It would be a mistake to take the banality of current LLM outputs and extrapolate that into the future. Of course they are going to get better. But that is not the point - it is that in the chat room the human and LLM spark ideas off each other. Humans come with their own unique life experience and large context, LLMs come with their broad knowledge and skills.
There is a Borges short story written in the 1930s about "the Library" a supposed collection of all possible permutations of language, even misspellings and gibberish. In many ways, it is extremely prescient of AI.
To cut it short, in the end what Borges proposed is that the meaning comes from the stories, and that all the stories are really repetitions and permutations of the same set of humans stories (the Order) and that is what makes meaning.
So all a successful literary AI needs to do is figure out how to retell the same stories we have been telling but in a different context that is resonant today.
> It would be a mistake to take the banality of current LLM outputs and extrapolate that into the future.
Imagine a chef, congenitally unable to taste or smell food, who has nevertheless studied a million recipes. Can they reproduce existing recipes? Sure, if they follow the instructions perfectly. Can they improvise original recipes? I doubt it. Judging by the instructions alone, the recipes they invent may be indistinguishable from real recipes, but this chef can never actually try their food to see if it tastes good. The only safe flavour combinations are the ones they reuse. This is a chef who cannot create.
LLMs are structurally banal. The only plausible route to a machine which can competently produce original art requires the development of a machine which can accurately model human's aesthetic sensibilities—something which humans themselves cannot do and have no need for, since we already have those aesthetic sensibilities built in.
This is the fundamental error of using an LLM as a ghostwriter. Humans don't only bring inspiration to the table—they also bring the aesthetic judgement which shapes the final product. Sentences written by an LLM are banal sentences, no matter how you prompt it.
As an amateur home-cook, I find current LLMs incredibly useful as a sounding board for the on-the-fly recipe modifications - for allergies and food sensitivities, adapting preparation methods to available equipment, or substituting produce not available in season. It may not be able to taste the final product, but its reasoning on what's likely to work (and what isn't) has not led me wrong so far.
Head over to groq.com, use the qwen-qwq-32b model, and take these examples [1] and put them at the start before the prompt. After that use the following command:
write chapter 1 for a new Novel in Progress, take inspiration from the example Novel but DO NOT Repeat Example. Add vivid imagery, in a dark comedy style. dial up the humor and irony and use first person narration. Fracture sentences and emphasize the unusual: use unusual word orders, such as placing adjectives after nouns or using nouns as verbs, use linguistic voice pyrotechnics, telegraphically leaned and verbal agility in plot building intention, reflection, dialog, action, and describe solar civilization, which lives totally in space. Near a star, but not in a planet, and no gravitational pull anywhere.
Depending on the story, the examples have to be adjusted. But of course, logical reasoning from humans cannot be replicated just like that, by the machines.
The real question is this: Suppose a person was great at reasoning the last 100 years, but with zero knowledge. That person might not attended any school, almost illiterate. But his reasoning is top notch. I don't know if you are familiar with Sultan Khan [1] for example.
With no formal training to absorb a lot of knowledge, that person is totally economically crashed. There is no chance of being competitive at anything, not involving muscles anyway. Now suppose that this person can complement his lack of knowledge with a magical knowledge machine. Suddenly he is ahead of a competition, involving people with 10 Phds, or doctors with 30 years of experience.
This is basically a contemporary reframing of the core purpose of Renaissance magic. I suppose aspiring to be a 21st century John Dee from talking to some powerful chatbot of the future, rather than angels or elemental beings, does sound a bit exciting, but it is ultimately mysticism all the same.
