Yet Untitled 056 - “Hey ChatGPT, will AI replace screenwriters in the future?”
Ai Ai Ai…AI!
Dearest Yet Untitler,
A reader and I were talking on the eve of publishing the last instalment. I still hadn’t finished and I complained to her about my completionist woes.
She suggested - “use Chat GTP.”
Thence began the journey towards this instalment, with a thought experiment:
What would Yet Untitled look like if I took help from AI?
Off the top of my head:
Perhaps the newsletter will end up sounding more informed. I’m aware that I usually steer clear of ‘rounding up’ all available perspectives on what I’m writing about, and perhaps - if I wanted to do this - AI would help me do it without too much trouble. It…could…be a good place to begin.
Likely, it would take me less time to generate the newsletter - I’d likely ask it to generate a template for what it could be, creating the possibility of hammering at an AI-generated first draft - or joining AI generated fragments to bring together an instalment that I sign off on.
I ask myself - as someone who had employed various techniques to generate stories - could I not evolve my existing methods using AI? In the past, I’ve used cut-ups where I have written out story beats on paper, cut them into strips, further cut each strip in half, shuffled them and then put the sentence fragments together randomly to see what surprising connections emerged. I work manually with story cards on walls all the time, looking from afar so that hidden patterns become apparent.
Perhaps AI could help me take some of these methods further.
Here’s my first ever question to an AI:
“Hey Chat GPT, will AI replace screenwriters in the future?”
Here’s what Chat GPT said:
While AI technology has advanced significantly in recent years, it is unlikely that it will completely replace screenwriters. While AI can generate text, it currently lacks the creativity, intuition, and emotional intelligence that human writers possess.
Screenwriting involves more than just writing dialogue and plotting scenes… AI may be able to generate some aspects of a screenplay, but it would struggle to create a story that engages and entertains viewers.
Additionally, screenwriting is a collaborative process that involves working with directors, producers, and other members of the film crew. AI lacks the ability to build relationships, communicate effectively, and respond to feedback in the way that humans can.
In summary, while AI may be able to assist screenwriters in some ways, it is unlikely that it will replace them entirely. Human creativity, intuition, and emotional intelligence are essential in creating the compelling stories that engage and entertain viewers.
Oh well. I guess…phew? Or is Skynet blowing smoke up my ass and lulling me into a false sense of security?
Like this, I thought many things when I experienced ChatGPT’s speed and eloquence, feeling that I’m living on the Edge of Tomorrow (also the title of one of my fav Tom Cruise films, btw).
I’ve been thinking about AI all week after this admittedly mind-bending experience, which was defined for me with deadly clarity by Benbrick, the prolific producer of the BBC’s award winning podcast “Have You Heard George’s Podcast”. According to Benbrick (listen here, ~ minute 17:00 onwards), what I experienced is called “Future Shock”. To paraphrase Benbrick’s words:
Future Shock is when the future arrives faster than we thought it would, disorienting us at a societal level.
Yup, I thought. That made sense. That’s where we’re headed. Towards confusing times.
Later, I walked on my building podium where a lot of kids come down to play, and I felt a bit frightened for them. That pillar word - Truth - is going to be so much more elusive for them in the tomorrow they inherit.
Asking questions of an AI isn’t as simple anymore as portrayed in the Netflix kids’ show I love watching with Ananya and Aahana - Ask The Storybots. In it, children ask a ragtag gang of bots curious questions that lead both bots and kids on a magic journey of discovery. It’s all friendly and funny. But the moment it turns real, and the entity in the other side is a disembodied and disturbingly human presence and not a fuzzy robot, things change.
After listening to Benbrick, I watched my brain run into my two pals who often accompany me in an encounter of anything new - Fear and Apprehension.
I’ll expand on one of Benbrick’s insights: AI is designed to move fast. It’s constantly calculating the best next possible word after the previous one - forming coherent answers at staggering speeds. As I learned, ChatGTP is a “large language model”. The way that it takes me a week to generate these newsletters, negotiating my way through loops of thought - AI accelerates through many more (exponentially more!) loops and comes up with something that sounds not just coherent but…considered 😐.
Here’s another gem from ChatGPT:
It's understandable to feel a sense of apprehension and concern about the impact of AI on the creative industries, such as screenwriting. However, it's important to remember that the heart and soul of storytelling lies in the human experience, and no amount of technology can replicate that.
When I read this, it was as if ChatGPT had placed a virtual hand upon my shoulder, almost giving me a back rub. Maybe one of AI’s biggest support to us screenwriters could, one day, be instant affirmation which - as all writers know - goes a long way for us!
But there is something in this utterance coming to us from the expansive non-human mind of a machine flexing its powerful muscles to constantly simulate human thought better.
…the heart and soul of storytelling lies in the human experience.
Something that happened his morning:
I went for a run in Sanjay Gandhi National Park this morning.
As I was descending the hill that has the lovely pagoda dedicated to Gandhi, two deer darted through the wilderness and crossed the path in front of me. It was a flash of beauty, and my eyes fell on a human mother and child sitting on a bench near me. It was the mother whose face had lit up on having seen what I had seen.
To me, experiences like these are written between the lines our lives’ text. I notice a growing tendency to not give them import. For example, when I talk about how beautiful I find a particular tree, I’m sometimes greeted by looks that say - “you are strange”.
Seeing the deer, I suddenly precipitated this instalment’s point, as if it stood before me like a lone mountain on a clear horizon. I felt that AI’s ability to accelerate analysis and present a thesis is potentially threatening the space between the lines of life.
“ChatGPT, do you see yourself as a giant mirror?”
I find that one way of looking at AI is to see it as a big mirror reflecting us back at ourselves. It makes sense to me - AI is an intelligence accessing every text we generate, every impulse we record, fashioning its answers to questions we ask it from this resource.
This made me think about everything we have been putting on the internet in the past few decades - things that pass under AI’s eyes. What model of humanity is training this intelligence, that we seem to be promising ourselves to depend more and more on in the future? Looking at the Internet today - it’s not a very flattering model to my eyes. I shudder to think that we are training AIs via echo chambers of fear and apprehension already.
What will the giant mirror do except reflect this back at us, perhaps in a distorted way as large mirrors tend to do.
Undirected Violence…
…is one of the things that, according to Benbrick, characterise the societal level disorientation that Future Shock entails. In this, I hear him saying - we all go crazy when things strop making sense.
When I hear ‘undirected violence’ I think of gun violence incidents in the Americas, something that’s always baffled me. I know that stories tend not to make sense if we have missed parts of the story, and today - with information relaying so fast and in unprocessed form, I feel we’re missing more and more of every story that comes to us. We are in a scenario where the world feels more and more incomprehensible.
It worries me that AI is training off this kind of script.
How can we counter this? Hmmm, this made me think of a book:
The Volunteer is also set in a world that did not make sense, in Auschwitz. I recall one particular paragraph in which a 40 year old school-teacher quietly steps into a teenage boy’s place when the boy is chosen for execution. Remembering this made me hopeful that the best of our humanity can and does exist even in times when it’s most difficult to see it.
That teacher is also us - as much as is the man who picks up the assault rifle and makes his way to the kindergarten around the corner. But I fear people like the teacher get lost in our world today - drowned out amid the noise that has slowly been training us not to see them, or the way in which they see the world, because it is distracting.
I make a case for us being able to see more in between the lines, so that we speak more of it with each other, write more of it and eventually…AI reads more of this to interpret our world.
A case for Slowness
Hello Leonard, good to see you back in YU! This song of yours has made an appearance in my newsletter multiple times. And for good reason.
I came to Yet Untitled for slowness. To Consider in truth; not to simulate consideration. To me, YU is a refuge between life’s lines. An effective refuge must be shared, so here we are - you and I, dearest Yet Untitler. It’s the place from where we see the darting deer and admire trees without fearing strange looks from others. It’s silence. It’s pause. It’s a place for things like wisdom and humanity which we all possess to play in. It’s where will encounter that 40 year old teacher from Auschwitz who saved the teenage boy. It’s where will will acknowledge him, admire a tree and marvel at a darting deer all in one breath!
There are big changes ahead, and you can’t surf big waves while in shock. Here’s to the various YU’s in our lives that slow us down, grant us silence and, all in all, keep us feeling brave and feelin’ groovy.
Thanks for reading.
I have a question for you: What’s the YU of your life that slows you down and allows you to see things that are important.
Please tell me. I’d love to hear from you.
Apparently the next iteration, GPT4, can write a novel. It's a bit daunting but only we can write truly like us.
This is a glorious post. I love the breadth and the open mindedness in every thought, and sentence. Thank you, V.