What do Rudyard Kipling, Magpies, and GPT have in Common?
“Writers are magpies by nature, always collecting shiny things, storing them away and looking for connections of things.” — John Connolly
For the most part, writers don’t create stories and content from scratch. Neither does ChatGPT. So where does plagiarism end and creativity begin? In the letter below, Rudyard Kipling had this to say about writing The Jungle Book, “it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen.”
Today, GPT pieces together content from billions of posts and articles gleaned from the Internet. How is that so different than how The Jungle Book was cobbled together 128 years ago?
If writers are magpies, then maybe what GPT is doing is what writers have always done, only faster, and at scale.
I asked ChatGPT for a comment, and it had this to say (edited for brevity): Just like a magpie, GPT is able to take bits and pieces of information and use them to create something entirely new and unique. And just like a magpie, GPT is always on the lookout for new and interesting pieces of information to add to its collection… it will be remembered as one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
Which leads to reputation and credibility. Kipling’s reputation has taken such a drubbing that any well-trained human or A.I. should approach his work (including The Jungle Book) with extreme caution. As for magpies, their reputation for stealing shiny things seems to be undeserved.
Where does that leave things? It seems like we need to wait for the next version(s) of GPT to find out.
