91福利社

Good morning. What would you do if you came across a man in a park, sitting in front of a typewriter, offering to write a poem with you? I would avoid eye contact and walk away as quickly as possible. After all, the offer might just be a ruse to rob me, or worse. And even if its genuine, I suspect the outcome of our poetic collaboration would be cringingly bad.
But there is such a man in the park, and I have, on reflection, come to think he鈥檚 doing a good thing. Patrick Kruse, a Master鈥檚 student in Belfast, has set himself up in the city鈥檚 botanic gardens, encouraging passersby to write poems 鈥� every day for the next year. Perfect strangers report being charmed and moved by the experience.
AI offers something similar, of course. Feed it key words and it can spit out verses in any style you like. So, what鈥檚 the difference? Most discussions about AI focus on its supposed capabilities. But another approach would be to ask what it means for us humans when we give up certain of our own capabilities so that AI can perform them instead.
Pope Leo XIV recently published an encyclical warning against creating a technological 鈥淭ower of Babel鈥�. He emphasized that human dignity does not derive from productivity, that no machine can replace 鈥渢he grandeur of humanity鈥� revealed in the human heart. It鈥檚 very well said. Yet there is, it seems to me, much more that still needs to said; in particular, on how AI is changing the way human beings relate to language.
One of the greatest minds and prose stylists of the 19th century, Cardinal (now Saint) John Henry Newman described writing as a 鈥渢hinking out into language鈥�. Writing is not, he believed, simply a matter of expressing thoughts that are already in our heads. The act of writing is itself a form of thinking. As humans, we don鈥檛 passively transcribe ideas into words on the page; we actively test, explore, refine, reimagine our ideas as we go. Writing is in that sense a unique and powerful tool not simply for communication, but for reasoning.
Having machines write for us may be quicker, easier, slicker. But by outsourcing our struggles to find the right words, we also outsource the essential human struggle known as thinking.
The new bard of Belfast鈥檚 botanic gardens may not be producing high poetry, but his eccentric efforts are surely welcome in an age obsessed with efficiency and outcomes. It鈥檚 good to be reminded that all of us have something worthwhile to say, including things we cannot fully know until we set our minds to dance with language.