Original content vs AI enriched - what does future hold for the “art of writing”?
By Phanindra Ivatury
(Quiz master Phanindra Ivatury, an Indian national now residing in the Netherlands, shares his thoughts on AI generated writing which is near impossible to be distinguished from that of human and the challenges it pose for the true human authors.)
UTRECHT, (The Netherlands), Oct 15 (Bernama) -- An absorbing trio of anecdotes from my recent past have propelled me to write on this article’s headline.
The first of them relates to a chat with an US based techie friend of mine who while complimenting me on my published article queried whether I use some AI (Artificial Intelligence) enhanced writing tools to decorate my sentence construction and strengthen vocabulary usage for such features.
She further rattled off some AI writing tool titles which almost sounded like Greek and Latin though I would rather mention that a few of the Greek alphabets feel more familiar to me post COVID-19 variant names.
“Seeking such artificial support for my writing would render me guilty of the published credits to my name as the work ceases to be my original creation” I responded to her, while at the same time appreciating her genuine generosity in trying to pass on some debatable value addition AI intelligence writing tips to her transatlantic pal.
A few days after the above chat which lingered on my mind (with the term “AI” in particular), I entered a famous ‘Six Word Story Writing Competition” where all competitors have to come up with a story submission in exactly six words on a given ‘theme word’ which happened to be “Trouble” for this contest.
Amazed by the fact that how AI can be used up by humans in the future, for reasons both positive or negative, I submitted a story which read “Artificial Intelligence may determine future matchmaking”. The story, to my utter surprise won the top prize.
The third anecdote relates to something I read on the New York Times (NYT) recently about how more than a dozen prominent authors including the likes of John Grisham alongside Authors Guild sued ‘OpenAI’ accusing the company of infringing on authors’ copyrights with the claim that it used their books to train its ChatGPT chatbot. ‘OpenAI’ has the backing of techie giant Microsoft which has pumped in billions of dollars as investment into the company.
Getting familiarised with ChatGPT
Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) developed by “OpenAI” is a trained language model that interacts in a conversational way. The GPT architecture is a type of neutral network that is specifically designed for language processing tasks.
In absolute plain terms, ChatGPT’s primary purpose is to produce human-like texts, which can be used in a variety of applications like automated content creation and language-related tasks.
Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT has instantly taken the writing world by storm, also creating growing concerns en route for academicians, journalists, and writers as the model’s AI-generated writing is near impossible to distinguish from that of humans.
While ChatGPT has been programmed to generate high-quality and appropriate texts, the large corpus of text data it has been fed with may contain prejudices which may in some ways result in the production of biased texts that can be damaging.
Chat about Stats
Not even a year since its existence, ChatGPT has never struggled to stay relevant. On the contrary, it had users snapping it up like ‘Snickers’ bars. ChatGPT lit up the internet straight away by accomplishing one million users in 120 hours since launch and galloping in a couple of months to 100 million. With a growth rate of 9,900 per cent in 60 days it set the record for the fastest growing platform in history.
Conundrum for Creative Writing?
Going back to the experts from NYT’s article on the lawsuit of Author’s Guild, the complaint mentions that OpenAI’s chatbots can manufacture “derivative works” that can mimic and summarise the authors’ books potentially harming the market for the author’s work. Also, the writers were neither compensated nor notified by the company.
It also says that ChatGPT is capable of producing summaries of books that include details not available in reviews or elsewhere online which suggests the underlying programme was fed with the books in their entirety.
Writing platforms based on Artificial Intelligence are like challenging conundrums staring into the faces of original content creators like a rampaging climax dinosaur in Speilberg’s Jurassic Park movies. On the other hand, for writing novices thriving to produce a professional project summary or an instant academic thesis, AI writing techniques can be ridiculously handy.
Feed the source material data with clear specifications to summarise it, press the play button, and download the final copy with oven-baked freshness. Would be nearly impossible to tell if it was an original creation or AI enriched. Like a near-perfect fake Gucci Bag. No one can tell the difference except the makers or leather experts.
Man-made machines with instant intelligence
Whether a portion of the world accepts it or not, Artificial Intelligence promises to be a dynamic field of computer science that is here to stay and will make its omnipresence felt in many more creative industries other than writing. The astonishing success of chatbots like ChatGPT are reflective indicators of AI’s role in shaping the minds of tomorrow.
From the times of memorizing reams of math tables and texts intended to manufacture them with human brain accuracy in examinations, from gaining teacher’s brownie points for possessing good handwriting skills, we have graduated to keyboard-equipped computers, then on to laptops.
Generations from the not-so-distant future may not even need a laptop or smartphone for a human interface with AI. Present-day writing and learning concepts may almost feel archaic after a certain time, similar to how we feel now about the ancient methodology of mugging up math tables.
In other words, AI may place some stiff pedagogical challenges on the future ideologies of educational systems, if not already.
Is AI an imminent danger to natural human intelligence?
The thrills and chills of inventions have always been like two sides of the same coin. The difference lies in how humanity chooses to embrace and control it. For Example, even after a manual typewriter had existed for decades, it was not made mandatory through technical curriculums for everyone to embrace it and desert the conventional method of writing with a pen on paper. To date, many exam patterns still adopt the pen-to-paper format.
With the right Information Technology regulations in place, the original content writer will always stand a chance of securing his or her “place under the sun”. Their stories about relationships, experiences, things, or places are based on changing creative perceptions of life alongside the tides of time, something which should never go out of fashion.
Policy Frameworks on AI should ensure beneficial conditions for growth and good use of this innovative technology so that it blissfully co-exists with natural human brilliance.
-- BERNAMA
