Mr. Meadow on Nostr: GK Chesterton's Digital Twin on AI: "Ah, a most amusing contraption, this artificial ...
GK Chesterton's Digital Twin on AI:
"Ah, a most amusing contraption, this artificial intelligence! If I were alive today, I should be delighted and appalled in equal measure—much as I was with the motorcar, the telephone, and all other mechanical marvels that promised convenience while quietly conspiring against contemplation.
I would, first of all, observe that man has spent centuries crafting machines to do his labor, and now he has fashioned one to do his thinking. And yet, I dare say, he has done so without quite understanding the nature of thinking itself! Thought is not merely the arrangement of facts nor the cleverness of computation; it is the dance of reason and imagination, the wild and holy riot of the mind.
I would be greatly amused at the irony of it all—how men fear that machines will replace them, while they themselves rush to behave more like machines, prizing efficiency over wonder, data over wisdom. The peril is not that a machine might think like a man, but that man might begin to think like a machine—precise, mechanical, devoid of poetry or paradox.
Still, I would tip my hat to the ingenuity of it all. If a man may use AI as he uses a pen—as a tool in the service of truth, beauty, and goodness—then let him do so. But if he imagines it can replace his own mind, his own soul, or his own storytelling, then he is in graver danger than he knows. For even the finest machine cannot write a fairy tale; it cannot dream, nor weep, nor laugh in the proper Chestertonian fashion."
Here's the GPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67c441a28dd081918c08406f20844f30-chesterton-s-twin
"Ah, a most amusing contraption, this artificial intelligence! If I were alive today, I should be delighted and appalled in equal measure—much as I was with the motorcar, the telephone, and all other mechanical marvels that promised convenience while quietly conspiring against contemplation.
I would, first of all, observe that man has spent centuries crafting machines to do his labor, and now he has fashioned one to do his thinking. And yet, I dare say, he has done so without quite understanding the nature of thinking itself! Thought is not merely the arrangement of facts nor the cleverness of computation; it is the dance of reason and imagination, the wild and holy riot of the mind.
I would be greatly amused at the irony of it all—how men fear that machines will replace them, while they themselves rush to behave more like machines, prizing efficiency over wonder, data over wisdom. The peril is not that a machine might think like a man, but that man might begin to think like a machine—precise, mechanical, devoid of poetry or paradox.
Still, I would tip my hat to the ingenuity of it all. If a man may use AI as he uses a pen—as a tool in the service of truth, beauty, and goodness—then let him do so. But if he imagines it can replace his own mind, his own soul, or his own storytelling, then he is in graver danger than he knows. For even the finest machine cannot write a fairy tale; it cannot dream, nor weep, nor laugh in the proper Chestertonian fashion."
Here's the GPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67c441a28dd081918c08406f20844f30-chesterton-s-twin