BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The best books in the world were not written on desktops or laptops. They were handwritten and printed on traditional printing machines, mostly Heidelberg ones. Even before the advent of the machines some of the best books were written by hand and printed on parchments or goat skins. According to a recent survey by a books website, 10 of the classic books mentioned there were published before this century.
Ethiopia being one of the first countries in the world that has started using its own scripts to write books, it has now sunk to the level of low literary output simply because it could not create the auspicious condition for the flourishing of arts and literature while technological backwardness is weighing heavily on out artistic productions both quantitatively and qualitatively. In my effort to show that classic books were not written by computers but by men long before computers became household items, I stumbled upon the latest list posted by a website called “Book Reviews”. In the introductory part of the article there are useful tips why people should read good books or classics with immortal lessons on life, people and situations.
One of the passages about reading says that, “Reading has the power to transform our lives. It can take us on incredible journeys to new worlds, introduce us to fascinating characters, and challenge us to think about the world around us. The books we read can inspire us and offer us hope and change the way we see ourselves and others.” The blog further discusses the impact of literature on our lives by saying that, “Literature, is more than just entertainment. It has the power to educate, inspire, and transform us. When we read stories we are exposed to new ideas, different cultures, and diverse perspectives. We learn about the struggles and triumphs of others, and we see our own lives reflected back at us in new and surprising ways.”
The list of books chosen by the blog writer on the basis the above considerations is not very long. Its interest lies, as I said above, in showing that the books were published long before the advent of computers and less the current Artificial Intelligence writing assistance software.
- The Great Gatsby by Scott. Fitzgerald
- To Kill a Mocking bird By Harper Lee
- 1984 By Gorge Orwell
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I am sure many people in this country have read these books when they were younger and eager to know what life looked like during what critics call the Jazz Age in America when writers like Fitzgerald, Hemingway and others were the craze of the literary world. The list goes on with additional titles in the non-fiction and memoir categories.
I tried to look at the best books in Ethiopian languages and Obviously all of those considered to be classics were written way before even the modern typewriter was used. The books can be counted on the fingers of both hands and it is difficult to imagine how these books could be invented by machines when there was not a single word processing machine in the country. The same goes to European and American classics, most of which were written long before Einstein invented his Relativity Theory.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that book writing is a profession that requires talent, passion and hard work, endurance or resilience in the face of poverty, overcome writer blocks and the underdeveloped literary market particularly in Africa and Ethiopia as well. Technology may encourage and facilitate the work of writers or cut production time and improve editing quality. But it cannot by itself create literature or write books by itself. Recent news about the creation of what is called Artificial Intelligence and its contribution to writing was so fascinating to me that I instantly went on a Google search spree to know what the hell is going on this particular field of human endeavor that may advance or hinder literature in a developing country like ours or elsewhere in Africa.
First I started reading about Artificial Intelligence and collected the following information. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision.” In what is entitled ‘best definition of AI’ I found the following information, ‘Artificial Intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision making capabilities of the human mind.”
Another article entitled, “The Future of Creative Writing with AI Technology” says that, “As a writer, have you ever wondered what the future of creative writing holds? Will we eventually see robots producing best-selling novels or will AI simply help humans become more efficient and imaginative writers? While some may argue that AI could never replicate the creativity and emotional depth of, others believe that the technology is rapidly advancing and could revolutionize the field of creative writing.”
The questions raised in the above passage are not only critical but also clear to answer. For a non-computer-savvy guy like me, I am of the opinion that machines will never replace men and do the jobs that the latter are doing as efficiently as people do. When we come to writing fiction or nonfiction, the material for the books comes from personal human experience that is accumulated and processed by the human mind.
It would therefore be hard if not impossible to imagine a machine that has lived a human experience and writes about its experience without being fed by inputs of human experiences that are only possible by the human mind. Machines may be as smart as one can imagine them to be but they will never substitute the human mind as the latter cannot do what machines are doing the way they are programmed by human beings.
Moreover, books are the reflections of human thought and human experience while machines have no lives of their own unless men transfer their knowledge to them to give them a false impression of being independent. There has never been and will never be an independently thinking machine however smart it might be, simply because it will always be dependent on human thought. However in case machines would write novels in the future those will be stories lived by men and transferred to machines via AI tools.
Shall we, computer users in general and writers in particular, be concerned about AI taking over the work of writers and turning them jobless? I doubt whether this will be truly the case. True recent events show the direction and extent of AI subversion in the creative industry. The recent protest against layoffs of creative workers in the Hollywood film industry is a case in point. As AI does the work of some of those humans, it makes them redundant and liable for layoff. This is an alarming phenomenon indeed.
Yet, it is neither a new or unprecedented event. The same thing happened when machines were invented during the industrial revolution, displacing some of the workers and leading to violent protests. But this phenomenon was fortunately short-lived as the redundant workers were hired by other industries where the revolution had created new jobs. This is how capitalism developed in the past and how it will develop in the future. It will however never manage to layoff all workers and create a world where only machines rule the day or control human destiny. Machines may fight wars but there will never be a “machines-only” warfare in the future. The same goes to other human endeavors like writing, producing movies or doing the chores.
In this age of incredible machines that are trying to replace what is human endeavor in literature or in any other fields, critical opinions are being expressed by both amateurs and insiders of the new technology as to the dangers it poses for the future of human creativity. No other than the richest scientist in the world, Elon Musk recently said that he is deeply concerned when he thinks of the future of AI in human life. Will AI replace human mind or will machines win over man is not yet a settled issues. Yet, present trends still indicate that the prospects might be alarming.
Most, if not all of us may not understand the danger AI poses to humanity at this stage. But, technology erudite and scientists like Elon Musk, inventor and owner of Tesla Car Company and Space-X outer space travel agency might be the best authority in these matters. And his opinions are highly valued.
Modern technology is like a knife that cuts on both sides although it may cut deeply or lightly depending on the tastes and appetites of the consumers of new technology. We can perhaps extend this metaphor of a knife from individual consumers to the culture of countries that are forced to adopt the new technologies whether they like it or not. There will always be a need to keep the right balance between machines and men. There are limits to what machines can achieve and no limit to what men can. The creator cannot be replaced by the machine he has created.
Whether here in Africa or in the developed world, human experience will ultimately take the upper hand in the ongoing dispute between those who think machines are equal or superior to men and those who believe that machines are not important at all. We need to be pragmatic and swim following the middle course. Let machines help us do what we cannot because of speed, time or similar considerations. Let AI speeds up writing and editing. Let them help us launch spaceships into the space. Let them helps us produce self-driven cars that can fly up into the air. We human beings are bound to prevail over machines. And more so in the creative fields like arts and literature because we can only imagine and write about the human conditions.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 11 JUNE 2023
