Greetings from the postliminary comedown of an annual conference that was personally gratifying and professionally anything but. All the professional confusion and angst revolved around generative A.I. and I'll get to that, but first - I'm funny1.
Well maybe not so much. What I mean is, I studied public speakers and stand-up comedians and improve how-to videos and, over the years, I've become what Kevin Smith calls "living room funny." Which is to say that I can be a really good dinner guest with funny stories , on point quips, and generally amusing anecdotes. It also means that when I'm stressed or defensive, my sense of humor gets barbed. Like in, all the arrows barbed. I try very hard to stay in the light, but it's not always easy and, just like everyone, I have been known to take everything too far.
All of which is preface for my favorite kind of left-handed compliment: "Is that a quote?" "Did you get that from somewhere?" "That's a great line, where's it from?"
When this happens, it’s tempting to puff up my chest and climb up on the nearest soapbox and rant and rail about how I'm an original and would never, etc. etc. But, odds are, actually I would.
In much of modern culture, originality is prized above all else; plagiarism is a cardinal sin. And yet, it happens all the time. When it’s deliberate, when we can identify both the original and the copy, strict penalties are put in place and we all go on about our day. But when it’s unintentional, when it’s a case of multiple discovery or simultaneous creation, that’s when things get tricky.
And it’s one area where A.I. is going to make things that much harder. Joke theft is a controversial topic among comedians. On the one hand, just as in the previous paragraph, stealing is bad and plagiarists are the worst kind of thieves. On the other hand, there are only so many observations to be made about similar life experiences. And so you have what is sometimes called parallel thinking wherein two different artists take the same idea and end up with similar punchlines. The arguments over what is deliberate theft and what is simply parallel thinking run for decades.
I've talked before about Spider Robinson’s story “Melancholy Elephants,” where he argues that we have to be able to forget because otherwise we will soon run out of material. His example in the story is that the 88 keys on a piano can make an incredible number of combinations, but on a long enough timeline, repetition is inevitiable. Our devices and the internet that they're connected to, as well as a greater understanding of form and delivery, mean that we're all copying each other all the time, whether we intend to or not.
So, rather than puff up my chest and say I would never steal a joke, it’s far better for me to say I would never purposefully steal someone else's joke. If I borrow a line, I give credit. If I quote someone, I attribute it. I mean call me a simp for academia, but I cite my sources.
When I'm lucky enough to get a one-liner that lands, well, I want ALL the credit. Because I'm funny and rely on that characterization of self far more than I really like to admit. But I digress.
This concern with originality is, in my ever so humble opinion, something that exists all throughout academia: be original or be silent. Make sure your research is your own and make sure the way in which you present it is original to yourself. Which is odd because research is built on other people’s work.
In fact, we have to pay careful attention to the holy trinity of quotation, attribution, and citation. When I put together an academic paper, I have to both show that I have done all the homework. And once I have shown all my sources and built a foundation of solid principals and core concepts, then, and only then can I show my original thinking.
It’s a burden but a necessary one. If only comedy worked the same way.
So, when I get asked if I've quoted a line, I have to double-check. I mean, I read and watch a ton of media. It's entirely possible that something burrowed its way into my subconscious only to be severed from the originating character, author, or delivery vehicle and therefore pop up as something I've invented myself. So, I check. Mostly, I'm pretty good at knowing what's my own thought and when I've borrowed one, but sometimes...oops.
Which is where all these concerns about A.I. come back into play. One thing Chat GPT and Claude and their ilk make abundantly clear is that we're none of us as original as we think we are. Most of us are a walking mishmash of cliche, misattributed folk wisdom, aphorisms, maxims, and half-remembered radio jingles that mostly - mostly - manages to form something of an original whole. But not always.
Behind the doom and gloom around generative A.I. is something more fundamental: if a bot can write an essay about any given topic, is it more original than me? Am I not as original as I thought? To answer the latter question honestly, no, you're not. None of us are. And so, what we need to do is to learn how to take the things that are truly original about us - our feelings, our experiences - and learn how to express them in an original a manner as possible, while making sure to cite our work in the process.
By the way, the line that prompted this whole piece went like this:
I was leading a group to a nearby restaurant and stopped to check the map on my phone. Amidst all the ensuing ribbing, one of my friends said, “We trust you. Don’t doubt yourself.”
To which I responded, “Hey, if you’d been me as long as I have, you’d doubt yourself, too.”
Original? I think so. Maybe. Hang on, I’ll go check.
But looks don’t count for much! Heh? Heh? Right?