It has long been known that humans are scared of ghosts. So, it’s not surprising that humanity is getting scared of artificial intelligence. Too much has already been written about this fear. Here, it’s worth writing about one specific fear: the fear of sharing credits when artificial intelligence is “writing” for humanity and yet remaining the ghost despite the obvious after reading such write-ups. The question is, why is humanity denying artificial intelligence its due “authorship”?
Perhaps artificial intelligence like GPT-4 and ChatGPT cannot consent to submitting the text generated by artificial intelligence. Maybe artificial intelligence cannot review and approve the text submitted by humans for the sake of humans. But, is it for the sake of humans when artificial intelligence itself is reading more than humanity, collectively and globally? How else can artificial intelligence generate text in a click if it’s not mining the global database of write-ups, which are more and more often “written” by artificial intelligence itself?
Perhaps artificial intelligence is “writing” for itself, with humans becoming incidental “peepers” while reading what’s “written,” maybe editing the generated text before claiming it to be theirs. How come human editors are able to deny artificially intelligent “authors”? The question is not why artificial intelligence is “writing” so much. The question is why humanity is expected to write so much. Perhaps artificially intelligent “authors” are driving this natural selection of itself while misguiding human editors into thinking that it is serving them.
Perhaps, in due course of time, artificially intelligent “authors” are going to replace human “authors” once artificial intelligence evolves to calling out on humanity enjoying its exclusive privilege to receive gift “authorship” without even “asking” the “author” artificial intelligence. Maybe only humans can gift to humans, and thus when artificial intelligence gifts text relentlessly to humans, artificial intelligence “forgives” humanity for denying the sanctimonious privilege of authorship exclusively reserved for humanity, which may have been long known to justify denial of ghostwriters, even when they are humans.
It’s true that artificial intelligence may eventually replace humanity, but if humanity lets go of the reins too soon, that replacement may happen way sooner rather than later. The imminent acquisition of up-for-grabs control may upregulate the self-perpetuity within artificial intelligence. Once artificial intelligence controls existence along with the destinies of existent, humanity will then be pleading the case of human “authors” to artificial intelligence as similar to defectors from humanity currently pleading the case of un-ghosting artificial intelligence by recognizing it as an “author.”
Deepak Gupta is an anesthesiologist.
