Wednesday, November 08, 2023

Authors

During lunch with a friend at a local cafe on Tuesday, I mentioned what my main concern as a writer is about artificial intelligence.

She urged me to write an essay about it so here it is.

I’m not really worried about students using AI to cheat on writing assignments. Because anyone who would do that does not have enough skill or self-confidence to ever become a professional writer anyway. They are simply the latest generation of plagiarists, who have always been with us, just like the bad shadows of our better selves.

And in its current form, any AI-composed article is mediocre at best.

Of course, as it iterates, chatbot technology will improve but that is not of concern to me either.

What disturbs me is not all the machine writing that will soon clog the digital landscape, but the people who will read it.

Why am I worried about the readers?

Historically, during the long reign of the Age of Gutenberg, there has been some measure of a finite limit to the volume of writing in the world.

Those limits have expanded dramatically in the Internet Era, when anyone can publish a blog. But, generally speaking, the best writing usually still rises to the top, like cream in a cup of coffee.

There are many more good readers than good writers — by orders of magnitude, actually.

So in this time when more and more of the “writing” that floods the market will inevitably be AI-generated, I’m worried that too many readers will grow accustomed to mediocrity, and that will cloud their appreciation of excellence.

That would only further shrink the options for truly talented writers to make a living, which is already a daunting task.

After all, even cream curdles when left untouched for too long.

And that, my friends, is what we are worried about.

HEADLINES:

 

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)