Wednesday, February 15, 2023

George Eliot, "Felix Holt" (1866), and ChatGPT

A few days ago, a Facebook memory came up from my sixteen months of reading George Eliot novels back in 2017-2018; it was a quotation from "Felix Holt, The Radical" (1866): "There are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is to tell them what they don’t understand; and the other is, to tell them what they’re used to." Back then, I couldn't have had the thought which crossed my mind now: ChatGPT impresses people because it tells them "what they're used to" in a style they're used to – or if it's something "they don't understand", they assume it must be correct and feel like they've been informed. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 February 2023)

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