S6 Ep. 17: Chatbot vs. Writer: Vauhini Vara on the Perils and Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence

fiction/non/fiction

Novelist and journalist Vauhini Vara joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss how ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, may—or may not—impact publishing, education, journalism, and the humanities in general. Vara explains differences between ChatGPT and another OpenAI tool, GPT-3, which she used as a way into writing about the death of her sister, a topic she had previously found unapproachable. She reads from the resulting essay, “Ghosts,” which was published by The Believer and anthologized in Best American Essays 2022.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Vauhini Vara

• The Immortal King Rao
• Ghosts

Others:

• Review: ‘The Immortal King Rao,’ by Vauhini Vara - The New York Times
• Meet GPT-3. It Has Learned to Code (and Blog and Argue). - The New York Times
• Is This the Start of an AI Takeover? - The Atlantic
• AI Has Come to Save the Arts from Themselves - The Washington Post
• AI Reveals the Most Human Parts of Writing | WIRED
• Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It. - The New York Times
• Microsoft Bets Big on the Creator of ChatGPT in Race to Dominate A.I. - The New York Times
• ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6 episode 16: In Memory of Russell Banks: Rick Moody on an Iconic Writer’s Life, Work and Legacy
• W.B. Yeats’ Autoscript
• ‘Even the spirits get a say’: A Look Into James Merrill's Ouija Poems by Harriet Staff
• Exquisite Corpse poetry
• Will Artificial Intelligence Kill College Writing? Online programs can churn out decent papers on the cheap. What now? – The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3 Episode 25: No Innocents Abroad: Scott Anderson and Andrew Altschul on the CIA and US Provocateurs in Foreign Politics

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