The most challenging thing in this world is not to earn money, gain fame, win the lottery or swim across the Suez Canal but to write, I believe. Though I was a regular writer and columnist, I started facing writer's block for the past several months, precisely from the day on which I was designated as Chief Editor of the ‘Coffee Table Book’ being released in connection with the centennial celebrations of Rotary Club of Trivandrum South. Taking it as a challenge, I decided to write some beautiful paragraphs demonstrating my writing skills and started collecting the data and pictures, but the tempo didn’t last long, as I was advised by Rtn. PDG R Reghunath to explore the possibility of ChatGPT to write short paragraphs in an easy but effective manner. Though I was a bit reluctant to use ChatGPT to write snippets about the glorious pathways travelled by the Club for the last 50 long celebrated years, I tried the same and, to my surprise, beautifully worded and properly structured sentences unequivocally prompted by the AI-driven algorithms, which made me ashamed about the poor vocabulary and sentence structuring I possessed. By making me more insecure and inferior, ChatGPT redrafted the paragraphs in a more beautiful, passionate, empathetic, and emotional manner by taking cues from the inputs. With great shock, I realised that writing is no longer a challenge to anyone, even for an illiterate, and with a lot of pain, I acknowledged that the writers of this world would go extinct as a bunch, like lion-tailed macaques and orangutans!! Though I got a mindful appreciation for the excellent presentation of the coffee table book from all corners of the club, I felt dejected as I knew that all the credits were for ChatGPT and not for me. Since then, I have not written anything, as ChatGPT can do that job better than I do.
Today, after a light dinner over a hectic day, I decided to write something to break the ice by giving some food for my thoughts. But nothing came to my mind, and I stared at the empty pages for a long time with a blank mind, wishing to find some interesting topic to write about. I wrote a mundane paragraph about the ‘Modified Modi’ and ‘Revamped Rahul’, but the political stories were not giving me much interest due to their monotonous nature, and, being disappointed, I tore down the pages onto the floor. I then tried to write about myself, childhood, adolescence, and the afterlife but tore off those pages, failing to find an exciting thread for the readers. After a few failed attempts, sitting in the middle of a heap of torn pages, I dropped the idea of writing, cursing the trauma created by ChatGPT on my writing skills, took a newspaper, and started browsing through the lifeless but colourful prints. I searched for exciting news that could inspire me to write and found Joy in it. All of a sudden, the heap of torn papers scattered all over my room became a heap of garbage and wrapped me around from toe to neck. Feeling helpless, I tried to come out of that, but the stairways, lift rooms, corridors, and gardens all became filled with filth and debris, thrown out through the windows of skyscrapers, kirana stores, and supermarkets, filled with educated and literate people of Kerala. Somehow, I escaped from it and ran out of the room, screaming for help from someone, but no one was there to help me; heaps of garbage continued to pile up and made mountains around me. My eyes filled with tears; the tears filled the road; the road turned into a river, and I started drowning in that, with heaps of garbage and debris flowing over my head. When the piercing smell of the filth, human faeces, debris, and live worms started suffocating me and the grease-like water went into my mouth, the newspaper in which I found the news of Joy, who went into the river filled with filth and gave his life, started slipping out of my hand and in that shock, I stood up from my seat dropping all the attempts to write about something. The fate of Joy, who lost his life in the water filled with garbage, was a hard blow on me, who had the pride of a sophisticated human being. The Mayor of the City had broken out in front of the media out of repentance for her inaction, and, in those tears, the sorrow of Joy became irrelevant, then the blame game began, as usual. As the tears of Joy had taken out my joy of writing, I dropped the idea of writing something, being ashamed for the mistake of belonging to a society in which the irresponsible bureaucracy, ineffective governmental systems, and senseless people are living with a handful of pride and a mind full of prejudice.
Note: I am posting this article on my blog with a fear in my heart that the readers will trash it by simply giving this credit to ChatGPT, thanks to the engineers who devastated the creative minds of countless people on this earth with mindless algorithms and software codes.
BIJOY P PULIPRA
Comments