There is all sorts of talk about artificial intelligence and the ease with which a computer can create content with a mere prompt from a user.
For those of us who read science fiction it cuts too close to the famous H.A.L. scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the rise of the machines in Terminator or the autonomous military robots in Keith Laumer’s BOLO series.
I dare say we are not there yet, but our imaginations can suggest we are on our way.
What Is Real?
The philosophical question about the origin of content is an honest one. If I were to ask ChatGPT to write a 500-word blog on artificial intelligence meant for writers, would this be what it created? And if it did, is it “real” or “original” or “a lazy cheat by a lazy writer?”
Curation
I talked with one author who uses AI to generate advertising copy for their books, catalog copy for online stores, and short hooks for use in advertising. The author said that while the content isn’t perfect, after some scrubbing and editing, what is used is what the writer needed.
In other words, this writer used AI as a tool, but not as the final “word” on the subject.
One graphic-design artist asked an AI (site called MidJourney) to create an image he needed. It took over 100 queries, refining each time, until he got close to what he needed. Then he spent six hours refining the image for commercial use.
Is that wrong?
The U.S. copyright office is struggling to define what can be copyrighted if computer generated. They plan on offering a webinar this week called “Registration Guidance for Works Containing AI-generated Content” on June 28 at 2 p.m. EST: https://www.copyright.gov/events/ai-application-process.
As a Tool?
I remember when Photoshop was introduced to the consumer market thirty years ago. At the time, there was sincere concern that the ability to manipulate photographs meant we could no longer trust that the picture we saw was the actual photograph.
Today we can manipulate the images we take on our phones. Moving someone, deleting someone or an unwanted object. Even cropping a photo or enlarging it is so commonplace we don’t give it a second thought.
That is because image-changing software is usually seen as a tool.
Another creative blogger asked ChatGPT to write a cease-and-desist letter to someone who is stealing the author’s writing and selling it as their own. The result (found here) is quite astounding. The blogger doing the exercise wrote, “This is better than some cease-and-desist letters written by other attorneys that he has reviewed.”
However, simply accepting an AI version could be troublesome if the AI is in error. Earlier this month ChatGPT was sued for creating false information stating that an individual was accused of embezzling money, which never happened (article here).
Out of curiosity, a couple months ago I asked ChatGPT to write a biography of “Steve Laube Literary Agent.” While succinct, it had incorrect information in it. For example, it said I worked for Zondervan as an editor. No, I didn’t. It claimed I wrote a book called The Christian Writers Coach, published in 2013. Not true. It also claimed I served on the board of directors for the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference and the Serious Writer’s Foundation. Neither is true.
Conclusion? Check your research. The internet can include inaccurate information. Plus, the knowledge engine for ChatGPT was cut off from the internet in September 2021!
Should You Be Concerned?
We read of businesses looking at ways of automating certain tasks and completing jobs, eliminating the human currently doing that work. While it creates gloomy headlines, is it really something new? Think of the industrial revolution and its subsequent developments. This “efficiency” has been the watchword for years.
For example, in the early days of being a bookseller, we took inventory by hand. We had a “Never Out” list of titles that we checked each day; and when the stock on the shelf dipped below a certain level, we ordered more.
When we placed the order, it was done on the phone, reading the ISBN and quantity to a human operator on the other end of the call.
Today, the store clerk trusts the computer (is it a “thinking machine”?) to know if a book needs to be reordered. It generates a purchase order that is sent to another computer for processing. Humans are no longer critical to that exchange except as overseers.
And so the onward progress in business goes.
Do I think writers will be replaced? No. I do not. Not the good ones. Great writers have a voice that is hard to mimic. Even humans try to mimic a bestseller’s “voice” and often fail.
What Should You Do?
Watch and learn. Don’t be unaware of the developments in AI related to our industry. Continue to spend considerable time working on your writing craft. Read a book like Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century or Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. Learn from great teachers on how to communicate your ideas and stories in the best way possible. The greatest writers will remain the greatest writers.
Did an AI bot generate any of the above content? Tell me what you think in the comments below.
Fun Fridays – June 23, 2023
Don’t really care about AI,
you can have ChatGPT.
Thinkin’ machines? Yeah, goodbye,
’cause they can’t do a thing for me.
I write to exercise my brain,
not to build words, more and more,
and the control that I retain
pretty darn well shuts the door
against this big Shock Of The New
they say is rolling down the street,
and I’ll just go on up the blue
to do my thing and thus defeat
the paradigm that has entrapped
with the demand that we adapt.
This is something to definitely keep in mind, thank you, Steve, thank you.
For what it may be worth, I think it’s important to look at AI’s origins in the field of numerical optimization.
Consider the side view of a camel’s humps as a two-dimensional line (Barb, as she was dressing this morning, suggested another example, but let’s stay with camels).
A person can pretty well eyeball the biggest hump, but the computer can’t. It can look; it can’t see. It has to take into account two pieces of information to find the highest point: the elevation of a single point, and slope between two adjacent points.
Choosing a fine ‘mesh’ of points for evaluation will give a better idea of the maximum using only XY data, but it’s wasteful of computing power, storage, and time. Using a wider mesh increases the chance of missing a local or global maximum.
Thus, slope is considered. A change from positive to negative slope over three consecutive points indicates that a maximum lies in that region, and indeed this information can be used to resize the mesh on the fly.
And, yes, the programme can store the ‘lessons learned’ to improve efficiency of the next analysis, which is effectively a mimicry of judgement.
But that’s all the computer can do. It can alter its programming, but can’t go beyond the programming parameters. Everything boils down to binary solutions. Lots of them, yes, but still ones and zeroes.
And that is, in a nutshell, AI. It can ‘learn’ from experience, but its learning is binary. It can be ‘creative’, but only in a derivative sense.
Some will say that this is how people work, that everything, from faith to intuition to judgement, results from the firing of neural synapses.
I don’t agree.
When human journalists err, lives are often damaged and a retraction may appear in the back pages of a publication—but, at least, someone is accountable.
With AI, especially in these days of polarization, will we be able to believe a thing we read?
Steve, a chatbot recently told me the results of some genetic testing I had. Talk about insincere! The news was good, which was nice having come in the midst of some medical challenges I have been facing recently, but it was certainly impersonal. Such is life in our Brave NewWorld. I show the trailer for 2001 in my communication classes from time to time; the students’ faces always look shocked.
My question for Christian writers : AI over HS? Where is the direction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit going to squeeze in a space over ChatGpt?
I’ve written passages that came at His direction – not mine. Without His influence, i would not have six traditionally published books. I’d have thrown in the towel long ago!
God has given me the creativity that I need to create books by his great grace alone. I don’t need AI.
A concern about A.I. is that preachers use it to create sermons. This has already been tested. But as the reporter pointed out, there is no Holy Spirit in A.I. The Holy Spirit is in the believer’s heart. A reminder for all Holy Spirit inspired Christian writers with writer’s block not to take the “broad” and easy way.
I believe you did not use AI in writing your article.
AF (artificial food), AI (artificial intelligence) AI (artificial relationships) = Anything artificial can only try to be real, but it will always be, artificial
AI has no soul. I’ve used it to brainstorm character motivation, and presently, it comes off as flat and simplistic. However, what I got back from AI triggered more ideas for my character and took him in a different direction.
Did AI create any of your content? Your post doesn’t sound flat or simplistic, and it has soul, so I say no.
Hello, Mr Laube!
Thank you so much for this article. It was a good reminder. This is one more big development in our world and every time goes through something like this, and we have to now learn how to live and work in a world that has been infiltrated with this. I love what you said about how great writers will still be great writers and that AI can’t ruin that, and I think this is also a challenge for writers (especially young writers like myself) to work hard so we can build our craft and style well enough that it will rise above the AI-generated works.
Did AI generate any of your content in this article? I don’t think so, but now I wonder if you threw in a little bit of AI-generated content in there just for fun… 😉 But probably not.