On ChatGPT, Dall-E, and the Fading Light of Rawalpindi

This is written by a human, promise

I have been thinking a lot about OpenAI’s chatGPT. Over the last few weeks, screenshots of its capabilities have taken over my Twitter timeline. I signed up too, and I’m happy to report that my mind is blown. As an engineer who has worked on a bunch of machine learning systems, I am amazed by GPT’s associative power.

So much that I couldn’t shake the thought off for a while. I thought of GPT while cooking, playing music, or watching the Morocco men’s football team make their Portuguese opponents look silly. Maybe GPT can find me a better recipe for akuri than the one I’ve been using. Could it also suggest a transition chord for this cinematic score I’m composing? In C minor, please. Thank you. Oh, one last thing. Can I call it Alfred?

Groundbreaking is too mild a word for technology like this.

But hold on. A machine can only do so much, right? Can it really perform creative tasks beyond the threshold of its corpus? Great question, Watson. Let’s find out. Someone asked Dall-E to paint a basketball player dunking in the middle of an exploding nebula and it created this.

This thing has mad chops. I’m just going to latch onto Dall-E for all my cover images. Oh, by the way, this essay, until here, has been edited by chatGPT. Thanks for the free editor and illustrator, OpenAI. Much love, xoxo.

**

Beyond the hills of wonder lies the valley of cynicism. What does a tool that can generate anything between code to cover letters mean for writers?

Daniel Hermann, author and teacher, wrote a lovely article for The Atlantic expressing astonishment at the quality of prose GPT has produced. The most telling excerpt, a giveaway almost, reads thus.

“What GPT can produce right now is better than the large majority of writing seen by your average teacher or professor. Over the past few days, I’ve given it a number of different prompts. And even if the bot’s results don’t exactly give you goosebumps, they do a more-than-adequate job of fulfilling a task.”

Imagine a creative-writing teacher saying that a computer can produce better work than most students. Ever.

Think of the possibilities.

I can’t draw to save my life. But, like everyone else, I have ideas bouncing in my head that I wish somebody could do the actual craftwork for. So I asked Stable Diffusion to draw me Gandhi walking through a town in Bladerunner-universe while a wolf lurks nearby. I was completely sober. Honest.

This is great. Imagine the ocean of art that can be generated if those without necessary pen skills could have access to a machine that does most of the critical work. New tech that pushes boundaries excites me. With GPT and Dall-E, we are no more bound by the constraints of human artistry for creative work. The pace is the biggest game changer.

Now, before I start sounding like the mouthpiece for a political party spearheaded by Robocop, let me come clean. I am all about the human touch.

I have been fortunate to interact with some incredible artists. Many have been kind enough to share advice and best practices. Funnily, when I asked a famous Indian guitarist about his compositions, his answer was similar to that of a bestselling author about her prose. Voice. Voice is unique.

It is a lovely challenge to have as someone who enjoys writing and composing music. A seemingly simple route to keep the threat of machines at bay. GPT can spit out that transition chord for a crescendo, but it will never know how much I want to emphasise its third harmonic because that note makes me feel like floating in the air. That stuff is personal and out of reach for a machine just yet.

**

Wait. You didn’t really think I was going to write an entire essay without talking about sports, did you?

We will talk about sports. And the picture that triggered this essay. But before that, we must address technology in sports.

Let me ask you a question. What is the most unnecessary aspect of a sport like cricket or football? Or tennis and badminton? Something kids in a backyard don’t need. Even professionals, for that matter.

Umpires and referees, yes? I mean, let’s be honest, very few kids grow up wanting to be that dude in black running across the pitch just to be heckled by twenty-two muscular athletes. Or, if they are in South America, chased across the pitch with guns.

Naturally, technology has made its most significant inroads in officiating. At the World Cup final tonight, vans filled with wires and bespectacled experts hunched over screens will be sat outside the Lusail Stadium in Doha. They will supply something called the VAR, shorthand for video assistant referee. For contentious decisions, the on-ground, flesh-and-blood referee can consult a screen that replays multiple angles in slow motion. 

It is a necessary change. With all the technology accessible today, it will be a travesty for matches to hinge on the naked eye, which anyway must process a million things in real time.

You’ve got to feel for the umpires, though. Perennial sideshows of their sport, marginal decisions are the only time they get any spotlight. And most of it is invariably negative. In all situations, especially when the emotions reach a fever pitch, they must remain calm and stoic. The noise cannot reach their ears. The drama, unfolding at a few yards’ distance, cannot cloud their vision. The accuracy of their decisions must maintain a proportionate relationship with the dramatic graph of a game. You’ve really got to feel for them.

Which, finally, brings me to the real subject of this essay. A photograph from England’s recent Test against Pakistan at Rawalpindi. Allow me one last delay before we reveal the picture.

This England men’s team are playing Test cricket like never seen before. They have taken a format that can be thrilling and boring in equal amounts, and turned the amplifier knob hard right. On the first day of this Test at Rawalpindi, they scored 500 runs in 75 overs. Many teams struggle with this kind of run rate in T20 cricket.

I will spare you the other details of this match. The situation on the final afternoon stood thus: amidst fading light, England needed a few wickets, and Pakistan needed to survive the remainder of the overs. Ben Stokes, the English captain and spearhead of this movement to revitalise cricket’s oldest and most arduous format, brought in his fielders. All chances must be taken; draw is not an option.

Phil Brown, ace photographer, was sat in the stands.

Beautiful.

If you asked anyone - writer, player, fan - to describe the drama of Test cricket in the subcontinent, they would reach for a scene like this. Brown captured this with one tap of his right index finger.

The colours in this photo are incredible. Golden hour twilight for a backdrop and long shadows to add texture to the foreground. This has been a gruelling match. The pitch bears a familiar shade of bone-dry grey, as if the game shouldn’t be as dramatic as it is being made to look. England’s pristine whites contrasted beautifully by Pakistan’s off-white. Even the colour of the grass is distinctly subcontinental, bearing a drier, more arid shade than the kind that welcomes you on day one at London or Boxing Day at Melbourne. If this photo makes it to an exhibition, the description could just read “the purity of a Test match in Pakistan”.

I am also thinking of the subjects in this picture. Not one player is still. The fielders look like they are all springing up, except the wicketkeeper Ollie Pope, who has sprung sideways. A word on him. To do this, at about 15 yards-distance from a batter, on the hint of a sudden deflection, is amazing. But look at the others. This photo screams motion and energy. Not an ounce of inertia.

Now, look at the umpire.

The only human being in this frame on whom you could draw a straight line from head to toe. Symmetrical. Calm. How do they do it? What does it take to be still in a situation like this? England’s first Test in Pakistan for seventeen years, a match down to the wire, intensity going through the roof. Noise, chaos, drama. How does one shut everything out and channel all their focus on the landing of the bowler’s foot, the trajectory of the ball, and every minutae of its journey for one loop every minute? You’d have to be crazy to do this for a career.

There is one more still head involved with this picture: the photographer. I don’t know the first thing about photography, but I’d imagine stillness of body and hands is the founding pillar of its craft. A racing heart or nervy fingers could ruin all symmetry of a nice frame. In this most dramatic of moments, this picture is crisp in its lines and lighting.

And yet, a photographer cannot be devoid of emotion. The play of emotions makes this picture incredible. You can see the fielders beginning to scream. The bowler, still in his follow-through, hoping for a miracle. The non-striker crouching. Phil Brown could do this because he saw the drama beyond the surface. And that comes from knowing the pulse of Test cricket, feeling it in person.

Maybe algorithms can learn to predict drama. Or maybe not; who knows. But until they can replicate every way in which a piece of art or literature can touch a person, there will always be a pocket of space where human artistry exists without competition.