The Lonesome Whip-poor-will

Nick Cave has had enough. In his recent newsletter, Cave bemoaned that, “Since its launch in November last year, many people, most buzzing with a kind of algorithmic awe, have sent me songs ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ created by ChatGPT.”

Such songs fail, Cave rightly notes, because

Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.

I’ve been following reporting on the effects of ChatGPT on teaching. The AI’s algorithm can produce coherent-enough renditions of human writing on academic topics. I’ve posed synthetic questions to it, asking it to apply classical sociological ideas to contemporary topics. The results are fluent and accurate summaries of sociological theories, with adequate applications to new topics.

AI, in other words, currently writes essays that would receive a passing grade.

But its writing is bland and formulaic. Its ideas artlessly reflect what others have thought and said.

Likewise its songs.

ChatGPT Tries to Write a Sad Song

Here’s AI’s version of a song, written in the style of Hank Williams, mentioning a Whip-poor-will. It’s a bland, general song about suffering. The rhymes are simple, mono-syllabic, and predictable. It feels like a mashup of every previous song about sadness and Whip-poor-wills. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, many pop songs probably could have been written by a chatbot.

In other words, The lyric is true, without being True.

Listen to the sound of the whip-poor-will
Echoing through the hills, it's a lonesome thrill
As the sun sets on another day
I can't help but feel a little bit of pain

Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will
Your cry is like a song that's hard to still
It reminds me of the love that's gone
And the memories that linger on

I can hear you calling in the night
A mournful song, so pure and so right
It's a reminder of a love that's true
And the memories that still carry through

Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will
Your cry is like a song that's hard to still
It reminds me of the love that's gone
And the memories that linger on

So I'll sit here and listen to you sing
As the stars come out and the moon takes wing
And I'll think of her and the love we knew
And the memories that still carry through.

(How long until some lonely singer-songwriter writes, “Hear that lonesome ChatGPT / It sounds to blue to AI.”)

As far as I know, Nick Cave never sang a song mentioning Whip-poor-wills. He did join Johnny Cash on a rendition of William’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” but Cash took the famous opening verse and Cave the second.

Featured Photo by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė on Unsplash