I find lately that I can’t trust anything I see, read, or hear. Now when I read something, or view a video, there are doubts in my mind. I can’t help but think, did AI create this? Did AI help create this? How much? At what point in the process?
Using AI for our work, or creative efforts, raises new questions about transparency and ownership. For example, if AI generates a first draft of a novel based on imaginative prompts from the author, who gets the credit? Presumably a draft requires rewrites and edits. Does it matter if a human is doing them? Or if a human is prompting the AI to do specific things instead?
What about scenarios when AI and humans work together collaboratively. This was described in “Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)” by Sal Khan. He’s the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit service providing educational resources to children. In his book, he describes the experience of his daughter co-writing a story with an AI bot. Both prompted each other to create and complete the story. Is this any different from two people working together collaboratively bouncing ideas off of each other?
While I can definitely understand the benefits of using AI in these scenarios, I feel without any consistency of application it leaves too many doubts in my mind. Some authors might use AI for edits, or to suggest revisions for clarity. I tend to use AI on my formal work documents to provide executive summary and conclusion sections based on what I’ve already written. AI is also useful for reviewing documents to identify areas that are unclear or underdeveloped. However, others may use AI to generate the entire document or story. Then simply make a few tweaks, add their name on the title page and submit it as theirs. The point is, there’s no easy way to determine AI’s involvement and to what extent.
I have to confess, some weeks the temptation to use generative AI to whip up a blog post for me is real. However, I always resist the urge because I feel committed to the first rule of my blog post that I’ve followed for almost 13 years. The rule: The Deletist is my creative space and I’m not allowed to be judgmental with myself. Let’s hope I can continue to resist.