INCONTRI NEL LABIRINTO VIRTUALE: CALVINO E CHATGPT TRA REALTÀ E FANTASIA

If we looked back, we would understand that the automation applied to writing does not constitute an unprecedented. It all depends on who builds the technologies and who uses them. If Italo Calvino’s enlightened and utopian mind were to do this, we would have much to experience and nothing to fear. In 1967, Calvino published the essay Cibernetica e fantasmi in the wake of several lectures he gave in Italy and Europe on behalf of the dell’Associazione Culturale Italiana. In Cibernetica e fantasmi, Calvino approached the concept of Artificial Intelligence, predicting that computers would write novels and poems and asserting that literature, from its origins, has always been based on algorithmic forms. A computer can write thousands of stories, some good, some nonsensical, some bad. However, only a human reader can appreciate them, to be moved, to be bored, to be interested. Thinking of today’s Artificial Intelligence systems, of ChatGPT systems that are able to generate texts, works of art and music, the scenario imagined by Calvino instead appears to our eyes as a reality.