Henrik Karlsson has noted one reason why AI writing is bland.
Consider a paragraph written by an LLM. Blank out one of the usual words. Can you imagine what word it is? Or does the paragraph lose meaning, taste, or direction in the absence of the word? Chances are, yes, you can guess the word, and the paragraph remains consistent.
LLMs are ambiguous with their word choice, so they choose all three. Maybe by luck, to hitchhike on the power of rhetoric, but it’s also because they don’t know which of the three words to use. They therefore choose all three.
Basically, AI writing does not pack high information into a single paragraph. There are no garden-path sentences that surprise readers.
Our brains love novelty. What is familiar easily gets pushed to the background. However, an incisor gap is more noticeable than a laterally symmetric face.
Artistic work packs layers upon layers of unpredictability. Several times, I go back to Lupe Fiasco’s lyrics because no amount of scrutiny makes me believe I have completely understood him or them. And as sure as the orange hair on a president’s head, I find new, packed, hidden meaning. True to his words, he, along with other pivotal hip-hop artists, has been putting substance over style.
The reduction of information from a creative output is what I call collapsing dimensions. It can be useful in various fields, but in art and in a richer life, it does the opposite. Let me share a couple of examples.
Mathematical tools to harness complexity
A simple example is taking two variables and plotting them on a graph. One on the X-axis and the other on the Y-axis. A clear line implies the existence of a strong correlation. A formula will be traced. The usual ones follow the classical schema: y = mx + c, where ‘y ‘ is the figure on the Y-axis, ‘m’ the gradient of the line, ‘x’ the figure on the X-axis, and ‘ c ‘ the y-intercept.
Such parsimonious lines are collapsible dimensions. They have collapsed information from various data points. Two dimensions, from the two axes, collapse into one, a line. In the words of Lupe, such a formula is abbreviated for the doppery.
The new line packs more information because it is predictive and explicative. I can use the line’s formula to predict the other points. The information on the other dimensions is not lost. Scientists and mathematicians like these elegant solutions to information.
In fields such as medicine, these formulas may come in handy. After collecting several data points, enough to represent a certain population of interest, these formulae can be used to bucket people into groups. Logistic regressions collapse various variables into a single formula that has higher predictive values. Thus, when I want to make a knee meniscal transplant, I can use the formula to estimate the best menisci for the patient. The reason is that getting the dimensions wrong does not improve the quality of life of the patient. This was research I conducted almost a decade ago.
Famous mathematical formulas can pack dense information in a line. Think, for instance, of the Planck formula, E = hf. It tells the packets of energy a light wave carries. Together with the work function of a material, it can tell us how many electrons can be freed from a surface when exposed to incident light.
In the hands of a creative mind, these dense packets can be played with to generate interesting insights. My favourite is by Sir Roger Penrose. He took Plank’s formula and equated it to Einstein’s formula. That is, E = hf = MC². He then removed the constants h and C, and remained with f ≈ M. It made sense. Physical matter can behave like a clock, with frequency.
These are the only examples I can think of that collapse dimensions in a useful way because they pack more information. It’s how good writing can leave readers with more questions, intrigue, or insights than the scripts written by AI.
The alternative concept of dimension collapse can also be seen in physics. In quantum field theory, when a wave collapses, we lose information. While it was previously in a superpositioned state, the collapse of a wave makes it take a precise coordinate of a variable.
Think of Schrodinger’s cat. Before the examiner opens the box, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is superpositioned, dead and alive at the same time. After opening the box, this wave collapses into either of the two. Cat lovers can argue over whether it’s necessary to open the box or not without a proper means to settle the debate.
The fact that cat lovers can argue without compromise is evidence of how much information one can derive from a superpositioned state. Opening the box removes the interestingness of the concept. Schrodinger’s cat is so interesting that it drew other interpretations from it besides the one agreed on at Copenhagen.
Collapsing dimensions has this possible outcome. A loss of interesting features. In our reality, there are worse means of dimension collapse. These are my special concerns.
Let me remove my phone to record this
I foresee, like I live next door to 4B,
gon’ be hardcore like the next war my sword see— Lupe Fiasco
First, appreciate Lupe’s mastery. Forsee can be replaced with 4C, for the next line to make sense, “like I live next door to 4B.” As much as he raps about putting substance over style, in itself, that is irreducible style.
In sharp contrast, what I detest is taking out a phone to record a performance at a concert.
Unless you have been assigned the role or recording them, I have yet to encounter a sound argument for why everyone records an artist for the entire performance. Frankly, after enough concerts, these artists, I think, feel like zoo animals, recorded rather than experienced. Display animals waiting for the tourists who got an entrance ticket to watch the talented spectacle.
The individual who takes out their phone collapses a three-dimensional being into a two-dimensional pixelated one. Collapsing this dimension reduces the information one can get from soaking in the moment.
We can get technical and imagine the dimensions are four, including time. By recording a performance, one collapses the dimensions into three, because time is always continuing. You can never trace back time. So the memories of that particular moment when you were enjoying the performance are in two dimensions, instead of soaking it all in in three dimensions is gone, never to be recovered.
Sometimes, one flashes out their phone to take a dish of their meal, which they will post before they dig in. Hunger, that evolutionary signal, pauses because one needs to have something to share with their fans. A three-dimensional meal is collapsed into a two-dimensional image. This is as far as one sensation goes. However, from an image, we lose the smell, which influences the taste and the texture of the meal, sometimes in its sizzling hot presence before it settles into a purr atop your heated stone tablet serving as a plate.
But hey, I didn’t order the meal. I didn’t get the phone. You can do what you wish with your phone and your meal. My wish is that you appreciate what is in front of you without thinking that the snapshot of it is necessary for a full experience. From a dimension perspective, it is the opposite.
These are all dimensions that are lost when you take a picture. You know who consumes all these? The one who doesn’t remove their phone. The one who simmers in the moment. The details don’t have a chance to escape. They became untangled without permission. Especially when they pay attention. And thus, the nature of their attention determines the nature of their experience. In contrast, a snapshot breaks the entanglement. It destroys the dimensions, the complexity, the moment of living.
When the artist is up there, performing some of their favourite jams, they want you to experience it, not record it. Something at some point in their lives moved them to pick up a pen or pencil and paper and write the lines. They practised several times and had numerous edits before the final cut. What they shared was also practised a couple of times before the actual performance. The final act is heavily layered.
Ironically, the artist collapses hours of practice and preparation into a performance. Packed, dense, creativity. And yet we flash out our devices to record, often not for ourselves, but to share with people who will forget about it the next week. These are dimensions we don’t want to collapse, even if it’s unintentional, because it does an injustice to the artist. To an artist who has committed to the art, substance, as Lupe insists, is key.
Hip-hop fans know that Lupe will not dumb a bar for you. You have to elevate to his level and understand it as he does. Great art is the mental extension of a hand to lift you to a level you never before considered or thought possible. For poetic justice, to a higher dimension. Collapsing the dimensions is an injustice to the artist and the art.
Worse still, social media has collapsed all those photos and videos that we share into a single word — content. Oh, how I could purge this word from most online creators.
Think of all the creative material online. The pencil artist. The podcaster. The reels. The photographer. The comedian. The writer. These are all collapsed into a single word — content. These are the kind of collapses I would want us to break apart from. They are not pro-creation.
Creativity explores. It doesn’t crenate. Creativity is seen when Alice drops down that rabbit hole and doesn’t know how to get out. We got a story, movies, and songs from it. No dimensionality collapse.
From Michael Jackson, we got an album, a vinyl record, a tape, beats to sample, live recordings, performances, a movie, a documentary, books, memories. From one of the most creative artists, we got endless facets. Nothing collapsed. We see this in nature.
Nature’s dimensions
Without the substance I feel incomplete
Like taekwondo without the feet, type it wrong without delete— Lupe Fiasco
Can you imagine finding another David Attenborough? It’s impossible. Nature believes in creating irreducibilities. Collapsing dimensions goes against nature’s very modus operandi.
Dimensions are so key to packing information that it was factored into the very fabric of nature. Together with a team of biologists, Geoffrey West discovered the ¼ power law in a wide array of nature’s complexities. From the branching of vessels, the fibres of the brain, the city’s planning, and even the disease rates, these follow a quarter law.
The team discovered a dense law packed in a mathematical concept of fractals. Self-similarity is seen in many of nature’s most striking features. Beauty is echoed from the repetition in a non-obvious way since fractal repetition does not guarantee you can predict what the final set will look like after multiple iterations.
Fractal geometry is essential to improving efficiency. It’s an extra, albeit much hidden dimension that eluded many scientists, perhaps by overly relying on the other neatly collapsed dimensions as they hunted to bag that heavily sought-after recognition among their peers and to engrave their names in history. And yet, nature becomes rich because it does not collapse dimensions.
Consider the edge of a black hole. Virtual particles appear and disappear at any given point in our shared universe. These particles can appear and collide, annihilating each other. However, at the edge of a black hole, the appearance can have one particle sinking into the hole while the other escapes far from the celestial entity. Black holes, therefore, experience a kind of radiation, Hawking radiation.
This radiation settles the question of the information paradox. Ideally, we should not lose information. Black holes presented a paradox because whatever got in was somehow lost. Hawking radiation shows that it isn’t because the virtual particles are usually a pair. If you know the properties of one, you also know the other. As the black hole radiates and shrinks in size, it practically emits what is inside it, bringing out the information that was inside it.
This radiation is so subtle and little that it will take billions of years for black holes to radiate and fizzle out. And yet, even in these powerful bodies, there is no collapse of dimensions. Nature preserves dimensions.
Humans, in contrast, during this present age, collapse dimensions, without their knowledge, with the result of deflavouring our experience.
I am a victim of this blame because I have opted to share my ideas by punching keys on a keyboard and have them appear on a black and white document in a font that anyone can access on the planet. You can pick any piece of scanning technology, and you will know the font of this very article.
Contrast that with my handwriting. Nobody has the same handwriting as mine. The fact that I used to win awards for best handwriting (in contrast with the shameless scribbling my profession is known for) means a couple of eyes surveyed other irreducible hand writings and ranked mine at the top. Multiple times. It doesn’t call for celebration, but offers a glimpse into the irreducibilities that we’re abandoning after transitioning from pen and paper to keyboard and monitor. There are elements of ourselves we lose when we decide never to pick up a pen again.
Some tablets allow us to scribble notes using a stylus and then convert that into a font we’re all familiar with. That conversion, from your scribbles into what a computer can easily read, takes away the evidence that you actually wrote. Someone else may think you typed those words. That dimension is gone. The collapse of dimensions removes the experience, the richness, the clear picture of the process or series of events as they unfolded.
Our virtual experience has a means of collapsing dimensions that sucks away life. Cooking, for example. I love cooking. Well, you may not want to cook for various reasons, but by punching buttons on our mobile computers and having a rider bring you a meal, you have lost the parts that it took in its preparation. Cooking is not all about getting the meal on the table. Any reasonable chef will slap you in the face with a pan if that is your line of thought. There is pleasure in cutting the vegetables into near-perfect slices, letting the smell smack your nostrils as it marinates in the oil, tasting to evaluate the richness of the broth, observing as the meal bubbles, and as you serve, anticipating how your palate will be having a field day when you down mouthful after mouthful.
Or, you could just order it.
I think you know by now which is the richer version.
What I’m trying to say is…
The nature of our attention determines the nature of our experience. Our attention is drawn to elements we wish not to be reduced. When systems are put in place to collapse these dimensions, our experience changes.
I’ve heard countless arguments about how AI will improve efficiency, but from a point of collapsed dimension, it strips the life from these actions. A doorman does more than simply opening the door. When they share a joke in the morning, it sets the tone for your day. An automatic door lacks this rich feature. Life is lost when the human is replaced. A dimension is lost.
Lucky for us, nature does not conform to these capitalistic ideals. It can be our constant reminder to always improve our dimensionality, even when we collapse others.
We can be intentional about preserving dimensions. Like Lupe, nature has been doing this for a while. Life is so rich.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube