What is a writer?

Some may say that a writer is someone who expresses their thought through writing or as Google may pronounce it “A person who writes a particular text”, but I believe that writers are the unconsciousness in which speaks when we are not present. Like a maze, we turn in different directions, whether it be left or right, up or down, forward and backwards to find that essence in what makes us. The human mind is complex. A line repeated for centuries over and over by scientists trying to find out what makes us tick: what motivates us to do the things we do, what makes us write the things we write. It’s like a iceberg. You only see the bare minimum on the surface till you dive deeper and find layers upon layers stacked against each other. What is a writer? Even as I am writing this post, I stopped to think of those words myself. There’s billions of definitions yet there’s many uses for them. How does this definition correlate with the rise of A.I. writing?

When I first heard about ChatGPT, I didn’t think much of it. At first, I thought it was just another cheat sheet to help students get through school. No biggie there. “It would all come back to haunt them in the latter years” so I thought. But looking closely, I was too naïve to just sit with that conclusion. When I was writing a paper, I started tinkering with some of the options and describing specific scenarios.

“Ari is a music producer looking to establish her voice as an artist. She seems passionate till one day she wakes up with a stich in her throat. She find out from her doctor, that she has lung cancer and is in the third stage. Describe a scene afterwards in which she figures out what to do next.”

At first, I was expecting a error or something that didn’t fit in with what I was expecting. But sure enough, it was there. Although the topic was pretty generic and didn’t fit into anything I really wanted. Overall, I was impressed though. So I tinkered with it bit by bit. Adding key phrases

“Describe the same previously mentioned with Ari breaking down in despair as the doctor is breaking the news.”

Sure enough, I got the response I wanted. But had to go through layers and layers of highlighting that the software wouldn’t get at first glance. The point is, the A.I. mind can’t replicate the human mind.

While some may think that is the obvious, it was clear that a point needed to be made. As with some, many teachers and faculty believe that this would replace writers and even those in their professional fields. Especially in the beginning when this was first announced, however, the thing I didn’t see brought up in discussion was a simple word.

“Change“

We as human beings are changing everyday. How could an A.I., being limited to the information we put on the web, be able to mimic our lifestyle. Afterall. they are only allowed to mimic what we even put on the web to show and even then, how would they know that we would be the same person tomorrow and the next day of? That’s the thing. They wouldn’t. Even now, as people, it’s hard to predict a person’s next move or their emotions. So rather than a debate with the human mind vs a.i. mind, we should look at as it way of enhancing our knowledge through the uses of A.I.

“I thought it would be easier if we were just one color, black or white. I didn’t want to be white. My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds.” – James McBride, The Color of Water, 1995.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, McBride has made his mark through his talents as a musician, screenwriter, and his award-winning work as an author. One of his famous books, The Color of Water, tells the story of viewpoints from different worlds and how those worlds come together and interact with each other. The book follow the story of his mother, Ruth McBride Jordan, who was an orthodox Jewish women from Poland raising him along with seven of his other brothers and how they viewed each other.

A.I and Their Influence on The Current Writers

As mentioned in a previous article, the A.I. have improved drastically over the years, being able to emulate voices similar to that of a human, establishing chat boxes, and even generated A.I. bots that are capable of having real time conversation. There has been an new introduction, called ChatGPT, which have taken the markets by storm. So much so, that multibillionaire companies like Google are trying to implement their own version of the A.I system. However, there’s more to ChatGPT than what is discussed on the surface.

One key feature that has been play tested with the users of ChatGPT is the emulation of humanist voices. Specifically from historical people’s writing and the tone used. For instance, a person can ask ChatGPT to write a political response to the recent Roe v Wade in Malcolm X’s voice, and it would generate a response pertaining towards that. This can open the door to many possibilities as it can lead to topics such as false identity as it can implement their tone and use of words. However what separates the A.I chat from the humanist is through the feelings and emotions embedded through their piece.

We often write and categorize things based on input on and intuition. Generally, through our sensitivity, we often create some of the most profound pieces here in society. Since the A.I system is ran through the internet database, though it may copy the tone, they would never be able to fully implement the person as the human mind is often complex and hard to compromise.

How McBride’s writing may be implemented through the world of A.I is that it would capture the structure of the diversity of the African American culture and how the culture differentiates from other cultures, however it would not capture the soul and depth of the message McBride would want represented in society.

Photo by Pierre Plante

In the beginning, humanity has prospered off the structure of writing. During the time of the Egyptian and the Assyrian empire, they utilize pictographs. Pictographs are symbols that were used in order to communicate and pass on messages using symbols. Often many times these were used, especially in biblical times, in order to establish a deeper connection towards those of an higher power. Back then, there was an emphasis on the use of technology and civilization prospered through trades and treaties.

In today’s time, technology has been at constant high, with how much it’s effected the economy. There’s not a single place where technology is being used in, and how it influenced people. Tech companies such as Samsung, Apple, Sprint play a big role in the subject of families and now are even making a impact with subjects like politics and daily news. Donald Trump utilized twitter as a means of communication when establishing major announcements back during his presidency (2016-2020) and would make posts on there which would highlight the current state of the nation. In today’s time, you’re more likely to hear news online first through social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc than your traditional newspaper. Now, almost everything is being conducted through an online database.

How might this affect today’s literature?

Photo by Helen Ebach

Writing has always been a staple towards the society around and how we interact with each. At an early age, we are exposed towards words and interpretations in order to mold us into the people we are today. Traditionally, we have always used to literature as a way of convey our emotions and feelings and implementing our ideals and beliefs onto a sheet of paper. With the release of ChatGPT in late November, now it questions the definition of “voice” in writing. ChatGPT main function is their use of database, one could type a prompt and the A.I. could generate a prompt in the matter of seconds and come up with a response that meets the person’s demands. Many writers have play tested it, seeing if it could be able to generate a poem or a short novelty piece. The results were phenomenal as the feedback often met or exceeded their expectations.

However, there has been speculation upon these findings. Many, especially teachers and faculty, are worried with the production of this A.I. system how it will affect our way of thinking. Many high school students have experimented with this A.I system and have been using this as a way of generating essays for their classes. This in turn, have led teachers to have to change their instruction in order to accommodate for ChatGPT.

They say life is like a mystery.

Almost like a tree growing from a mustard seed.

But I believe there’s more to life than what’s to come.

As much as the human mind denies it, calling it dumb.

Before we get into detail, how about we take it slow.

As I extend my greeting with a simple hello.

Hi, My name is Javon Harris. As you may know I love to write and draw. My favorite pass times to do is to research articles and look into history. What I hope to learn from this class is about the process of digital writing and how it is affecting the market for readers and writers a lot. As what you may know, the current technology known as ChatGPT which was announced back in November last year. My hopes is to learn about the digital network that comes with writing and be able to establish a connection between traditional writing and digital writing.