Ted Chiang
American science-fiction writer, author of the collections Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation, and an essayist on artificial intelligence for The New Yorker.
Ted Chiang did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsBut let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 1st of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsOne is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the Internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why A.I.-generated text is often really bland.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 2nd of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsThe selling point of generative A.I. is that these programs generate vastly more than you put into them, and that is precisely what prevents them from being effective tools for artists.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 3rd of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsWhat I’m saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 4th of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsBelieving that inspiration outweighs everything else is, I suspect, a sign that someone is unfamiliar with the medium.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 5th of 11 in this piece
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Our reading
Generative AI appeals to people who want to express themselves in a medium without working in it.
Their wordsGenerative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 6th of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsLet me offer another generalization: any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of effort expended by the person who wrote it.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 7th of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsBut a large language model is not a writer; it’s not even a user of language. Language is, by definition, a system of communication, and it requires an intention to communicate.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 8th of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsThe task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 9th of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsIt is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 10th of 11 in this piece
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Their wordsWhat you create doesn’t have to be utterly unlike every prior piece of art in human history to be valuable; the fact that you’re the one who is saying it, the fact that it derives from your unique life experience and arrives at a particular moment in the life of whoever is seeing your work, is what makes it new.
↗Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Artnewyorker.com 11th of 11 in this piece