creativity

General ravings, Musings

ChatGPT, and the Era of AI…AIiiiiyeeeee!

Mani 7 Comments

Has creativity ended…or only just begun?

Today I tried out ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a ‘chatbot’ developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022.  It can write virtually anything at all—stories, kid’s tales, essays, poems, lyrics—in any style you choose (however crazy you want it) in less than a few seconds.  All you have to do is type in your instructions in a little box. Try it out here.

So, I asked ChatGPT to write this:

‘Poem in Edgar Allan Poe style on rat and politician’

The response I got, in about two seconds, was this:

Once upon a midnight dreary,

While I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious

Volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping,

Suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping,

Rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered,

“Tapping at my chamber door –

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember

It was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember

Wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;

Vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books, surcease of sorrow

Sorrow for the lost Lenore!

For the rare and radiant maiden

Whom the angels named Lenore –

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain

Rustle of each purple curtain

Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic

Terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating

Of my heart, I stood repeating

“’Tis some visitor entreating

Entrance at my chamber door –

Some late visitor entreating

Entrance at my chamber door;

This is it and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger;

Hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly

Your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping

And so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping,

Tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you” –

Here I opened wide the door;

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering,

Long I stood there, wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal

Ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken,

And the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken

Was the whispered word, “Lenore!”

This I whispered, and an echo

Murmured back the word, “Lenore!”

Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning,

All my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping

Something louder than before

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is

Something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is,

And this mystery explore –

Let my heart be still a moment

And this mystery explore;

‘Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter,

When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Rat of the Capitol

Not the least obeisance made he;

Not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But with mien of lord or lady,

Perched above my chamber door –

Perched upon a bust of Pallas

Just above my chamber door –

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling

My sad soul into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum

Of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven

Thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly, grim and ancient Rat of the Capitol,

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Rat: “Nevermore!”

Oh, and if this wasn’t enough,  ChatGPT also offered me a brief, almost apologetic remark that it had created this poem based on Poe’s broad style as in ‘The Raven’ and ‘House of Usher’, and that of course this poem did not in any way reflect or represent Poe’s own work.

Incredible, isn’t it?

But I did something more with ChatGPT, O long-suffering Reader, in the interests of humanity and what remains of my equanimity and sanity.

  I asked myself: what would ChatGPT write if I repeated the SAME request? Would it produce the same poem? Would it repeat itself, plagiarize itself?

And so I logged out of ChatGPT; cleared all cookies and logged in afresh after five minutes (just to give ChatGPT enough time to forget me, I chortled cunningly with all my Jurassic wisdom); logged in again, and once more typed in the following:

‘Poem in Edgar Allan Poe style on rat and politician’

The response I got, in less than a second, was this:

In the dim and dreary streets,

Where the rats scuttle and scurry,

Lives a politician, sly and fleet,

With promises smooth as a cherry.

He speaks of change and progress,

But in his heart there is rot,

For he’s a rat in human dress,

And his words are nothing but a lot.

He’ll steal and lie and cheat,

And grin with a toothy smile,

But all his constituents will eat

The scraps of his dishonest guile.

And when the people cry out in pain,

He’ll simply shift the blame,

For in his eyes, they are all the same,

Just pawns in his twisted game.

So beware, my dear friends,

Of the rat in politician’s clothes,

For his deceit never ends,

And his heart is black as those…

These poems are so totally Edgar Allan Poe-ish that ChatGPT could bring a lawsuit against the estate of Poe for having plagiarized its own style – even though he wrote his stuff 200 years ago – and obtain court verdicts in its favour.

ChatGPT is infinitely more creative and original than any human.

It even makes strong and largely accurate value judgments on creatures like rats and politicians!

But it gets better…or worse.

ChatGPT is only textual. Young friends cheerfully tell me that already, there are AI thingies like ChatGPT available for trial that can compose equally original and remarkable audio and visual works based on your typed-in instructions—however wacky, however outlandish the instructions are.

So, we can all look forward to creating, in less than the time it takes to flick a paint-brush or pluck a guitar string, audio-visual compositions with elements like the following:

  • Blues song in the style of John Lee Hooker with lyrics on Narendra Modi,  Rahul Gandhi, bedbugs and soggy samosas
  • Oil painting in a style fusion of Don Martin, Constable and Botticelli with a sleazy Gurgaon mall as backdrop and featuring Vladimir Putin, Roger Waters, Asaddudin Owaisi, three constipated armadillos, the Ross Sea, and Greta Thunberg with her “How dare you!” look.

Our AI creations have become infinitely more creative than us.

I’m now convinced, O gentle Reader, that after 200,000 years of strenuous efforts at self-annihilation, we humans have finally come close to achieving the evolutionary equivalent of shooting our collective creative arses right off the planet with these latest steps forward in our technological progress. and intellectual retrogress.

Perhaps it’s a damned good thing, too. George Carlin would certainly have agreed.

Still…I can pound away at my worn-out old clay pot, missing anything between 3 beats and 7 beats in every 48 beats in utterly chaotic manner.  Like so:

I bet no AI thingy can do THIS as horribly as I can.

At least, not yet…?

Musings, Remembering

Chords of memory

Mani 8 Comments

It’s amazing, how quickly one’s equanimity vanishes beneath the stresses and strains of living in our beloved Rajdhani.

In the present instance, by ‘equanimity’ I mean the peace of mind that I found at the India Music Summit in Jaipur (4 – 6 October). Time flew while I was there.  Now , barely a fortnight later, all that peace of mind too has flown out the window; my Delhi window that is,  beyond which the afternoon sun is hidden by a haze made up of equal proportions of PM10 particles, toxic fumes from factories and vehicles, and toxic abuse from a million marauding muttering motorists.

Where has all the music gone?

You know how it is sometimes with a wonderful childhood experience?  You remember you had a good time; but that’s all you can recall. It’s as though all the little details— the when and where and how, the who did what with whom and to whom and why, the people and places and happenings and all the other elements— have vanished from memory; they’ve been chopped up fine and atomized in Time’s great grinder and swirled in the waters of forgetfulness, and then slow-cooked with the spices of experiences and the tadka of love and joy and sorrow (stirring frequently all the while), till everything has become like one cerebral kootu.

And so, when you try and remember your childhood experience, you can only discern the kootu; a tasty but uniform, featureless stew.

Yet it takes just a random spark— perhaps a certain aroma, perhaps the way the morning sunlight gleams on a leaf, a certain voice or giggle or chord, or a stranger’s face that reminds you of someone you knew …and at once the years and decades fall away like dream’s architecture dissolves with awakening, and for a brief thrilling moment the wonderful childhood experience of ten years or fifty years ago returns in all its intensity and washes over you and renews you;  and just as you become aware of returning memory it vanishes …leaving you smiling, longing for more.

Sometimes, of course, you can seek out the spark yourself. And with music it’s really easy, music as a spark always works for me.

That’s what I did just now;  I turned to YouTube and sought Aruna Sairam. I found a wonderful performance by her with sarod player Soumik Datta, including  songs she’d sung at Jaipur! Here are two—the 500 MWe Durga stotram Aigiri Nandini, and the Kalinga Nartana joyously and passionately recreating young Krishna’s sport with the great serpent Kalinga.

And in less time than it takes the law-abiding but stressed-out Delhi motorist to yell “Abbe saale, wrong side pe kyon chalaa rahe ho!”, all my stresses and strains have evaporated. 🙂

I can’t wait to attend the 2020 Summit.   To temper my impatience, I just listened to, and share here, the ethereal voices of the Shillong Chamber Choir singing Vande Mataram:  as they did in Jaipur; singing here on another occasion, when Chandrayaan II silently circled the Moon and the Lander Vikram was lost; evoking what their songs always evoke in my mind, the embracing and celebration of Life with all its ups and downs, the joy and awe and grandeur of Eternity.

General ravings, Musings

Saccha Swar—Gateway to Perfection

Mani 8 Comments

If you love listening to music – and I believe everyone loves music, it matters not what kind of music it is — you’d  know that there’s this very special and powerful thing that exists in some music, a thing that lights up in your mind and heart when you are listening to the music; a thing that is like pure ecstasy. It awakens you, inspires you, excites and moves you to the point where you feel a sense of supreme joy, pure intense awareness, the wild, mad, uninhibited passion of junoon, utter liberation from all the stuff and nonsense of daily life…when you transcend time and lose the sense of Self,  yet, strangely and paradoxically, you feel more close than you have ever been to the entire universe. 

It’s this mysterious, timeless, supremely powerful thing that makes great music; it’s the ability to find this thing and convey it that makes great musicians great.  To experience this thing is like awakening into a Realm of infinite possibilities, of power and bliss, of union with the One in All and the All in One.  For great musicians, every performance is an exploration, a quest for the gateway to this Realm. Hindustani classical musicians sometimes speak about looking for ‘Saccha Swar’; the ‘Note of Perfection’… maybe that’s a nice description of the gateway.

And how does one find and follow the path that leads to the gateway of Saccha Swar? 

Perhaps only the great musicians know; perhaps even they can describe the path and their quest only through their music, not by mere words. This much is clear, though:  the path itself has to be laid down  individually, with the paving stones of endless learning and practice, riyaaz  and  saadhana;  the path  must be walked alone, it must be smoothed through deep discipline and dedication, illuminated by humility and openness and selflessness…

At this point, O long-suffering reader, I abandon my pitiful efforts at describing what I cannot describe.  Instead, I quote wonderful musician Aruna Sairam from an interview I came across recently:

“…Ultimately, when you speak of a raga, it is an emotion. And therefore the musician that engages with this raga is making himself or herself very open, emotionally—and very vulnerable to everybody else who is in that space. This means that you have to trust, and you have to love, yourself and everyone else.  And in that trust you put out your music, and the moment you express it, without inhibitions, the audience gets it, everybody around you gets it, and they in turn return that love manifold back to you…”

[click here for full interview]

Aruna Sairam is going to perform at the Music Summit, Jaipur. We’re going to join her, and many great Path-finders like her, in their explorations towards Saccha Swar; through them and with them, we too shall glimpse and experience the Realm of Perfection.