"Zoning refers to the designated land use regulations" is barely a step above "Webster's Dictionary defines zoning as," the ur-opener of bad freshman comp writing.
BTW this is a reply not a comment because I can no longer comment, don't know why, maybe my browser and my ancient laptop have broken up for good this time.
I think we may have the same vintage laptop. I can't access the comment box because it's all smooshed together with the first comment. So I mostly reply, and when I try to comment, I dash it off elsewhere, then copy and paste in what I hope is the comment box, then cross my fingers. This is gonna have to do till at least next year.
I noticed the same thing. In the last downmarket step in my career, I worked for a news website with a shoestring budget. Our lawyer told us we could use social-media photos without fear of being sued, as long as they were set to public. One of my colleagues, more than once, would pull photos that were plainly filtered -- not the dog-ears ones, but ones that had, for instance, Harry Potter glasses added. I'd point this out, and he simply couldn't see it; he didn't have the eye for it. I wonder how many editors are getting snowed by AI the same way.
We should not forget about Sin from Satan's forehead. What would Milton say? Even a blind poet finds a tasty nut in the darkness of his own thoughts. Milton against the ghost in the machine, I'm betting on the blind guy.
There’s only one assertion of fact in that whole piece, the claim that some jurisdictions have made changes to accommodate telehealth. Of course there’s no citation so it’s of no more value than the rest of that litany of redundancy. AI doesn’t create anything, it rearranges bits of information with no understanding of context, validity or relevance. It will be perfect for propagandists and worthless for the advancement of knowledge.
Maybe we could program the AI to read this stuff and cut ourselves out of the loop entirely. I could be out in my garage building furniture while two AIs argue about the 2024 election.
That AI example just keeps spitting back the issues, concerns, needs, etc., like a student spinning wheels on a Sociology exam. Actual journalism might have "While zoning regulations may vary, many jurisdictions..." followed by actual reporting: "In San Jose, CA, for example, regulations..." Or "it remains essential for doctors engaging in telehealth..." with "Bob Smith, a proctologist in Phoenix, was sued by the city government..."
What struck me most is that it sounded exactly like the endless Megan McArdle boilerplate that enfolds her libertarian opinions. Could she have been an artificial intelligence all along? Or does the word "intelligence" nullify that possibility?
I'm just pissed because I paid good money for that Zweiback toast/gorilla info.
Ever see " Colossus: The Forbin Project?" I did when I was like, 12. I been sweating this AI bullshit for 53 years.
You think the Magas are tweaked out now, wait until there's a halfway plausible video of Hillary harvesting adrendochrome while destroying a huge pile of Trump votes by throwing them in a gas stove.
A terrific flick, ahead of its time. From the wild poster for it, you'd never know that so much of the movie (as I remember it) was a guy talking to a computer screen.
Having read some samples over the last couple of weeks, the AI copy seems notably stiff and bloodless, and seems of dwell in the uncanny valley of writing. However, I’ll bet money that it’s already being used to write self-release novels on Amazon. I should see if it can outline a 10 volume series of zombie apocalypse novels set in Florida, where survivors take over a prison built conveniently near a well supplied popular theme park. In addition to fighting off the flesh eating undead, the survivors must also take on a Cuban invasion trying to bring woke liberal communism to The Sunshine State.
Having made my living on both sides of the editorial desk, the advent of AI can be seen as an improvement over the dreck so many freelancers submit. At the very least, the AI stuff is literate and actually comprehensible. As opposed to some of the gems I've gotten from freelancers over the years. (Like the guy who sent in a feature article about fishing around Manhattan--he was writing about fishing for striped bass and bluefish, but the entire article was about looking for "strippers and blues" because he did not know how to spell "striper." Or the writer who sent in a piece on tying craft-foam flies in which he told the reader to "cut out the round circles." Or one of my regulars who could fill an entire issue if you asked him to, but who had no idea of actual English syntax--"throw Momma from the train a kiss" was a typical sentence construction for him.)
So while AI may not generate an article filled with news or new knowledge for the reader, it also likely won't generate an article that the editor has to spend 3 hours basically rewriting from its native tongue into something readers might understand and enjoy.
I've been thinking about a Theodore Sturgeon quote lately. "It came to him that [science fiction] is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also – Eureka! – ninety-percent of everything is crud." From now on the "crud" is going to be machine-made and it's going to be even harder to find the good stuff.
One of my takes on AI before Silicon Valley VCs decided that it was the new path to great riches was that no way could it be more intelligent than its creators. (OTOH, I have no doubt that it will develop to the point that it is smarter than it’s creators.) And given what I think of the state of intellect these days, well, the presumption has to be that all in all its so crappy that the benefit is minimal.
As I understand it -- questionable! -- what it does by and by is to do some research and regurgitate it in prose. What it seems not to do is what a person does: assess the research before committing to an opinion. So it’s susceptible to spewing bullshit -- as that lawyer has been discovering.
Which is to say that at this point I’m greatly underwhelmed by it in all respects. And that anyone takes it seriously is kind of depressing. But these are the times we live in...
I'm with you on AI not being all that or anything like what people's (yes, the actual human) imaginations make it out to be. Chomsky put it best: It's a kind of parlor trick. There's no mind in the machine. We supply the nuance and the life. The audience fills both sides of the conversation. The program isn't really creating or learning or even participating. It's like hitting a tennis ball against a backboard, just playing with ourselves, with some coder masturbating in the background somewhere.
I do this, although I am not a journalist but a scientist who has been on the TV a few times, an expert witness, has ~5 patents and ~50 peer-reviewed papers
That last sentence is great, thx. And yea, I recognize that writing style. It is what you get in a lot of clickbait toe articles.
On an entirely different subject I read that it will soon be easy, if it’s not already, to train your own AI with whatever to want. Maybe you should train one to write lie Roy Edroso and copyright it. If not to save yourself time, then to keep someone else from doing it first. Imagine a future where you can create a bot that writes like Steven King and then sue Steven King for writing like himself. Probably only weeks away and I doubt the Supreme Court would have a problem with it.
Googled "toe articles" but all I got was a bunch of links about toes (and sorry, that ain't my thang, but now that it's in my search history I can't wait to see the ads) Stupid AI.
Hey, in all these "Put ME in the paper" pitches you've gotten, you ever hear from a guy named John Barron? Word on the street is he's got the real inside dope on the amazing accomplishments of a certain Manhattan real-estate developer.
The two extremes you highlight, truth and lie, or perhaps better framed as authentic communication and spoofed non-communication, have parallels in politics. Human demagogues work hard to say nothing while representing themselves as knowledgeable authorities. They throw in slogans and coded dog whistles. The skill is in avoiding matters of real concern, such as the causes of economic precariousness for the majority of us, and substituting instead conspiracies or false causes which are an emotional comfort zone to their audience.
Anti-Semitism has a long record of easy ways to express what can seem innocuous and neutral to those who are deaf or willfully ignorant. And for the average person who is stressed out about making a living, who would rather not face matters and think directly about how life can go from getting by to down and out in a series of unexpected accidents or misfortunes, one serious health problem or a job loss or both, blaming an identifiable group works.
That is true for both left and right, if we can even speak in those terms anymore. We find news junkies on both sides of the gaslighting. I am not even hinting that both sides are equally bad. Are there only two sides? This is more a matter of how we love doping our brains with the kind of fears, disgust, and fantasies we choose, watching the news passively, rather taking effective actions.
Whether the latter means restructuring debt or trying to get a better job, voting or taking to the streets, or even just thinking more clearly about what the real problems are, anything is better than filling up on conspiracies OR rage-reading/watching good reporting on how the Federalist Society and ALEC have destroyed our ever-tenuous democracy.
As a final note, AI itself can be used as just another boogeyman. It is merely yet another way that increasing access to information (yes, over the Internet, God bless us, everyone!) and increasing democratization also have ushered in more noise and confusion about whose views are worth paying attention to and whose information intends to obscure and misguide us.
Thanks to your heads-up, it was pretty clear that answer was handwaving bullshit. I'm surprised it didn't "hallucinate", to use the computer science term, a few cites, since a lot of the ChatGPT stories I see highlight that as a standard feature. They must be using some downrev version. the great AI Angst reminds me of the old fears about samplers replacing musicians in recordings and pit orchestras and recordings replacing live performances and sheet music (a particular fear of John Phillip Sousa) before that. They came true, but the impact was mostly on the lower rungs of the ladder, where a cheaper but inferior replacement was good enough. Capitalism works its magic once again. Once, being a musician was a trade, like being a reporter. I would expect being a "writer" is going to look a lot like those real soon now.
My point exactly. Ive worked as a professional musician for mumblety years, playing everything from shitty bars to international festivals, and I never made a living, that's what the day gig in San Jose was for (thanks Mom). From what little I've read, most contemporary reporters are rich kids who can afford to work for no money, like unpaid "interns" who can afford to live in NYC or DC. Eliminating the bottom of a trade turns it into a hobby or avocation, where you hustle for a living and suffer for your art. Yeah, i know it was just a punch line, but it's a sore spot for me.
Maybe “AI” generated text will at least make people slightly better writers by modeling grammatically correct prose. Since people internalize examples they see, and since most people now see sentence fragments and emojis all day, rather than Woolf or Addison & Steele, it’s no wonder written communication has gotten so bad. You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) what too often passes for professional writing in a business setting. And since everybody reads each other’s bad writing, it gets replicated.
I take your point. But I fear the spread of this technology as a tool of obfuscation rather than illumination will further ruin the regard ordinary people have for written communication, and even for proper grammar and usage -- that "well-spoken" and "well-written" will become virtual synonyms for "bullshit."
[gently reading] "AI, AI, Cap'n!"
My first thought was, "What's Al Capp got to do with it?" Stupid sans-serif fonts.
"I sought the serif, but I did not seek the Draughtsman Bold"
Iä! Iä!
-whose work flows fully formed from their brows like Athena from the head of Zeus -
The rest of us though , our half- baked
unformed fragments drift by like life preservers from a wrecked ship, receding into the smoky fog of Canadian wildfires...
This AI thing is bad shit. And we are helpless to stop it. Too much money to be made.
"Zoning refers to the designated land use regulations" is barely a step above "Webster's Dictionary defines zoning as," the ur-opener of bad freshman comp writing.
BTW this is a reply not a comment because I can no longer comment, don't know why, maybe my browser and my ancient laptop have broken up for good this time.
Looks passable to me.
It’s a pretty good noncomment, though.
Possibly AI generated, who knows?
Looks cromulent to me.
I think we may have the same vintage laptop. I can't access the comment box because it's all smooshed together with the first comment. So I mostly reply, and when I try to comment, I dash it off elsewhere, then copy and paste in what I hope is the comment box, then cross my fingers. This is gonna have to do till at least next year.
Exactly.
Javascript. Another thing we can blame Mark Andreesen for.
I noticed the same thing. In the last downmarket step in my career, I worked for a news website with a shoestring budget. Our lawyer told us we could use social-media photos without fear of being sued, as long as they were set to public. One of my colleagues, more than once, would pull photos that were plainly filtered -- not the dog-ears ones, but ones that had, for instance, Harry Potter glasses added. I'd point this out, and he simply couldn't see it; he didn't have the eye for it. I wonder how many editors are getting snowed by AI the same way.
A smoky day in DC town
Had me orange, had me down
I viewed the haze from a ledge
The Nashnul Gall'ry had lost its edge
How hot I wondered could this thing get
But the AQ index, it ain't popped yet
Flame ladder climbed right up the rungs
And in smoky DC town we all sadly wrote off our lungs
“Computer, compose some lyrics in the style of Ira Gershwin.”
Bring.It.On!
Ha ha, my browser created a link out of Bring.It
Bring.com Bring.org
Bring.edu, whose sports teams are the Fighting Bonnies.
A smoky day in DC town
The air was orange, turning brown
Toward my hand my poor gaze fell
If I had fingers, I couldn't tell
Particulate matter obscured the skys
I viewed the tragedy thru blooshot eyes
Finally I felt fully gassed
And in smoky DC town I well and truly breathed my last
Sen. Inhofe's snowball had melted fast,
How long, I wondered, could this thing last?
For my next number, I'm going back to one of the gold old good ones, "Particulate Matter Gets In Your Eyes"
They asked me how I knew
Climate change was true
I of course replied
Learn to read you fucking moron
Thanks for this – I'm here to drop an update but first I'm savoring the moron's rebuke...
Anyway, here's this:
Queens Man up and committed connivery
Via conspiracies and contrivery
But the Feds he incited
In return he's indicted
For flipping off the archivery
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Ferries wreathed in smoke off the shoulder of Staten Island.
Well done!
We should not forget about Sin from Satan's forehead. What would Milton say? Even a blind poet finds a tasty nut in the darkness of his own thoughts. Milton against the ghost in the machine, I'm betting on the blind guy.
Speaking of Milton imagery, I can never shake the image of “Hymen, in his saffron robe” from Comus.
Delightfully, saffron crocus is pollinated by Hymenopterans.
Followed by the audience joining the players for a dance to end the masque.
N95 or forget it.
There’s only one assertion of fact in that whole piece, the claim that some jurisdictions have made changes to accommodate telehealth. Of course there’s no citation so it’s of no more value than the rest of that litany of redundancy. AI doesn’t create anything, it rearranges bits of information with no understanding of context, validity or relevance. It will be perfect for propagandists and worthless for the advancement of knowledge.
And yet it fills space with words.
Think of the good to which we could have put those electrons!
Maybe we could program the AI to read this stuff and cut ourselves out of the loop entirely. I could be out in my garage building furniture while two AIs argue about the 2024 election.
You have garage-building furniture? Could you cut yourself out of that loop too?
I think he already has
I'd be out building in my garage if I wasn't out standing in my field.
"George Santos says..."
Happy now?
That AI example just keeps spitting back the issues, concerns, needs, etc., like a student spinning wheels on a Sociology exam. Actual journalism might have "While zoning regulations may vary, many jurisdictions..." followed by actual reporting: "In San Jose, CA, for example, regulations..." Or "it remains essential for doctors engaging in telehealth..." with "Bob Smith, a proctologist in Phoenix, was sued by the city government..."
What struck me most is that it sounded exactly like the endless Megan McArdle boilerplate that enfolds her libertarian opinions. Could she have been an artificial intelligence all along? Or does the word "intelligence" nullify that possibility?
I'm just pissed because I paid good money for that Zweiback toast/gorilla info.
Zweiback toast/gorilla info – 1.5 marks
Silverbacks do Ritz, I've heard...
Silverbacks do Ritz, I've heard,
While chimps eat Triscuits with dry bean curd.
Macaques like fruit with their Saltines,
And orangs dig Townhouse with sardines.
But homonids like me are snackers
And devour any of those crackers!
You guys keep getting better at this
Frightening, isn't it?
They'll soon have enough practice to make it to Carnegie Hall
Practise? PRACTICE?
DOCTORS have Practice. LAWYERS have PRACTICE. I have a CAB.
Damn.
2 marks!
Lookin' like a millionaire gorilla
Tryin' hard to look just like Magilla (killa dilla)
"How much is that zwieback in the window?"
Gorilla be all steamin' up the glass...
When the truth is found
To be lies
And all the joy
Within you dies-
Is it not possible that you might make use of a personage via the application of affection?
Or amourtization, as I like to call it...
I would like somebody to love
but I don't need somebody to love
I suppose at some point I should take it upon myself to find somebody to love
You better!
you better!
you bet!
Or else resign yourself to being treated like a guest by your friends.
I hear Dr. Bob associates with a lot of assholes . . . I’ll show myself out.
Ever see " Colossus: The Forbin Project?" I did when I was like, 12. I been sweating this AI bullshit for 53 years.
You think the Magas are tweaked out now, wait until there's a halfway plausible video of Hillary harvesting adrendochrome while destroying a huge pile of Trump votes by throwing them in a gas stove.
Electric stove. Hillary would never do gas.
A terrific flick, ahead of its time. From the wild poster for it, you'd never know that so much of the movie (as I remember it) was a guy talking to a computer screen.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/mediaviewer/rm1222727680/?ref_=tt_ov_i
Could she have been an artificial intelligence all along? Or does the word "intelligence" nullify that possibility?
Artificial, yes; Intelligence, sub-cat level
Spats be like "Dude. Don't even bother."
Grumpy Cat respond "Let it go, man..."
Having read some samples over the last couple of weeks, the AI copy seems notably stiff and bloodless, and seems of dwell in the uncanny valley of writing. However, I’ll bet money that it’s already being used to write self-release novels on Amazon. I should see if it can outline a 10 volume series of zombie apocalypse novels set in Florida, where survivors take over a prison built conveniently near a well supplied popular theme park. In addition to fighting off the flesh eating undead, the survivors must also take on a Cuban invasion trying to bring woke liberal communism to The Sunshine State.
During a hurricane, while being devoured by a reticulated python in the Everglades.
"endless Megan McArdle boilerplate that enfolds her libertarian opinions. Could she have been an artificial intelligence all along?"
Artificial, sure. Intelligence, not so much.
Having made my living on both sides of the editorial desk, the advent of AI can be seen as an improvement over the dreck so many freelancers submit. At the very least, the AI stuff is literate and actually comprehensible. As opposed to some of the gems I've gotten from freelancers over the years. (Like the guy who sent in a feature article about fishing around Manhattan--he was writing about fishing for striped bass and bluefish, but the entire article was about looking for "strippers and blues" because he did not know how to spell "striper." Or the writer who sent in a piece on tying craft-foam flies in which he told the reader to "cut out the round circles." Or one of my regulars who could fill an entire issue if you asked him to, but who had no idea of actual English syntax--"throw Momma from the train a kiss" was a typical sentence construction for him.)
So while AI may not generate an article filled with news or new knowledge for the reader, it also likely won't generate an article that the editor has to spend 3 hours basically rewriting from its native tongue into something readers might understand and enjoy.
All worthy examples – you got more?
And re that third one – hell, I could do that!
Antecedents: What are they and why do they matter?
"They may be ugly, but fishermen love to use maggots as bait."
Facts check out.
Have you seen any fisherman recently? This writer hit a run home
You and I could be antagonists in a George Bernard Shaw play about this. "Is there no higher power than that [points at computer]?"
"Why can't Americans write English?"
The're revolting?
I've been thinking about a Theodore Sturgeon quote lately. "It came to him that [science fiction] is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also – Eureka! – ninety-percent of everything is crud." From now on the "crud" is going to be machine-made and it's going to be even harder to find the good stuff.
If the human race survives long enough we can use the ol' Test of Time, how many sci-fi writers from the 50's-70's are still being read today?
I've been thinking of re-reading John Brunner's 1972 novel, "The Sheep Look Up", see how it holds up. So that would make one at least.
Even better, rewriting something for three hours only to discover it was crap all along.
I imagine plenty of people have looked for strippers and blues in Manhattan, probably even a few who also like to fish
Thanks for this. I spent some (too much) time trying to squeeze something out of the strippers and blues. Glad I deferred.
Pat Robertson is dead.
When my mother - in - law passed away we discovered she was making an automatic 600 dollar a month donation to Pat .
This was while we were helping her out with groceries and utility bills.
I'm not a fan of Pat's.
Rest in piss!
Oceans of it.
Tramp the dirt down, THEN piss (getting the order right is very important)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi_YQul7XXk
The 700 Gallon Club
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
They finally got his eternal lodgings warmed to the appropriate temperature so he could move in.
“The logic, at least, of a bad term paper” saying nothing. Perfect.
Eh.
One of my takes on AI before Silicon Valley VCs decided that it was the new path to great riches was that no way could it be more intelligent than its creators. (OTOH, I have no doubt that it will develop to the point that it is smarter than it’s creators.) And given what I think of the state of intellect these days, well, the presumption has to be that all in all its so crappy that the benefit is minimal.
As I understand it -- questionable! -- what it does by and by is to do some research and regurgitate it in prose. What it seems not to do is what a person does: assess the research before committing to an opinion. So it’s susceptible to spewing bullshit -- as that lawyer has been discovering.
Which is to say that at this point I’m greatly underwhelmed by it in all respects. And that anyone takes it seriously is kind of depressing. But these are the times we live in...
I'm with you on AI not being all that or anything like what people's (yes, the actual human) imaginations make it out to be. Chomsky put it best: It's a kind of parlor trick. There's no mind in the machine. We supply the nuance and the life. The audience fills both sides of the conversation. The program isn't really creating or learning or even participating. It's like hitting a tennis ball against a backboard, just playing with ourselves, with some coder masturbating in the background somewhere.
I still assert true AI (as opposed to the "clever" sets of algorithms at present) won't think anything like we do. It might even look insane to us.
Time will tell. I think it’s inevitable. Then again, I won’t be here to see.
Tbf many of us already look insane to us
Just like Alien intelligence would likely be very unlike ours, except, presumably, for common points in maths and science.
"What it seems not to do is what a person does: assess the research before committing to an opinion."
So - perfectly suited to modern day journalism.
Who are these persons who carefully research before forming an opinion? I'd like to meet some of them.
I do this, although I am not a journalist but a scientist who has been on the TV a few times, an expert witness, has ~5 patents and ~50 peer-reviewed papers
Yeah. I wonder if artificial general intelligence will ever become irrational enough (if at all) to be actually useful.
That last sentence is great, thx. And yea, I recognize that writing style. It is what you get in a lot of clickbait toe articles.
On an entirely different subject I read that it will soon be easy, if it’s not already, to train your own AI with whatever to want. Maybe you should train one to write lie Roy Edroso and copyright it. If not to save yourself time, then to keep someone else from doing it first. Imagine a future where you can create a bot that writes like Steven King and then sue Steven King for writing like himself. Probably only weeks away and I doubt the Supreme Court would have a problem with it.
Googled "toe articles" but all I got was a bunch of links about toes (and sorry, that ain't my thang, but now that it's in my search history I can't wait to see the ads) Stupid AI.
As has been noted by many others. Apple autocorrect really sucks.
They are supposedly changing it. Possibly to make it better
If only Saul Zaentz were alive to see it! https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/john-fogerty-self-plagiarism-lawsuit-creedence-clearwater-revival-752805/amp/
Zaentz can't dance
But he'll steal your money
Good thing there was a different Supreme Court back then.
I'm pretty sure you can ask ChatGPT to write in a specific authors style, and have it do so eta: now.
Is that Fake Hemingway contest still going on?
It was a dark night, and stormy...
That's Bulwer-Lytton, not Hemingway. Hemingway would be Hills Like White Heffalumps
I'm hip. Lazy, too...
Tho I like the idea that hills are out of date and can be rewrapped for anonymous gift exchange.
"Oh! It's a...hill..."
Give it a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. Actually, wait, don’t. It might be able to weaponize it.
Hey, in all these "Put ME in the paper" pitches you've gotten, you ever hear from a guy named John Barron? Word on the street is he's got the real inside dope on the amazing accomplishments of a certain Manhattan real-estate developer.
Don't call him – heel call you.
"In conclusion, zoning laws contain multitudes."
“And many people have differing opinions about them.”
The two extremes you highlight, truth and lie, or perhaps better framed as authentic communication and spoofed non-communication, have parallels in politics. Human demagogues work hard to say nothing while representing themselves as knowledgeable authorities. They throw in slogans and coded dog whistles. The skill is in avoiding matters of real concern, such as the causes of economic precariousness for the majority of us, and substituting instead conspiracies or false causes which are an emotional comfort zone to their audience.
Anti-Semitism has a long record of easy ways to express what can seem innocuous and neutral to those who are deaf or willfully ignorant. And for the average person who is stressed out about making a living, who would rather not face matters and think directly about how life can go from getting by to down and out in a series of unexpected accidents or misfortunes, one serious health problem or a job loss or both, blaming an identifiable group works.
That is true for both left and right, if we can even speak in those terms anymore. We find news junkies on both sides of the gaslighting. I am not even hinting that both sides are equally bad. Are there only two sides? This is more a matter of how we love doping our brains with the kind of fears, disgust, and fantasies we choose, watching the news passively, rather taking effective actions.
Whether the latter means restructuring debt or trying to get a better job, voting or taking to the streets, or even just thinking more clearly about what the real problems are, anything is better than filling up on conspiracies OR rage-reading/watching good reporting on how the Federalist Society and ALEC have destroyed our ever-tenuous democracy.
As a final note, AI itself can be used as just another boogeyman. It is merely yet another way that increasing access to information (yes, over the Internet, God bless us, everyone!) and increasing democratization also have ushered in more noise and confusion about whose views are worth paying attention to and whose information intends to obscure and misguide us.
Thanks to your heads-up, it was pretty clear that answer was handwaving bullshit. I'm surprised it didn't "hallucinate", to use the computer science term, a few cites, since a lot of the ChatGPT stories I see highlight that as a standard feature. They must be using some downrev version. the great AI Angst reminds me of the old fears about samplers replacing musicians in recordings and pit orchestras and recordings replacing live performances and sheet music (a particular fear of John Phillip Sousa) before that. They came true, but the impact was mostly on the lower rungs of the ladder, where a cheaper but inferior replacement was good enough. Capitalism works its magic once again. Once, being a musician was a trade, like being a reporter. I would expect being a "writer" is going to look a lot like those real soon now.
Yeah, but tradesmen are supposed to earn a living!
My point exactly. Ive worked as a professional musician for mumblety years, playing everything from shitty bars to international festivals, and I never made a living, that's what the day gig in San Jose was for (thanks Mom). From what little I've read, most contemporary reporters are rich kids who can afford to work for no money, like unpaid "interns" who can afford to live in NYC or DC. Eliminating the bottom of a trade turns it into a hobby or avocation, where you hustle for a living and suffer for your art. Yeah, i know it was just a punch line, but it's a sore spot for me.
But will people pay to read AI-dork copy? Either with their wallets or their eyeballs?
They'll pay – they just won't know.
"But the machine is beyond all that. It is in the business of perfecting its craft — that is to say, of perfecting itself."
It made it up. Figuratively and literally.
Maybe “AI” generated text will at least make people slightly better writers by modeling grammatically correct prose. Since people internalize examples they see, and since most people now see sentence fragments and emojis all day, rather than Woolf or Addison & Steele, it’s no wonder written communication has gotten so bad. You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) what too often passes for professional writing in a business setting. And since everybody reads each other’s bad writing, it gets replicated.
I take your point. But I fear the spread of this technology as a tool of obfuscation rather than illumination will further ruin the regard ordinary people have for written communication, and even for proper grammar and usage -- that "well-spoken" and "well-written" will become virtual synonyms for "bullshit."
Then the Savage God returns, I guess.
I agree with you. I was just desperately grasping for a silver lining.
Savage God? Or Savage Gods?
What do you think this is? A restaurant patron waiting area?
Were David Addison and Remington Steele purveyors of written communication?
No, but I assume that’s where the producer, Glenn Gordon Caron, got the names.
Better grammar makes obedient writers, not better writers...
But also, you have to know the rules before you can break them effectively.
**Error** unexpected retval