A Beginning
I’ve been playing around with generative AI for a few years, in one way or another. Obviously, ChatGPT and other forms, such as MidJourney, caught the imagination of the public like no projects before. ChatGPT apparently hit 100 million users in January this year. This was not too long after its launch in late November last year at all.
You’ve probably already heard about all this. So, I won’t go on about it too much. But this does inform the plan behind this little website. I quite like to write when I can. But I feel that ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI are going to change things regarding writing and all sorts of other areas of craft and creativity.
The Experiment
Still, I don’t really have a good idea of what this means. Let me give you one example. When talking to a family member recently, she talked about reading about an experiment in her local newspaper where they print an article by ChatGPT and one by a human to give readers a better sense of what the tool can do. She said you could always tell which article was generated by ChatGPT and which was written by a human. I quite like the experiment. It does raise a bit of awareness about the topic. But it also has its limitations, at least I think so. For example, is this really the way people will use this tool most of the time? Just bung in a sentence and see what comes out? Maybe sometimes. However, this isn’t the only way to use it.
Are things like this important? Maybe. Soon ChatGPT will be a year old. It’s not been around so long and developments have not stopped. So what’s next? For me, I feel I just have to start somewhere.
The Implications
I wonder what this might mean for me in the future. I do work with language. I can’t really see a way such tools aren’t going to change the way that things are created. Some people seem to worry about being replaced, as far as I can tell, others that there’s a real danger in using the technology due to ethical and legal issues. I think that these are significant issues that I’d like to get a better grip on. But I also doubt I can do this without using it more.
Lessons from the Past
This reminds me of when I was in school. Back then, computers and the internet were still finding their way into people’s homes and other places. They weren’t always welcome.
When I was in my late teens, I remember having to hand write essays. My handwriting is terrible. I’m also left-handed, which means I’d often end up smudging the ink as my hand went across the page, if I wasn’t careful. This led to many hours of writing an essay, then rewriting it, so it was sufficiently presentable.
However, there was a perfectly good computer sitting idle when I was writing and rewriting these essays in my messy hand. But the teachers said we had to write our essays by hand as it was a vital skill to learn. How to use margins and all sorts of other things, I think. I’m not sure, I can’t really remember. But I do recall that as soon as I went into further education, I had to learn how to write essays on the computer, something I’d never really received critical feedback on before. Perhaps I did learn something by writing those essays in my own handwriting. I imagine the main thing was that people didn’t like it. But I also felt both at the time and in hindsight that I was missing out on learning something that would have been more useful for me.
The Plan
I now feel that way about things like ChatGPT. I think I’ll have to learn about all this, so I’m going to try and experiment a little more with it and post a few things on here.
