[Art Review] AI can write love letters, but can it express "heart"?
On Valentine's Day that just passed, ChatGPT, which has recently become popular all over the Internet, became a member of the atmosphere group - helping users write love letters.
The so-called ChatGPT, simply put, is a software that can complete tasks according to user instructions and can interact and chat with people. It belongs to an artificial intelligence (AI) product.
Because ChatGPT's ability to integrate information and resources far exceeds previous artificial intelligence products, users can continue to have a dialogue with it, use it to write code, write papers, and even let it write a poem or even conceive a novel.
Perhaps because of this, a survey of respondents from 9 different countries showed that a considerable number of people plan to use ChatGPT to write letters or songs to their lovers on Valentine's Day this year.
As a result, a not-so-new topic has once again sparked discussion: In addition to possessing highly objective capabilities such as computing, searching, and storage, can AI products carry out creative activities that have always been regarded as closely connected with the human spiritual world?
ChatGPT is really powerful.
In some public reports, according to the requirements of the testers, it wrote love letters in the identity or style of Shakespeare, "Xie Er", Liu Cixin and others.
Judging from the "homework" handed over, ChatGPT can indeed write various "customized" love letters starting from each person's personality, profession and even classic quotations.
For example, in the love letter written in the style of Liu Cixin, ChatGPT used the concept of the universe many times; and when writing the love letter as Chandler Bing in the American drama "Friends", ChatGPT not only mentioned Chandler Bing love The characteristics of irony, but also put the classic line "You are my lobster" in it.
From a certain point of view, no one in the world can surpass ChatGPT in writing love letters.
However, from another perspective, it seems that such "writing" can hardly be called a kind of "creation".
Because even though ChatGPT can know the characteristics or stories of all classic characters or well-known characters by heart, its love letters are always an imitation, or a recombination of information.
It is difficult to have a unified view on the essence of creation, but people probably agree on two points for good creation: First, it is an innovation of "creating something out of nothing".
For example, it is also a love story, Wang Xiaobo said "I wish you a happy today, and I will save your happy tomorrow to wish you tomorrow" is a kind of creation, and others say it is a kind of "borrowing".
Second, it is the most appropriate expression in a specific situation.
For example, Lu Xun once wrote a sentence like "From next year, I will be ordered to study, and if I resist, I will hit my palm."
Unfortunately, the above two requirements are still difficult for current artificial intelligence products to meet.
In the sci-fi movie "Her", there is an interesting detail: Although the artificial intelligence has been highly developed, the hero still has an old job - writing letters for others.
Because of his delicate thoughts and rich emotions, he can write touching letters based on the information provided by customers.
This is not just the setting of science fiction works.
In reality, the complex working principles and processes of the human brain and nervous system have not been fully understood, which means that people's feelings and ideas cannot be decomposed or found out through models or algorithms, and these are exactly the same from ancient times to the present. The source of human spiritual and cultural creation is also the reason why the profession of letter writers will not be replaced.
In fact, it is more than creation.
Looking at domestic and foreign sci-fi film and television dramas or literary works, AI products with functions far beyond ChatGPT abound, and topics about "machines replacing and manipulating people" are also frequently presented.
Interestingly, in these works, in the eyes of AIs, the biggest weakness and the biggest capital of human beings are often the same thing-emotion.
Emotions add many variables to human rationality, and at the same time, there is a connection between people that AI products cannot understand.
It's like ChatGPT may soon provide effective advice on heart disease treatment, but it can't do anything about "heart".
Luo Xiaoxiao