Rise of the Robots

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AI in Higher Education

Image from the first stage production of ‘R.U.R’ by Karel Čapek , 1921

In 1923 the term ‘robot’ was introduced into the English language when the first translations of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by the Czech writer Karel Čapek appeared in English. The play had been premiered in Čapek’s homeland on January 2nd, 1921. In the play, Čapek imagines a future society where a robot underclass are created to serve their masters, but ultimately rise up and overthrow them. Čapek’s robots (from the Czech ‘robota’ for forced labour) are artificial human beings of organic human beings – closer to the replicants of Blade Runner, or the hosts of Westworld than the mechanistic type of Maria Metropolis (1927)and C3PO of Star Wars (1977). Not only did this enable human actors to play them on stage, albeit in costume (starting a long tradition of humans in suits and make-up playing the non-human) it is also reified visually the idea that not only did this underclass have sentience and deserved agency, but many humans act, or are forced to act, like robots. As such, it was not speculative fiction, but political satire – a dark mirror about the state of the world, like so much science fiction.

First edition of RUR (1920)

Čapek’s ideation of the robot was no doubt informed by Czech culture – the Medieval story of the Jewish Golem from Prague, and the long tradition of puppet-making in his country, which seems on one level to be an extended metaphor of how everyone is manipulated by someone (the influence of the State on the individual was a theme Kafka explored in his fiction). I first worked on a creative writing commission about Artificial Intelligence in 2016 (funded by the Centre for New Writing, University of Leicester). Read GOLEM Speaks here, and incorporated AI into my science fiction novel, Black Box, which won a national manuscript competition in the same year. And as an educator I have been using computer and internet technology in my work for 20 years. So, I am no Luddite, and am not imagining any Terminator-style takeover anytime soon (the ‘singularity’ first mooted by John von Neumann, a Hungarian-American mathematician, computer scientist, engineer, physicist and polymath, who first discussed the concept of technological singularity early in the 20th Century) but I have grave concerns about the use of AI in Higher Education – in particular arts universities.

Here’s why:

  • Generative AI like ChatGPT creates content by ‘scraping’ the internet of existing content, i.e. the work of authors. It thereby exploits the work of authors without crediting them or paying royalties, and is therefore a form of Piracy. ‘that many of the books used to develop AI systems originated from notorious piracy websites’ (Writers’ Guild open letter – see full text below).
  • Creative Industries universities should not be advocating Plagiarism software that runs roughshod over artists’ rights. It should be encouraging originality of thinking, diversity of voices, and innovation. ChatGPT and similar software draws creates generic content based upon an aggregate of content scrape, and thus is biased towards the majority, not the minority, the hegemonic – and thus silences the marginalised. It reinforces the loudest voices, like the algorithms of Facebook, and thus – in terms of ethical and artistic excellence – a law of diminishing returns. A race to the bottom.
  • Advocating the use of AI within a Creative Industries university is unethical and unartistic.
  • There should always be a choice about whether an individual lecturer or student uses AI within a learning environment – it should not be forced, otherwise it risks becoming a form of digital fascism (I was once told on social media when I posted a critique of AI: ‘Adapt or die’, or responded to with ChatGPT generated comments, which proves my point about it taking away peoples’ own ability to think and write). Alternatives should always be articulated and encouraged. And nothing should be beyond criticism. It is imperative that robust critiques are offered of any hegemonic model.
  • AI will no doubt continue to be a fascinating novelty for now – toys for the talentless and bored; an apparent ‘harmless’ content generator for social media and with about as much value as a cat video or holiday snap – but more disturbingly, exploited to the maximum by those not willing to pay artists – e.g., inscrutable executives of content platforms – hence the open letter signed by hundreds of top writers including Margaret Atwood; and the current Writers Strike in North America. It is putting writers out of work.
  • Like with CGI audiences made start to weary of the artificiality of the content, and yearn for the ‘affect’ of the analogue. At present, generative AI content is obvious, a dodgy book jacket, fake film poster, etc. In terms of trends, see where book design has gone in the years following the digital design revolution. Now much of that looks old-fashioned. There is a return to the hand-drawn, the low-fi, the human touch. Anything too slick lacks soul.
  • Work generated by AI contravenes the Academic Integrity policy of the university, and is unacceptable for assessment.
  • No doubt the issue and existence of so-called AI can be used to generate discussion and even writing activities, e.g. editing. Exploration of it may encourage critical thinking and a refinement of artistic sensibility. As a tool used in a restricted, controlled environment it could have some minor value. A stepping stone in the creative process at best.
  • AI used within a closed system, in which the author creates the content the AI draws upon – the macro-text, or ‘bible’ – would be more ethical and interesting. Yet I ask: why deprive yourself of the pleasure of writing, which for myself is the thing I love best doing in the world? If you are a genuine writer (and not a talentless opportunist, or simply lazy) then why use a machine to generate content?
  • Examples of these closed AI systems are being used to empower, not disempower, communities and individuals, e.g. Story Weaver https://acutrans.com/using-ai-to-save-dying-languages/#:~:text=AI%20technologies%20have%20the%20ability,multilingual%20platform%20featuring%20children’s%20stories.
  • AI is funded by corporations who thrive within an existing capitalist paradigm. As an exploitative model – a form of digital slavery, where the efforts of untold ‘workers’ (i.e. creatives) are exploited without payment – it is the zenith of neoliberalism. Is it really conscionable to be complicit in something like that? And with the Modern Slavery Act is it even legal? I would rather be a cyber-abolitionist or a cyber-suffragette and advocate emancipation and equality.
  • As Naomi Klein warns, AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’, but their makers are:  ‘We live under capitalism, and under that system, the effects of flooding the market with technologies that can plausibly perform the economic tasks of countless working people is not that those people are suddenly free to become philosophers and artists. It means that those people will find themselves staring into the abyss – with actual artists among the first to fall.’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein
  •  Human beings already have the most remarkable in-built AI – the imagination. With it we can invent life-saving medicines, devise profound philosophies, design cathedrals, compose symphonies and write masterpieces. Are we going to be the first generation to completely disempower ourselves by an over-reliance on the ‘robots’ of machine-learning and AI-generated content, when our predecessors achieved sublime greatness? How is that progress? An over-dependence on AI could ultimately create a race of enfeebled Eloi relying upon the underclass of the Morlocks to do all the real work of running a civilisation.
  • I certainly don’t want a future where I am just monitoring the content generated by AI, anything manufactured made on automated assembly lines and delivered by drones, while I whither away stuck living a virtual, vicarious existence – subsisting on the thin gruel of the digital, rather than the vast, multi-sensory riches of actual reality. I have a body, a mind, a heart, and a soul, and I want to use all of them while I am alive on this planet.
  • I have spent my life developing and honing an authentic, and hopefully original voice — it is my artistic DNA. Writing is not just my profession, it is intrinsic to my identity and sense of self-worth. Why would I get a machine to do that for me? The very idea offends my artistic sensibilities, as well as my conscience, as it should any writer worth their salt. 

These, at least, were my initial thoughts (11 September 2023) before attending a well-organised and most stimulating Learning and Teaching Symposium at Arts University Bournemouth on 12th September, after which I made the following notes:

  • Gen-AI is already here, students are using it (some software like Grammarly has been around for quite a while and some students already rely upon it), and universities need to deal with it. Lecturers need to engage.
  • A clear academic policy is needed. Consistent guidance for staff and students is essential.
  • There are significant ethical, aesthetic, and pedagogical concerns – by condoning the use of Gen-AI we are encouraging the abuse of creator rights, and artistic and intellectual laziness – a slippery slope in which less and less effort is required. What is empowering about that? How will that prepare students for industry?
  • A nuanced, scaled down approach is perhaps acceptable, but how do we manage AI-generated content? Where do we draw the line?
  • Is using AI to mark assessments – however ostensibly appealing to overworked staff – the thin end of the wedge? By conceding key tasks like this to software are we declaring our skills and experience to be unnecessary? Are we at risk of putting ourselves out of a job?
  • Is AI just another techno-fad? Will it eventually see the resistance that CGI has experienced, where film-makers and cinema-goers are preferring a return to the analogue? By focusing on it too much are we not ‘future proofing’ our students but in fact doing the opposite?
  • Shouldn’t we be focusing more on real world skills – ones that have true longevity and not built-in obsolescence predicated on the latest technology and availability of expensive resources (and thus vulnerable to the digital divide and the real hardship people are facing because of the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’, aka greedflation), e.g., research skills, critical thinking, presentation skills, voice and movement skills, fine art skills, craft skills, design skills, writing skills, project management skills, and so forth?
  • There is a spectrum of applications and ethical positions – it is not just a Manichaean divide between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘use’ and ‘don’t use’.
  • AI can be a good subject for discussion and debate – it is complex and topical. We should encourage our students to develop their own ethical, critical, and artistic positions about it.
  • Although one needs to ask – if you use Gen-AI would you be happy to have your own work ripped off; for your own labour of love to be shamelessly exploited by others?
  • It leads to considerations of artists’ rights, copyright, intellectual property, and so forth. These have been hard won over many years. Are you willing to be complicit in the corporate erosion of these via exploitative Gen-AI software?
  • Another aspect not discussed is the environmental angle. AI is predicated upon a carbon economy. The servers that AI run upon have a massive carbon footprint and are thus contributing to Global Warming and the Climate Emergency (and thus in complete contradiction of Carbon Net Zero targets and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals conscionable universities have signed up to). AI is built upon the current unsustainable model of Capitalism. It assumes the future will be business as usual, based upon the myth of progress, rather than the reality of Doughnut Economics (living within the resources and capacity of the Earth and its ecosystems).
  • Creating spaces for continued rigorous, balanced discussion (offering a full cross-section of perspectives) is essential – rather than presenting a fait accompli to staff in which AI is implemented without genuine debate. However it is appreciated that this exponential rise in generative AI (and its use by students) has happened very rapidly and action needed to be taken. Organising symposia to discuss the issue and prepare lecturers is a good ‘emergency’ measure. 

    ***

The bottom line is to proceed with caution; to test, examine, critique (always asking ‘why?’ and not just accepting because it can be done it should be done); and to act mindfully and conscionably for the best interests of creators, colleagues, and students – all of whom wish to thrive, and not see their existing or future livelihoods rendered obsolete.

            For ultimately the real robots are not those imagined by Čapek, or all the science fiction that followed him, but those who follow edicts from above or trends mindlessly, who do not question and critique – using their own intelligence and autonomy to formulate their own individual stance on things, rather than the group-think of the crowd. Who do not offer a ‘Culture of Resistance’, as the fabulous keynote from yesterday’s symposium, futurologist Ruth Marshall-Johnson, called it.

            It is time for the real ‘robots’ to revolt.

Image from the first stage production of ‘R.U.R’ by Karel Čapek , 1921

Writers Guild open letter July 2023

Join thousands of authors and sign the Authors Guild’s AI open letter

To: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta Emad Mostaque, CEO, Stability AI Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft From: The Authors Guild

We, the undersigned, call your attention to the inherent injustice in exploiting our works as part of your AI systems without our consent, credit, or compensation. Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the “food” for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill. You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited. We understand that many of the books used to develop AI systems originated from notorious piracy websites. Not only does the recent Supreme Court decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith make clear that the high commerciality of your use argues against fair use, but no court would excuse copying illegally sourced works as fair use. As a result of embedding our writings in your systems, generative AI threatens to damage our profession by flooding the market with mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and journalism based on our work. In the past decade or so, authors have experienced a forty percent decline in income, and the current median income for full-time writers in 2022 was only $23,000. The introduction of AI threatens to tip the scale to make it even more difficult, if not impossible, for writers—especially young writers and voices from under-represented communities—to earn a living from their profession. We ask you, the leaders of AI, to mitigate the damage to our profession by taking the following steps:

Obtain permission for use of our copyrighted material in your generative AI programs.

Compensate writers fairly for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs.

Compensate writers fairly for the use of our works in AI output, whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.

We hope you will appreciate the gravity of our concerns and that you will work with us to ensure, in the years to come, a healthy ecosystem for authors and journalists. Sincerely, The Authors Guild and the Undersigned Writers

(123 pages of signatories including Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, and the cream of the US literary establishment)

Beyond the World We Know: Fantasy Study Day

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Branwell Brontë ‘s map of Angria – part of the secondary world created by the Brontë siblings. C1830-31.

This Fantasy Study Day was an enjoyable prelude to the forthcoming exhibition at the British Library exploring the genre, Fantasy: imagining impossible worlds (27 October 2023-25 February 2024), featuring key experts involved in the exhibition and catalogue. As I have been designing the forthcoming MA Creative Writing for Arts University Bournemouth, and had written the outline of a module called ‘Im/Possible Worlds’ back in early May which is intended to explore Fantasy and Science Fiction, this felt good timing.

Rising at 4am I left my home in West Dorset at 5am to catch the 5.52am train to Waterloo – it was a long, hot day, but it felt very stimulating and worth the effort.

I don’t know if the day was programmed with an intentional narrative, but one seemed to emerge. Tanya Kirk, curator of print collections at the British Library, kicked things off with a talk about designing the forthcoming exhibition. It seemed like Tanya acted as a kind of keeper of the portals, both in curating the exhibition of imaginary worlds, and as our threshold guardian of the day.

Michelle Anya Anjirbag’s talk on fairy tales and folk tales – ‘taproot texts’ of so much modern fantasy informed by the oral tradition – seemed to foreshadow the final presentation by Anna Milon on LARP*ing – co-authored improvised shared world fantasies which involve alot of elements from oral traditions: storytelling, poetry, spells, charms, curses, proclamations, lore, and song. Through the prosumerism (to use Alvin Toffler’s term) of LARPing, it feels like the genre has gone full circle in some ways, with the often ephemeral oral tradition aspects echoing earlier sources, and enriching the scene, helping it to avoid entropy. Ironically, it is through the ravenous consumption of what Le Guin called ‘Consumerist Fantasy’, that fans are inspired to create their own ‘hacks’ of ‘canon’ material via Fan-Fic, Cos-Play and LARPing – not merely emulating existing narratives, but taking them in new directions. In the latter, much of the material is site- and time-specific, created to be performed in a certain context and then let go of, thus being the opposite of a commodity. Anna gave a couple examples of stories created for specific scenarios, and these she read out while in a gorgeous costume, which gave the audience a flavour of LARP and livened up the end of a hot day in the bowels of the British Library.

As a former professional storyteller who has performed many myths, legends, folk tales, and fairy stories (including Gilgamesh, Beowulf, as well as much of the Arthuriad including Gawain and the Green Knight), and has gone on to compose and compile written versions of folk tales for The History Press, this felt like familiar territory – but it was heartening to see how the oral tradition mutates and continues.

Professor Emritus Rob Maslen’s paper on Quest narratives, Dr Dimitra Fimi’s talk on ‘Crossing Borders of Otherness’, and Professor Matthew Sangster’s talk on ‘Architectures of the Strange’ (all from Glasgow University’s MLitt in Fantasy) also helped expand the creative imaginary of the genre in fascinating ways.

Thus the tradition moves forward, breaking new territory (fan culture; YA/New Adult fiction) in old ways (the oral tradition; play; print), as well as sideways. Familiar ground is revisited and re-appraised. The old stories are deconstructed and re-imagined for new audiences – breathed new life into by new generations of writers – while the widening market for Global Fantasy, which is bringing non-European, or Anglophone fantasy to Western audiences, helps to enrich the field with much-needed diversity.

It feels like Fantasy, which has never been more popular, or more participatory, is in rude health.

*Live-Action Role-Playing. I starred in one in the late 80scalled ‘Strange Lands’, in which I played Robin Hood – I still have the (foam) silver arrow.

A Wilderness of Dragons

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While dragons are in the air …

An extract from my book, Desiring Dragons. #StGeorgesDay #Tolkien #Fantasy #dragons

Dr Kevan Manwaring

In the eponymous essay, reprinted in The Monsters and The Critics (2006), Tolkien cited the Beowulfian critic Professor Chambers’ phrase ‘a wilderness of dragons’ 298. Tolkien, punctilious as ever when it comes to language, queries the ‘Shylockian plural’, and yet it is clear he would prefer such a hazardous place to the bleak territory of the unimaginative critic. It clearly stuck in his mind, and perhaps acted as grit in the oyster for his creation of the ‘desolation of Smaug’, in the map for The Hobbit (1937) – a blasted wasteland on the edge of the cosy world of the hobbits.

This is a deliberate striking out into unchartered zones.

On the borders of medieval maps, where human knowledge ran out and reason slept, monsters stirred: ‘Here Be Dragons’ the legend read. This is the direct descendant of the primal fear which lurked outside the circle of firelight for…

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Dragon Lines

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A taste of the dragon on St George’s Day…

Dr Kevan Manwaring

6-13 April

Over the Easter break Jenni and I spent a week staying in a yurt on an organic smallholding on the Roseland Peninsula, South Cornwall. Cotna, just down from the sleepy village of Gorran Churchtown, is nestled in an L-shaped valley which gave it its original name ‘Crookcorner’. Dave and Sara, the owners, moved in five years ago and have transformed the 14 acres – which now boast a wind-turbine, polytunnels full of leafy veg, free-range chickens, woodland, solar panels, compost loos and a rather lovely straw-bale house. We were first visitors to stay in their yurt, sitting in its own field – separated by its twin by a stream and a line of recently planted willow. With a log burner and lots of homely touches, it was cosy in the evenings. We ate outside alot and enjoyed sunsets, a vast field of stars, a full moon, dawn…

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Heavy Weather, Grey Wethers

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Some early thoughts on heavy weather from 2009…

Dr Kevan Manwaring

Bath to Avebury

14-15 November

new bike 021

A contrasting weekend. Yesterday went to the Big Transition Bath Event at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institute (BRLSI) – a day of talks, workshops, networking and inspiration organised by Transition Bath. Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, opened the event with a sobering but galvanising talk about the effects of climate change – and how we can respond to its challenges (as the Maldives is doing, becoming the world’s first carbon neutral country). There followed a triple programme of interesting and empowering talks. Oh, and some nice cake.

The weather was suitably ominous – like the start of some disaster movie. This particular ‘pathetic fallacy’ was simply a pain in the arse for most of storm-battered Britain. Unfortunately, it will probably take some extreme weather event (London flooding – a la New Orleans – to shock the majority of people, including…

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