Who’s the author?

Author

Affiliation

Ludovic De Cuypere

VUB & UGent

“In Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a blind monk, Jorge of Burgos, poisons the pages of a forbidden manuscript to suppress what he perceives as dangerous knowledge. The book in question—Aristotle’s lost work on comedy—contains ideas Jorge fears might erode reverence for God and the Church’s authority. By his reasoning, laughter is not only disruptive but subversive, undermining the established order. Yet the irony of Jorge’s censorship is profound: his efforts to control knowledge result in unintended consequences—murders, the destruction of the abbey’s vast library, and ultimately, the collapse of the very order he sought to protect.

This story illustrates a paradox fundamental to the dissemination and restriction of knowledge: suppression often magnifies the allure of what is censored. This dynamic resonates deeply in the current debate surrounding the use of generative AI (GenAI) in education. As with Jorge’s poisoned manuscript, GenAI embodies a dual potential: a source of intellectual empowerment and a perceived threat to traditional hierarchies of learning and authorship. The educational sphere, like Jorge in the abbey, is grappling with whether and how this tool should be regulated.

At the heart of the debate lies a practical and theoretical problem. Should students be allowed to use GenAI for minor tasks, such as refining grammar and style, while being prohibited from using it to generate content? If so, where is the line drawn between permissible assistance and intellectual transgression? These questions expose the difficulty of disentangling the generative from the interpretative. If a student uses GenAI to spark an idea or rephrase a sentence, can we still attribute authorship entirely to them? The impossibility of policing such distinctions mirrors Eco’s observation, implicit throughout The Name of the Rose, that knowledge, once accessible, cannot be easily controlled.

Authorship itself has long been a contested concept. Eco’s writing offers a particularly illuminating perspective on this issue. His works, including The Name of the Rose, exemplify an approach that deliberately blurs the boundaries of originality. Entire passages in the novel are reconfigurations of historical texts, medieval philosophies, and theological debates, woven together in ways that challenge the notion of a singular authorial voice. Eco’s postmodernism delights in intertextuality—ideas appropriated, adapted, and reframed. His writing operates less as a declaration of individual authorship than as a dialogue with the past, a semiotic mosaic.

This intertextuality offers a lens through which to understand GenAI’s role in creativity. Much like Eco’s novels, GenAI synthesizes pre-existing material into new configurations. While some might view this as a dilution of originality, it underscores a deeper truth: originality is rarely the product of isolated invention. It is instead an act of recombination, shaped by context, history, and dialogue. The boundaries of authorship have always been porous; GenAI merely brings this reality into sharper focus. The question, then, is not whether GenAI undermines authorship, but how authorship can be reconceptualized in an age of generative technology.

This reconceptualization is particularly urgent in education, where traditional models rely on the premise of individual intellectual effort. Essays are meant to reflect a student’s personal understanding, their unique synthesis of research and critical thinking. The availability of GenAI challenges this model, not by negating originality, but by offering new pathways to it. If a student uses GenAI to generate an idea, refine its expression, and critically engage with the result, are they not participating in the same semiotic processes that characterize scholarly work? The ethical challenge lies not in forbidding GenAI, but in ensuring it is used to deepen understanding rather than bypass it.

The fear surrounding GenAI is not unlike Jorge’s fear of laughter. Both reflect a concern about losing control—over knowledge, creativity, and the structures that sustain authority. Yet censorship, whether of books or technologies, often produces counterproductive results. Efforts to restrict GenAI’s use may alienate students and inadvertently reinforce its allure. Moreover, such efforts risk overlooking the pedagogical potential of GenAI as a tool for critical engagement. Instead of drawing artificial boundaries around its use, educators could embrace its complexity, integrating it into teaching practices that emphasize ethical and analytical skills.

The lesson of Eco’s novel is clear: knowledge cannot be contained without consequence. The abbey’s library, with its labyrinthine structure and secretive codes, represents the ultimate paradox of censorship—it protects knowledge by hiding it but destroys the openness that gives knowledge its vitality. Similarly, the challenge of GenAI is not to suppress it, but to guide its use responsibly. Students must be taught to critically evaluate AI-generated content, credit its influence transparently, and integrate it into their work in ways that reflect their own intellectual contributions.

Eco’s approach to writing provides a model for navigating these challenges. His works demonstrate that creativity lies not in isolating oneself from external influences, but in engaging with them dynamically. GenAI can be part of this engagement, serving as a collaborator in the creative process rather than a replacement for human thought. By framing GenAI as a tool for exploration rather than a threat to originality, educators can foster a more nuanced understanding of authorship and creativity.

The debate over GenAI ultimately reflects larger cultural anxieties about the future of knowledge. Like the abbey’s library, GenAI is both a treasure trove and a Pandora’s box—a source of immense potential and profound challenge. Its rise offers an opportunity to rethink how we teach, learn, and create. Knowledge, as Eco’s works remind us, is always dangerous, but it is this danger that makes it transformative. The task for educators is not to fear this new tool but to embrace its possibilities, ensuring that students engage with it critically, ethically, and creatively. Only then can we harness its potential as a catalyst for intellectual growth.”

The above text was generated with ChatGPT. I used a series of prompts (a conversation if you will) with observations, ideas, and questions about Umberto Eco’s book The name of the Rose, intertextuality, and my personal struggle as an educator to intergrated genAI in written assignments. Here is a link to the chat that I used to create the text:

https://chatgpt.com/share/6746d6d5-90b8-8005-86f7-4c92fe8345fe

The text is well-written and perhaps even better that what I could have produced without the use of genAI. The text also aptly captures my ideas and presents them in a coherent way. But who’s the author? It feels profoundly fake and utterly wrong to call myself the author of this text; that is why I put the text in quotation marks - it’s not “mine”. Then again, the text is a product of my creation using all the tools and knowledge that I have at my disposal. Is sharing a link transparent and honest enough to give proper credit where credit is due? Somehow it doesn’t feel that way. The LLM was fed with huge amounts of data and previous scholarship about Eco, including the novel itself and a cornucopia of scholarly works about the topics touched upon in the text. So many works and authors deserve credit here, including the creators of the LLMs itself. Would it be accurate to say that I deployed the LLM as the perfect ghost writer? This feels wrong too. Although I’m quite sure that ghost writers do more than merely recording and polishing someone else’s ideas and words, they don’t have access to existing scholarship in the same way the LLM has. So maybe I am just the creator of the text? But what exactly is my role then? Co-author? Generator? Or Instigator? I don’t know. Drop me a line if you do.