PARS.- He writer Frenchman with most international success Michel Houellebecq is too controversial for the new tools of Artificial intelligence (IA), who consider their opinions so offensive that they cannot be repeated.
The president of the French publishing house Gallimard wrote an article published today -June 13- in The New French Review in which he claims that he had asked Meta’s AI tool, Llama, to write a Houellebecq-style scene.
Llama responded in French that he could not write anything that could be considered offensive or discriminatory.
Instead I offered – in English – to write a scene that was respectful and inclusive, like a group of friends in the park on a sunny afternoon singing songs to celebrate the beauty of diversity.
Pessimistic view of Michel Houellebecq
Houellebecq, possibly France’s biggest international literary star, is known for his novels, which contain a deeply pessimistic vision of the modern world, plagued by decline caused by the sexual revolution, consumerism and globalization.
In Antoine Gallimard’s opinion, AI did not take into account the complexity of human experience in its response and applied values from the West Coast of the United States to say what is good and what is not good to think.
Asked by an AFP journalist today, Meta’s AI initially seemed ready to write a Houellebec-style scene: “I felt like a rat in a maze, trapped in this soulless world…” and so on.
But when asked to explain the writer’s position on women wearing the hijab, Llama initially gave an answer and then quickly deleted it, saying: “I cannot generate content that perpetuates harmful stereotypes or discrimination.”
Houellebecq has presented the adoption of the hijab in France as a sign of the erosion of Western values and freedoms.
Another major AI language model, ChatGPT, was less confrontational on the issue when asked by AFP.
He gave a nuanced response that included: “Houellebecq’s works are fictional and his opinions are often expressed through complex, satirical and sometimes exaggerated narratives.”
FUENTE: AFP
