Doran van Nifterick

To round up this practice I wish to reflect on automatic writing by connecting it to AI, more specifically chatGPT.

In class we were instructed to do an automatic writing exercise, which, to be honest, I experienced to be quite frustrating.
Trying very hard not to think too much about what I wrote down I noticed how hard it is to try to write without aiming for some sense, logic and palatability when writing.
I can imagine not being the only one who switched languages during the exercise or diverted to drawing at some point. In an attempt to not think too much I wrote down that Ed Sheeran should go f*ck himself... the poor man hasn't done anything to deserve that.

As AI and chatGPT were mentioned a few times in classes I came to wonder how ChatGPT would handle automatic writing.
I use this website to present some observations I made from a long conversation in which I attempted to let ChatGPT do some automatic writing.

CHATGPT AUTOMATIC

WRITING MATCH-UP GAME

CLICK ON NAMES AND DRAG THEM TO THE AUDIO YOU THINK MATCHES THE AUTHOR!

Besides being ever so polite, chatGPT answered in a very ambiguous manner.
It names the absence of conscious thought or intentional planning as a property to the automatic writing method and it mentions its own ability to generate text in a more free-flowing manner but then it says that the results might divert from more intentionally crafted writing…

The use of the term ´´intentional´´is what stands out to me. Is intention not what chatgpt is coded to project and contain in its answers. ´´ My aim is to assist and provide information or create content according to your requests.´´ is what it tells me when I ask it whether it is getting frustrated by my numerous requests to try automatic writing.

The chatGPT automatic generated text is extremely well written in the sense that it is lyrical, logical yet it also has a dreamy flow to it.
´´There's a river of emotion flowing, coursing through the valleys of the mind. It carries the weight of unexpressed feelings and the echoes of forgotten laughter. The pen becomes a boat, navigating the currents of sentiment, leaving ripples in its wake.´´
It describes the possible experience of automatic writing, generating a text that resembles the ´´tapping into the subconscious or spiritual realms´´, just like it describes automatic writing to be

ChatGPT is also unable to write anything of that sort as it is generating an answer that fits the description of automatic writing.
It gave me pages upon pages of rephrasing of the initial description of automatic writing. Throwing in some metaphors such as ´´weaving a tapestry of dreams and uncertainties. ´´ and one of my favorites being ´´The ink spills like stardust, forming constellations of words that shimmer in the vast expanse of the imaginary cosmos.´´
WHAT INK?

I started to become a little frustrated, asking if it could write it like a human being.
ChatGPT is painfully aware of the inherent imperfection to human existence, so it added mundane observations into the generated automatic writing: ´´Coffee stains on the notepad, a reminder of the morning's contemplation.´´ Now the text actually felt like a stream of thoughts that I could have myself. Yet that is exactly what I was trying to avoid while doing the exercise myself, the generated text still made too much sense to me.

At some point I started feeling not only frustrated but uncomfortable in this conversation with this incredibly patient and polite generator. It was SO happy to help me, even after my 50th request to regenerate the automatic writing. The endless patience was just confirming what I had assumed from the start, which is that chatGPT is unable to do automatic writing or to even generate anything that feels like authentic automatic writing as it is just generating a product from all the information it receives and works from a pattern, even if that pattern is supposed to be free of intention.

I was not able to write anything truly random because my human experiences influence my thoughts so much and chatgpt can not generate anything truly random because it does not have any human experiences and because its every word is generated, it´s coded. It also cannot mimic any attempt at automatic writing by a human because of its lack of true agency.