From now on, that column will go from being weekly to every two weeks. Needless to say, I'm sorry to change it after more than a decade of consistent publication, but what can you do?
This decline coincides with a particularly interesting time for writing, and not just journalistic writing. A few days ago, Antoni Batista, the Reader's Advocate for the ARA newspaper, wrote that "literary journalism must be one of the specific contributions that will sustain print publications" at a time when "AI is beginning to be a regular columnist." But it seems to me that the problem is much deeper. AI poses a challenge: if we can't distinguish human authorship from that of a robot, why not prefer the machine, which does it for us more quickly and effortlessly? What exactly do we mean by creation?
These are questions that shouldn't need to be asked again, because we've been devaluing human creation—that is, humanism—for decades now. To give just one example, the scandal over the trivialization of literary prizes is a reaction similar to the feeling of being cheated when we realize that a song or a painting was created by artificial intelligence. We've been living with zombie writing for a long time. We're more than used to rewarding imposture, but it still bothers us.
Knowing humans a little, I don't see why we prefer to master technology rather than be mastered by it. The question is always the same: who's in charge here? We Catalans have a long and constant experience with the tension between comfort and freedom, and we know firsthand that, of the two tendencies, comfort isn't exactly what makes us human. We know deep down that only creation guarantees truth, because truth is something alive, as is freedom. Only creation goes one step further than the truth of machines, and creation, like all births or genesis, is uncomfortable.
It seems that what's coming will be uncomfortable, whether a little or a lot, as always. That's the point. How will creation have to be bolder, more advanced, more creative so that we humans can distinguish ourselves from machines? A certificate like those for organic products won't be enough; it won't be reliable. How can writing—the very writing you're reading right now—become different from—be improved upon—that of the robot? It won't be easy, and it won't be detached from political struggle. It never has been. Is it really possible to collaborate with machines? I honestly don't know. We'll meet again in two weeks.
