Craft Chat To AI or not to AI

[Pamela Jo]

Here is the problem. An analysis of energy needs and costs. Energy costs are going up because the delivery system is at peak capacity. Given the extra loads needed for AI-the electrical lines needed to deliver electricity can carry only so much and there is a competition for the space. Supply and demand. The demand is much greater due to AI, the supply or space free to carry electricity to humans vs machines is limited therefore you have to pay more to get your electricity delivered. This is the choice you are making when you say it is inevitable. it is a race to see if the investors in AI get complete control before consumers realise the consequences of what the tech bros are pushing. We can do wo chat GPT. Can we do wo lights, heat or the power to start your laptop?

 

[Pamela Jo]

The other reality of monetising AI is that it is feeding these guys. These are the investors.

 

[RK Wallis]

The other reality of monetising AI is that it is feeding these guys. These are the investors.

Yikes! Too much brains = no common sense.

 

[Mel L]

The real danger comes when less qualified or unqualified humans oversee AI. Big mistakes are made when clerical staff decide that, with the assistance of AI, they surely know as much as those of us who trained 7+ years and have decades of experience. I can see this coming.

I'm sure you're right and it's what terrifies me the most. The little knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing human overseeing the almighty machine. Save our souls!

 

[Sarit]

AI def makes mistakes. So I double check and cross check. But it is brilliant for marketing all the stuff that authors hate to do but have to. And all the stuff related to media: photos, vids, voice overs. You need to know how to work with it and prompt it. The danger is now people see chatgtp as their confident and don't make decisions without consulting it. It's always there, polite and positive. Problem. At the same time humans take too long to do things and are subjective with their own baggage. I wanted an editor for my short story. He wanted $400! for 7K words. I fed it into AI, 3 different types and it came back with all kinds of notes. Most of which I ignored, but one was critical and all 3 pointed to it. So I'm pleased with the result.

 

[MattScho]

My question I guess is then, why write? If you don't want to break the story, and you don't want to push yourself and discover and express your own personal perspective, and you don't care about being original, and you don't care about plagiarism, and you don't care if your research is correct (because ChatGPT does NOT claim accuracy and it doesn't list sources) and you are okay giving your human experience over to a machine because that's easier than doing it yourself or asking other humans...

Why the f*ck are you writing???? Do something else.

But it's no surprise to anyone that my answer to "Is It All Right if I Use A.I." is always going to be a resounding no. No. NO. In no circumstance is it all right to use AI. Using it perpetuates the lowest common denominator of a machine's amalgamation of humanity.

Bang on.
We write because we need to write, love the act of writing, not because it's product. Therein lay the death of writing, if the finished product is all that matters, and the assumption is that people repeat people just like bots repeat people.
I would add that while it seems harmless and beneficial to use AI for research, there are a couple problems to consider.
1. The little Google AI summary of research i do is almost always wrong. It is stunning how bad it is.
2. The point of research for a writer is not to simply to get the information you want, it's to understand it, fully, deeply. Using AI to save the work is quite similar to hiring folks to do your work. A quite famous NYT journalist did that, hired grad students to do his research for him. But while the short term results were quite excellent, Pulitzer winning, book publishing, etc, the mid-range results had problems. He didn't really understand what he was explaining to the world. That's why he was fired and disgraced.
It's the old standing on the shoulders of giants notion.
Can we get by with AI, sure. But that's not the right question.
The right question is should we? Are we best serving ourselves as writers in taking short cuts?
I spent 35 years researching stories. A very clear lesson that emerged was that the more research i did, the better the story. It was frequently the serendipitous finding that made all the difference.

 

[E G Logan]

Also, we should be aware that many agents, US in particular, are asking of queries/submissions: "Was any part of this work produced using AI?" The answer clearly expected being 'No'.

We shouldn't give any more reasons for our work to be rejected out of hand!
I'm sure some agencies, at least, have the technology to recognise AI as one of their no-nos, if they have set up the ability, for example, to reject on the grounds that one of their agents has already rejected a (much) earlier version...