-
John Lawrence Nazareth deposited A Shakespearean Experiment with ChatGPT on Humanities Commons 2 years, 5 months ago
Four hundred years ago, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) laid the philosophical foundation for the scientific era with his famous declaration: Cogito Ergo Sum! “I think therefore I am.” ChatGPT is its most recent manifestation within a broadened Cartesian dictum that governs much of modern science today: “I compute, algorithmically, therefore I think, symbolically, therefore I am, experientially.” An experiment with Chat GPT is described here that seeks to establish whether this generative, AI-based model of human language does indeed have a capacity for producing original and expressive writing grounded in human experience, or whether it merely simulates and stochastically parrots past writings. The procedure for getting acquainted with ChatGPT, the specific task assigned to it of writing a Shakespearean-like stage play, and the overall guidelines that enabled ChatGPT to carry out this assignment, are first presented. The direct input to ChatGPT and the output it produces, i.e., the results of the experiment, are given next. Finally, detailed conclusions are drawn from this interaction with ChatGPT, within the context of the aforementioned Cartesian dictum, which the reader may wish to peruse first.