AI

Don’t let a bot do your writing   Recently updated !

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged AI SanityProject software writing on by

A couple of days ago I was in a conversation where one of the people talked about letting an AI bot rewrite her business correspondence. She thought that her own style might seem abrupt and an appropriately directed chatbot could produce a less confrontational tone. Handing authorship to a bot is almost always a bad idea.

If it’s something purely utilitarian, like placing an order, then fine. Having software write up the request could save some time and make sure the numbers add up. But if it’s something the reader will care about, then it should come from you, not a machine. There’s still room for software to help you. A spelling and grammar checker can catch errors. I’ve used Grammarly and Language Tool. The important thing is to look at each suggestion and decide whether you want it. You can even have it check your tone, as long as you make the final decision yourself. Sometimes a “correction” will seriously change the meaning. The style might be wrong for your intended readers.

The point isn’t to flee from all forms of artificial intelligence. It’s to keep the content and voice yours. You may not be a pro-quality writer, but I’m sure nearly all of you reading this are competent. People would rather have something in your voice than something polished, grammatically correct, and fake-sounding.

If you let software be your full-time secretary, it will have a set of biases. Every creator of original text, human or machine, does. It will express views, perhaps subtly, by its choice of words and avoidance of topics or expressions. It will say things you wouldn’t.

Better to say things in your own way, improve your style as you go, and let your writing authentically represent you.

AI Panic and NaNoWriMo

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged AI computers nanowrimo software writing on by

This has been the year of panic over artificial intelligence. It will take over our jobs! It will replace journalism, fiction writing, and maybe even songwriting! This panic has shown up in reactions to a measured statement by the board of National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. Three members of the board have resigned over the statement.

It begins: “NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI.” That’s not a very tactful way to start, I’ll grant; it could easily be read as endorsing the use of a computer to write your work for you. A clarification was added after the first paragraph, saying, “We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.”
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Content generation with AI

This entry was posted in Tools Writing and tagged AI computers writing on by

Software is getting steadily better at passing the Turing test. This doesn’t mean computers are people and should have their civil rights recognized, but it raises some problems. Students use computer-generated output to generate essays and answer exam questions. A bot called ChatGPT has gotten a lot of attention for its ability to generate coherent answers to questions.

The issue of using AI to generate what’s euphemistically called “content writing” — low-quality filler for business pages and blogs — hasn’t gotten as much attention. The people who work in that field need to worry, though. If a customer wants some generic text to give the impression of having something useful to say, can a machine do it well enough? Computer-generated output is cheaper than paying content mill rates. It will probably have fewer errors in spelling and grammar.
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