Humans are really good at coming up with better ways to create things. And humans are also very good at pointing to anything new as the end of the world as they know it. And those folks are not far off their prediction, but not how they think.
Writing will make you styoopid
Did you know that Socrates was against writing? Writing wasn’t a newish thing in his day. Nonetheless, he didn’t think it was an effective way of communicating. And he worried that folks would become forgetful.
But writing has been central to humanity’s growth and dissemination of knowledge and in the sharing and enjoyment of stories. Can you imagine a world without writing? You would have to meet up with me for me to tell you what I’m writing here.
Derivative drivel
I’ve been following how folks have been reacting to generative AI for making images, text, music, and audio. The worried ones are concerned about copyright, plagiarism, thinking effort (familiar, eh, Socrates?), and such.
Yet, if you think of the process of writing, there’s extensive reading (indeed, the best writers are voracious readers), there’s the exercise of learning styles from existing sources, there are editors and proofreaders to help the best writers be better. And we know that plagiarism and ghost writing happens.
So what’s the fear with ChatGPT? The system is trained on a broad range of material – just like anyone who reads everything. The system synthesizes all of that into an output – just like anyone who writes.
Indeed, the article quoted below from the NYT is one of the few very well-balanced explorations of the impact of generative AI, in this case, on college admission essays.
A.I. chatbots could facilitate plagiarism on college applications or democratize student access to writing help. Or maybe both.
Source: Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays. – The New York Times
Good writing is always good writing
One thing that no one seems to point out in all the articles I have read: no matter WHO writes the text, krap writing is still krap writing.
In a previous post where I used ChatGPT for programming, I mentioned that ChatGPT is a krappy programmer, but was helpful to accelerate my programming tasks. In the end, I had to know how to program for ChatGPT to help me.
The same is for any writing: you need to be a good writer to turn the ChatGPT text into good text.
_____ will democratize ____
When blogs came out, folks said that anyone could become a journalist, everyone would be writing online and there would be an explosion of text online.
But in the end, the best blogs were written by writers and journalists.
When podcasts were reborn, folks said everyone would be able to create audio channels of all sorts. But the podcast that brought podcasts from the dead, Serial, was produced by a long-time radio crew. And all the best podcasts are made by professional audio teams.
Good writing and radio is made by folks who know how to create, do the effort, and produce good writing and radio. Generative AI will not displace them.
As one of the students mentioned in the NYT article says:
But she found the responses too broad and impersonal, even after she gave it details about her extracurricular activities like teaching dance classes to younger students.
“I feel a little more pressure to create, like, this super unique, interesting topic,” Ms. Vakharia said, “because a basic one these days could just be generated by ChatGPT.”
In short, she knows she still needs to put in the work to write a good essay.
Good writing will always be good writing.
Image from janeb13
