Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the October 4 posting of the IWSG are Natalie Aguirre, Kim Lajevardi, Debs Carey, Gwen Gardner, Patricia Josephine, and Rebecca Douglass!
October 4 question: The topic of AI writing has been heavily debated across the world. According to various sources, generative AI will assist writers, not replace them. What are your thoughts?
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(I took this topic on recently, so today's post is a re-post of those thoughts)
As much as I enjoy reading stories about AI, I haven't really had much interest in trying it out in my writing life in the real world. I've got a process that's working for me right now, and it doesn't involve using AI.
For starters, in these early days, the ethics are unclear. Is this really just a form of plagiarism? Can people really take credit for work co-written this way? Is it just another way exploitative method of undercutting and devaluing writing and art?
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Obviously technology evolves and it changes the way art is produced. I'm not against that. I'm grateful to be typing this blogpost on my laptop rather than turning over my longhand notes to a literal typesetter who lays it out in trays and presses copies. I enjoy eBooks and audiobooks and am happy about some of the ways new technologies increase access.
But, something about AI tools in writing, at least so far, stinks of exploitation and laziness.
When ChatGPT was all everyone was talking about earlier this year, several well-respected magazine were deluged with submissions that had been AI-created.
More people looking for a shortcut and thinking they can make some moolah without investing any effort, let alone a slice of their soul. (I haven't read anything about this actually working for anyone so far, by the way--a story written by AI, copied and pasted and submitted has yet to find fame or fortune in a news-making way).
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I do have a couple of writing friends who say they find it helpful in the brainstorming phases of things, that they use it to get unstuck. I can see that. I can respect using a tool in support of your creativity, but in place of it?
But I don't have anyone in my writing life using it in the place of their creative impetus. But then again, I don't hang with a mercenary literary crowd. While we'd all love to make money from our work, we do the work because we love it and it expresses an essential part of our selves. Why would you hand the best part over to a computer mind?
So, yeah, I'll stick to reading about AI and talking to the one in my kitchen.
Some stories about AI I've enjoyed recently:
How about you? Any AI in your real life? Any AI you've loved in fiction? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
I think AI is a tool like some of your writer friends think. But it won't replace writers. And only use it if you think it could help you.
ReplyDeleteThe love of creativity is something the people who made the AI stuff just don't get. They see a problem to solve and can't wrap their brains around someone learning to draw just because they can and only later deciding to try to earn a living at it. Hell, I started writing because I was bored. I had no plans on publishing. It wasn't until later that I thought others might enjoy the story I had written. Money wasn't even on my radar.
ReplyDeleteDespite that, I don't think AI is a horrible thing. I think it can be a tool that is useful in many ways.
Where I'm drawing the line is the people who made AI scraping anything they can for training, not compensating those they used to train on, and then claiming THEY should be paid for their hard work in making the AI. You'd have nothing if you didn't have other people to train the AI on. Compensate them.
Yes! I've seen some articles about that and it's pretty crazy.
DeleteI can see where it would be helpful for issues and maybe short pieces, but without a soul and the human touch, AI writing lacks. And yeah, there's that plagiarism thing.
ReplyDeleteAt a convention back in January, the general conclusion was that using the AI tools at the beginning of the writing process is okay, but not at the end. In other words, the final product should be human-generated, even if the initial draft came out of an LLM. And also, the output of these chatbots can't be copyrighted.
ReplyDeleteThat seems like a good tactic to make use without looking for the "cheat codes."
DeleteI wonder what the response will be in court when questioned about where the AI creators get the material from and if they had permission. I don't think it will go well.
ReplyDeleteRight? Copyright law is already messy and it's about to get messier.
DeleteI do see uses for AI, but I don't equate it to the typewriter or word processor. Those are simply better pencils--tools to get the words from my head to the paper. AI is doing something else entirely.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
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