Word Hunter just posed a question about AI writing. Omachuck immediately chimed in with a view that I can completely support. I think that we need to think a little about tasks, skills, and tools.
I'm trying to get a flat area to drain a little better, and I've recently dug a trench from the middle of it to a nearby creek. Well, I didn't actually touch any of the dirt myself except by accident. I used some tools. A backhoe, to dig the trench. A front-end loader, to move all that dirt out of the way. A shovel, to clean up some of the mess.
Those guys at the factory who ran the stamping press to create my shovel's blade, ran the lathe to produce the wooden handle, and drilled a hole and put a rivet in to mate the blade and handle into one piece: How much credit do I owe them for digging that trench? I mean, it was the shovel that moved all that dirt, not me!
I believe that they deserve the credit -along with the businessman who created their factory- for creating the tools I used. I gave them all the credit they deserve when I went to a store and bought that shovel. After I bought that shovel, it's mine, and I get all the credit for any tasks accomplished by my shovel under my direction. And, yeah, with my sweat.
I have not willingly used any AIs yet. Unwillingly, yeah, it's getting harder and harder to avoid them. Some of them are pretty helpful. Alabama Power's phone system is pretty well written and it knows when to go get help. Some AIs, I believe, are only there to keep you from getting any help until you give up and go away. Frontier Fiber's phone system is willing to keep me on the phone for half an hour or more, going back to the beginning of its script every time it can't figure out what to do, before it finally gives up and tells me to call another number. Hello? Computer program? Answering the phone? And it can't forward a call to a number it knows inside the company it's supposedly working for? That's GREAT customer service!
In this case, I use a lot of tools to write. I paid for the computer and peripherals. How much do I owe Dell for helping me write my last best-seller? I paid for some of the software, while other software I got for free from the internet, downloaded where the authors had posted it for free use. Should I add all those software tools to the list of acknowledgements at the end? I'd like to thank Jim, Sally, and Toad for proofreading, as well as my word processor, my spell checker, and Google.com for all their help. I'm not thanking my grammar-checker, though. That piece of shit is worthless.
Where's the dividing line? There's a guy here who is posting something like eight different versions of the same story: A young man with super powers (genetic, magic, alien gift, he's tried them all) grows up and deals with life, girls, crooks, the government. I honestly believe that he's trying out several different writing AIs to see which ones get the best reviews here. Nothing he's posted is actually HIS writing, except maybe the 'seed' he feeds into the AIs. I figure that within a couple of years he'll be posting stories that are good enough to enjoy reading. By then, though, we'll all have marked his account "don't show me any more of this crap" so he'll have to get a new pen-name. I really, really hope that the webmaster here lets us know that "Bob? Yeah, that's the same account as Joe from last year. It's just a new pen-name." I wonder. If he'd put all that effort into, you know, WRITING, wouldn't he be a decent writer by then? This way, he'll never learn to write. All he's learning is how to run an AI.
Okay, I need to get back out and do something useful instead of sitting here in the AC.
(* "Tools and Their Uses" was the title of a module I went through -and, much later, taught- in my early USN training. How to recognize different types of tools, how to tell which of several similar tools might be best for my current task, etc. One topic was judgement: How to decide when the right thing to do was to go get the correct tool, and when to go ahead and mis-use the tools that were immediately available. Yes, I can do it right. If I have the right tools, the right parts, and the right tech manuals. I can ALSO do it _wrong_, when we don't have the right tools, parts, or manuals, but we're getting shot at and the Captain really, really wants the ship to start moving again.)
-ZM