The Aporia of Transparency
Origin: Concept developed from the distinction between authenticity and sincerity
Definition
An aporia is a logical impasse, a problem that cannot be resolved within the terms in which it is posed. The aporia of transparency refers to the irreducible tension between two requirements that appear to go hand in hand but turn out to be distinct and sometimes incompatible: authenticity and sincerity.
Authenticity refers to the absence of mediation between the author and what they produce. A text is authentic if the author is its direct source, without technical interposition. Authenticity is a question of origin.
Sincerity refers to honesty about one’s intentions. A text is sincere if the author does not conceal their intentions through their production. Sincerity is a question of one’s relationship to oneself and to others.
These two requirements come into tension as soon as generative AI is used for writing: a text produced with AI can be sincerely assumed (its author openly acknowledges the use of the tool) without being authentic in the strict sense, since technical mediation is constitutive of its production.
In my writings
This aporia is at the heart of my reflections on transparency regarding the use of generative AI in writing. The demand for transparency about the use of generative AI often presupposes a confusion between authenticity and sincerity: it raises the question of origin (did the author “really” write?) when the relevant question may be one of sincerity (does the author stand by what they sign?).
Confusing the two amounts to asking a poorly formulated question and providing inadequate answers. A text that has been reviewed, corrected, supplemented, and directed by an author who used generative AI as a tool can be perfectly sincere, and the question of its strict authenticity may not be the right question.