As a writer, it doesn’t even occur to me to use AI. I would never disrespect my readers by asking them to read anything created with artificiality. I hope it inspires, gives hope, and sparks wonder. I aim to be soulful. My hope is that my words are worthy of their attention.
AI can’t replace that which is written with heart, but it obviously can’t replace that which is written from MY heart, with my personal experiences stitched into the words.
It perplexes me that people find it helpful. Are they not writing from the heart?
Probably because I am old ( seventy - two ), and have strong memories of times when you might see people in public ignoring one another and staring down at things, but they would have been books, not "devices," I hate the whole thing. Not only has it no allurement for me, it revolts me in the way an Android, if one existed as delineated in a Philip K Dick novel, would revolt me.
Every now and then, I inadvertently touch something on this phone and a cheery "Try saying it!" or something equally forbidding appears. I snicker and move on.
I imagine most of us done the following deliberately, as a test: you're not around a computer, and you have turned your phone off. You say aloud something you would not ordinarily have any interest in, in my case, for example, "the Super Bowl." It shouldn't surprise you if there appears in your Google feed stories about the Super Bowl.
For many years, PBS made an interesting animated series, Blank on Blank, which consisted of audio of famous people talking about a particular thing, accompanied by cartoon, as opposed to photo, illustrations. ( You can see these on YouTube. ) Several years ago, I had seen one in my YouTube feed, "Jim Morrison on why fat is beautiful." I had thought it was funny, and several days later, brought it up in an in person conversation with a friend. All I did was mention the title and how funny it was and somehow, we both got the giggles about it.
You know what happened next in my Google and YouTube feeds.
AI writing may be well suited for composing just one thing: epitaphs.
I do use AI for some of my professional (legal) work; it can produce some decent first drafts of things and ideas for content. Likewise it's not bad at translating, but, and it's a big but, it tends to produce middle of the road, generic stuff. It makes mistakes, it misses the point in translation, doesn't understand context, substitutes its own opinion for yours and never, never, produces something you would regard as polished. Over time I expect the quality to sink as it ingests more and more substandard material. I can usually spot ai generated stuff now, young people tend to use it excessively and inappropriately. It has its uses and limitations and will undoubtedly disrupt our existing patterns of life. I've no idea where it will end but there will still be a need for people who can express themselves without asking a machine to do it. (Written without AI)
My question to the users of AI is this, does the bad out way the benefits?
It is simple the brain is like any other part of the build, use it or lost it. The more we relay on a tool the less capable we become to use the parts of our human structure the tool replaced, the more dependent we become to the tool. Muscle
Never used waste away, a brain never used, logic, reason and thought waste away. Is it worth it?
Thank you for this post!!! I detest the intrusion of AI into all aspects of our lives, especially our creativity. It’s an abomination imposed on humanity without our knowledge or consent, and it’s a runaway train to stupefication and disempowerment. We need to resist with all our might. It baffles me when writers and artists play around with AI to see what it does. I don’t want to know and don’t want to give it a speck of my attention.
Glad to give a nudge in that direction, Mark. It’s certainly helped me get back to something more pure. Between my head and the tip of the pen on the page, something creative happens that I can’t replicate digitally.
Copilot is microsoft's latest way to capture everything you do on your computer and store it in some A/i's brain. Your privacy is fully compromised as copilot takes a screenshot of your computer every few seconds. All this mountain of personal information will eventually be used by A/i to track, control and manipulate you.
I stick to writing by hand too and am currently well along with a story. I plan to write it out once more when I eventually edit. I do worry that once I switch to typing it will lose something from the temptation for quick corrections. It is difficult to ignore the red and blue squiggly lines beneath your sentences and words with easy suggestions for improvement or to stumble over a difficult sentence and not have the option of having 3 versions from AI spat back. Like you said, the words then lose their unique quality and at some point it shifts to something completely alien.
It seems that we can turn off all proofing in word processors so that might be the simplest route. Even better would be something like GRRM uses where distractions are less likely.
The best thing I ever read about AI generated writing is: Why should I bother to read what somebody couldn’t be bothered to write?
I think AI has its place, and generally that place is helping me with things I don’t like to do haha. I suppose for some people, writing is something they don’t like to do, and that’s fair.
For me writing is about process and discovery, as much as the product. If it’s not me putting the thought and effort and personality into it, then why am I even bothering to write? I could something else. It would be like designing a machine to crochet for me. I crochet because I want to crochet, not because I want someone to do it for me.
But then I came to maturity with the assumption that if I wanted to do something, I had to put effort into it and well, DO IT. Perhaps that is now an old fashioned assumption? Maybe we have to backpedal and articulate the value of doing things for yourself, which was a lesson people in the past mostly learned because they had no choice.
It will all pass, believe me. I'm a veteran ICT specialist. Have seen thousands of technology hypes come and go. This one will peak and then slowly descend into the abyss of normality. I would pray though that some catastrophic AI driven accidents to happen, sooner rather than later. That typically helps to correct the ship. It should also cause the downfall of this AI madness. If it does not, then I'm afraid we're doomed.
I write songs. Nothing published. I'm at the level where when I play my original songs at an open mic night people come up to me and say "That was great - you should record an album!" I'm under no illusions that I have the necessary motivation or skillset to 'make it' as a singer/songwriter. It's never going to pay my bills and that's ok - I enjoy the opportunities I get. Recently however, I found an AI that puts music to lyrics that you provide it. I took some of my lyrics that I was working on and let it have a go. I wish I hadn't and I'll probably never do it again. The song it produced was amazing. Yes, the lyrics were mine, but the arrangement into a heavy rock style was something I would not have thought of. I can't use it. I feel like its a slippery slope. I feel like it shouldn't be about the quickest way to produce a good a product. Things have a history - provenance.
I have drink coaster I made that sits on my desk. The story goes like this:
I needed a desk and while I love woodworking, my skills are not yet sufficient to make a desk so I purchased a nice one. Immediately I needed a drink coaster to protect my nice new desk and I thought "now that is something I can make!" It took me two weeks. I purchased a router - I learned how to use the router - I learned how to modify an old Ikea table into a router table and did that. Eventually, I finished the drink coaster, sanded it and coated it with linseed oil. It's an expensive drink coaster and has many flaws. But the story - the suffering(hard work, setbacks etc) - gives it meaning.
Great reflections, Arthur. And wow, that story about the AI and your lyrics is the kind of thing that more and more creative people are going to be facing, and the temptation is going to be irresistible.
Thanks for this, Peco. I published an essay last summer which began in a remarkably similar place, asking the same kinds of questions, before taking it in a somewhat different direction. Ultimately, I wondered about what it will mean for the writer, with the "AI assistant" sitting constantly on their shoulder, never again to be truly alone with their work. Thought you might be interested!
I write to think, to reflect, and to create. The very act of working things out helps me to hone ideas, or to reject them on consideration. I refuse the AI crap just on principle. But Microsoft et al see users as products to harvest (Adobe is doing the same to artists of all types). It might be nearing the time to go offline.
My paper notebook is fast becoming a best friend. Digital can be helpful, and I can't live with out it (not yet anyway!), but paper, somehow, brings out a different, deeper dimension.
My father (84) has been asking AI theological questions. He sent me a response recently on an issue we disagree on showing that the AI supported his position. So I had him ask about another theological issues we disagree on and it agreed with me :) Hopefully that gave him pause in using it for matters of faith.
All of this reminds me of Ivan Illich's idea of "tools for conviviality", as well as the distinction between tools that we can work with, and tools that do the work for us. (The same tool can be in either category, depending on the context.) Using machine-learning technologies to better perform tasks that are ideally performed by computers can be acceptable; the problem is that we are tempted to ask these machines to do non-computer work, or to conform our own human work to patterns and outcomes that are suitable for machines. This is not a new problem; one could argue that we've been struggling with this since the dawn of the Industrial Age. This is, of course, all the more tempting when the technologies offer a half-way decent simulation of non-machine results. (Sherry Turkle's book "Alone Together" is a frightening exploration of the effects of outsourcing human connection to devices.)
In this, I like the suggestion offered by a number of people, which is to intentionally add friction to using these sorts of machines. Writing by hand, as our host does, and then doing the work of typing it in order to get grammar/spelling proofreading is an example of this. Or, avoiding in-line AI assistants, requiring one to upload documents to another system to get feedback. Making sure to only use them for certain stages of the writing process, etc. The merits of these particular ideas aside, the point is to firmly keep in my own mind that these are tools that I am intentionally working *with*, and not use them to do the work for me!
“Using machine-learning technologies to better perform tasks that are ideally performed by computers can be acceptable; the problem is that we are tempted to ask these machines to do non-computer work…”
As a writer, it doesn’t even occur to me to use AI. I would never disrespect my readers by asking them to read anything created with artificiality. I hope it inspires, gives hope, and sparks wonder. I aim to be soulful. My hope is that my words are worthy of their attention.
AI can’t replace that which is written with heart, but it obviously can’t replace that which is written from MY heart, with my personal experiences stitched into the words.
It perplexes me that people find it helpful. Are they not writing from the heart?
Probably because I am old ( seventy - two ), and have strong memories of times when you might see people in public ignoring one another and staring down at things, but they would have been books, not "devices," I hate the whole thing. Not only has it no allurement for me, it revolts me in the way an Android, if one existed as delineated in a Philip K Dick novel, would revolt me.
Every now and then, I inadvertently touch something on this phone and a cheery "Try saying it!" or something equally forbidding appears. I snicker and move on.
I imagine most of us done the following deliberately, as a test: you're not around a computer, and you have turned your phone off. You say aloud something you would not ordinarily have any interest in, in my case, for example, "the Super Bowl." It shouldn't surprise you if there appears in your Google feed stories about the Super Bowl.
For many years, PBS made an interesting animated series, Blank on Blank, which consisted of audio of famous people talking about a particular thing, accompanied by cartoon, as opposed to photo, illustrations. ( You can see these on YouTube. ) Several years ago, I had seen one in my YouTube feed, "Jim Morrison on why fat is beautiful." I had thought it was funny, and several days later, brought it up in an in person conversation with a friend. All I did was mention the title and how funny it was and somehow, we both got the giggles about it.
You know what happened next in my Google and YouTube feeds.
AI writing may be well suited for composing just one thing: epitaphs.
Yes, one for every human.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrpFxHfppI
Epitaph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrpFxHfppI
I do use AI for some of my professional (legal) work; it can produce some decent first drafts of things and ideas for content. Likewise it's not bad at translating, but, and it's a big but, it tends to produce middle of the road, generic stuff. It makes mistakes, it misses the point in translation, doesn't understand context, substitutes its own opinion for yours and never, never, produces something you would regard as polished. Over time I expect the quality to sink as it ingests more and more substandard material. I can usually spot ai generated stuff now, young people tend to use it excessively and inappropriately. It has its uses and limitations and will undoubtedly disrupt our existing patterns of life. I've no idea where it will end but there will still be a need for people who can express themselves without asking a machine to do it. (Written without AI)
My question to the users of AI is this, does the bad out way the benefits?
It is simple the brain is like any other part of the build, use it or lost it. The more we relay on a tool the less capable we become to use the parts of our human structure the tool replaced, the more dependent we become to the tool. Muscle
Never used waste away, a brain never used, logic, reason and thought waste away. Is it worth it?
Thank you for this post!!! I detest the intrusion of AI into all aspects of our lives, especially our creativity. It’s an abomination imposed on humanity without our knowledge or consent, and it’s a runaway train to stupefication and disempowerment. We need to resist with all our might. It baffles me when writers and artists play around with AI to see what it does. I don’t want to know and don’t want to give it a speck of my attention.
Your piece on vampire cognition led me to make a plan to have a separate computer for e-mail and internet and for writing.
This one might just push me over to writing by hand again. Thank you.
Glad to give a nudge in that direction, Mark. It’s certainly helped me get back to something more pure. Between my head and the tip of the pen on the page, something creative happens that I can’t replicate digitally.
Copilot is microsoft's latest way to capture everything you do on your computer and store it in some A/i's brain. Your privacy is fully compromised as copilot takes a screenshot of your computer every few seconds. All this mountain of personal information will eventually be used by A/i to track, control and manipulate you.
I stick to writing by hand too and am currently well along with a story. I plan to write it out once more when I eventually edit. I do worry that once I switch to typing it will lose something from the temptation for quick corrections. It is difficult to ignore the red and blue squiggly lines beneath your sentences and words with easy suggestions for improvement or to stumble over a difficult sentence and not have the option of having 3 versions from AI spat back. Like you said, the words then lose their unique quality and at some point it shifts to something completely alien.
It seems that we can turn off all proofing in word processors so that might be the simplest route. Even better would be something like GRRM uses where distractions are less likely.
https://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/how-george-r-r-martin-writes-on-an-old-school-dos-computer/
The best thing I ever read about AI generated writing is: Why should I bother to read what somebody couldn’t be bothered to write?
I think AI has its place, and generally that place is helping me with things I don’t like to do haha. I suppose for some people, writing is something they don’t like to do, and that’s fair.
For me writing is about process and discovery, as much as the product. If it’s not me putting the thought and effort and personality into it, then why am I even bothering to write? I could something else. It would be like designing a machine to crochet for me. I crochet because I want to crochet, not because I want someone to do it for me.
But then I came to maturity with the assumption that if I wanted to do something, I had to put effort into it and well, DO IT. Perhaps that is now an old fashioned assumption? Maybe we have to backpedal and articulate the value of doing things for yourself, which was a lesson people in the past mostly learned because they had no choice.
"The best thing I ever read about AI generated writing is: Why should I bother to read what somebody couldn’t be bothered to write?"
Nicely put!
It will all pass, believe me. I'm a veteran ICT specialist. Have seen thousands of technology hypes come and go. This one will peak and then slowly descend into the abyss of normality. I would pray though that some catastrophic AI driven accidents to happen, sooner rather than later. That typically helps to correct the ship. It should also cause the downfall of this AI madness. If it does not, then I'm afraid we're doomed.
From an artist's perspective - I draw a hard line at zero AI in my work. Glad to know that many writers feel the same way!
https://open.substack.com/pub/fdabao/p/the-dabbler?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=51efvi
I write songs. Nothing published. I'm at the level where when I play my original songs at an open mic night people come up to me and say "That was great - you should record an album!" I'm under no illusions that I have the necessary motivation or skillset to 'make it' as a singer/songwriter. It's never going to pay my bills and that's ok - I enjoy the opportunities I get. Recently however, I found an AI that puts music to lyrics that you provide it. I took some of my lyrics that I was working on and let it have a go. I wish I hadn't and I'll probably never do it again. The song it produced was amazing. Yes, the lyrics were mine, but the arrangement into a heavy rock style was something I would not have thought of. I can't use it. I feel like its a slippery slope. I feel like it shouldn't be about the quickest way to produce a good a product. Things have a history - provenance.
I have drink coaster I made that sits on my desk. The story goes like this:
I needed a desk and while I love woodworking, my skills are not yet sufficient to make a desk so I purchased a nice one. Immediately I needed a drink coaster to protect my nice new desk and I thought "now that is something I can make!" It took me two weeks. I purchased a router - I learned how to use the router - I learned how to modify an old Ikea table into a router table and did that. Eventually, I finished the drink coaster, sanded it and coated it with linseed oil. It's an expensive drink coaster and has many flaws. But the story - the suffering(hard work, setbacks etc) - gives it meaning.
Great reflections, Arthur. And wow, that story about the AI and your lyrics is the kind of thing that more and more creative people are going to be facing, and the temptation is going to be irresistible.
Thanks for this, Peco. I published an essay last summer which began in a remarkably similar place, asking the same kinds of questions, before taking it in a somewhat different direction. Ultimately, I wondered about what it will mean for the writer, with the "AI assistant" sitting constantly on their shoulder, never again to be truly alone with their work. Thought you might be interested!
https://evernotquite.substack.com/p/this-is-not-an-automated-message
I write to think, to reflect, and to create. The very act of working things out helps me to hone ideas, or to reject them on consideration. I refuse the AI crap just on principle. But Microsoft et al see users as products to harvest (Adobe is doing the same to artists of all types). It might be nearing the time to go offline.
My paper notebook is fast becoming a best friend. Digital can be helpful, and I can't live with out it (not yet anyway!), but paper, somehow, brings out a different, deeper dimension.
My father (84) has been asking AI theological questions. He sent me a response recently on an issue we disagree on showing that the AI supported his position. So I had him ask about another theological issues we disagree on and it agreed with me :) Hopefully that gave him pause in using it for matters of faith.
All of this reminds me of Ivan Illich's idea of "tools for conviviality", as well as the distinction between tools that we can work with, and tools that do the work for us. (The same tool can be in either category, depending on the context.) Using machine-learning technologies to better perform tasks that are ideally performed by computers can be acceptable; the problem is that we are tempted to ask these machines to do non-computer work, or to conform our own human work to patterns and outcomes that are suitable for machines. This is not a new problem; one could argue that we've been struggling with this since the dawn of the Industrial Age. This is, of course, all the more tempting when the technologies offer a half-way decent simulation of non-machine results. (Sherry Turkle's book "Alone Together" is a frightening exploration of the effects of outsourcing human connection to devices.)
In this, I like the suggestion offered by a number of people, which is to intentionally add friction to using these sorts of machines. Writing by hand, as our host does, and then doing the work of typing it in order to get grammar/spelling proofreading is an example of this. Or, avoiding in-line AI assistants, requiring one to upload documents to another system to get feedback. Making sure to only use them for certain stages of the writing process, etc. The merits of these particular ideas aside, the point is to firmly keep in my own mind that these are tools that I am intentionally working *with*, and not use them to do the work for me!
“Using machine-learning technologies to better perform tasks that are ideally performed by computers can be acceptable; the problem is that we are tempted to ask these machines to do non-computer work…”
Yes, this seems the important distinction!