Dave Eggers Calls AI Writing Catastrophic for Students, Dismisses $1tn OpenAI's Novels as Pastiche
Updated
Updated · Financial Times · Jul 18
Dave Eggers Calls AI Writing Catastrophic for Students, Dismisses $1tn OpenAI's Novels as Pastiche
1 articles · Updated · Financial Times · Jul 18
Summary
Eggers said generative AI is making teachers’ lives “infinitely more difficult” and, when students use it to compose, risks silencing “an entire generation or two” by preventing them from learning to write.
At a talk to about 200 OpenAI staffers, he mocked Sam Altman’s praise for an AI short story as “pastiche nonsense” and said no one would read an AI novel.
The 56-year-old author tied that critique to his broader belief that creativity comes from practice, feedback from other people and teaching—not from outsourcing expression to a machine.
His new novel, “Contrapposto,” published this month, largely avoids contemporary tech and instead centers on artistic craft, failure and instruction, echoing his long-running skepticism of Silicon Valley.
Living on a 23ft sailboat without internet, email or a smartphone, Eggers argues society adopts new technologies too quickly and backs measures such as youth social-media bans.