some non-poetic thoughts on prompt-based text generators

Writing is a social contract between writer & reader that only the writer is obliged to uphold: you write forward across space & time & hope the words find a home in the heart or mind (or maybe both) of whomever reads your words & for this reason & this reason alone writing is an innately human endeavor, like most artistic endeavors. AI & LLMs are not writing machines; they are algorithmic word probability machines that can only regurgitate what they have consumed. Yes, what they do is impressive, but it is not writing. There is no sense of authorial presence in what an AI/LMM churns out, no sense of authorial intention or personal sensibility; there is no there there. The friendly, constructed persona of the machine is a lie intended to get you to engage more, to feed the machine so it can turn out more glurge & slop & extract both human & natural resources in pursuit of enriching technocrats who worship consumption as their path to self-aggrandizement. Siri is not your friend,…