On ChatGPT as a Writer.
Presenting here a singular thought that opposes my own tendency of being increasingly stunned by AI.
Recently, I opened ChatGPT for some content writing that I needed to do for a LinkedIn update post.
Now, I had made many LinkedIn posts in the past, and I knew they’d gotten boring because of the consistent structure that prevailed in all of them and prolonged flow of the posts. It was the kind of predictable writing that simply would not surprise, engage your mind or have pivotal points and turns as you read it. I knew immmediately that was not a sign of good writing after just one 20 min class I’d freshly taken on reading and analysing comprehension as part of my GRE prep course. And I realised that it felt somewhat similar to ChatGPT.
In fact, this was the main thing many people not deliberately but slowly come to the conclusion to after using ChatGPT for content writing. This includes me, when I utilised it for efficiency with a lot of reports that had to be made and minutes of meetings which have to be refined.
And that’s when I realised that ChatGPT was in fact a terrible writer, ranging from technical project reports all the way to creative writing or even LinkedIn posts. Using ChatGPT pushed me further down a spiral that I was already somewhat half way in by myself resulting from not having opened a book in a long time.
Because, no matter how great it is at generating long pieces of impressive looking content, it could not have conveyed the opinions and takes that I had in mind like this post I just wrote with no help from ChatGPT.
In wanting to prove this to myself, I turned pages through my life and came to the conclusion that the best content I’ve ever produced with or without AI was my many many pieces of poetry I wrote back when there was no such thing as fast dopamine and higher patience levels. Mind you, this was also that golden time when I could not bring myself to put down my weekly collections of library books.
I’m hoping here that readers will now also remember their school essays and hobby writing which will prove the same to them. Or those who explored AI and came to this conclusion much earlier than me can relate and feel reassured.
I wrote this passage in 40 min, naturally with backspace moments. My deep neural network too generated this content based on past data and experiences. ChatGPT wouldve given me something instantly without holding back. In wanting to reduce every model’s time complexity and increase confidence scores, where are we going wrong? What is that x-factor that makes humans different? I wonder if it is our perpetual insecurities, stocks-graph emotions and extremely plastic thoughts.
One day, there will be something close to EQ in trained bots and that day I will take this back. Will that have its cons? Definitely. Nevertheless, our generation knows it is bound to happen and I’d like to look forward to the good parts. Until then, I will continue to strictly (parent-like as some of us may feel towards these wonderful technological developments) encourage my AI assistants to refine, correct and change NOTHING more.
ChatGPT is a tool and that should give us sufficient reason to believe that we are capable of more. And a writer is not simply someone who can write but majorly a writer because he/she is human.
