I’m less terrified of AI taking over the world as I am of it taking over me.
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The first scenario seems inevitable.
The second one, I will fight.
But, I don’t necessarily trust my conviction.
It could be like how I fought buying an automatic car the first 10 years of being licensed.
No, mate, I want to feel like I’m actually driving this car.
Then, clearly oblivious that there would be cars that did, in fact, drive themselves in a future I am currently living in.
Or it could be like how I was the last photographer I personally knew to ditch my old film SLR camera for a digital one.
I’ve come to love both my auto car and my digi cam.
An automatic car is easy, digital photography is convenient (and much cheaper).
But, as a writer who is coming across words scripted by AI daily in the media releases I receive and the posts and captions I see online, it unsettles me.
And no, it’s not simply concern that a robot will put me out of a job some day.
I just hate the idea that people are going to stop exercising their minds.
Is the intelligence we created going to breed the most unintelligent species of humans yet? Are we going to make ourselves dumb?
I suppose we have been using ‘cheat’ tools ever since we’ve been using computers.
A calculator does the complex sum for you in seconds, an electronic thesaurus will find you the synonym that refused to fall from your tongue’s tip, spelling and grammar checks have been polishing our sentences since we started loading word processing software onto our Commodore 64s from floppy disks in the ’80s.
Given that, I do question my resistance to accept it’s the way of the future.
I think it’s because I see writing as an art, and to imitate it in such a way feels insulting.
Selecting words with intent and carefully arranging them in harmonious paragraphs is personal.
It’s crafted from your head.
It’s what’s known as intellectual property.
Every writer has their own style, to the point that when another ‘writer’ pilfers their work and goes to town with their thesaurus to make it look like theirs, the original author can still immediately identify it as their own.
It’s in the structure, the flow, the order, the assembly.
AI has already advanced so far it can easily fool if you don’t know what you’re looking at.
I’ve been hoodwinked by some videos.
I don’t even trust photos online anymore unless I know the photographer personally or I’ve been following a page that’s proven itself since long before AI came to the party.
But if you know what you’re looking at, it’s easy to spot.
I can tell an AI-scripted piece of writing straight away.
The untrained eye might not be able to recognise it, but writers can tell.
But I wonder if anyone else cares as much about the authenticity of the art as the artist.
Will it even matter if I keep faith in my skills and stay true to my set of them?
Or is it only the creator who places that much importance on exclusivity and human-touched pieces?
It’s something for us all to ponder, whatever our craft is.
It’s no doubt a helpful assistance tool in every industry, but I hope it remains just that; for assistance, without taking on a main character role.
For now, however, I think underdeveloped transcriptions from voice recordings will keep my job safe.
After all, as valued as it is, we’re in the Goulburn Valley, not the Golden Valley, and I believe the old prison nearby is named Dhurringile, not Darren’s girl, and while the battle of Long Tan raged on for some time, I certainly don’t recall it being renamed to the battle of long term, as AI would have reported had I let it write any of my articles.
Robots can try, but in spite of their expense, programming and advanced technology, they’re still just a Temu version of a real artist.