AI ChatGPT describes Deleuze

There’s a lot of chatter around about the AI that is ChatGPT. Rather ominously the website states that “during the research preview, usage of ChatGPT is free”, which tends to imply that it’s going to become yet another paywalled tool at some point. In the meantime people get to ‘play’ with the tool, training it in the process, for free of course.

Some of the chat I’ve seen about it has to do with writing code. One interesting comment was that if the AI can do the coding, then the task of the human will be to specify clearly what it is that the AI will code for. They went on to suggest that it may be that the subjects of English and the Humanities will benefit in that they’re able to train people in precisely this skill of specifying clearly what is wanted. There’s all sorts of hidden assumptions there, but very roughly speaking, this seems entirely possible.

Anyway, I thought I’d have a little fun and see what I could turn up. I asked ChatGPT to ‘give a short summary description of the work of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’. Here’s a response:

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher who, along with Michel Foucault, was a leading figure in the continental philosophy movement known as poststructuralism. Deleuze is best known for his development of the concepts of desire and becoming, as well as his critique of the philosophical tradition. He wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including philosophy, literature, film, and politics, and his work has had a significant impact on fields such as psychology, literature, and cultural studies. Despite his significant contributions to philosophy, Deleuze was not always well-received during his lifetime and his work remains controversial in some quarters.

Interestingly there’s a little button at the bottom of the page that says “try again” and so:

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher who wrote extensively on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His work was characterized by its emphasis on the concept of becoming, and he often focused on the connections between philosophy, art, and the social and political spheres. Deleuze’s philosophy is difficult to summarize briefly, but some of his key ideas include the concept of the “body without organs,” which he used to explore the ways in which individuals and groups resist and subvert dominant power structures, and the idea of “desire,” which he saw as a fundamental force driving human action and creativity. Deleuze’s work has been widely influential in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, and cultural studies.

And again:

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher who is best known for his work on philosophy, literature, film, and political theory. He wrote on a wide range of topics, including metaphysics, the nature of perception, and the concept of difference. Deleuze’s philosophy is characterized by its emphasis on the creative power of difference, and his belief that thinking and creativity are not limited to the realm of the human mind, but can be found in all forms of life and matter. His work has been influential in fields such as post-structuralism, feminist theory, and cultural studies.

And again:

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher who is best known for his contributions to philosophy of identity, philosophy of difference, and political philosophy. He was a proponent of the idea of becoming, which is the concept that individuals should strive to constantly evolve and transform themselves, rather than remaining stagnant. Deleuze’s work is characterized by its emphasis on the importance of the individual and their ability to create their own identity. He was also a critic of traditional philosophical concepts, such as the idea of the self and the concept of representation.

None of these are wrong in any sense, indeed what’s fascinating is that each of them pass as a one paragraph summary. The last two have odd sentences in them which might make me go ‘huh’? For example, “his belief that thinking and creativity are not limited to the realm of the human mind, but can be found in all forms of life and matter.” Yeah, kind of, perhaps, although I’d want to ask where exactly the summariser thinks that this belief is evidenced. Or again, when it says that he was “a proponent of the idea of becoming, which is the concept that individuals should strive to constantly evolve and transform themselves, rather than remaining stagnant“. My interest is piqued by the use of the phrase ‘remaining stagnant’ and I’m curious as to how the summariser would evidence this. So I asked. At which point we hit a wall and receive the generic ‘error’ message:

I am not able to provide evidence for my claim, as I am a text-based AI and do not have access to external sources of information. I was trained to provide information on a variety of topics, but my responses are based solely on the input I receive from users and the information I have been programmed to provide. I do not have the ability to browse the internet or access other sources of information. My responses are intended to provide general information on the topic at hand, but they should not be taken as definitive or authoritative.

One wonders who gave it the input about Deleuze in the first place, but this limitation is in some ways the most interesting thing of all, since it appears imposed and not essential.

I remember the shift in my research techiques when searchable text, mainly PDF text, became widespread. I would find searchable texts of books I was working on and use word searches to track and trace a concept or a phrase, adding wildcards to find cognates and variations and looking at dispersal patterns through a text to see where and when it was deployed. This is perhaps little more than an on the fly self-generated index search, so not great paradigm shift. It’s still something I do at times, although less so than when I was first able to do it, as the results were interesting but usually secondary, peripheral or without any great implication. It did enable me to ‘feel’ a text differently, which was useful, and was a way to cope with the tide of texts that can appear on the horizon. Did it make it easier to think about the texts I was reading? Perhaps. It was a kind of play and play is a crucial part of any hermeneutics, as well as any attempt to think, but in the end editing and selecting from the experiments is still perhaps the most vital moment of thought. What to leave out when it’s impossible to say everything in one go is always a central problem and this selection process is still vital, in all senses of the term.

Will conversations with AI about philosophy, or art, or literature, be interesting and playfull additions to future research in these areas of the humanities? Almost certainly, but unlike getting AI to code – or diagnose illness – the function of humanities research, and of philosophical activity, is not to be found in the results as they stand, in the short summaries if you like. Rather, these areas of life and thought are most interesting when you follow the processes that take you to such claims as can be summarised. It’s the processes of learning, grappling with a problem, trying to narrate a story about a route forward or a blockage to be avoided, it’s this that matters. Just like this initial encounter with the ChatGPT, it’s less what is said than why it’s said that really seems to matter.