Would you use AI to write for you? Would you want to deal with people who use it that way?

[highplainsdem]

I believe this is an important question, especially now that Microsoft is already putting a compose feature in its newest Edge browser that will not just open a text box for you to write in, but do the actual writing for you - even suggesting tone, format and length for what will appear as "your" words. See this post in LBN, particularly my comments in the OP: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143031627

This feature is being pushed as something that will make emails, blog posts, etc., easy, by writing them for you. So expect to see it used for message boards, dating apps, etc. Expect to see it used more often by people who believe it will make them seem more intelligent, literate and witty.

I'm not asking this only about the use of AI to cheat in school. There are some people who disapprove of that, but who still want to use AI to write things for their own purposes and convenience, whether that's a business letter or a thank-you letter or a poem or a novel.

So, how do you feel about it?

14 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	I would not use AI to write for me and do not want to deal with people who use it, or buy AI-generated writing.
	6 (43%)
	I might use AI myself but would like to be sure that other people's writing is really their own.
	0 (0%)
	I won't use AI myself but wouldn't mind if other people's writing is all or partly AI-generated.
	1 (7%)
	I'm fine with AI myself and don't mind others using it to write something they couldn't have written on their own.
	5 (36%)
	Other (please explain in a reply below)
	2 (14%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[lapfog_1]

1. This is like saying "Would you use google to do research on a topic?"

or will you insist on using an Encyclopedia?

[highplainsdem]

2. No. Not the same thing at all. Writing, like speech, is communication.

It conveys both personality and ability to reason.

Editing to add that it also shows creativity.

[Yavin4]

24. Google is an Encyclopedia.

Actually, all search engines are superior Encyclopedias.

[Johonny]

3. Ai is only going to get better and I assume in the future

it will be able to do "novel" graphic art and "novel" writing among other things that are an incredible time savings to me or other people.

Since I write novels (that don't sell well ). I sure wouldn't mind AI that does editing that generally costs me thousands of dollars to do. Or AI that writes better ads or blurbs etc . . .

In the future, it's almost certain AI will be able to write whole novels. Basically a publishing company or James Patterson himself (not sure there's actually a difference these days) will ask AI write me a James Patterson type novel, and poof a publishing company in a matter of time will have a "new" one. What does that means to artists? It could be good, it could be very, very bad. It certainly means we are going to have lots and lots of more James Patterson like books in our future. But it also might mean more Agatha Christie type books or Shakespearian like plays . . . it could get weird. One thing we can be certain of, AI will get better and be a bigger part of our lives and our children's lives.

[highplainsdem]

5. How would you feel about AI writing novels if you'd ever been paid well for your

own writing, as opposed to having had to pay to have your work edited and published?

[Johonny]

6. I mean, you can see the future

Instead of publishing companies paying writers to crank out James Patterson like books, they're going to have AI write these books. It almost certainly is going to put a crunch on the self publishing market and make it even harder for new people entering the field (It's already hard). Almost certainly the business of ghost writing (which can pay well), or script doctoring, or joke writing among others are going to be less well paying jobs and harder to get into.

You're going to see Etsy artists competing with essentially big companies mass producing "original" art.

As I said, there is a very very bad side to it. This doesn't even get into coding or engineering analysis. AI is getting better and better and we humans cannot evolve faster than it. This has been predicted for a long time now. We can reasonably guess the future.

On the good side, instead of Agatha Christie's estate hiring people to butcher "new" novels of her characters, the AI will likely be vastly better at writing novels where the characters stay in the tone of an Agatha Christie novel.

[highplainsdem]

10. We don't have to accept that future. Just as we don't accept

people driving cars as fast as they can go, anywhere they feel like speeding.

You're describing AI exploiting what's been created by humans, without giving them credit or compensation. That needs to be stopped, and there are already lawsuits trying to do that.

And while at this point there might be some people in publishing or the film and TV industry thinking it'll be great not to have to pay and deal with real writers, AI also threatens them because it could also lead to publishers, booksellers, filmmakers and theaters being cut out as well. AI is getting closer and closer to being able to generate completely convincing actors as well as settings. It can already direct in terms of being able to suggest camera shots for scripts it generates. So if we accept heading in that direction, people will simply be able to tell AI to generate any books or films they want, with whatever content they want.

I don't want AI-generated work that rips off and exploits real art, puts real artists out of work, and discourages aspiring artists from using their own creativity.

That's a nightmare future.

[Johonny]

17. How do you know you're not arguing with an AI bot on the internet right now

You don't. Indeed, right now as we speak on social media organizations are using bots and people are essentially arguing with no one and in doing so boosting engagement. It's really not about accepting the future. It is going to happen. Sci-fi writers have been writing about this for a long while now.

Is it a nightmare . . .

Well, for mass produced crap it will be absolutely a god-send. However, just as some people still buy vinyl records (sales have actually gone up), there may very well be a resurgent in in person theatre or "real" actors movies. Usually to these social trends there is a certain backlash.

To me the nightmare is the Deepfakes. It's going to be very hard to know if what you're seeing is real or made to fool you, discredit someone etc . . . imagine computer generated child pornography. Totally created by a computer. No child is harmed. All of it is essentially fake. Is that illegal (its certainly immoral), but is that illegal. What age is a computer generated character in a computer generated work of art. These are the questions the future is going to have to answer. What will be the penalty for Deepfakes to the media that spread them? Etc . . . there are real issues and if you think "The internet is not a truck but a series of tubes" people in congress are up to working on solutions, I have my doubts.

[fescuerescue]

19. Most people argue like bots already.

Get into any argument with someone. The internet or in person.

Both participants pretty much just trade a collection of quips they repeat from other websites, crafted political narratives and other self-selected sources.

originality is pretty rare.

[Freethinker65]

4. No. I am not fine with AI generated writings, however

I can see AI's usefulness in critiquing/or offering suggestions to how one's writings may be improved for an intended audience.

Again, this would be AI's "opinion" or suggestions. Perhaps you are not a native speaker, or typically write in a formal clinical or textbook manner and wish to convey your ideas to an informal community audience?
Or you typically write in long flourishes and need to be concise? An AI virtual editor where the writer decides upon any recommended changes.

If everything is written by AI, I can see most writing styles becoming homogenous which would remove some, if not all, joy from experiencing reading creative non-conventional writing.

[highplainsdem]

7. In all of those, you'll be losing the personality of the writer and

what writing communicates about abilities.

Someone who has trouble writing in a particular language can write what they want to say in their own language and then get it translated. Preferably by a human translator if it's something important, since machine translations make a lot of mistakes.

And having AI rewrite something for you to change the writing style is fraud, IMO, if you can't do that revision yourself. It also keeps you from learning to do it yourself.

Would you want to vote for, or employ, or get involved with a person based on falsified communications?

[Freethinker65]

27. I think using AI as an editor for non-professionals is probably ok with limitations.

Suggesting a better word or phrase to use, pointing out redundancy and misuse of idioms and slang, and highlighting possible grammatical errors is not changing the writer's intent. Suggesting changing the order of arguments to make them more persuasive and improve the flow could really help many. I would not consider these falsified communications.

Having AI write an entire piece in the style of someone specific to attribute it to them would be false. That I am against, and I agree it could be abused. A professional writer often does this as satire to great affect though. I still laugh a the New Yorker's Donald Rumsfeld Orders Breakfast at Denny's.

Do you honestly believe those in power write all of their own material with no advice or assistance? That business writings for the public have not been looked over by staff and attorneys?

I would never consider using AI to write a thank you note to a friend or relative. Would I consider using it to possibly improve upon a speech for a public event? Possibly, though I doubt such a need will occur. Would I read a wholly AI written novel?, honestly I would probably get bored with it.

[CrispyQ]

8. Hallie Jackson read a news article about AI, written by AI, on her show this week.

I have to say, it was much better than I thought it would be & better than a lot of news stories. I wouldn't use AI to write for me but if others want to, I guess I don't care. Should they tell people, though, that the words are AI & not their own?

Last week on FB, there was a image of a spectacular mansion of a spooky variety, the kind you imagine Wednesday Addams would live in. The caption said it was in eastern Europe somewhere, & built in the 1700s but turns out it was an AI generated image, presented as real. Who knows if the original poster knew it was real or AI generated, but this is going to be a bigger problem as the technology gets better.

[highplainsdem]

15. The thing is, they won't tell people it was AI-generated. Not if they're

businesses wanting to lay off human employees but avoid any stigma attached to using AI instead.

And not if they're writers wanting to pass off work as their own that they either weren't capable of writing on their own, or didn't want to be bothered to write on their own but still want the credit for.

ChatGPT can also invent fake news sites in minutes, as was pointed out in an article I posted about recently. Make up an imaginary staff and give them convincing bios, write convincing articles and letters to the editor. Put those online to give some plausibility to fake news stories, and no matter how fast they're taken down after being discovered to be fake, they'll still be able to do a lot of damage. That was happening before AI but took a lot more work.

[Pobeka]

9. Amazon reviews already are falsified, think what this means for that!

I think the only solution will be to start forming trusted networks of people -- people you actually know and can give an honest review of a product.

Incredibly ugly world we are going to have to navigate through for a while...

[highplainsdem]

23. Crap. Hadn't even thought about that. And there are probably already

companies using it that way. I do check Amazon reviews a lot, though I also check reviews elsewhere.

[fescuerescue]

11. I've already started using it for this purpose

Not 20 minutes ago I had it write up the agenda for a meeting I'm hosting next week at work.

My boss gave me a list of things to achieve. I took his email and pasted it into CHATGPT and it gave me 95% of what I needed.

I think this educator panic over AI is kinda like the math teacher calculator crisis of 1973.

[highplainsdem]

12. If writing agendas, or anything else, based on your boss's suggestions is

an important part of your job, you just showed how replaceable you are by AI.

[fescuerescue]

14. That part of the job yes

But agenda writing isn't primarily what I do. It's an annoying part of the job that I hate and I'm glad to outsource it to a computer.

This let's me focus on the other more interesting things that I'm good at.

Calculators and spreadsheets didn't replace accountants. It just made them better.

Either way the technology is here. Me not using it isn't going to make it go away.

[NotASurfer]

26. I wish I'd had something like this in my previous job

Management - probably after hearing a presentation at one of their executive brainstorming retreats at a resort in Arizona or Colorado that they liked to do to get away from Texas - decided that all communication regarding issues or problems be sent in an SBAR format. For me, that turned the process of a simple 5-minute email to alert the first level of supervision into 30 minutes of making sure all the boxes of the format were checked and the language was couched in vocabulary clearly understandable by average 8th graders.

Having this as a tool to meet the imposed communication format would've still required me to critically read and edit the email before sending it. I'm not crazy enough to put absolute trust in the output. It's like Excel, that can autofill and calculate happily, but you're going to review the damned spreadsheet to see it what it did makes any sense.

The biggest risk personally would be the temptation to quantify the request to tools like this with the phrase "...in the style of Elmer Fudd", and accidentally send it.

[dembotoz]

13. would you eliminate spell check and cut and paste as well?

I flunked typing in high school
I went thru college with my trusty Adler portable at my side or perhaps in front of me.
I used white out and correction tape. what keys i hit were the keys i got.

When i would get half way thru a page and understood the paragraph i was typing made absolutely no f&&king sense at all, my options were limited.

Technology has given me tools. I like that i get the little red line under a word when i spell it creatively. I like that I can save and edit a doc after i have had time to wake up and look at the doc with fresh eyes. I like that i can instantly send the doc all across the world to get someone else's opinion and editing.
I like that i can save a copy of what i write so if it gets lost, re-submission is just a click.

In retrospect, I wonder if the papers i submitted could have been improved if the production of them was not such a nightmare.
Will i use the new fangled toy?
If i can figure it out, perhaps.

But i still have my Adler in the basement.

[highplainsdem]

18. You're talking about tools to put words on paper, or publish them or transmit

them in other ways. I have nothing against improvements in those.

I'm talking about AI doing the actual composition, the actual writing. AI providing the words.

Replacing the brain, not finger movements or tools we use.

Replacing the writer. Replacing the ability to write, which is learned and improved by writing, as opposed to telling a person or machine to write something for you.

[old as dirt]

16. No doubt it would improve my writing, but...

…how can I get it to do my math for me?

[Solly Mack]

20. I don't need anyone or anything to write for me.

Edit, yes. lol

[highplainsdem]

21. Hey, even the best writers in the world can sometimes be helped

by editors. And sometimes hurt by them, too. So you want GOOD editors. And human ones.

[Solly Mack]

25. Absolutely.

[crickets]

22. I wonder how this is going to affect keystroke logging technology. nt

[Sympthsical]

28. I wouldn't mind it depending on circumstance

Off the top of my head, I think about my partner. He immigrated here from the Phillipines in the 80s. So his English is totally fine with some tics of tense and things ("more betterer" ). He got a PharmD and has a good career.

However, sometimes he struggles with some of his work correspondence with the higher-ups and he'll come consult with me, "What do I want to say here? How should I say this?"

He's amazing over the phone and in person. I hear his meetings (we both WFH), and there are no issues of communication with the people he oversees. But sometimes those more "formal" e-mails where you're trying to strike a very specific professional tone. It's just not his thing. If AI could clean that up, reach for the words he's trying to conjure, and structure it in a way that is very clean, organized, and is expressing the thought as succinctly as he wants it expressed, I don't have an issue.

Like or not, we do judge people based on their writing skills. I get work-related e-mails where I have sat there and wondered if someone graduated from high school. Ostensibly college educated people. It does leave an impression. It can kind of say, "I don't care enough about my job or you to even make the attempt."

So, I'm not sure I'd be bothered. As long as what's being communicated is the accurate, useful information that's required. You might get less of a sense of a person's personality, but if it's work. Eh. I get enough personality at company parties. I don't need JoAnn's bubbly missives about what an exciting Thursday it is when I'm trying to figure out if a spreadsheet has been done correctly.

[tinrobot]

29. Writing takes time. I like saving it. So, perhaps for a first pass that I later edit.

Typically, when I write something, I do a lot of research and read all sorts of information, books, articles and posts on the topic. I then digest it all and use what is relevant. Something from an AI engine would not be much different. Just more information for me to digest.

And, if the the AI output is close to what I want to say, I have no problem using it as raw material. It saves time. However, I'm too much of a perfectionist to allow something like that through unscathed. It will be edited to match my voice and align with the overall narrative.

[LiberalFighter]

30. Would it include derogatory language?

There are so many things I would like to say to clergy, Republicans, evangelicals, criminals, idiots.

[ripcord]

31. I wouldn't want to deal with someone who was passing the AI work as their own

[old as dirt]

32. The Future of AI, by ChatGPT

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217635235