Trees of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life

Recently, as the new managing editor for a small literary journal, I’ve been forced stop ignoring all the hoo-ha, and actually research burgeoning capabilities of Artificial Intelligence. I’ve experienced growing unease as I learn more about the Large Language Models (LLM) and Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPT) that are currently flooding the writing tool market.

I’ve come to believe that how we choose to use, and not to use, these new AI tools is a vital matter for personal reflection and discernment by Catholic writers.

I keep hearing new resonances in an old story:

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.'” Genesis 2:15-17 (1)

What if our loving Father God wasn’t just warning Adam about his own personal death? What if He meant the wholesale death of a species, the only species created in the image of God, who can directly connect, converse with and praise our divine maker?

Robert Hugh Benson’s dystopian novel, Lord of the World, published in 1907, offers a chilling vision of how that could happen. Christian Classics Reprint Edition (February 5, 2016) carries a quote from Pope Francis on its cover: “I advise you to read it.” (2)

Human use of mechanical intelligence probably began when the first caveman picked up a piece of metal to mark a rock. Tools that provide information have been employed by human intelligence to guide us across oceans, and into outer space.

But computers are now so much a part of our mentality that we rarely stop to think, before embarking on the next learning curve to take advantage of the latest innovation.

We’ve forgotten warnings by early 20th-century writers like Benson, E.M. Forster, and Isaac Asimov. Contemporary Canadian Catholic novelist Michael D. O’Brien continues to explore the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, among other threats, in his dystopian novels today.

Many of the tools we use routinely as authors incorporate limited versions of AI, for example, Word document formatting, Google searches, and editing tools like ProWritingAid. But the explosion of LLM and GPT technology that has erupted into publishing over the past twelve months represents a seismic shift. We ignore that reconfiguration of tectonic plates at our own peril.

 To foster personal discernment and community reflection, I offer a few important points for Catholic authors to consider.

I. There are significant risks of unintentional and unrecognized plagiarism in the use of GPT-generated content. On September 20, 2023, The Authors Guild, America’s “oldest and largest professional organization for published writers,” and seventeen individually-named best-selling authors, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for violation of copyright, by use of their published work to ‘train’ its LLM data base without permission or licensure (3).

II. Several of my colleagues in another Christian writer’s organization, who publish primarily in traditional paper-and-board format, are insisting that their Christian publishers insert new language into their publishing contracts, stating that their original content “may not be used to ‘train’ Artificial Intelligence.”(4)

III. Amazon Publishing recently established new rules requiring disclosure of AI-generated content in all of its formats (5).

IV. Use of new tools to estimate the percentages of AI-generated content in submissions is rapidly becoming ‘standard industry practice’ in higher education, scientific journals, and major publishing houses. AI-produced work cannot be copyrighted. (6)

V. In a marketing pitch to authors, DDIY (“Don’t Do It Yourself”) — just one in a multitude of GPT-generated-content tool suppliers — claims that 66% of bloggers and social media posters do use AI-generated content (7).

VI. If you choose to use AI-generated content in work you publish under your own name, a pre-emptive check with detection tools could offer a valuable heads-up. You might decide to think a little longer, edit a lot more thoroughly, or maybe even examine your conscience.

VII. But beware. Many plagiarism and GPT-generated-content detection tools are also AI-based. Your original content that you put into testing software might be Saved by default. Then it can be used to ‘train’ future LLM data bases, unless you know how to use, and trust, the program’s method for removing it immediately after analysis.

The constant bleat from AI tool merchants is, “This will save you so much time!“

What’s the hurry? We are built for eternity.

Sooner or later, an efficiency-obsessed Artificial Intelligence may decide that human writers are too slow to tolerate, and remove us from the process altogether, except as consumers for their endless recycling.  

After all, we do need to eat and sleep, pray and love, too.

But we received our Kairos instructions from the very beginning of Chronos time. We’ve even been granted fruit from the Tree of Life, through Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, to sustain us along the way.

May the Holy Spirit guide you, as you write.

© Copyright 2023 by Margaret King Zacharias

Featured Image: Cloister forest path, Glenstal Benedictine Abbey, Murroe, County Limerick, Ireland. Author’s personal photo, March 2023.

Notes:

1. https://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/genesis/documents/bible_genesis_en.html#:~:text=%5B2%3A15%5D%20The%20LORD,of%20it%20you%20shall%20die.%22
2. https://www.amazon.com/Lord-World-Robert-Hugh-Benson/dp/0870612980/ref=sr_1_4?crid=104NVIC6RDOZV&keywords=robert+hugh+benson+lord+of+the+world&qid=1695840448&sprefix=robert+hugh+benson+lord+of+the+world%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-4
3. https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-and-authors-file-class-action-suit-against-openai/
4. Personal communications.
5. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390#:~:text=Artificial%20intelligence%20(AI)%20content%20(,and%20interior%20images%20and%20artwork.
6. Personal communications, and
   https://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2023/09/publishers-test-ai-tools-for-in-house-processe
7. https://ddiy.co/ai-writing-tips/