ChatGPT just told me off!

I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT like much of the world (25 million a day by some accounts).?I’m impressed.?I’ve used it to edit, to rewrite and even to generate afresh.?My wife - who works in children’s books - was a sceptic, until I asked ChatGPT to write a story in the style of Julia Donaldson about a heroic tale of an Australian aboriginal child.?She’s not a sceptic any more!?

But I wanted to see where the edges were.?My hunch was that ChatGPT is good at imitating and replicating, but not being original.?OK, ChatGPT - let’s see what you’ve got.

One creative technique that I use from time to time is to take a familiar pattern and give it a twist. The brain looks to complete the familiar pattern but is tripped up, creating a moment of dissonance and intrigue.?So I took the famous “Think Small” VW ad concept from the late 50s - a classic pattern-twist example - and used it as a prompt.?Give me ideas about small thinking, about seeing the small picture, about going small or going home, etc.

ChatGPT refused!?It said that it was an engine for progress and big ideas, and refused to participate in an exercise that was counter to its principles. ?

Well, excuse me for my low brow experiments, thought I.?Having brushed off the fact that not only had I been told off by a robot, but that it has taken the moral higher ground on me, I took comfort in discovering that - for the moment - ChatGPT is good at the patterns, not so much the twist.

I don’t doubt tools like ChatGPT will evolve and learn and become better.?But for now, if we want to be distinct, to give things a twist, there’s still plenty of scope for the creativity of human intelligence. Just don’t expect ChaptGPT to approve. ?