Editorial: What Have Large-Language Models and Generative Al Got to Do With Artificial Life?

Abstract

Accessible generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like large-language models (LLMs) (e.g., ChatGPT,1 Minerva2) are raising a flurry of questions about the potential and implications of generative algorithms and the ethical use of AI-generated text in a variety of contexts, including open science (Bugbee & Ramachandran, 2023), student assessment (Heidt, 2023), and medicine (Harrer, 2023). Similarly, among the graphic and visual arts communities, the use of generative image synthesis algorithms (e.g., DALL-E,3 Midjourney,4 Stable Diffusion5) that take text prompts as input and produce works in the style of a particular human artist, or no artist who ever lived, are causing consternation and posing challenging questions (Murphy, 2022; Plunkett, 2022). The use of generative AI to create deep fakes has also been in the spotlight (Ruiter, 2021), as has its role in answering scientific research questions directly (Castelvecchi, 2023).To our minds, the questions these technologies are raising do not seem to be of a fundamentally different character to questions asked about AI for many years. They largely concern (a) what is possible, (b) what is right, and (c) the implications of the technology’s use. For instance,Can AI generate documentary “evidence” that is indistinguishable from reality? Can AI generate artifacts that are competitive with (or superior to) those made by a human?How is the concept of “truth” confused or undermined by the output of these technologies? Is it ethical to load examples of a human’s art to generate a model for replicating their style?Who owns the intellectual property rights of AI-generated artifacts? Who is accountable if an AI-generated artifact causes harm? Will I lose my job to an AI; does AI make creative writers or artists redundant?The sense of urgency and public interest in these questions has increased as generative models become practical and ubiquitous tools with levels of skill or expertise that appear to be of above average human competency.Of general relevance to academic publishers, including Artificial Life, is that LLMs can compose text structured in the form of research paper sections or even whole articles. And these texts are often (currently) hard to distinguish from human-written text, even by software trained to detect text generated by language models (LMs). When questioned (on February 20, 2023) “What should a journal editor do about LMs?” You.com’s chatbot suggested,A journal editor should ensure that all submitted manuscripts adhere to the journal’s style guide, and that the language used is appropriate for the journal’s audience. They should also ensure that any language models (LMs) used to assist with the writing process are properly cited and that any generated text is labeled as such. Additionally, the journal editor should ensure that the LMs are used in accordance with the journal’s policies and ethical considerations.That’s a generic response that begins tangentially to the questioner’s intended focus. As any human reader can immediately see, the chatbot is not aware of the social context of the question, nor has it had the opportunity to gauge the questioner’s level of expertise. But the text is “good enough”—it does address relevant issues, and it’s an answer that probably took you a few seconds to read, interpret, and critique. It may take you more time to read and analyze the text and this paragraph than it took for us and the chatbot to generate it. Was this therefore a waste of your time, or ours? Is the chatbot wasting your time? Are we? Some journals and publishers have drafted formal policies that require the use of LLMs for writing submissions to be explicitly acknowledged (e.g., at Springer-Nature; “Tools Such as ChatGPT,” 2023). In practice, their use (or misuse) may be very difficult to detect.Artificial Life, and its publisher MIT Press generally, is also adopting the policy that any use of generative AI, for any part of a submitted work, including b