Why I'll never let AI write for me...
A Top 5 list grounded firmly in the 20th century...
No, I’m not living in an Amish Paradise or partying like it’s 1699 - but I am white and nerdy (and there are a fair number of such anti-tech communities not too far from where I live in Ohio). I haven’t turned Luddite or decided to start the Butlerian Jihad against the machines; I actually have some very good reasons for why I’ll never express myself through the flawed and sometimes psychopathic lens of Open AI’s latest LLMs and here they are:
Because AI is a lousy writer. Yes, it can format pretty documents and even do citations (which is where I might just crack one day), but even when copying the style of actual writers, the output leaves me less than impressed. This may get a little better over time, but I doubt if it will ever progress from adequate writing to great writing. And after spending decades trying not to be mediocre, it would just be too depressing to give in now.
Because somebody real has to help train these things. Leaving the next generation of AI models to the mercy of Grokipedia or Reddit or Pravda’s disinformation factory is just a recipe for ending up with a real-world Terminator (if you don’t count Arnold as Governor as already having achieved that). My content is the only thing that might keep these unhinged models from going overboard. I’m saving the world, one post at a time.
Because I’m getting old and my brain might shrink. Yes, this is a real thing (and it can happen even without AI - for example by watching TikTok or too much sports). I hate Sudoku, so writing it is. Also, I’m becoming fairly convinced that the LLMs are crazier than I am.
Because someone must be around to teach the next generation of humans (after the GPT generation self-destructs). As we pull ourselves out of the Trump Dark Ages, where millions relinquished their ability and desire to think, the few - the proud and the very old writers that remain will spark the next enlightenment.
Because I’m making it my personal goal in life to prevent anyone from becoming a trillionaire (just on principle). The greatest irony of the AI Age will undoubtedly be that some of the dumbest people in the world (yes, we’re talking about you Elon and Sam) became some of its richest ever. The last thing I want to do is to facilitate their path to riches by legitimizing their (currently) ridiculous products. I’m afraid I may be too late to stop it though.
Here’s some tag lines / potential ads for today’s most popular Use Cases for LLM-based AI:
Cheat your way to higher grades and career success!
Got Plagiarism, hell yeah!
Thinking is so retro…
In all seriousness, I don’t intend to use LLMs (or any AIs) for any of the things that a) I’m good at or b) that I really enjoy doing. This situation is a little bit like having a robot play tennis for me - why would I outsource my fun? I don’t want LLMs to write for me because I know the writing quality would suffer and that I’d lose the very skills that I was trying to exploit or conserve (and then it’d be someone else’s creation, although maybe a tiny amount would still actually be mine - no royalties of course).
Weird Al’s Amish Paradise.
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