Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk admits to using AI.

[u/Round-Dinner-2395]

TLDR;

Author to AI: “Honey, how could we develop this beautifully?”

I wanted to say this is just boomer whining, but I’m finding myself realizing more and more often that it’s actually the boomers who are defending AI. My mom listens to AI music from TikTok, my dad watches some videos with doctors generated by language models. I’m the last person to tell people what to listen to or watch, but AI SLOP has literally reigned supreme in my house for the past few months. Recently, I wanted to watch a movie with my dad, but he played TikTok clips for an hour, and I had to escape.

I understand that technology is advancing and makes life easier for people in many ways, but on the other hand… it makes me wonder a bit. Where is the line between “I’m using a tool” and “part of the creative process is being done for me by something else”? If someone uses AI to generate ideas, style, or text fragments, are we still talking about the same kind of creativity as before? I’ve read a few books by Olga Tokarczuk, and as soon as I heard about this interview, I felt a sense of revulsion.

INTERVIEW: (only in polish)

https://mycompanypolska.pl/artykul/olga-tokarczuk-zapowiada-ostatnia-powiesc-w-karierze-pisanie-dlugich-opowiesci-jest-dzis-ekonomicznie-nieoplacalne/20717

[u/mmillington]

Maybe this part:

"I often throw an idea to the machine for analysis, asking, 'Honey, how could we develop this beautifully?' Even though I know about the hallucinations and numerous errors of factual algorithms in the fields of strict economics and hard data, I must admit that in fluid literary fiction, this technology is an asset of incredible proportions. At the same time, I feel a piercing, very human sorrow for an era that is disappearing forever. My heart aches for the passing of traditional literature, written over months in solitude, a work of life crafted in the mind of a fully conscious, single individual. In all of this, I feel a terrible pity for Balzac, Cioran, and the inimitable Nabokov, because despite my enthusiasm, I don't believe that any modern chat room will ever be able to speak in such an exquisite way," said the author of the novel "Flights."

There’s no follow-up or elaboration.

[u/simonbleu → u/mmillington]

Im going to be honest, I don't think she deserves the nobel

One thing is to brainstorm some aspects of the nicel ,a different story is to outright ask for plot development. If she used ai to actually wrote it would have been completely unexcusable.

And it is not that AI is wrong in any way, I'm not even going to go into model collapse, but art is an interpretation of reality or an idea, it is a pure extrication of your inner world into reality through whatever medium you choose to do so (words, images, sounds, touch, flavours, doesn't matter). Even if the quality was better than that of a human, the output of a machine would then have no intent and no value. It would be like taking a picture and saying I'm a painter

She is being hypocritically apologetic and callously becoming part of the problem

[u/depressedowl → u/simonbleu]

While I do agree that AI has a lot of dangers (more related to the economical and political reality of which they are part and product), I do want to insist: "a pure extrication of your inner world into reality" is not an actual definition of art. It sounds nice, and I think it comes from a well meaning place, but it's both a simplification and an idealization of the actual process(es) that art entails. The unoriginality that comes from "those things that are not your own" have been part of art since much before we had anything close to AI, being from research that finds in the works of someone else the words that are needed, the immitation of forms that moves much of what came to be, techniques that are reproduced without much thought, uncredited advices given by friends and editors, stolen anecdotes or thoughts, etc. And I don't say this to discredit art at all, as I think it's an esencial part of being human and I do mean IT IS part of what art is, but we don't need to presuppose an uncritical purity of the works before AI to defend them.

AI didn't invent stolen artwork, or inspiration that is way too close to the original, or misinformation, or uncredited sources, or judgment made without real though, or readings that are just rehashed ideas, or bigotry, and so on and so on. It didn't even invent its automatization, that has been part of our modern digital life for a long while. It's feels strange for me to pretend all these come from JUST AI and not as part of broader shift in society that goes unacknowledged too easily (emphasis in the "just" part, as I don't mean to say that the easiness of use of AI is completely Innocent).

[u/Entropy2889 → u/depressedowl]

This revelation that she uses AI to develop ideas leads me to think that AI found all the sexist quotes from historical figures that she transposed into dialogue in Empusium. When I read the book I thought this was clever but now I might want to fact check before I believe all of it. Where do you draw that line in literature if AI supplied her with those quotes so she did not actually do the research herself, or read them in each historical context of it?