Alphabet Soup or AI + IWSG

10:02 AM Elizabeth Seckman 25 Comments

This month's IWSG question....will AI assist writers or replace them? Let me start by saying, I am in no way an expert, so keep that in mind as I share my thoughts. 

I hear tales of AI sources scanning writer's works for emulation without the writer's permission. That's a no-brainer. That's not a just no-no, that's a hard hell no. More needs to be done to protect creative property (which is why I have credited the photo above at the bottom of my post!) Most creatives barely make enough money to keep themselves in chocolate, much less keep roofs over their keyboards. 

But do I panic over AI? No. Granted, it's really hard to push me to panic, so perhaps I am under-reacting and one day will be living in a world run by Terminators thinking back on this post with a big old whoopsie. 

Here's my thinking: robots will never be able to replace human creativity because robots do not replicate the complexity of our humanity. We are a roller coaster of a myriad of emotions. Talk about chaos theory. If humans were so simple, we'd be easier to train. There is also the intricacy of our humor that would also be tough to fake. 

AI vs. Humans reminds me of Harlow's monkey experiment.

 In 1958, a psychologist did a study of monkeys to see if the love and nurturing of a responsive caregiver could be replaced by an object. Granted, Harlow didn't have a high-tech robot for the study, but the results were striking: live, sensitive interaction could not be replaced. Baby monkeys raised without love grew to have a lot of personality issues and problems. (It's an interesting and controversial study. If you'd like to read more, here is a link to an article better explaining the study and its results.)

Now, as far as AI as a writer's aid, I must admit, I use AI as I write. I am a member of the *Novlr online writing platform which includes editing software that points out passive verbs, clunky phrases, and other writerly bad habits. That's AI and it helps me, because I do LOVE me some passive voice! But it's an assist. I would never trust it enough to allow it to automatically "correct" my writing. It would never keep words like whoopsie. Or phrases like "I do love me...". It's those little irregularities that put the voice and humanity in our words. 

But now students...they are encouraged to write like robots. Oh my, teachers beware. You think autocorrect made student's lazy, just you wait for all the AI generated research papers. 

On the bright side, if we're the last generation to learn how to write, that's less competition in the future. Kidding.

 See? No robot writing this post. 

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Thank you to this month's awesome co-hosts for the October 4 posting of the IWSG are Natalie Aguirre, Kim Lajevardi, Debs Carey, Gwen Gardner, Patricia Josephine, and Rebecca Douglass!

*Full disclosure, I am an author-owner of Novlr and this is my affiliate link. I have been using the platform for many years and when they opened it up to investment, I jumped at the chance. It's easy to maneuver and has enough bells and whistles to keep me happy without overwhelming or distracting me. It also stores my writing (in its various stages should I, you know, say fall asleep with my finger on the delete button) online so I can access a story and work on it from any device, including my phone. They also have quick, effective user support. So, if this sounds a bit like an infomercial of a post, it is a bit.  

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay