Creativity Of course, at this writing, much of this is still hypothetical, or at least not widely available. But I do know enough about tech to be confident that GPT will be the next technology platform—on a scale like the internet, and very possibly bigger—on which the world will build applications, tools, and services of these sorts and literally a million others. And it’s going to happen fast, not least because GPT tools will themselves accelerate the develop- ment of all the rest of it. So yes, I’m excited. As a humanist, it’s hard to express how excited about this technology I am. At the same time, I am—just as GPT-4 suggested—not without skepticism. That led me to the following exchange, along with a request for GPT-4 to lighten up its style a touch: Reid: GPT-4, once large language models are fully devel- oped and deployed, what would you suspect will be the worst effects on the quality of overall cultural produc- tion? (200 words) (less wooden style than usual) GPT-4: Large language models, if fully developed and deployed, could have several negative effects on the quality of overall cultural production, such as: - Homogenization and loss of diversity: Large language models could generate massive amounts of content that mimic existing styles, genres, and trends, but lack originality, creativity, and authenticity. This could result in a saturation of the cultural market with bland and repetitive products that appeal to the lowest common denominator and discourage innovation and experi- mentation. - Manipulation and deception: Large language mod- els could also be used to create deceptive or harmful content that exploits human biases, emotions, and 59