Fake Plastic Trees, Baudrillard, and AI Reliance
Her green plastic watering can For her fake Chinese rubber plant In the fake plastic earth Warning: This blog post is the product of my loose understanding of Jean Baudrillard's philosophy, specifically his notion of the hyperreal, my love for Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees," and my latest thoughts about society becoming overreliant on generative AI, such as ChatGPT. Consider this: the real-world referent of a photo of a tree is the actual tree captured in the image. A tree that the photographer could touch with their own hands and see with their own eyes. A real-world referent being the concrete connection to reality. Similarly, the real-world referent of a poem is the poet's authentic emotions and pathos expressed in their words. But what happens when a student asks ChatGPT, “Write me a poem about trees”? The response is an instantly generated synthesis of data from unknown referents—perhaps drawn from other poems about trees, photos of trees, research on tree...