Being a Human Author in the Age of ChatGPT, A Conversation with the Authors of Private I
When
-
Where
Rashid Auditorium (Gates Hillman 4401) and via Zoom
Description
Authors:
- Jill Fain Lehman, Senior Project Scientist, Human Computer Interaction Institute, CMU
- Paul Pangaro, Visiting Scholar, Schools of Architecture and Design, CMU
- Ashlei E. Watson, Director of Academic Planning and Effectiveness, College for Creative Studies
Imagine an author, shoulders hunched, fingers tensed on her keyboard, rewriting a three line paragraph over and over in an attempt to capture the exact nuance and character experience necessary to push her narrative forward. Now imagine her 20-something child in the next room having an idea for a scenario and, 15 seconds after typing relevant words and sentence fragments into ChatGPT, reading the entire short story the platform coughs out.
What is lost and what is gained by the generation of written content from Large Language Models? What does the human author bring to the written word that machines cannot, at least for now? And perhaps most importantly, what do the stories that machines create through a mashup of centuries of human ingenuity tell us about the current and future state of humanness?
We don't have the answers to these questions, but will discuss them through the lens of our experience as authors of Private I, a book that, when we began it, was a near-future, cyber noir thriller and now, as we begin Book 2 of the trilogy, feels a bit more like a news item from last week.
In Person and Zoom Participation.
What is lost and what is gained by the generation of written content from Large Language Models? What does the human author bring to the written word that machines cannot, at least for now? And perhaps most importantly, what do the stories that machines create through a mashup of centuries of human ingenuity tell us about the current and future state of humanness?
We don't have the answers to these questions, but will discuss them through the lens of our experience as authors of Private I, a book that, when we began it, was a near-future, cyber noir thriller and now, as we begin Book 2 of the trilogy, feels a bit more like a news item from last week.
Join in the conversation.
Open to the CMU Community and all Carnival GuestsIn Person and Zoom Participation.
Questions: scs-dls@cs.cmu.edu