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 September 3 posting of the IWSG are Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, Nancy Gideon, and Diedre Knight!
September 3 question - What are your thoughts on using AI, such as ChatGPT, Raptor, and others with your writing? Would you use it for research, storybible, or creating outlines/beats?
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No thanks.
I've written about this on my blog before, and I'm honestly pretty tired of talking about it. It's a choice people make, and I choose not to.
Here are my issues:
1. Ethics. It's all over the news how AIs were trained on the backs of creators with no permission asked or granted, no payments made, etc. There are class action lawsuits in progress for breach of copyright and other types of theft or piracy committed to train these systems.
Until they get this figured out and learn how to proceed ethically, I'm out.
So far, the main use case seems to be exploitation or lazy seeking of shortcuts, at least with generative AI (assistive AI like Grammarly and ProWritingAid is another kettle of fish that doesn't stink nearly as badly).
2. Environment: The energy and water usage for AI processing is ridiculous. My brain works with way less fuel and does less damage to the planet. You can run a Samantha on coffee and curiosity for days. AI is much more expensive.
3. I don't see the appeal: I write because I enjoy writing. I even enjoy the parts that don't feel fun in the moment and get a real feeling of accomplishment from working my way through problems and figuring them out.
I'm also enough of a control-freak and see enough stories about AI getting it wrong (how about those completely inaccurate search results, like citing books that don't exist? and the doubling down when called on it?) that I don't trust AI even in support roles because it hallucinates and then I'd have to redo the work anyway to make it useful.
So yeah, I'll stick to enjoying AI as a fictional concept.
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| Some AI themed books I've recently enjoyed. |
How about you? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
I wouldn't use Al to write stories either. It's a helpful tool for other tasks. At my job, they want us to use it to write articles, so I do, though I edit and fact-check the articles to improve them.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad they've still got a human checking for accuracy and tone.
DeletePerfect. We all have our preferences and methods. I would never use AI for the actual prose in my story, but I would use it to find synonyms and the like when my brain is tired.
ReplyDeleteRetaining ownership of the work is the essential bit, I think. Using a tool for support is different than handing the work over to something else.
DeleteI enjoy the actual writing and editing part too much to use AI for those either.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't get why you'd want to give away the good parts!
DeleteI hadn't realized how much water and energy AI wastes until today. Surprised environmentalists aren't screaming about it.
ReplyDeleteI suspect a bias in the news reporting. Screaming is happening, but it's not making it into the mainstream.
DeleteI'm teaching an art class, and I showed them a meme about how AI art is terrible for all those reasons. Get them young. I don't get the appeal, but then again, I'm not one of those who wants to skip the hard parts.
ReplyDeleteThe young person in my house is 18, and they and all their friends are staunchly anti-AI, especially in art. Gives me hope.
DeleteSeveral of Dancing Lemur Press's titles were used by AI and we signed the petition for that lawsuit.
ReplyDeleteA couple of mine were, too. I also signed on.
DeleteRunning on coffee! ☕ I'm with you.
ReplyDelete“Let’s strive to be better in September!” – Charmaine J. Forde #quote
My novelette came out on the ninth. A post about condiments is scheduled on the A to Z site this month. Hope you're well!
J Lenni Dorner (he/him 👨🏽 or 🧑🏽 they/them) ~ Speculative Fiction & Reference Author and Co-host of the April Blogging #AtoZChallenge
Love it.
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