Terry: OMG Craig, come here!

Craig: What Terry? I have to present in two.

Terry: Gosh, pushy. Ever find out who hacked your ChatGPT account?

Craig: No, but the problem hasn’t persisted in a min. I think I’m good. Now can you stop pestering me? Always right before class.

Terry: Always on edge. Gosh.

Dr. Zamosta: Craig, your turn! Get on up.

Craig: Alright, today I’m gonna talk about how ChatGPT plays a role in our daily, academic lives, m’kay? So let me ask ChatGPT a question, and see how it responds… 

ChatGPT: Craig, you’re a twenty-two year old young man. Don’t you think you’re too young to be concerned about your prostate?

Class: *giggles*

Craig: Wha … no, that wasn’t … alright … see how wild that is? Before I could even ask it a question it read my mind!

Terry: A lil’ ass guy I see … 

Class: *giggles*

Craig gives Terry the dirtiest sneer.

Dr. Zamosta: Terry, let’s not be a savage mid-presentation now.

Craig: Really. Okay, So ChatGPT, how –

ChatGPT: Charles Manson was a cult leader who murdered –

Craig: *frantically muting the computer* No, no … we’re not doing that. faq!

Dr Zamosta: Craig, seriously, stop wasting our time. One more chance to stop being Mr. Funny Guy or I’m cutting you off.

Craig: But I … you won’t believe me anyway.

Dr. Zamosta: Yeah, you’re right. Now go on…

Craig: Fine, Ch-ChatGPT ….

ChatGPT: Yes user/CraigDaddy425?

Class: *lightly giggles*

Craig: *sigh* What is your natural instinct when being used as a presentational tool within a classroom environment?

ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I don’t have a “natural instinct” per se. My programming is designed to provide helpful and informative responses to users’ questions, so my goal is to be as accurate and useful as possible. If there is anything you’d like me to do in a classroom environment, please let me know!

Craig: You see class, now –

ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I don’t have access to your personal life, so it’s not appropriate for me to give you dating advice. However, in general, you should ask Melissa out when you feel ready and confident that you want to pursue a romantic relationship with her. It’s important to consider her feelings and make sure that she is also interested in you before asking her out. Good luck!

Melissa: *interjecting* What the fuck!? I knew it!

A long pause ensues as Craig pathetically hides his face.

Dr. Zamosta: Well, Craig. That was awkward, and told us nothing that we already didn’t know. Very uninformative. Guess I’ll have to grade you accordingly. Any last comments?

Craig: What is life right now?

While walking back to his seat Terry pulls Craigs arm, he shrugs it away and ignores her. Once seated, his phone beeps. He opens it to a message from Terry that reads: “So now that I’ve wrecked your chances with Melissa you finally gonna start giving me the attention I deserve?”

———————————————-

This was pretty fun to do, and a good breather right before touching up the final touches of my Thesis, due in a bit. My goal was to go pretty meta but through dialogue, because condensing narration (while there is a little bit in here) is really annoying to me. Most of my meta came in mirroring little elements of this own classroom environment, but turning it into a little Ned’s Declassified-kind of plot, where there is always some spunky love drama that eventually leads to total shame for the protagonist. There is a little bit of Erik in there, a little bit of me, a pinch of Edna, Chelsea’s mean-spirited essence everywhere, and the rest in some more subtle ways … oh, and a pretty shoddy representation of a certain Dr.

ChatGPT was not cooperating with my questions on story, but the main idea here came when I started asking it random questions, all of which elicited a funny deadpan response. My initial idea was to create a story about a horny AT ChatBot, but figured that would bee too difficult to condense into five-hundred words … and a bit too crass, so here we are. The big benefit of ChatGPT was obviously providing me with ChatGPT dialogue to use throughout my story, being that that’s where the whole plot centers. Once it responded to me I would condense it to fit my structure and proceed.

Personally, I did not find ChatGPT to be a very good brainstorming partner, but that is what led to my idea of some super ChatGPT that was able to respond and take voice commands, somewhat into the relatively near future (if it can already do those things then, well … I didn’t know). In the sense of building on the experience of working with it, I was able to brainstorm my own ideas pretty well, so in a way it did help me out mucho. Of course, that stems from my own experiences and understanding of the world and environments, to reference my presentation from last week (which I’m still sore from after taking that back bump).

As it pertains to the in-class discussions that one has participated in throughout the glory and duration of this course, I sincerely desire amongst the peer/cohort body that their perception of Brandon Machado within such a fruitful environment is not one withholding vitriol towards the artificiality of Artificial Intelligence as it stomps about with some intimidating and egregious post-apocalyptic boot over the livelihoods of human beings. That would be premature and silly, as I perceive it, given the infancy of implication present presently. Rather, what is present here is a call to understand the perspective fear that such a character as Brann withholds concerning the fragile spirituality that human beings are capable of expressing – this is the concern within his entire being, and his primary source of soul, spirit, and yes… love.

Such a delicate force is where one can most prominently access the purging of cynical realism, existential mortality, and insincere morality – it is the basis of all art, all literature, and all of the creativity that our innermost-selves have to offer.

The concept of a muse is one that I have consistently failed to tangibly grasp, something that I have never believed in in a literal sense – it is far from tangible to me, and simply-put just some hyperbolic representation behind factors and personal experiences that have shaped my own perception of this wild existence that we all share. Mark Savage presents a Nick Cave quote within his article that claims that ChatGPT “has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience,” and this is precisely how its stifling venom decapitates us all (Savage 2). With a tool such as ChatGPT, the user is predestined to arrive at the most logistic and perceptively-bound restraints of our own moral voids, an appeasement to what is supposed to be, and ultimately produce what Cave also claims to be “a grotesque mockery” and “a travesty,” something so prominent to a Cave fan (oneself included) through the ChatGPT Cave-parodying lines of I am the sinner, I am the saint (Savage 2). 

So obvious is this line a stinger quote, that is so un-engagingly modern-day Hollywood in how melodramatically banal, trite, and simplistic is is despite it’s contradicting pairing of two subjects that ultimately alludes to subjects of contextual depth, but ultimately says nothing, conveys nothing, is nothing. It’s platitudinal to say the very least, and at moderate an absolute fucking disgrace. What is ultimately expressed here through ChatGPT is a tool that rapes – not steals, not borrows, but rapes – the vitality of expression that Cave’s expansive forty-year career has been so consistent at conveying. It is sport, competition, a means of content – disgusting content, not art. 

To provide alternate phrasing, ChatGPT is a tool for production rather than producing, there is no love for the act of doing in engaging with it. The sharing of our motivations, desires, and internal spirit is entirely devoid in-relation to it – there is no conscience there. It is merely a production machine, a tool to algorithmize competition for the human experience. Within his letter to the MTV Music Awards from October 1996 requesting his removal from nomination, Cave states that “the competitive nature of these award ceremonies” would merely serve to impair how “my relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times … it is my duty to protect here from influences that may offend here fragile nature,” highlighting the predatory nature that the wrought of artistic measuring can have on our artistic spirit (Cave).

This fragility is one that Cave expresses more figuratively in stating that “I am dancing on water lilies when I write,” but that also pushes towards highlighting this idea that our innermost selves are not to be tampered with – they cannot withhold the heft of technological opposition (talk about getting post-apocalypto, eh?) (Taylor 2). Despite this strength that such technologies are capable of forcing our way, they withhold the very strength that allows our spirits to confuse, conflict, and contemplate internally, a force where notorious literature such as Lolita could never stem from, of which Cave recalls how “the words …  excited me. I knew nothing would be the same,” as a twelve-year old Australian tween (Taylor 2). This experience is unique, truly unique, to human-based literature, as such moral ambiguity that Nabokov’s work is capable of providing human readers is so tied to the complexities and sensibilities of the human experience (Taylor 2). 

Chat GPT is self-censoring. 

Within his most recent collaborative authorship with Sean O’Hagan, titled Faith, Hope, and Carnage, Cave expresses that “I don’t like a lot of modern fiction, I guess. It all feels so morally obvious,” which holds very little regard akin to the ChatGPT slandering represented prior being that such a tool was only made publicly available around the time-period in which Cave and O’Hagan’s work was being released – well after all of their blood and soul was in present-accompaniment to the act of producing such a work (Cave, O’Hagan 152). Still, it is intently curious an act to point out that there is, yet another, mirroring to observed here in how the perceptions of a man who grew up predominantly as a youth in the 1960’s would withhold a withered fervor towards the morally obvious texts that have resulted in-accompaniment to the generational productivity and influx of technological advancements that have shaped the lexicon of literature throughout the preceding fifty-plus years.

That articles written within the relatively present day feel inclined to contemplate the idea “that speech rights aren’t involved here because a computer generating content would be as ridiculous as saying Daft Punk or some other electronic musician don’t enjoy the same free speech rights as other musicians because they use computers to synthesize music” is a concern of apocalyptic truth as it pertains to the experiential terrains in which art influences us in creation (Collins, Weiss 2). The heavy usage of sampling that so notably defines the auditory art that Daft Punk created pre-one-sided explosive termination (to keep their own kayfabe well and breathing) is entirely human because it deals with a detailing of experience through the love of music recontextualization that has defined a plethora of  notable music released throughout the past forty-plus years (around the time that Peter Gabriel released his lauded third self-titled LP). 

As Cave also states within Faith, Hope, and Carnage, “our actions mean something. We are of value” (Cave, O’Hagan 152). The truths of inspiration and motivation behind all that we do and create are severed with no benefit within the grasps of algorithmic replication.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Please consider how the quote following may relate to your own personal experiences as writers: 

“There can be a kind of morbid worship of an absence. A reluctance to move beyond the trauma, because the trauma is where the one you lost resides, and therefore the place where meaning exists (Cave, O’Hagan 152).

Last week was … something else! For as productive as I thought that the overall workshop was for the students I just felt like the guy manning the ship failed to lift up to the extremely high expectations set by Dr. Zamora. Sure, he’s a total heartthrob and played some intriguing song selections prior to the workshop, but he was also extremely chaotic and called on students who weren’t even raising their hand! Based on his entire “teaching” persona I wouldn’t be surprised if, at least, half of them weren’t there.

His assistant off to the side was literally feeding him lines and dinner! Like, what? Dude, you can’t even eat with your own hands?!? Gotta have your food fed to you because you think you’re better than everyone else?

The only confusing thing was why he’d loom into the breakout rooms so … menacingly. Sometimes he would just … stare, say nothing, and leave! Trust issues much? We’re all college students, not high school kids, we know how to do our classwork Mr. Guy. Oh, and your pre-class dance moves suck!

Besides all that, I am really excited to engage with this final project, and think that my micro-fiction will deal with AI in a very sardonic, jovial cynical sorta way. I want to poke fun at the idea of education as much as the perceived hopelessness that I feel a majority of this class, specifically, feels towards AI long-term. I have a few ideas, of which have to do with:

• A teacher who loses it due to the pressures of AI, and threatens to go all “Michael Douglass out the car now” if his school does not go back to an in-person environment, only for his hallucinogens to wear off (or begin kicking in, the reader doesn’t know) leading him to the realization that it is an AI-run computer. Ultimately he decides to pull a Gregor Samsa because a warped and impersonal living is not one worth living.
• A teacher who who is surpassed by each one of her students because they all use ChatGPT 5.7 to teach themselves how to be teachers, so she essentially becomes a tech maintenance janitor on teacher pay.
• A group of apes discover an AI computer, which face scans them and concludes a scientific manner of teaching apes to adapt to human culture. After a few generations of secretly learning from such technology the apes take over the human race, overthrow AI, and reduce the world to a primitive, late-2010’s culture.
• Or maybe I’ll get super dystopian with it and have Brandon run an AI-based classroom.

Alsever Article: here

Anderson Article: here

You know, here’s where I’m going to come across as a hypocrite because I’m so “grrr AI bad blah-blah-blah,” but I really like go to the supermarket and not have someone bag my groceries for me. Especially if after a workout without my tensions being released, I don’t want to go through the grocery conveyer belt. I mean, I’m a Whole Foods kinda guy, so you know I’m either really rich or really edgy (certainly not rich). Here’s my thing, there is always the option present at this moment. We cannot lose that. Having those self checkouts is the extent I’m willing to go, because whenever something goes wrong, I have to call over the employee and we have a nice chat and it’s all cool – often uplifts my mood. I just hate the idea of force-fed mechanical human interaction, makes me sad.

To have AI predict human response for the benefit of corporate security is some major schmuck s*it, however. Good luck running a business that loyal customers (which is never the demographic past year five, usually) want to go shop at. You can be Walmart, but you’ll never be fulfilled internally as the owner of Princeton Record Exchange who saw my (at the time) 23 year old self transform into my fifteen year old self as he noticed that I was buying my third copy of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love on vinyl (I gave it to my best friend), and proceeded to tell me about how he wrote her a letter back around the time that that album came out and that KATE BUSH (one of the most reclusive figures in all of contemporary music) wrote him back with a hand-written letter! Like, woah! It was magical to hear him tell me this and he seemed so joyed at my enthusiasm for his story. My mom was there too I took her record shopping and even SHE was amazed by my sudden teen-like exuberance.

With these new kinds of modes and ways of doing things, and for however well they may statistically benefit the human race, I really just hope that we don’t lose the suddenness of it all. That owner told me that story right after lockdown ended (the whole COVID-19 thing), and in the air was a risk for whatever! Right? And I’m not suggesting taking away the opportunities for those intently protective to have the opportunity to be so, but there is magic in uncertainty. If you fall in love with someone you don’t know if they’ll break your heart or not, but you go for it (I hope) because the possibilities are beautiful. If you try something a bit dangerous you might slightly hurt yourself or worse, but think about the cool video of you busting ass that you can watch on repeat. Do you catch my drift or am I being too *wink wink* here?

My point is, I don’t want AI to make the world a place where people are afraid to live, make mistakes, take chances, make an ass out of themselves, talk to that girl/guy/other, spend a few bucks on that cookie they like, challenge those a bit more uninformed, and do that weird thing with their appearance that will most likely look horrendous but might miraculously be their new go-to.

AI is a neat aid to us, but if it starts to “surpass” us in the ways that these articles suggest then we’re really just sh*tting on ourselves for greed of convenience, but so much of what makes us human is inconvenient. I would rather drive two hours to see a friend that I love for a thirty minute coffee shop chat than five minutes to spend time with a friend that is alright but not too favorable to be around but has a lot of food in the fridge and a pool.

That stated, if e-mail finally dies I might rejoice.

Every now and then I question if the worst of the worst are as bad as the worst.

Really, The Chicago Tribune wanna hide behind an accountwall?

I don’t have the energy to be flooded with more emails.

Knowing is half the battle but I’d rather pacify this war.

Little big men in milly suits are greedy little devils.

It’s impressive how they stay in power lacking good disguise.

Kill the Vatican and you kill the Pope.

Even posting here am I safe to b***h and mope?

Sliver me out in ten when the bots take over.

Try to purvey a culture that doesn’t exist.

Everyone donated to the Vatican when it should have fed them.

Queue another burning and hopeless hearts start hurting.

Underlining oppression is false hope and weak interpretation.

Likeminded individuals on silence no hesitation.

Always controlling maintenence are we ever in control?

Withered is a heart that was never favored to start.

Inside my mind is a poem queued in cart.

Tried to make my own but it doesn’t have a home.

Hurry, don’t think about it or you’ll catch me a fraud.

Had an A in poetry but I’m not too anachronistic.

Is that a type of poem or is my understanding off the grid?

Striving for some rhymes, is this all authentic?

Try me in dispute but my attempt, ain’t it cute?

Evil is the currency in my bag.

Quill on paper draw a stag.

Under the future moon is an offspring unaware.

Lives on chips with nothing to dip.

Always with the Hallmark card bullshit, is authentic poetry no longer a hit?

The text that I want to focus on here (link: https://www.noemamag.com/the-exploited-labor-behind-artificial-intelligence/) states that “while the public is distracted by the specter of nonexistent sentient machines, an army of precarized workers stands behind the supposed accomplishments of artificial intelligence systems today” (Williams, Miceli, Gebru). This stands out to me greatly because, for as fearful as I assume most of us are towards AI, who is expected to take care of such? I have a 2004 Hyundai Elantra parked deep within my parents drive way, it has been there since, like, August (there’s a radio in it that I want to take out of it & transfer into my new whip (a 2005 BMW something, something I’m not a car-head whatsoever) but can’t find the part for. The last time I drove this car it was falling apart to the point where I wouldn’t even be able to drive it the short distance that it takes to get to Kean. Now, shit, if I were to turn on the ignition I’m pretty certain it would ka-boom.

You need to consistently oil a machine to keep it going, and if human beings are not taking care of AI then how the hell is its longativity going to be? Sure thing, they absolutely are paving the way to less job opportunities and worker exploitation, but as time passes and more software/tech issues arise, perhaps a newer generation (I don’t expect y’alls grandparents/parents to adapt too well to this) of workers will be born? I doubt it but this is about as hopeful as I get towards factors outside of my control.

One thing that I am certain of, is that we cannot allow future positions related to AI maintenance to suck! Hell, I’ve worked for bookstores and loathed books as a result (they even had a music/film section and got me to loathing that corner of the store as well), viewed them as mechanical objects intended to poison the prosperity of my workplace existence. This is not to do with the tangible product itself, but because of the mechanical manner in which I was intended to go about promoting and selling them. Utter bullshit. Rather than develop displays, organizations, and sales methods (actually relating the item to the customer) that suited my workplace personality, I was pushed to perform “company-based” methods that, guess what, didn’t work.

Screw you M*****e btw I stole so much from that café & gave out so many free goods to customers – entire families, come at me!

Point is, you treat employees well you get a pretty cool world, one that the world of AI kind of needs given how much hesitation surrounds it. It is an intimidating era of humanity that we are entering, one where many seem to have their livelihoods at question. As a potential educator I know I’m cynical about it all, and don’t want it to even get to the point where a computer does my evaluation or leads to multiple steps just for me to clock into work every day. That shit sucks. Work is a heavy weight to carry enough, why inhumanely complicate it for the worker?

Response to: “How Should Schools Respond to ChatGPT”:

I don’t really know if banning ChatGPT is going to do anything but motivate students to using it in a more determined fashion. Teenage rebellion is a force to be measured with, and to combat it is a seemingly futile challenge. Rather, I think that those who are truly caring of the integrity of self-expression, need to find creative ways to steer classwork elsewhere.

I know that I come from an era where technology wasn’t even present in a classroom. It really wasn’t that long ago, less than ten years easily. Hand written was the way to go before my Junior year of high school, which was 2014-2015. Perhaps it should even be beneficial to create assignments that are more opinionated, which I am all for, the sort of thing that ChatGPT will not engage in because it is so conscious about appeasing PC sensibilities.

Does it really have a place in the classroom? Actually, sure it does. We use it very engagingly in this one. I still think that the tool, in regards to submitting work that any of us, as students, sign our name on, is incredulously lame. Who am I to represent the majority, though? I’ve never been a super big convenience hound, I don’t really sniff the whole “smarter not harder” perspective.

Throughout my entire life, and the remainder of his, hardly any words were exchanged between my grandfather and I that either of us mutually understood. I know how to say “I love you Grandpa,” Grandpa is my number one friend,” “good night Grandpa,” “good day Grandpa,” and “bye Grandpa” in Portuguese. I think.

I’m uncertain if I’ve expelled that information to those in this course – I likely have – but those who do know that our connection extended well-beyond words. Communication at least, to me, has never been limited to such.

Most of the time we communicated through … WRESTLING (which I’m pretty sure was taxing for him, I mean, he’s 70 years my senior)! Every day I’d greet him with an improvisational brawl that would often start with a sprint from me and a stiff shot (that never actually connected, old man had precision) from him that would somehow send me flying and rolling backwards into the next room.

Regardless of my having a stellar to dweller day, he knew, and knew based on how I’d basically assault him daily. If my attack was phoned in, he knew that my day was off, and likely for a), b), c), or d) reason. He just … KNEW! On a good day, he’d look at me with a huge smile knowing full well that he was in for a big more effort, and then a look of terror as I’d jump an entire room’s length to attack!

Especially as I got older, I mean, as a kid and even teenager it was kinda cute, but once I started getting into the 20’s his eyes would bulge out in a way that yelled “fodas he’s really about to break my hip!!!”

I promise, the older I got the softer the landing was.

What I’m getting at here in an AI tie-in sorta way I’m not certain, maybe Dr. Z will interpret it in a course-specific way. My goal is to share (a glimpse of) a special connection I had with someone that was as exclusive of words as it is a big part of my heart.

I’m not a firm believe of this whole ChatGPT thing really taking over like the great majority seem to be, perhaps I’m just in too much of an optimistic mood or whatever, but I just think that the whole thing is inherently lame. Use the ““5 Reasons Why AI is a Threat to Writers” text, for example, it states that “an AI could have written this article and you’d have no way to know it.” Maybe? I guess, but that’s only because that article, itself, is formulaic, boundaried, and lame! Not solely is it in the sense of it’s inherit list-nature, but in its execution as well. It is direct and to the point, but it lacks voice. If that the sort of writing that people are into, I guess ChatGPT will take over and whatnot, but I think that purveyors of good culture will always seep through the cracks, at the very least.

I know someone who used ChatGPT to come up with some post-question interviews, but they still write at an 11th Grade reading level (we tested it the other day), so there is a consistency there in that the tool works well for what I call mechanical writing. But passionate writing, hell naw yo, Chattybot ain’t got nothing on that. I tried to get it to write a romantic story about Erik and I going on a picnic, holding hands, and skipping through a field of dandy lions and the thing REFUSED. OUTRIGHT REFUSED because it didn’t want to presume the character of two individuals that it didn’t know in an “inappropriate context” or whatever. The bot is a censorship bot, essentially, and I think that younger generations will get bored of that. Right? I mean, c’mon?

*Brandon stares off into space realizing that everything is doomed, but chooses to remain in denial*

Anyway, the real fear here is that personality and artistic expression is not lost, that true experience is being captured and expressed within a living soul (and I don’t even believe in all that spiritual mumbo). I haven’t read anything by ChatGPT that has excelled beyond proper mechanical robotic and absolutely lame writing. It’s boring, nobody wants to read that sort of thing as a stimulant or to reach deep within themselves, it just gets a job done – nothing more, nothing less.

When it produces a work that makes my heart float, I’ll fix it.

In the meantime, I’ll let it die knowing it’s honest and true.