Do you use AI?
I do, quite a bit. Never for any of the words you see in the Daily Reminders—my writing is strictly a No AI Zone 🚫—but for loads of other stuff.
I use it as a kind of upgraded search engine these days. It's also really good at checking for inconsistencies, if I'm working on a wide-ranging project, or if I've put something to one side and forgotten the details. It gets me up to speed.
But I know its game. I know it's not sentient. I know it's not a person.
I know it's not wise… it just has a shedload of information at its disposal.
I know it's not my friend, even when it's been programmed to behave in a cloyingly agreeable fashion.
I know it's nothing more than a tool. Most crucially:
But kids don't. And I think we need to acknowledge that.
A New York Times article did the rounds a few weeks ago. It was called If You're Over 40, You're Ready to Use A.I. and it was quite the eye-opener. I really recommend reading it.
(It's behind a paywall, but you might have luck seeking out an archive copy of it.)
The article—from someone who runs a Masters program—details what happened when they allowed their students to use A.I. for thesis research and project management, but forbade its use in the generation of actual original content/writing (a bit like my own delineation I have described, above).
What they found was that although everyone literally signed an agreement to that end, and were reminded regularly of the rules… many of them simply couldn't resist. When confronted,
“…they squirmed and then admitted they had used A.I. to augment and synthesize their writing.”
The very natural state of resting in ‘not knowing’ as we await the creative muse was too much for them, and they chose the path of least resistance, because—unlike this boring old fart who's had to hone his craft over decades, without A.I.—it simply made sense to do that.
We're hard wired for energy conservation. 🤷🏻♂️
Here's the wake up call, from the author:
“There is something druglike about using A.I., not because it necessarily produces pleasure, but because it removes a particular kind of pain. A person who grows up with A.I. may never know the necessary agony of a blank page, the false start, the dull vocabulary and the private embarrassment of a first draft. A student who relies on A.I. too early will likely never sit long enough with confusion to distinguish it from failure.”
I'm not one for advice, but I do recommend you remain mindful of what happens whenever you children use AI. They're curious little beings and you can pretty much guarantee that every interaction will go beyond fact-finding and stray into conversation, advice seeking and content generation.
Why wouldn't it? These programs are designed to interact, and from experience, they never conclude a conversation unless you specifically tell them to!
And every time a child lets it create on their behalf, almost by definition, they're outsourcing their wisdom – turning their attention from their ‘guide inside’, avoiding trial and error, bypassing the creative process and losing out on developing their critical thinking skills.
The author concludes:
“We do not wait for children to turn 16 to hand them car keys because cars are evil, and we do not insist that surgeons train for years because scalpels are immoral. We build thresholds around powerful things because power requires judgment, and judgment can’t be downloaded or installed.
“Before a person asks a machine to write for them, they should know what it feels like to write from the depths of their own uncertainty and identity. Before a person lets a machine imitate their voice, they should have endured the long, uneven, often humiliating process of acquiring one.”
I couldn't agree more.
What say you?
💟
Giles
p.s. If you suspect something has been AI-generated, you can always check with free software, such as Pangram. It's not perfect, but it suffices for stuff you read online. Here's the text of today's Daily Reminder, run through it. Imagine my relief when it concluded it was: 100% Human Written 😅
p.p.s. Usual disclaimer: if you're reading this in 2030 (assuming we get that far), it's going to seem painfully naive.
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Giles P Croft