Writing with AI
I will start off by saying, I don’t use the AI to write my blog posts or anything else. I have in the past tested our ChatGPT and found its uses. There is something fascinating about the concept and its many uses, and even the way they come up with suggestions that can help build topics and guide you in the right direction.
There have been times in my life when I struggled starting stories, articles and reports. Often, that first sentence kept me stuck, unable to get writing even when my head was filled with ideas, seemingly random and disorganised. It was only after I got over that first sentence that the rest of fell into place easily and effortlessly.
The WordPress AI
I didn’t originally start exploring ChatGPT but instead, when I started my website on WordPress became acquainted with its AI which doesn’t quite behave the way the other program does. You see, when you write these blog posts on WordPress, you have a personal editor who comments on what you write and makes suggestions on how to improve them. These suggestions can include putting subtitles in the artless or expending on certain sections on the post that will make the post better. For one of my previous posts, the AI suggested giving more examples from Curupira’s history and revealing more about the character.
The AI often tells me to include an action to the bottom of the post though here I struggle as I always include an action at the end, yet the AI is never satisfied with what I put into it but never gives more detailed explanation on this matter. If my action is wrong, what is right? You cannot ask this AI questions and get answers to specific questions and this can get a little bit confusing.
My favourite feature by far of this software is that the AI assistant doesn’t just give you ideas on how to improve your articles, but it also provides positive feedback. For the likes of announcing The Wolf’s Heir publication on last Monday, the AI wished me well on my upcoming publication and it felt very uplifting to read those lines.
For example, for this post, it suggests the following:
The content of the post expresses a mix of personal experiences with AI and ChatGPT, as well as thoughts on the potential and challenges of AI technology. The author’s struggles with the AI’s suggestions and their fascination with AI in pop culture are well portrayed. The mention of AI scams and ethical concerns adds depth to the discussion.
Suggestions:
1. Provide a clearer structure to the post to help guide readers through the different aspects of AI and ChatGPT being discussed.
2. Consider expanding on specific examples of the AI’s suggestions and the author’s experiences with implementing them.
3. Encourage readers to share their experiences and thoughts on AI and ChatGPT to foster engagement and a sense of community.
So, what did I do with these suggestions? The first step was adding subtitles to the text and applying the “clearer structure” advice into my text. By using the “generate feedback” feature, the AI created further instruction:
The post content effectively portrays personal experiences with AI and ChatGPT, along with reflections on their potential and challenges. The structure could be clearer to guide readers through the themes. Consider expanding on specific AI suggestions and experiences to provide more depth. Encourage reader engagement by inviting them to share their thoughts on AI and ChatGPT. Additionally, consider exploring the ethical implications further and discussing potential solutions.
You see how it points out it “effectively portrays”, these little remarks thrown into the feedback is what I particularly enjoy reading. The one thing that I have issue with is when it suggests “encourage reader engagement” because I always include questions for readers at the end of my posts and yet, the AI is never satisfied with this and keeps insisting I add the very same thing. This has been an issue since the very beginning. In fact, the reason I began to include the questions was because of the early suggestions by the AI, and yet no matter how I chose to phrase it, the AI wasn’t happy with it.
Here, we do stumble into a small problem with the WordPress AI, where the feedback is a completely one-sided speech and the user is unable to ask the AI anything directly. For example, I would often like to ask it “how would you suggest I encourage reader engagement?” because the way I wrote my own simply doesn’t contend it.
Something for WordPress to consider in the future.
AI in Pop Culture
It’s hard to say where I stand with AI. Parts me have always been fascinated by the idea. Growing up, there were several television shows that featured the AI, and my favourite was the Sci-Fi Andromeda where the AI showed incredible improvement. It went from a voice to a hologram to finally a flesh version of Andromeda who operated separately from the original AI, as if they were two different people. Years later, we were given the movie Her with the wonderful Scarlett Johansson voicing the AI in the movie. It was a peculiar sort of story, advocating romance between the AI and the human user but came out very strange in the end.
Then, of course, we have the Terminator who takes the concept of artificial intelligence to a completely different direction. The lesson of Terminator is… always be nice to AI in case there is an uprising of the machines someday.
Many of these ideas have been inspirational and aspiring (not Terminator) and it’s one of those concepts, much like Star Trek, that makes you wonder about its future.
Scams with AI
Real life, unfortunately, does not mimic these stories quite as it should and while the AI does have a place in likes of customer service chats (which can make it difficult to reach a human as these programs often don’t have the capacity for many of the problems) but also in scams, as I have recently learned. AI-generated voice scams, for example, are set to scam people much as your now old school text messages from your bank, phone provides, post office, etc. Rationally, I can think that is a ridiculous concept but think of the impact it can have on someone who aren’t very well used to technology or simply the fake sound of a loved one’s voice might have a panicked mind. Never say never, something like that can a devastating affect on someone.
Makes me wonder what sort of future we are headed for.
So, do I think the AI is a novel concept that should be explored and embraced? I do. Do I think that the possibilities are endless? I do. Do I think the human race is ruining something like this with its applications? Absolutely. We have seemed this concept many times in the movies… if something important falls in the wrong hands, the repercussions can be disastrous. Terminator warned of just that… we can put too much in the hands of something powerful and it can turn on us. Especially if the human race continues to teach it all these malicious behaviour patterns.
Discussing the ethical implications of this, movies aside, it’s still unclear what sort of future we are carving for ourselves with this human behaviour. Consider the artificial intelligence as a small toddler, absorbing the world around it by being coded into existence first and foremost and secondly, through interaction with humans. What are we teaching the AI? Deceitfulness, manipulation, destruction of life. We are most definitely raising something harmful for our society. I believe in doing so, the future we are creating for ourself is not a bright one at all. If we consider a future where the AI will further interlope with society as many pop culture references have led us to believe than there is very little chance for our world to develop into a better society as a whole.
Instead, we teach the AI to become more like humans, with all its negative flaws.
Students using ChatGPT
And let us not forget that the ChatGPT problems began even before that, with students writing whole papers using this technology and getting caught out on unchecked facts. Writing with AI shouldn’t be an easy cheat, it should be a novel approach of helping one’s creative juices flow and guiding them in the right direction rather than cheating their way through the tertiary education and creating adults who graduated without exploring the depths of their own minds.
It was in college last year where I first encountered this feature where the lesson was to learn how to use ChatGPT, not to cheat, but rather to generate ideas and rephrase wording as you consider who it is you’re addressing (specifically in terms of digital marketing). For example, if your targeted audience is young adults, there is a different way of presenting content then it would be for someone in their late twenties or early thirties. In this, I found ChatGPT to be very literal and pop culture influenced, if this makes sense. It would apply slang and terminology that feels out of date. On the other hand, asking it for suggestions of social media posts proved to be useful. Maybe not all of them but most of them tended to be very good ideas that I could develop myself.
Final Thoughts
This is certainly a subject that gets away from you and one that could be explored through multiple posts, I will admit to this. For now, I want to leave my thoughts here and maybe continue them at another time. It’s a vast subject and hopefully one that will get back on the right track in the near future, if this is even possible anymore.
Parts of this text have been expended through the suggestions of the AI. When working on my blog posts, I often utilise this feature but I never quite show you the editing process which is what this post was about. Different suggests guided me to added additional paragraphs throughout the text, some of which were obvious from the suggestions mentioned above while the others seemed to implement quite naturally.
What do you think of AI and Chat GPT? Have you ever used AI to write whole pieces or asked for its help on WordPress by exploring its editorial functions? I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject and maybe create a debate. I’m curious how many people on WordPress have utilised the Jetpack option and seem all it can do.
Furthermore, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the AI voice scams, the implications it will have on society, the way AI is being “raised” by the malicious pockets of humanity and what this will mean for our future. It’s certainly a topic to be included into this discussion whether we want to or not, at times because while writing the AI can be fun and could be handy in different ways (I still prefer the WordPress AI over ChatGPT), we do have to wonder about the other worldly implications it will have for all of us.
As always, I hope you enjoyed the read and tune in again next week for the next rendition of Inspiration Monday. For now, this will be the only written blog section covering all previously existing topics (except quotes, because I love quotes).I would greatly appreciate likes and follows, especially on this blog post.
And don’t forget to keep up with my Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
Until next time…
~ Love, L.V.
L.V. Luca 