Notes from a Year of Grief and the Mad Age of Curation

AI revolution has just started

Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Sketch by Ugur Akinci

Hi Again!

It’s been a year, a tough year, that I haven’t written anything for the Ocean. I’m back with a renewed flame and green hopes for the future.

Last year my wife and I were devastated by the illness of a truly precious member of our family. In the end, she lost her brave 5-year fight with a debilitating illness that ravaged not only her beautiful body but robbed her brilliant mind as well.

Our loss was a renowned engineer and a scholar who could delve into Dostoyevski and minimalist art within the same conversation about Fourier transformations. She will be missed dearly.

A few years earlier my wife lost her little brother as well. So it wasn’t easy to handle these consecutive losses even though I’m aware similar misfortune visits many households every year.

That’s the ocean of life, isn’t it? One day it’s a gorgeous beach, scintillating under the baby blue skies. The next, it’s a tsunami, sweeping away memories, words, and all plans.

A famous adage attributed to more than one famous person goes: “Life is what happens when you have other plans.”  Touche.

Drawing by Ugur Akinci

AI Revolution

If there’s one thing that changed the world radically last year it was probably the availability of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to the masses on the OpenAI platform.

I don’t believe we are still fully aware of the way AI has already changed our world.

Enter ChatGPT (But No Jokes Please)

After I immediately signed up with ChatGPT in December 2022, I was shocked pleasantly to discover that I could easily generate anything from writing JavaScript code to step-by-step instructions on how to perform pancreas surgery (an experiment I came up with just for the heck of it).

Since then I kept fiddling around with the endless powers of AI.

From time to time AI disappointed me.

For example, it was pathetic at writing jokes. Humor is such a human invention that it’ll probably take years for AI to replicate Seinfeld or Louis C. K.. Software programmers and graphic artists might soon be without a job but I think standup comedians are still safe, at least for another year or two.

Yet the AI revolution in my own chosen field, writing, is already apparent.

From Creation to Curation

What’s happening is this: writing is shifting fast from a creative art to a curative craft.

Merriam-Webster defines curation as “the act or an instance of selecting and organizing artistic works for presentation in an exhibit, show, etc.”

Imagine you are in an archeology museum.

Who created all the statues you are enjoying? The museum's Board of Directors? The guard at the door? The designer of the exhibition hall? Of course not.

All the works you enjoy are… curated. They are brought together for your pleasure even though nobody who has anything to do with the museum has created them.

Thanks to AI, writing is similarly becoming a craft of curation, prose brought together for your benefit and pleasure, even though it might not have been created by a writer in the good old-fashioned sense of the verb.

Plagiarism

The specter of plagiarism will cast its dark shadow on all writers for some time to come.

However, I think this will increasingly become less of a concern as AI becomes more sophisticated, creating unique works, never “put together” before.

This probably has a generational component as well.

Those under 30 are much more tolerant of “derivative works” than Boomers like me. What has been once frowned upon as “stealing” is not even noticed within the immense daily flotsam of social media.

Swiss Cheese

What is a “derivative work”?

Let’s take YouTube for example.

Did you know that you can download any video from YT, (just) add captions, and republish it as your own, and that would be perfectly okay with YouTube as a “derivative work”?!  

How can accusations of plagiarism survive in such a new environment of “liberal inspiration” and infinite loopholes? The concept of copyright has turned into Swiss cheese in this age of AI.

Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube need new content with an unquenchable thirst and AI is perfect to supply what is needed.

Deluge

According to Google’s estimate, 30,000 (thirty thousand) HOURS of video are uploaded to YouTube every MINUTE.

How can traditional definitions of creativity and originality survive in our new merciless world of unbridled curation?

Thanks to AI, each writer now has her or his own Everest to climb to maintain their creativity, self-respect, and integrity.

Until next week…

(This post is created 100% with human sweat and inspiration.)