I couldn’t find authoritative data but I assume millions of copies of William Gibson’s novel, The Peripheral have been sold. And many more millions share my interest in Eastern spiritual traditions (specifically the illusory nature of the self). And the subset of those who fall into both groups is probably large… I just don’t happen to know any of those people. So I fired up my ChatGPT app fully aware of the bullshit risk.
“I’d like to get your take on one of the plot elements in William Gibson’s novel, The Peripheral. Before I get to that, I’m curious about how you know what you know. For example, were you trained on the full text of that novel or would your “understanding” be based on reviews or other sources?”
The rest of the conversation (PDF) was pretty interesting.
[Me to ChatGPT] I posted the above conversation to my blog and a friend was curious about your use of the phrase “neon-lit nod.” He wondered if the phrase was “original” or had you “cribbed” it. His google search found numerous uses of the phrase so he concluded it had been part of your training. Which prompts the question, can an AI like ChatGPT come up with an original phrase? And would you ‘know’ it was original? But then… is there such a thing as an original phrase? The obvious answer would seem to be ‘yes. ’ Someone had to be the first to write “neon-lit nod.” Can you provide any examples of an ‘original’ phrase?
https://www.smays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/can-AI-be-original-1.pdf