CAN AI WRITE SATIRE?

     Most of us know something about the Luddites. Typical of most Americans it is not much. After all, it happened a long time ago over two hundred years ago, and didn't happen here. Why bother? What we know for sure is that they, the Luddites, destroyed machinery at the beginning of the industrial age. We're pretty sure it happened in England. To know more would be woke. And that's where it stands. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was written about a half century earlier, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels would write their book, Capitol, about a half century later. In between this, a new nation had come into being, and that was the United States of America. What could be more important than that? DAMN THE LUDDITES! 

     What only a few understand is the context. These protests against industrialization were led, and participated in, by workers in the textile craft industries. They were not industries until the industrial engines began putting these craft people out of work. Crafts people like, weavers, who were not only seeing their jobs going away, but were seeing the cheapening of the products that these people had made by hand with much pride. Today you may see such crafts on display at county and state fairs. And sweaters grandma's knit for their grandchildren as Christmas presents. Wood workers and shoemakers would join them. As usual, there was both sides to the issue; the crafts people who had spent years attaining the skills necessary to attain the excellence they sought to achieve, were now out of work. Even worse, they were forced to feed raw materials to the industrial weaving machines that had replaced them. The industrialists were now free to hire lower-cost labor, including young children. Naturally, larger profits redounded to the industrial class. Clothes did become cheaper, though at the expense of quality. No mention of the quality of life for textile workers.

     We do these things; we eagerly adapt newer things. Sometimes to our benefit, often to the detriment of the working class, and eventually, everybody. Slavery was not a new thing. It is nearly as old as humanity. Slavery in the American colonies, later American states, allowed the agrarian states to produce their goods cheaper than those states where industrialization  was taking place. You had to invest in machinery and pay someone to maintain it. Even then machinery wore out and needed replacing, and it was still not completely understood. Slaves were an investment that had a longer lifespan than machinery and they could reproduce, allowing the owner to capitalize the offspring. Of course they had to hire slavedrivers to keep the "machinery from running away", but the expense was small. Eventually the industrial north out-competed the slave states in the machinery of war. Most of us are greatful for that history, though the south, and the party that defends them, have not given up.

     Later on, around the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century, emerged Taylorism. A fellow by the name of Fred W Taylor developed a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized work-flow to improve economic efficiency. It was not a machine, but the efficient working of labor that they wished to improve. Naturally this increased productivity redounded to the industrialists and manufacturers, not the workers in the factory. As a young man joining the workforce a half-century later, we called these Taylorists, "efficiency experts". Naturally, being on the shop floor and not in the office, we questioned their expertise. We did have at that time the benefit of Union contracts to protect workers from the overzealous efficiency expert. Those without union contracts still had a floor beyond which management could not go for fear of a union vote. We also had labor laws that protected all workers, though there was emerging in one particular party a movement to make government smaller to weaken these labor laws. These became an ironic doppelganger to the Luddites. Destroying the governmental machinery that protected workers who run real machinery. Later on, in more recent times they became so anti-government that they began to attack government by the consent of the people in favor of some sort of government by the will of God, a kind of nihilism. The trouble is, as in an earthquake, when the floor slides away, everything goes with it. What do they care? The people who invest in their political office-holders are making money regardless. And the corporate executives don't really care if there is a comfortable tomorrow, they will still make greater profits.

     Today, in the third decade of the 21st century, a new kind of device is emerging that  will impact the product of the mind. It is called Artificial Intelligence and it makes no reference to intelligence as we have come to know it. The quest to develop a sentient machine has now become closer to realization. Ironically, this is happening just as our own lack of sentience is being exhibited in Congress. Quest GPT and Artificial Intelligence-AI, are the titles most often used. The advocates, of AI claim that this app can write sentences, paragraphs, maybe even books published by Regnery Publishers, though the readers of those books cannot be counted on as critics of writing. Today's Luddite is the screenwriters guild, currently on strike to protect their jobs from being replaced by a computerized writer. Joining them are members of the Screen Actors Guild, who wish to protect their image from being digitized and used against their wishes. So far AI has shown some minimal progress. It can create essays for college applications, repetitive business letters and such. Not all colleges are so easily fooled so  I would suggest small religious colleges with conservative orientation. It has been less successful so far in creating nuanced thought or writing joke material. We all know people who, on their own, are unable to create nuanced writing or sophisticated humor. They proliferate in the majority party of the House of Representatives. But can they become best-selling writers if published by anyone besides Regnery Press? Can they be read without a chuckle, if they are writing on a serious issue, or with a chuckle, if being intended as humor. Can they discern the difference between a belly laugh and a chuckle? Can they learn that a pun is not intended to be answered with a laugh. Will they some day be seen doing stand-up? We can not know at this point, but we can be comfortable that it will not be a rapid transition and will be accompanied by many opportunities to laugh in the businessman face. 

    We may have found here, the proper place to introduce the image of the great actor Ned Beatty portraying a character written by the great Paddy Cheyevsky in his movie, Network. We can be sure that Mr Cheyevsky will endure, longer than AI.

           "YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, MR. BEAL...."