Artificial Intelligence - Can you spot it? and is it the death of the writer?

 

In the Royal Marines, I used to call them TLA's, three-letter abbreviations. These days there are many two-letter abbreviations, and the most prominent one currently is AI.

Artificial Intelligence has undoubtedly been in the news and the courts in America. Do we need to be worried as writers?

I mentioned this to a writing colleague of mine when we were discussing the newly announced ChatGBT app on his Youtube channel. My fear was and still is that I could lose out to work completed by an AI bot. His answer was;

"Nobody writes like you, and nobody writes like you. AI won't change that."

I like William's positivity, but it was a surprise when I discovered that a writing app I use daily now has an added AI text generator

William's show suggested that AI should be considered a tool for writers. He then went on to show ChatGBT in action. The first and obvious problem is that it needed to be faster. To compound that problem, the questions he asked either had no answer or gave answers patently trawled from the internet. Only a little AI, if any, is present there

What is AI, then?

AI, short for Artificial Intelligence, is a field of computer science that focuses on creating intelligent machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision-making, and problem-solving. AI technologies include machine learning, natural language processing, neural networks, and robotics. AI aims to create machines that can learn, reason, and adapt to new situations, ultimately improving our lives and transforming how we live and work.

Can we trust what we see? After all, to use ChatBGT on Bing, you need to have a Microsoft account. ChatBGT then has access to all the information about you over the internet. That's a significant advantage to the AI stakes for a start. On balance, I would treat anything coming from an AI bot similarly to how I treat research on the internet. If I'm researching for an article, I, the writer, must ensure information is first-hand and accurate. An editor would only publish something that has been appropriately researched. Would an AI bot go to a WiKi page that could have been reviewed and updated with spurious information? We have a long way to go before article writers and professionals from all fields can trust the work coming from such bots.

That's my brief view on AI for writers, or is it? I'm not currently a fan of AI entering the realm of writing and the arts. They are very human pleasures because they are something that humans gain solace and enjoyment from. Where would be the fun and joy of me loading up the basic plot for my novel and asking a Bot for 90k words in 45 Chapters and leaving it to get on with it? Something to think about.

Do you have any views on AI? Would you use AI for an essay? Could you spot AI-generated work?  

Just to let you know, there are a few lines in this piece generated by AI 😉