and if AI will end up being a tool and a technology of scale that humans will have integrated in the same way as that of the arrival of smartphones. , self-driving cars, or even vacuum cleaners “saucer-shaped”. His only surprise? That all of his work, from 1974 to today, can fit in a single USB key.
“Because the computer’s memory capacity is so large – everything I’ve written could fit on a single thumb drive, a fact that never ceases to amaze me – these programmers can transfer thousands of books into state-of-the-art digital mixers »writes the author.
Source :
The Atlantic