Rock Legend Nick Cave Excoriates San Francisco’s ChatGPT ‘Travesty’

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Jan. 17, 2023 | Joshua Bote

[nickcarraway]

Nick Cave, the seminal Australian rock figure who helmed the Bad Seeds, had plenty to say about ChatGPT, the text-based chat tech developed by buzzy San Francisco startup OpenAI.

In a letter published Monday in his "The Red Hand Files" newsletter, Cave talked about the humanity of art, the “emerging horror of AI” and ChatGPT’s “grotesque mockery” of his oeuvre.

A New Zealand-based fan sent him a song “written” by the already notorious bot in the style of Cave’s work. To say that the songwriter was unhappy with the song would be underselling his fury.

Cave begins by noting that he’s repeatedly been sent various iterations of “as written by Nick Cave” songs. To put it bluntly, Cave says the song in question “sucks.”

“What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary but it cannot create a genuine song,” he wrote in perhaps one of the more brutal callouts of the technology. “It could perhaps in time create a song that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from an original, but it will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque.”

[sushiman]

Cave’s “ The Boatman Calls “ album is a masterpiece . I must play it later on today Japan time .

[sushiman]

One of my fave tracks by Nick : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qap4DCbhA4U

[Chode]

nice

[Mr. K]

I am wondering if you had just told it that the question DID contain all the information it needed, what it would have done.

[Chode]

The Mercy Seat -— OK i heard Cash do that, good stuff

[Fuzz]

Then you’ve missed out.

[caver]

I will check him out. I’m not much of an alternative fan, but I will still give him a listen.
So much music, so little time.

[Fuzz]

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=kf_zVzvYWuw&feature=share

Try this one.

Jubilee Street, live in Copenhagen.

[ConservativeDude]

that’s not my experience

but in my time on it (only a few weeks) I’ve seen it give qualifiers to writing poetry which it didn’t do when I first got on it and I’ve also seen it get a fact wrong (nothing controversial or opinion oriented) and then I asked it to doublecheck and it came back with the correct answer and said it was sorry about the previous answer....

in my experience it would depend on how you ask the question

you can’t pick a fight with it and it’s also not going to easily weigh in on things that are clearly in the realm of opinion

but if you use it for sort of basic research and straight up facts (like I do) its an amazing tool and I’ve used it in this capacity for several projects generally in the energy realm and it never maligns oil and gas....and when facts about the benefits of oil and gas are relevant to the discussion, it never hesitates to cough them up

all that said, here soon i will push the envelope on oil and gas facts and see if it goes green fanatic

[WoofDog123]

another post was from a physicist who described how he got it to invent a property which definitely did not exist - with citations which also did not exist but sounded credible.

if I run into it I will link it, it was weeks ago, either on elon or pmarca’s twitters.

[ConservativeDude]

I think the key is to use it for basic foundational research of broad trends....not drilling down on specifics too much. basically journalistic depth.

I think journalists should be very afraid.

I don’t think scholars should be.

Used like that, I’ve found it to be a great tool.....

[Oystir]

You’ve missed out