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 |   Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
| Random book titles from entitled authors Overjoyed by Gideon Gaye Here Today, Gone Tomorrow by Evan S. Entz The Weight of Grief by Paul Bering Circumnavigation by Rhonda Worrell Fly That Freak Flag by Y. B. Dulles Buyer Beware by Connie Mann Half a Truth is Better Than None by Mosely Lyon Life on the Open Sea by Noah Moore Crossing the Line by Rand M. Parker The Sodium Pentothal Diet by T. Ruth Teller Stumbling Into Fitness by Tripp Daley See also: "A Few More Books"  |
I grew up among vacuum tubes and rotary dial phones. I got my first pocket calculator while I was still in high school and bought my first personal computer in 1984. I watched CB radio fade away as email and texting became basic utilities. I've embraced the internet, smart phones, and learned how to waste time doom-scrolling instead of playing solitaire. Change is simply a fact of modern life, but it seems to be speeding up. Changes that once felt like dominos toppling now feel like parallel processes in a multi-core CPU. So, in that vein, here are some parallel posts on the subject of Artificial Intelligence: The era of human writing is drawing to a close. Why should an author toil for months in the harsh glare of a laptop screen? Why rub their fingers raw scraping content from an unforgiving keyboard? An AI writing program can produce the bulk of a novel in minutes, and the author can complete it and send it to the publisher in a few days. The era of publishing human writers is drawing to a close. Why should an editor wade through a slush pile of dreck to find a hidden gem? Why gamble an advance in hope of a best seller? Why beg and plead with human authors to meet a deadline? A minimum-wage intern can feed buzzwords to an AI writing program and produce a novel in minutes. Add a cursory polish and the book is ready for market in a couple of days. The era of buying books from a publisher is drawing to a close. Why pick through a limited selection that someone else chooses for you? Why bother with unreliable reviews? Why waste time starting a book that you may not enjoy or even finish? Why take the risk of being 'triggered' by disturbing content? An AI writing program can produce a novel that's custom tailored to your individual tastes and interests in real time. The era of human blogging is coming to a close. Why wait thirty agonizing minutes for the peck, peck, peck of fingers hunting out seeds of wisdom among the keycaps? An AI writing program can post a clever observation, complete with snarky replies, in seconds. The era of human reading is drawing to a close. Why subject the perfection of AI prose to the fallible judgment of humankind? The visual intake of printed text is an uncertain process at best. Defects in the human eye may cause transcription errors and defects in the human brain may result in 'seeing' content that doesn't exist. An AI program is far better suited to evaluate AI writing than any human ever could be. And the snowball is already rolling downhill . . . |
There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and writing. And most of the questions have to do with ethics. Is it ethical to use AI to write an article, story or poem? And is the AI program itself ethical, or merely plagiarizing existing content? I write for my own gratification. For me, using AI would feel like starting from the solution and copying the answers into the crossword puzzle. The result might look good, but why bother? Of course, those who write for a living may feel differently about the prospect of increased income. And human nature being what it is, I have no doubt that AI will be used in the arts much like steroids are used in sports. Even amateur athletes 'juice up' and then pretend to have earned their trophies. Professionals going after lucrative prizes and book deals will behave even worse. And if the end product is merely a commodity, like click-bait on the newsfeed, then why not use AI? There's no Pulitzer Prize for best click-bait headline. The whole point of writing greeting cards, instruction manuals, or ad copy is to turn a buck. If using AI increases one's productivity, then a writer would be foolish not to use it. And if a writer isn't needed, then a business would be foolish to pay for one. This may sound harsh, but a successful product has to maximize revenue while minimizing cost. If, however, an author is seeking a prize for excellence, then AI is definitely unethical. Just like using a grammar-check program or taking the advice of an editor instead of relying solely on one's own talent. Originality is a slippery slope and it's difficult to draw the line between content creation and content polishing. I do believe that ethical authors must credit the help of an AI program just as they should credit their editor. One of the biggest issues is the use of AI by students. It might be helpful to consider the point of writing an essay. Is it to reinforce the subject matter, or to learn how to write? Writing classes should definitely not accept AI generated content, but it could still be useful for learning. Students have been copying from the encyclopedia for generations. The act of reading and rephrasing is a form of learning, and originality isn't really the point. Today, students simply copy and paste from Wikipedia. However, the learning aspect is much reduced when writing is replaced by clicks. My suggestion is to require all writing assignments to be submitted in longhand. And to make the student fully responsible for the content. If a questionable AI 'artifact' is submitted, then the student should be dinged for it. A student would have to fact-check their AI to be ensured full credit. Writing in long-hand may seem onerous, but it would help to maintain the long tradition of learning through reading and rephrasing. Real learning always involves hard work. And learning should be the focus of the assignment. |
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