On ChatGPT

To resist technology is to acknowledge one's age.

Similar to the way cats and dogs mature at a rate seven times that of humans, I feel as though I’ve matured (to the threshold and beyond) about three times as quickly as most well-adapted people. The fact that I feel about 120 years old is just another side note in this joyous adventure of being a human in the world, and it might explain the following thoughts.

I was an early adopter of technology. I worked an average of three jobs leading up to and throughout college, and one of those was helping Google create algorithms in the early 2010s by manually accepting/rejecting search results. In other words, my moonlighting gig was pretty much what led to ChatGPT-like and other AI programs. That’s right, folks, I am part of the problem (or gift?) of AI.

But look, I had to eat then, and I was poor.

So fast-forward to 2023 and, as a professor and writer, I am not a fan of what I helped create. I told ChatGPT to write me a story of 1,000 words about a young girl who finds empowerment, and it came up with a story that fit Freytag’s bill with a beginning, middle and end. AI dusted off its hands after about 90 seconds and stood back to examine my reaction. I shrugged, but inside … Well, I was a mixture of emotion.

While the story itself was not great literature, it was about on par with a beginning writer’s attempts at their first or second or tenth short story. It had the elements, but it lacked soul. And it also lacked polish. While I think AI will graduate to achieve more polish, I do wonder if its writing will ever have soul.

Thoughts?

Examining this subject in a different light, I also want to address the tech from an educator’s standpoint. (This might get me fired, so it’ll be for subscribers only.)