I briefly had a form up on my website for people to be able to contact me if they wanted to use any of my visualizations, visuals of theory in practice. I had to take it down because ‘people’ proved incapable of reading the text above it which clearly stated its purpose. They insisted on trying to persuade me they had something to flog. Often these individuals, generalists, were most likely using AI to generate blog posts on some vaguely related theme.
I have rejected hundreds of approaches in recent years from individuals (I assume they were humans) who suggested they could write blogs for me. My site has always been a platform for me to disseminate my academic outputs, reflections, and insights. It has never been about monetizing my outputs or building a huge audience. I recognize that I could be doing a better job of networking, I am consistently attracting a couple of hundred different individuals visiting the site each week, but I am something of a misanthrope so it goes against the grain to crave attention.
We should differentiate between the spelling and grammar assistance built into many desktop writing applications and the large language models (LLM) that generate original text based on an initial prompt. I have not been able to adjust to the nascent AI applications (Jasper, ChatGPT) in supporting my own authorship. I have used some of these applications as long-text search engine results, but stylistically it just doesn’t work for me. I use the spelling and grammar checking functionality of writing tools but don’t allow it to complete my sentences for me. I regularly use generative AI applications to create illustrative artwork (Midjourney) and always attribute those outputs, just as I would if were to download someone’s work from Unsplash.com or other similar platforms.
For me, in 2023, the key argument is surely about the human-authenticity equation. To post blogs using more than a spell and grammar checker and not declaring this authorship assistance strikes me as dishonest. It’s simply not your work or your thoughts, you haven’t constructed an argument. I want to know what you, based on your professional experience, have to say about a specific issue. I would like it to be written in flowing prose, but I can forgive the clumsy language used by others and myself. If it’s yours.
It makes a difference to me knowing that a poem has been born out of 40 years of human experience rather than the product of the undoubtedly clever linguistic manipulation of large language models devoid of human experience. That is not to say that these digital artefacts are not fascinating and have no value. They are truly remarkable, that song generated by AI can be a pleasure to listen to, but not being able to relate the experiences related through song back to an individual simply makes it different. The same is true of artworks and all writing. We need to learn to differentiate between computer intelligence and human intelligence. Where the aim is for ‘augmentation’, such enhancements should be identifiable.
I want to know that if I am listening, looking, or reading any artefact, it is either generated by, or with assistance from, large generative AI models, or whether it is essentially the output of a human. This blog was created without LLM assistance. I wonder why other authors don’t declare the opposite when it’s true.
Image credit: Midjourney 14/06/23