The people refusing to use AI

[Introversion]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15q5qzdjqxo

Nothing has convinced Sabine Zetteler of the value of using AI.

"I read a really great phrase recently that said something along the lines of 'why would I bother to read something someone couldn't be bothered to write' and that is such a powerful statement and one that aligns absolutely with my views."

Ms Zetteler runs her own London-based communications agency, with around 10 staff, some full-time some part-time.

"What's the point of sending something we didn't write, reading a newspaper written by bots, listening to a song created by AI, or me making a bit more money by sacking my administrator who has four kids?

"Where's the joy, love or aspirational betterment even just for me as a founder in that? It means nothing to me," she says.
…

 

[pdblake]

"why would I bother to read something someone couldn't be bothered to write"

Great way to put it.

 

[macwriter]

I understand the sentiment, but whether you love it or hate it, AI is here to stay and will only grow as time passes. A bit like the advent of word processors, then affordable PCs. What would writers in the 18th/19th/early 20th centuries think about those?

I'm a user of Prowritingaid, and whilst I personally write originally 100%, I do appreciate its AI tools for critiquing and grammar checking etc, as I cannot afford to hire professionals to do that for me.

AI is certain to have an influence on all art forms going forward. I'm not a 'fan' of AI, but whatever my opinion of it, it's here.

 

[lizmonster]

I understand the sentiment, but whether you love it or hate it, AI is here to stay and will only grow as time passes.

We do actually have agency here.

I'm a user of Prowritingaid, and whilst I personally write originally 100%, I do appreciate its AI tools for critiquing and grammar checking etc, as I cannot afford to hire professionals to do that for me.

Since you, as an aficionado, surely understand it doesn’t “know” anything, I’m sure you’re double-checking its work.

AI is certain to have an influence on all art forms going forward. I'm not a 'fan' of AI, but whatever my opinion of it, it's here.

It stole 5 books from me. Still waiting for my check, but since you like it so much, feel free to send your portion of the payment to me directly.

 

[Friendly Frog]

I'm not a 'fan' of AI, but whatever my opinion of it, it's here.

I understand the sentiment, but reminding people something is here, which they were unlikely to forget in the first place, is not as helpful as one might hope.

War is also here, as are famine, pollution and measles. I can't deny their existence but for me there is a big gulf between knowing something exist and engaging in it.

Generative AI is easy, I get that. Enticingly convenient and more. But it is still wrong. Like fascism, once it's everywhere, it becomes harder to resist.

 

[Paul Lamb]

• The last book contract I signed specifically prohibited me from using generative AI and required that I affirm that I did not.
• Most submission guidelines I see at lit mags now also say that AI-generated work is not welcome.
• I add a statement at the top of my submitted stories specifically saying I did not use generative AI.

In my experience, the "grammar" checking of AI is wrong about half of the time. Not subjectively wrong, but objectively so. It lacks the sufficiency to appreciate more complicated sentence structures. Even the spell checker can be embarrassingly regionally focused.

When Word pushed down its own AI tool, I spent several hours on the phone with MS asking to get it removed. The only solution (at the time) was to delete Word and install an older version that did not have the assistant. That lasted one day because a software update that evening re-installed the assistant. I was told that a "fix" will be released to allow users to turn off the assistant, but I haven't seen it yet. (Update: The fix is in. I have successfully turned off the AI assistant in Word for Mac.)

Not only do I resent the plagiarism that these learning tools rely on (and I guess lawsuits are working their way through the courts) but AI generated text seems to be the antithesis of creative work. It leaves out the creative spark, the sweat and effort, the repeated attempts to "get it right," and the satisfaction of creation. AI is not writing but assembly.

 

[Introversion]

What would writers in the 18th/19th/early 20th centuries think about those?

Many would probably think they were great. Why wouldn’t they? Word processors et. al. are just more efficient ways for a writer to get their thoughts onto paper (actual, or virtual). They don’t in any way reduce the contribution or growth of the writer. They don’t steal from other writers.

Luddites get a bad rap. They weren’t against technological progress, they were against it being used solely to replace skilled labor with cheaper unskilled labor. To, in essense, make humans into slaves to machines.

You may feel free to shrug and say LLMs are inevitable, and use them. That’s a choice. But I don’t think you’ll find much agreement here.

 

[Cyia]

AI is an oroborous. Eventually it will consume itself and burst for lack of input that wasn't first generated by AI.

 

[lizmonster]

AI is an oroborous. Eventually it will consume itself and burst for lack of input that wasn't first generated by AI.

If it could get on with this, that'd be nice. It's destroying a lot along the way.

 

[RichardGarfinkle]

AI is an oroborous. Eventually it will consume itself and burst for lack of input that wasn't first generated by AI.

I haven't checked the most recent versions, but last I heard it went chaotic after only a few iterations. It can't survive on a diet of its own output. It needs to be fed new art from human artists, otherwise its work will fall away in the inevitable flow of human fashion. People forget how quickly the normalized becomes outmoded. It usually takes less than 10 years for people to go from, "This is the height of fashion" to "What was I thinking wearing that /having that haircut / thinking that CGI looked realistic etc?"

 

[dickson]

AI is an oroborous. Eventually it will consume itself and burst for lack of input that wasn't first generated by AI.

One should always be wary of using one’s own product.

 

[Jazz Club]

• The last book contract I signed specifically prohibited me from using generative AI and required that I affirm that I did not.
• Most submission guidelines I see at lit mags now also say that AI-generated work is not welcome.
• I add a statement at the top of my submitted stories specifically saying I did not use generative AI.

Yes, and if you want to join promos with other authors to publicise your self-published book, the organisers often say that books written with the help of AI or with AI covers aren't welcome. So it's not just in trade pub circles that it can hold you back. (Some readers avoid AI books too!)

In my experience, the "grammar" checking of AI is wrong about half of the time. Not subjectively wrong, but objectively so. It lacks the sufficiency to appreciate more complicated sentence structures. Even the spell checker can be embarrassingly regionally focused.

Yikes. I've never tried it. I assume it's worse at grammar than me, though.

When Word pushed down its own AI tool, I spent several hours on the phone with MS asking to get it removed. The only solution (at the time) was to delete Word and install an older version that did not have the assistant. That lasted one day because a software update that evening re-installed the assistant. I was told that a "fix" will be released to allow users to turn off the assistant, but I haven't seen it yet.

From a document in Word, click 'File', then down at the bottom left, under 'Account', there's 'Options'. Click into that, and then there's an option called 'Co-Pilot'. You can disable it there.

Not only do I resent the plagiarism that these learning tools rely on (and I guess lawsuits are working their way through the courts) but AI generated text seems to be the antithesis of creative work. It leaves out the creative spark, the sweat and effort, the repeated attempts to "get it right," and the satisfaction of creation. AI is not writing but assembly.

And it reads so boringly

 

[engmajor2005]

My Facebook feed has been populated by advertisements for Squibly, an AI "writing tool" that is promoted as a way to "write your book in minutes."

As anyone who has ever written a book before can tell you, writing one in minutes is impossible. I wasn't a fan of AI to begin with, but I'm especially wary of any technology that claims to be able to do impossible things.

 

[Introversion]

As anyone who has ever written a book before can tell you, writing one in minutes is impossible.

Maybe not if you don’t care whether it’s, yanno, readable?

 

[Cyia]

If any of you are fans of New Who, the AI feeding on AI reminds me of Cassandra from 9's run. She was "the last human," but was literally so divorced from her original form that she was a sentient piece of stretched skin on a rolling frame that required constant maintenance from outside servants to keep her from disintegrating. AI is much the same. It is what it is, but it is rarely what it claims to be.

 

[lizmonster]

If any of you are fans of New Who, the AI feeding on AI reminds me of Cassandra from 9's run. She was "the last human," but was literally so divorced from her original form that she was a sentient piece of stretched skin on a rolling frame that required constant maintenance from outside servants to keep her from disintegrating. AI is much the same. It is what it is, but it is rarely what it claims to be.

Yeah, they love to talk about what it will be able to do Any Day Now [tm], but when you look at what it's actually cabable of in this moment, it's either a) doing it inaccurately; b) doing it inefficiently; or c) doing something that's been done for years by other, less environmentally destructive software.

 

[RedRajah]

If any of you are fans of New Who, the AI feeding on AI reminds me of Cassandra from 9's run. She was "the last human," but was literally so divorced from her original form that she was a sentient piece of stretched skin on a rolling frame that required constant maintenance from outside servants to keep her from disintegrating. AI is much the same. It is what it is, but it is rarely what it claims to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus ?

 

[dickson]

My Facebook feed has been populated by advertisements for Squibly, an AI "writing tool" that is promoted as a way to "write your book in minutes."

As anyone who has ever written a book before can tell you, writing one in minutes is impossible. I wasn't a fan of AI to begin with, but I'm especially wary of any technology that claims to be able to do impossible things.

QFT!

 

[frimble3]

Chatbots can't even fake sounding real for more than a few minutes, and once you're accustomed to their sound, you can spot them immediately. I doubt that AI writing is any better.

 

[dickson]

Chatbots can't even fake sounding real for more than a few minutes, and once you're accustomed to their sound, you can spot them immediately. I doubt that AI writing is any better.

I’ve recently started noticing a number of Youtube videos that don’t sound human. I expect they aren’t.

 

[JoeySL]

I’ve recently started noticing a number of Youtube videos that don’t sound human. I expect they aren’t.

I haven't noticed it with original English content to date, but most videos I watch are spoken in English (by people of various nationalities), and I have noticed YouTube is trying to push machine-translated voice-over with bot-voices first. I have to revert to O-Tone a lot, and it's really bugging me.

 

[Silenia]

It's somewhat common in commercial craft instruction videos (e.g. the crochet instructions that come with some of those "beginner kits" for making one specific plushie or another, particularly the off-brand/cheap brand ones) and "reading this reddit post out loud" style videos (though those I back out of the second I notice it's a reading-of-reddit-post vid with or without AI voice)

 

[Bitterboots]

I often ignore the grammar check in Word. It is often wildly inaccurate because it doesn't understand slang, syntax, subtext or foreign usage of certain words. AI might be here now but it doesn't have to stay. If enough people express their disgust that AI is basically taking away our ability to remain creative in our own right, then like the steam engine, it might become yesterday's passe tech.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I have managed thus far to avoid using AI in my life. It's relatively easy, since I just retired. The spouse plays with it sometimes, since he is still teaching and wants to see the ways students will use/abuse it.

One result I can anecdotally claim is that he and other college-level teachers I know no longer assign papers or essays not written in "real time" in class, and some actually do incorporate AI into lessons. Sometimes this is used as a way of showing students what it can and can't do (and where it can go badly wrong).

None of this, of course, addresses the issues with generative AI essentially being computer assisted plagiarism.

I do understand that AI has some applicability in medicine, as it can work better than people spotting irregularities in things like mammograms and other kinds of diagnostic imaging. What this means for radiologist jobs long term is probably more chilling, though there will still be some need for humans. A lot of the time AI is touted as simply making existing professionals more "efficient," but AFAIK that's a euphemistic way of saying fewer people can do the same job.

It may already be negatively influencing the number of new college grads being hired in some professions. One thing bottom-level hires do in some business professions is to read and analyze information from multiple sources and condense it into "reports" for their colleagues.

 

[gettingby]

I’ve recently started noticing a number of Youtube videos that don’t sound human. I expect they aren’t.

I've been coming across this, too.