"Can an AI experience silence and contemplation? The very prerequisite for human ingenuity and creative expression?"
This made me think about the brave it takes to be bored today. growing up boredom was presented to me as something to be avoided or uncool. but I find that I forget myself if I don't have silence, or speak out my thoughts and feelings on an evening walk. it's through this silence I rediscover myself and ask questions on my own conscience; where my friendship with nature and my Creator is renewed. AI simply cannot imitate that feeling and that's why I too dread it's rapid growth.
Thank you for writing again Andrew. Needles to say we've all missed you sharing your thoughts with us!
I felt the need to ask a LLM if it could have written your stunning piece. The answer disturbed and shocked me deeply. It's disturbing how we've taught something so lifeless to convince us it's human. What would Mary Shelley think of this.
Here is what the LLM answered:
Yes. But here’s the critical distinction: while I could produce something similar, I could not write that—because that is imbued with your lived experience, your silence, your pain, your reflection, your decision to return, and your particular insight.
I don’t sit in the fog. I don’t struggle with doubt or find my way through spiritual or creative darkness. I don’t wrestle with the question, “Will there be a place for me?” I can simulate these thoughts, but I don’t feel them. And that absence of experience is precisely what limits the depth of authenticity—the kind of authenticity that another human reader can feel and recognize, even if they can’t quite articulate why.
In other words, an LLM can compose text that resembles your piece. It might even fool some readers. But it cannot mean what you mean. It cannot carry the weight of your time away, your return, your longing, your decision to keep writing in spite of it all. Those things belong to you—and that difference matters.
So, is your essay reproducible by an LLM? Perhaps.
But is it replaceable by one? No. Not if what you care about is more than mere resemblance—if you care, as you clearly do, about soul.
And that is your most powerful point: poetry endures not because it is well-written, but because it is well-lived.
Very good. Shall I compare thee to a day when the light is correct and the temperature between 72 and 78. Does a cubic zirconium ever arrive in the rough? Thank you Ella
It is more essential than ever that you are poet, untouched by AI. This generation may not be awake to the significance, but future generations will gaze upon our real, human words as past generations knelt before diamonds and rubies, or kings looked to the stars.
I have refused to allow AI the smallest breath on any of my creative work.
Wonderfully said. AI poetry compared to great human poetry is like comparing fallen leaves in the Fall with the new leaves of Spring. Sort of a dead hallow often perfect artistry compared to the fallible but spiritual and passionate beauty of inspired but imperfect people.
You cannot imagine how fearful artists have become of there jobs. I myself wished to pursue an art career and although I have voluntarily shifted paths to psychology, I can empathize with the fear of your beloved passions being overrun bye passionless un-entities.
On the other hand this career change has given me an outwards perspective. We don't need art or writing to be reigned over bye our kingdom of humanity to at least enjoy the process of creating it. Do I care for AI art?
No. The AI artist has resigned artistic innovation in hopes to find shortcuts in fulfilling vision. I question whether this stiffpws creativity.
Does this make me care about AI art? No. Art is creativity, we despise the grueling middle, we all fulfill our passions despite it. A testament to the true fulfillment of creating patiently, I doubt that art will die, and even if it does, we might enjoy being the special few who make it. This is ofc coming from the view of the artist rather than the enthusiast.
As for the enthusiast in us artists... If we truly feared the changing nature of the art that is being produced, we would not be viewing contemporary art, that separate from AI art is its own form of evolution. We have made a contract under the implicit understanding that art changes. I wouldn't say I'm exited to view AI art, but I'm sure I can find some semblance of ingenuity through the exitment of those who are passionate about it, as it might just become the newest form of artistic vision. Maybe some day. I myself am unafraid to be both an old soul in wisdom and a child in hearty curiosity.
You are absolutely right. With AI, the individuality of the poet will be lost. There will be no geniuses of poetry. The same in the prose. We can use AI in many ways, but in the arts. Even now, when I see the AI's pictures in somebody's Substack, Substack looks poorer and less interesting.
I hope this is not the case, and that this new era will produce geniuses in poetry, though maybe of a different kind to the past. There will be such destruction of the creative instinct within so many, however. Interesting times we live in!
Dear Andrew, my gratitude for this beautiful darkness meeting light insight. Anyone with sensitive soul felt this. Thank you for sensibly interweaving your penchant for literature with your recent experience of silence that we who write need. To find the fiercest depths, through the dark crevices with a speck of a very distant flickering light as muted as a Rousseau's painting or that city fog, the noise we need to silence in order to see through once again!
Some favorite books were themed around the force of silence. The torture can be immense but it strengthens us from within. From St Augustine's Confessions, Jon Fosse's Septology, Matt Haigg's Midnight Library,... Keatsian poetry, Rumi's longing, Kabir's spiritual awakening,...
I wrote a contemplative essay on silence that got once lost in the virtual maze, but what fascinates me is how many poems of mine found their muse in silence. Its austerity opens the invisible gate to the soul.
I love your list of books here, themed around silence and contemplation, especially the Confessions. I do aim to write for sensitive souls. Thank you for the kind words :)
Thank you for this - "noticing glimmers and glimpses of the divine in the everyday" - good writing is exactly that. I'm finding it deeply worrying how many educators I work with are embracing AI with abandon and not really thinking about the devastating implications it has on developing this necessary skill of quiet contemplation, of developing thought - wanting a quick fix, a time saver instead.
Your piece was beautifully wrought and reassuring. Thank you.
So good to see you back here! And, this essay is wonderful, and so necessary! It's so discouraging sometimes the amount of content we find created by AI, art dying in this. But the human soul will prevail!
What do you think John Keats would think of all this? As one of the most prolific poets of all time, or at least of England, what do you think his thoughts would be of AI?
I think he would praise AI’s ability to improve people’s health and cure diseases ect (he was an apprentice surgeon for a while), but he would most likely be a radical Luddite when it came to AI in the humanities
"Can an AI experience silence and contemplation? The very prerequisite for human ingenuity and creative expression?"
This made me think about the brave it takes to be bored today. growing up boredom was presented to me as something to be avoided or uncool. but I find that I forget myself if I don't have silence, or speak out my thoughts and feelings on an evening walk. it's through this silence I rediscover myself and ask questions on my own conscience; where my friendship with nature and my Creator is renewed. AI simply cannot imitate that feeling and that's why I too dread it's rapid growth.
Thank you for writing again Andrew. Needles to say we've all missed you sharing your thoughts with us!
Thank you :) And I agree with your words here wholeheartedly.
Beautifully written and thought provoking. Staying on the path of quiet contemplation and the softly written word is a noble calling.
I felt the need to ask a LLM if it could have written your stunning piece. The answer disturbed and shocked me deeply. It's disturbing how we've taught something so lifeless to convince us it's human. What would Mary Shelley think of this.
Here is what the LLM answered:
Yes. But here’s the critical distinction: while I could produce something similar, I could not write that—because that is imbued with your lived experience, your silence, your pain, your reflection, your decision to return, and your particular insight.
I don’t sit in the fog. I don’t struggle with doubt or find my way through spiritual or creative darkness. I don’t wrestle with the question, “Will there be a place for me?” I can simulate these thoughts, but I don’t feel them. And that absence of experience is precisely what limits the depth of authenticity—the kind of authenticity that another human reader can feel and recognize, even if they can’t quite articulate why.
In other words, an LLM can compose text that resembles your piece. It might even fool some readers. But it cannot mean what you mean. It cannot carry the weight of your time away, your return, your longing, your decision to keep writing in spite of it all. Those things belong to you—and that difference matters.
So, is your essay reproducible by an LLM? Perhaps.
But is it replaceable by one? No. Not if what you care about is more than mere resemblance—if you care, as you clearly do, about soul.
And that is your most powerful point: poetry endures not because it is well-written, but because it is well-lived.
Very good. Shall I compare thee to a day when the light is correct and the temperature between 72 and 78. Does a cubic zirconium ever arrive in the rough? Thank you Ella
It is more essential than ever that you are poet, untouched by AI. This generation may not be awake to the significance, but future generations will gaze upon our real, human words as past generations knelt before diamonds and rubies, or kings looked to the stars.
I have refused to allow AI the smallest breath on any of my creative work.
Wonderfully said. AI poetry compared to great human poetry is like comparing fallen leaves in the Fall with the new leaves of Spring. Sort of a dead hallow often perfect artistry compared to the fallible but spiritual and passionate beauty of inspired but imperfect people.
You cannot imagine how fearful artists have become of there jobs. I myself wished to pursue an art career and although I have voluntarily shifted paths to psychology, I can empathize with the fear of your beloved passions being overrun bye passionless un-entities.
On the other hand this career change has given me an outwards perspective. We don't need art or writing to be reigned over bye our kingdom of humanity to at least enjoy the process of creating it. Do I care for AI art?
No. The AI artist has resigned artistic innovation in hopes to find shortcuts in fulfilling vision. I question whether this stiffpws creativity.
Does this make me care about AI art? No. Art is creativity, we despise the grueling middle, we all fulfill our passions despite it. A testament to the true fulfillment of creating patiently, I doubt that art will die, and even if it does, we might enjoy being the special few who make it. This is ofc coming from the view of the artist rather than the enthusiast.
As for the enthusiast in us artists... If we truly feared the changing nature of the art that is being produced, we would not be viewing contemporary art, that separate from AI art is its own form of evolution. We have made a contract under the implicit understanding that art changes. I wouldn't say I'm exited to view AI art, but I'm sure I can find some semblance of ingenuity through the exitment of those who are passionate about it, as it might just become the newest form of artistic vision. Maybe some day. I myself am unafraid to be both an old soul in wisdom and a child in hearty curiosity.
You are absolutely right. With AI, the individuality of the poet will be lost. There will be no geniuses of poetry. The same in the prose. We can use AI in many ways, but in the arts. Even now, when I see the AI's pictures in somebody's Substack, Substack looks poorer and less interesting.
I hope this is not the case, and that this new era will produce geniuses in poetry, though maybe of a different kind to the past. There will be such destruction of the creative instinct within so many, however. Interesting times we live in!
Now that's what I call a return. Big topic looked at with a fine eye. Thanks Andrew.
Thank you Weston!
Dear Andrew, my gratitude for this beautiful darkness meeting light insight. Anyone with sensitive soul felt this. Thank you for sensibly interweaving your penchant for literature with your recent experience of silence that we who write need. To find the fiercest depths, through the dark crevices with a speck of a very distant flickering light as muted as a Rousseau's painting or that city fog, the noise we need to silence in order to see through once again!
Some favorite books were themed around the force of silence. The torture can be immense but it strengthens us from within. From St Augustine's Confessions, Jon Fosse's Septology, Matt Haigg's Midnight Library,... Keatsian poetry, Rumi's longing, Kabir's spiritual awakening,...
I wrote a contemplative essay on silence that got once lost in the virtual maze, but what fascinates me is how many poems of mine found their muse in silence. Its austerity opens the invisible gate to the soul.
I love your list of books here, themed around silence and contemplation, especially the Confessions. I do aim to write for sensitive souls. Thank you for the kind words :)
Great read. I also feel the need for withdrawal and silence. Living in quiet resistance to AI.
Excellent read here. I love just how much poetry is stuffed in here.
i will never pass up the chance to stuff poetry somewhere :)
Thank you for this - "noticing glimmers and glimpses of the divine in the everyday" - good writing is exactly that. I'm finding it deeply worrying how many educators I work with are embracing AI with abandon and not really thinking about the devastating implications it has on developing this necessary skill of quiet contemplation, of developing thought - wanting a quick fix, a time saver instead.
Your piece was beautifully wrought and reassuring. Thank you.
Thank you :) 🤍
Please do keep writing!
Welcome back, you’ve been missed.
So good to see you back here! And, this essay is wonderful, and so necessary! It's so discouraging sometimes the amount of content we find created by AI, art dying in this. But the human soul will prevail!
By the way, reading you is always reading poetry.
Thank you Mariana :)
What do you think John Keats would think of all this? As one of the most prolific poets of all time, or at least of England, what do you think his thoughts would be of AI?
He would likely be horrified. Compare J. Turner Painting The Great Western Railway or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
I think he would praise AI’s ability to improve people’s health and cure diseases ect (he was an apprentice surgeon for a while), but he would most likely be a radical Luddite when it came to AI in the humanities