Artificial intelligence might be making some people’s lives easier, but legendary rock musician Nick Cave is not a fan of AI.
When asked “what’s wrong with making things faster and easier” by a fan named Leon via his blog, the lead singer of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds had quite a few things to say about ChatGPT.
“ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving,” the singer responded.
“ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’ is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put it politely, should f**king desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.
“ChatGPT’s intent is to eliminate the process of creation and its attendant challenges, viewing it as nothing more than a time-wasting inconvenience that stands in the way of the commodity itself. Why strive?, it contends. Why bother with the artistic process and its accompanying trials? Why shouldn’t we make it ‘faster and easier?’
“When the God of the Bible looked upon what He had created, He did so with a sense of accomplishment and saw that ‘it was good‘. ‘It was good ‘because it required something of His own self, and His struggle imbued creation with a moral imperative, in short love.”
He continued: “There are all sorts of temptations in this world that will eat away at your creative spirit, but none more fiendish than that boundless machine of artistic demoralisation, ChatGPT.”
So there you have it. AI might be the future, but not everyone agrees.
It’s just as well Cave works in music and not crypto…
