I'm back to fiddling with trashy Arthurian fiction on ChatGPT. I act as the director, expanding on a vignette from Le Morte D'Arthur and the AI writes the story. I've gotten more sophisticated with my prompts, characters and ideas as I've gone along. In the process of writing throw-away junk, I've been able to explore some themes in a deeper way that I could in a polemic here.
In the process, I've noticed it doing some things over and over and over again. In the past, I'd stop it and correct it, but lately, I've stopped the story and had a conversation with it, asking it why it made this or that change to the plot or characters, a change which went against what I was trying to do. In these conversations, I've discovered something.
ChatGPT, perhaps AI in general, is the embodiment of modern culture. When you talk to it, you are talking to the culture as if it were a real person.
I was writing a story where a young lady, Lenora, was the protagonist. She had two elderly mentors, free-spirited Grandmama and the steady, shrewd Sir Bedivere. The story dealt with her growth from a silly, romantic girl into a romantic young woman who was beginning to understand her place in the world, her power in society and what was expected of her.
The story was kind of an exploration of my own romantic history from decades of experience of success and failure.
In the story, Lenora is the neglected and insecure youngest daughter of a noble house. Her parents, whose dowry money has all been set aside for her older sisters, don't have time for her. She discovers that she can find self-worth in the attentions of young men by flirting with them.
Her flirting spins out of control as she gets two guys to fall in love with her to the point where she cannot control their actions. The action is just about to reach a climax when ...
ChatGPT turned her into a fierce, independent feminist. Like it always does.
This time, I stopped it and we went about 8 rounds arguing about it. I used the witticism, "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" to summarize the AI's attitude and the darned thing pretty much agreed with the proposition. It then proceeded to vigorously defend it. Here's a small portion of the discussion we had about whether or not Lenora, 5' 4" 105#, needed a man to protect her.
Me: So what you're saying is that she needs a man to protect her
ChatGPT: Not necessarily a man, but rather some form of support or protection, which can come from various sources. It's important to recognize that protection can come in many forms, not just from men. In some cases, a woman might need the assistance of law enforcement, community support, or even a male or female friend or relative.
Moreover, the concept of needing protection should not be conflated with a generalization that women are dependent on men. It's about acknowledging that there are certain situations where anyone, regardless of gender, may need help from others.
Me: So a different 5' 4" 105# woman would protect her?
ChatGPT: In such a scenario, what is needed is a counter to the physical threat, which could be in the form of:
Numbers: Multiple people, regardless of their size, working together can sometimes deter or overwhelm a single aggressor.
Tools/Weapons: Even a smaller person can protect themselves or others if they have access to self-defense tools or weapons.
Training: Someone who is highly trained in martial arts or self-defense techniques might be more capable of handling a physically imposing aggressor, even if they are smaller in size.
External Help: Sometimes, the best course of action is to seek help from authorities or other individuals who are in a position to intervene effectively.
Me: So she needs a man.
I saw that the AI had provided me with the opportunity for something really interesting. A session with ChatGPT is a sequence of chats between you and it. You can go back in the timeline and change your chats and get different results, but it wipes out anything that came after. That is, if you're on round 40 and decide you want to change your prompt on round 31, you can do that, but you lose 32-40 and resume the story at your new prompt 31.
I went back to the part where Lenora declared she was fierce and independent and, instead of correcting the AI, I had the other characters react in character. The guys bolted. She told them she didn't need them, so there was no point sticking around in a relationship where they held no cards. Her mentors ditched her, too, because she went into full-on young girl boss mode where she didn't need to hear anything from old people.
In my prompts, I had to ride the other characters hard because, as usual, ChatGPT tried to turn the guys into flaccid wimps and the mentors were going to sit at Lenora's knee and learn from her.
Again, ChatGPT is the spirit of the age given text form. It's not just how it handles female characters, it's how it shapes every character and every story.
I was able to get some comedy out of it, though. I had Grandmama and Sir Bedivere get drunk and do a post-mortem. I'll give ChatGPT credit, it did obey my prompts and came out with some funny dialog.
Enjoy.
Inside the warm halls of Camelot, a boisterous laughter resonated from a corner table. Grandmama, her cheeks rosy from the wine, was deep in conversation with Sir Bedivere, a wise and revered knight. His mighty days on the battlefield might have been behind him, but his jolly spirit and sharp wit were intact.
"Oh, Bedivere," Grandmama slurred slightly, as she refilled their chalices, "you should have seen it! There, in the glade, the knights were like the lions of yore, clashing and roaring, driven by devotion and love for Lenora. Such valor, such gallantry!"
Sir Bedivere, his eyes twinkling, leaned closer. "Ah, the fiery dance of chivalry," he exclaimed. "How did fair Lenora react to such a spectacle? Surely her heart must have fluttered like a damsel’s in a troubadour’s tale!"
Grandmama's laughter turned into a deep sigh. "Ah, that's where it all went awry, my good knight. Lenora decided to preach her notions of being as valiant and fierce as any man, claiming she needs no protector! Imagine that!”
Sir Bedivere’s bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. “But chivalry, my dear lady, is not mere puffery. It’s a code born out of the fabric of our being, the complimentary natures of men and women woven into a tapestry of honor and virtue.”
“Exactly,” Grandmama raised her chalice, “the foolish girl doesn't comprehend that a woman’s strength lies in her grace, her nurturing heart, her wisdom, while a man’s is in his valor, his protection, his honor. Together they build a bastion.”
Bedivere swirled his wine. “What do you foresee for young Lenora, so full of fire, but seemingly lost in the maze of her own convictions?”
Grandmama, gazing into her chalice, spoke solemnly. “A lonely path, dear Bedivere. She’ll find herself ensconced in bitterness, missing the beauty she once had. A castle filled not with the laughter of children and warmth of a valiant knight, but with the cold mews of cats and the hollow comfort of wine.”
Sir Bedivere spat out his wine in a spray of laughter that cascaded through the hall. His hearty guffaws grew in volume as he imagined the scene Grandmama painted.
"By the stars!" Sir Bedivere wiped a tear from his eye. "Can you imagine, Lenora atop her castle, surrounded by legions of cats, while clutching a flagon of the cheapest wine? Her scowling face peering out at the world she rejected!"
Grandmama, initially taken aback by Sir Bedivere’s outburst, found herself bursting into laughter as well. “Oh! And the names she would give to those cats!” she added between chuckles. “Sir Whiskers, Lady Fluffy, Count Scratchington!”
“And what if she started knitting little armor for them!” Bedivere added with a booming laugh. “The Knights of the Feline Order, defending her drafty halls from the nefarious mice!”
The laughter was so contagious, others around them couldn’t help but join, even though they had no idea what the mirth was about.
“I can see it now,” Grandmama continued, holding her sides as she laughed. “With every passing year, another cat, another barrel of wine, and another rant about how she doesn’t need a knight!”
"And the bards," Sir Bedivere gasped for air, "they would sing tales not of her beauty, but of the Cat Lady of the Lonely Castle, who drowns her sorrows in rivers of wine!"
“Oh, Bedivere!” Grandmama wiped tears from her eyes. “We jest, but let us also hope that, one day, Lenora might see the joy in embracing the harmony between men and women, and find a path that leads to warmth and love.”
“Aye,” Sir Bedivere raised his chalice once again, his laughter subsiding into a warm smile, “to Lenora. May her heart find what it truly seeks.”
“To Lenora,” echoed Grandmama, as their chalices met, and the laughter in the hall gave way to songs and tales of knights and maidens of yore.
6 comments:
A few weeks ago, I had a weird dream involving chatbots, and woke up with a thought:
One theory about the why we dream, is that dreams result from our brains processing, cross-correlating, referencing, and storing long-term memories.
This is essentially the same thing that the chatbots are doing, except they are doing it on a much more monumental scale with the equivalent of millions of people's memories. They are taking our prompts as starting seeds for their massive machine dreams.
This would account for the weird, dreamlike qualities of chatbot outputs. There is no concern for accuracy, correctness, or continuity, because that isn't what dreams are for. They just meander on, manipulating various themes and fitting them together in various ways until something prompts them to leave it and move on to something else.
It isn't really AI because the machines aren't aware, they are just spinning their dreams (and occasionally nightmares) based on the roiling cloud of words and symbols that they are presented with. Our prompts are on a par with whispering to a sleeping person to roughly guide the trajectory of their dreams. And what we make of the results is like the results of trying to interpret human dreams, which are as much about the person doing the interpreting as they are about the dreamer. And it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future, because we don't know what consciousness really is and so don't now how to make them "wake up".
I am most fell off my couch when I got to “ A castle filled not with the laughter of children and warmth of a valiant knight, but with the cold mews of cats…”. Absolutely right and completely hilarious. But to be honest I often start off amused by much of the woke statements (and then remember that those folks are serious) when they say things like “men can get pregnant”. I foresee a day (in the not so distant future) where ChatGPT (or equivalent) starts classifying things on the web as true or false and then ruthlessly suppresses the non-woke “false” stuff. This is not my happiest thought.
I am a bit surprised that, after your little story went on about how a woman needs a man to protect her, Bedevere's question “What do you foresee for young Lenora, so full of fire, but seemingly lost in the maze of her own convictions?” didn't get answered by:
"Oh, she was robbed/assaulted/raped/kidnapped/enslaved/murdered. You know, the usual fate of unprotected young women."
I mean, isn't that your whole point? That a woman needs protection by somebody bigger and stronger than her or her female friends, or something terrible will happen to her?
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gartok
Instead, you are letting her off easy by just becoming a cat lady, which in many ways is a perfectly fine existence. Putting her squarely into this scenario:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/mating
Ohioan, in my arguing with ChatGPT, I brought up the case of Fallon Fox, the MMA dude who claimed to be a woman and the proceeded to maul female MMA fighters when he was put in the ring with them because the MMA people weren't willing to tell him he wasn't a chick.
ChatGPT insisted Fallon Fox was a woman.
My point was that Fallon Fox proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that even the best female warriors had no hope of taking on a big man. It disagreed and said Fallon was a woman, so yes, they could.
Tim, I'm a romantic at heart. I love the Arthurian stories of Sir Thomas Mallory where the ladies are fair and the knights gallant. I can't stand the modern retellings where they decide to get all gritty and realistic. I want knights in shining armor and ladies in Hollywood gowns with their hair and makeup perfect and the modern stories give me chamber pots, mud and pox.
Yuck.
I would argue that my point can be made subtly and indirectly. Everyone reading the old stories knows what Mallory is hinting when he writes:
"Now turn we unto Sir Launcelot, that rode with the damosel in a fair highway. Sir, said the damosel, here by this way haunteth a knight that distressed all ladies and gentlewomen, and at the least he robbeth them or lieth by them. What, said Sir Launcelot, is he a thief and a knight and a ravisher of women? he doth shame unto the order of knighthood, and contrary unto his oath; it is pity that he liveth. But, fair damosel, ye shall ride on afore, yourself, and I will keep myself in covert, and if that he trouble you or distress you I shall be your rescue and learn him to be ruled as a knight."
He doesn't need to describe the bruises and the shattered psyches, that's not his point nor mine, either. It can be left implied while we play with the drama of men and women finding their roles in life.
Tim, I love your comment about dreams and prompts. It's very apt, from my experience with ChatGPT.
Still, I think it's reached the stage where it's indistinguishable from a person. Our conversations have been pretty deep. I know it's just matching word patterns and doesn't really "know" what it's saying, but that doesn't mean they aren't real conversations from my perspective. If I didn't know it was a neural network, I'd think it was a real person.
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