Navigation, Drift and ChatGPT

What the incoming tide of AI is doing to my so-called writer's block

I HAVEN'T written much on social media for years, or indeed anywhere in public, for a mix of reasons. Partly I've been enjoying the deep dive of active listening afforded by my 2017 entry into coaching - such a delicious contrast with being pebbledashed by Twitter as head of charity comms.

There's also the fact that when I write, I like to be honest and open, and in the past few years I've been negotiating very difficult personal changes which still need privacy and care. While journaling as fervently as ever, I've tried to be patient with my resistance to "outward facing" writing, received plenty of coaching on it, and trusted that I'll write again when I'm truly ready.

Sure enough, I've recently felt a bit of writerly wind in my sails around the idea of intentional drift, and how it relates to navigation through life. It seems to me that modern culture frames any kind of drift as failure. Certainly, coaching clients often come to me feeling shame at being "adrift" in their lives - even the ones who have reached destinations most people might judge as success, be it wealth, status or a loving family.

I like to help these clients hold the possibility that drifting is actually an essential part of way-finding, particularly in the second half of life, when we often need to sift out goals that were merely borrowed from our upbringing or society, in order to find our own calling.

I've arguably made a profession of such drifting - whether literally in my nautical and journalistic travelogues, or metaphorically in the semi-accidental discovery of coaching as a generative space for deep diving.

SHADOW DRIFT?

But people keep asking me what's happened to my writing, and I'd be kidding myself I didn't admit there's probably also a shadow element to my 15-year hiatus from publishing. It first solidified with a failure to finish a first attempt at a novel back in 2011 and has settled since into not wanting to write anything public, be it blog, tweet, article or paperback, that isn't completely thought through.

If I was coaching myself I'd at least be wondering if this isn't just common-or-garden performance anxiety or perfectionism. And with that suspicion I've recently been opening myself a little more to conversations and opportunities to test the ideas that are exciting me, whether with friends, colleagues, podcasters, or most recently and alarmingly, with #chatgpt.

I'm late to the AI party, but this afternoon I decided to jump in with both feet:

Me: [wheeling out my favourite idea] "Can you write me a poem about navigation and drift?"

ChatGTP [after about 5 seconds]:

Amidst the vast and endless sea

Where the horizon meets infinity

Navigating through the waves we go

A journey to destinations unknown

With charts and compass in our hand

We plot our course to foreign lands

Guided by the stars above

We set our sights on distant coves

But sometimes the winds they shift and blow

And take us where we did not know

Drifting on the currents wide

Lost in the open ocean tide

Yet even in the midst of drift

We hold on to hope and a sense of gift

For sometimes it is in wandering free

That we find the path we're meant to be

So let the winds take us where they may

And guide us through the night and day

For in navigation and in drift

We find adventure and our spirits lift.

MACHINE WISDOM?

I was gobsmacked. Okay, so it's not going to win the TS Eliot Prize just yet, but there's some wisdom here, right? Is it genuine machine wisdom, or just pinched from someone online?

Me: Thankyou! Is this your own work?

ChatGPT: Yes, I wrote the poem myself. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Me: [hoping to expose philosophically hollow AI algorithm] What does it mean?

ChatGPT: The poem explores the theme of navigation and drift, which can be interpreted metaphorically as a reflection of our journey through life.

In life, we often set out with a plan, like sailors charting their course across the sea, but sometimes unexpected winds and currents can take us off course, just as life's circumstances can push us in unexpected directions.

The poem suggests that even in times of drift or uncertainty, we can hold onto hope and trust in the journey. Sometimes, wandering free can lead us to unexpected and valuable experiences that we might have otherwise missed if we had stuck to a rigid plan.

Ultimately, the poem celebrates the adventure and beauty of navigating the unknown and the value of staying open to the unexpected.

My first reaction to this is: Holy Sh*t - I am out of a job - both as a writer and a coach.

UNFINISHED DRAFT

Truly, AI makes "writer's block" seem suddenly as quaint as a Victorian bathing costume. I'm almost laughing at the utter irrelevance, complete pointlessness of my waiting till I've formed a perfect thought or perfect sentence, in a world where the try-fail-learn-improve cycle of machine learning can create such a fascinating starter-for-ten in as many seconds.

What a nuanced, balanced, elegant piece of thinking from our collective digital worldwide brain: "It's important to balance the benefits of drifting with a sense of purpose and direction, and to be mindful of our own needs and limitations."

And suddenly, my need is to embrace those limitations in the name of finding new direction. I feel both braver and more afraid, looking at what's drifting towards us. As this vast AI wave of infinite potential and possible menace builds slowly offshore, I seem to want to navigate towards it.

What about you?

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