We already know how it works: neither television put an end to cinemas, nor e-books with paper books, nor zoom classes with classrooms. But the appearance of artificial intelligence in the field of artistic creation, it awakens the voices of the apocalyptic. A program like ChatGPT Can you compose a literary text if we give you the right coordinates, imitating the writers of magic realism, for example? can you create a drawing “Picasso-like” or compose the lyrics of a song with the same emotional charge as a person? Will artistic works as they are currently conceived disappear?
With one million users in less than a week, this platform has opened the debate, because the artificial intelligence It not only writes programming codes, but also can write essays, compose videos, create logo and countless other tasks in seconds with more or less successful results.
In the midst of this debate, Ana Santos AramburoDirector of National Library of Spainwho has been running this institution for ten years and has started an interesting process of digitizing its content, spoke to GlobeLiveMedia about it.
-There is, thanks to artificial intelligence, the possibility of a computer intervening in the process of creating a text, even when trying to write a literary work, as happened recently with an essay in the GPT system, which made a poem “in the style of Garcia Lorca”. Will artificial intelligence mark a before and after in writing or will it be necessary to continue to rely on the human component in creating a book?
-Without a doubt, the artificial intelligence it will change a lot of things and it will be, in fact it is already the case, a turning point in the composition of written texts. Pero no tengo duda de que se va a tener que seguir contando con las personas, no solo para seguir “alimentando” a las máquinas sino también para determinar sus normas de entrenamiento en las que deben imperar los valores éticos de los que, obviously, carece a machine.
-If this process progresses and perfects, will it have any impact on the future of the book? Could he become a threat to the writing profession?
-It can be more than a threat a challenge. Machines do not actually create texts, but use texts written by people to compose their own, so you necessarily need to have large amounts of data and content to do so. If at some point the creative capacity of human beings disappeared, the potential of AI would be very limited and the parallelism that any artistic or literary current should have with the society of its time would disappear. However, I think it will have an impact on the writing of other types of texts such as technical writings, reports or even academic or school texts which, after having been examined by a human intelligence, can provide a greater variety of content and even the possibility of these being considered in different ways.
-As the director of one of the most important national libraries, how do you think artificial intelligence could have an impact on the process of classification and storage of information?
– He certainly will. The technical process of materials that come into a library is one of the most expensive that is done in a library. On the other hand, bibliographic catalogs contain a large amount of standardized information, which can facilitate the task of processing and classifying documents that come into a library. Although we do not know when it will take place, because these developments are directly related to the economic benefit that they can produce and perhaps in this field they are not profitable at the beginning.
– The book on paper has already shown – like the cinema in front of the TV – that it retains its faithful. Do you think there is an important generational component in this issue or that many young readers will remain faithful to the book object?
-I think the book as an object is loved by all generations, it is immersed in our collective imagination as something perfect for reading; in fact, since the codex replaced the scroll as a medium of writing around the 3rd century, no better format has been found for reading. He book on paper It is also an object of beauty, both in its typographic composition and in its illustrations and in its design, which is why, in addition to the pleasure of reading, it provides aesthetic joy and, therefore, emotion and enjoyment increases.
-You mentioned in a recent interview that reading statistics and the number of book sales have increased in Spain. Is this phenomenon somehow related to the Covid19 pandemic and post-pandemic? Do you think there is a sort of greening of culture and artistic events in general (concerts, visits to museums) as has happened historically after the major crises?
-Of course during the pandemic, and especially during the lockdown, reading rates have increased a lot and the publishing industry has seen significant growth. Perhaps before this surprising and unexpected emotional impact, we had to search for answers. And what better way to look for them than to take refuge in the creative capacity of the human being and find beauty. It not only gives us aesthetic pleasure, but also ideas and knowledge, which leads us to think and helps us to understand situations. In the worst moments of our life, we seek comfort and this is provided by contemplating the world of the most sublime: the creative capacity of the human being.
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