Artificial Eloquence
Mehboob Alam
Islamabad: A great deal of the writings of the present century seem to be devoted to a doctrine of “easy expression. Much of the literature of this century is devoted to a teaching of “easy expression.
At the click of a key, a message, an essay, a report, or an argument can be produced, more instruments than ever before for the production of language have been at the hands of human beings.
AI can create prose that is grammatically correct, persuasive and polished. It looks like a great democratization of writing, at first glance. But, under the handiness, a more subtle change is occurring, a change that affects our thinking and our ability to capture the contents of our minds, that affects how we think to the extent that we do it faithfully.
This effect can be referred to as “the artificial eloquence”, the new standard of proficient expression is the fluency created by machines.
The merits of these technologies are real, and should not be ignored. Intelligent writing tools provide valuable help to people who have trouble with a secondary language, to people who get intimidated by formal writing and to professionals who are burdened with routine writing.
They remove the obstacles, speed up the communication and bring the refined sentence within a reach of practically anybody. Now a student in a distant village and a clerk in a bustling office can be able to write what used to take years of training to write.
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This is in one way or another an artificial eloquence that has the promise of inclusion that earlier generations could hardly have envisioned.
But when fluency is confused with comprehension, problems occur. Writing is not just the putting down of words on paper; it is one of the most trying processes of thinking that man uses. Writing a paragraph involves communicating an idea, challenging a position, and revealing one’s opinion.
Not the difficulty of writing, but the hesitation, not the revision, but the patient searching for the right word, this is not a blockage to thought but its very substance.
An unsuspecting mind, unused and untrained, that’s the one that signed the name and the final sentence might look like a great achievement, without the effort.
This worry is particularly acute in the field of education. Writing has been the foundation of classroom practice for a long time, and it is still an integral part of our instruction.
As a student learns to write an essay, he/she is learning to think in an organized way, at the same time. However, the more quickly polished compositions can be summoned forth, the more powerful is the temptation for skipping this challenging process.
Academic dishonesty isn’t the only risk; it’s a younger generation that can find eloquent answers, without ever learning to find them themselves. Eloquence is the outward expression of disciplined thought and can turn into a facade that hides the lack of disciplined thought.
Language is also intrinsically connected to identity. Each writer has a voice, a unique rhythm, word choice and perspective on the world that sets his mind apart from others. The record of those voices is written in books, a record that has been preserved over the years. Machine-generated prose, on the other hand, is more likely to be a monotonous and level register; the style of the prose is more uniform and tends to be the average of the styles of a multitude of authors.
As writers more and more emulate this artificial norm, expression may begin to appear more and more homogenized: the little discrepancies that make writing human are smoothed out. If a society becomes adept at reading sentences, it’s possible that it will begin to forget how to speak them.
The change has a cultural dimension to it as well. The artificial eloquence-producing systems are formed primarily on the giant system of archives of a few dominant languages and traditions. The machine reproduces those values, assumptions and preferences, which are embedded in those archives, usually without being noticed, in every sentence it produces.
In other cultures, writers use these instruments, and may have developed a slightly different way of expressing themselves to conform to an unfamiliar norm. Homogenization of language is not just an issue of personal voice, but an issue of the various intellectual traditions in which the world is enriched.
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None of these are arguments against the technology, as such. Artificial intelligence is a weapon of immense power, and one must not completely reject it but go all the way along with it. Judgement is the key to enlarging capacities of human and machine in the exchange, as in all exchanges throughout the history of knowledge.
The calculator hasn’t taken the place of mathematics, and neither have the printing press taken the place of thought. It is not these tools that are the real issue, but the imbalance that can come when convenience can take the place of effort altogether.
It’s better to use artificial, not actual, eloquence as an assistant, not an author, and not as an enemy. When a writer thinks for himself, writes his own words and only uses the machine to perfect, he is still the owner of his argument and his voice.
When used in this way, the tool is not the mind, but rather enhances it. It is the business of writing, of dealing with the difficult idea until it is grasped, that must be safeguarded especially because it is difficult; it is in the difficulty that understanding is created.
In the twenty-first century the question facing students, writers and societies is not if, but how, can we use these amazing instruments without losing the powers they were designed to enhance and bring into use. It is not about romanticizing the work of the past, or any convenience without any critical evaluation.
It is, instead, an understanding of balance with technology, a technology that can be embraced and a technology that will protect the human abilities to think, speak and act in an authentic manner.
Perfect sentences are no measure of true eloquence. It is the visible evidence of a mind that is really alive and active; it is something that no machine can provide for us.
The writer is currently pursuing his degree in English at the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI).
The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.
